We're all heroic, in our own way, probably just by being born. Now and again it occurs to me how heroic it is to be a writer, to be an unsung one, to do another job like bartending to support the principle. Heroic to go down into the quick pleasure-driven hell of a restaurant bar, to be dragged down each night by their cravings, so much so that your energy is consumed, so that you don't look that much like a writer but more a sort of general loser type, so that, if you wrote a book, that achievement too would be disguised as rant and rave, obsession, unhealthiness. The late nights up, waiting for sleep to come, the poor sleep, waking up late over and over, for what, you ask. Shunned by popular society, having little standing, or is it the destiny to be alone, to live like a hermit in the midst of a major city, headed in a direction different, opposite, from the crowd.

Compassion, of course, extends everywhere, even the depths and obscure places, even to poor old barmen and his suffering watches, permeates, at least in classical understanding, everywhere, without judgment.