Rocco, the man in the background, is a blind prophet with no followers. The napkin in front of Gloria is about to take flight like a magic carpet, carrying its gin-and-tonic off to foreign lands. I’ve always loved that line of Nietzsche’s: “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.” I used to identify with some unsentimental rebellion in that “nothing”, but now I realize the “nothing” could just as well be an affirmative “everything” without any change in meaning. So I fly on magic carpets, sipping gin, to the top of distant holy mountains and present myself as the first ever acolyte to a blind prophet named Rocco. That was today. True story.⠀