A wise man told me he had one wish and one wish only.
"I don't ask for much, but I love peace and serenity. I live for it. I love it. I feed off it," he said. "You can say I'm a peace nut. Sure, I've got money, but it doesn't mean a thing if you don't have yourself. Remember this, grasshopper, if you're not a friend to you, a thousand friends isn't anything."
He took a long puff off his cigarette and winced, then threw the butt into the water from where we were standing, high above, on a one-lane bridge. A flame flew up ten feet. And as we watched all the polluted brick-a-brac flowing in a cluttered mess down the oily, green, hot-pink, black, fire-engine red, yellow & purple river, the wise man sighed and said:
- I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather did.
- And not tumbling around and shrieking like the passengers in his Buick.
