You know…when you finally come to, and find yourself unaware of the day or date, or the precise county or state in which your body currently resides, but completely aware that your ribs are all stoved in, three fingers on your craps-throwing hand are busted, your front teeth are loose, your head feels like a basketball is being inflated inside it, and that you’re laying in someone’s pool of something…you start to reminisce about earlier days, better days—, indeed better times—when you could put two coherent sentences together and take a leak without pissing blood. Even writers have “golden ages,” gentle readers.