Every Man with a Mustache is not Your Father
Maturity—what is that? The grace of a molding grapefruit awaiting the garbage bin— is that it? Don’t tell me about wisdom, I’ve been served divorce papers. I’ve had too many teeth removed. I’ve sobered up but I still have a drunken spirit. Too many old wrinkled stiffs have neither tasted the wine from the cup nor the wine of the spirit. Fools are wise, sooner or later. Maturity—I think I know now. It’s a kind of surrender, but not like a coward. It’s like that American general surrounded in Belgium, replying to his enemy's request that he surrender with “Nuts.” Surrender to fate. Surrender to destiny, which is born from the womb of your spirit. Your enemy did not make your spirit. Your Friend sent you that adversary. Yes—I am surrounded. There is nothing to do but struggle here, in this trench which will be my grave. This life is my soil.
As a baby, I came from my mother’s womb, but now I’m all grown up and I know that I must die. Oh, Friend, let me die on my own terrain, drunk with the wine of my soul.