On arriving at her door in the rain, a stranger with suitcase in tow, I was furnished with lunch before I learned it was her birthday.

at once precise and discursive, friendly and skeptical, direct and elliptical

Did The Argonauts always begin as it does?

But as a writer you have to be willing to say, Yeah, that’s not good enough, over and over and over again.

The mindset that told me that a life without alcohol would not be worth living, or that I wouldn’t be able to live it, was a category error brought about by a substance. The thing is, quitting has to come from something deeper than rationality. It has to come from a true exhaustion and an interest in what else there might be.