I have a writer friend with whom I like to close down restaurants. Once, I sat with him in a cafe for three hours and did nothing but drink a glass of water. He teased me, after — but it’s also the slowest I’ve ever seen a person drink a cup of a tea.

I’m celebrating something — a thing only another writer can understand, and this weekend, when we were the second-to-last people to leave another restaurant, he brought me a celebratory gift: a book of Kerouac’s advice for sentences and general human existence.

He has a copy, he explained, and the pages are starting to get wrinkled.

Genius treasure friend.

(Post title from one of my favorite Kerouac lines, which I have framed in giant proportion at home.)