"I thought you were drunk."

I walked into Pho Saigon yesterday to get lunch and took my usual table. A stranger two tables away looked over and said, 'Hey, do you need to be alone, or could I join you?' He was thirtyish, kind of hipster-looking, in rumpled gray shirt and jeans. I thought he might be someone I had met at the pizza place or the coffee shop at some point, but had forgotten about. So I invited him over.

I'll call him David. He was, in fact, someone I'd never met. He was about 33, and he had just come back to town after living out of state for a few years. He'd left a wife and a lot possessions behind in Oregon and is trying to start over. He told me he'd been struggling with alcoholism for a couple of years, along with cocaine. I figured at that point he had just chatted me up to get a free meal off me, but that wasn't it.

"Actually," he said, "when you walked in here, I thought you were drunk. That's why I wanted to talk."

"No, I look like this all the time," I said.

I asked him if he'd ever been in the program, and he said he had, on and off. I told him I knew a couple of folks who could help him with that, if he was interested.

David asked me if I'd read 'The Power of Now,' and I told him I had started it, but not finished it, and that I was more into Alan Watts than Tolle. He'd heard the name, but didn't know much about him. I told him the story of Watts' uproarious (I guess that's a word) tenure as Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University, and how after that, he had retreated to an upstate New York farm to write "The Wisdom of Insecurity."

I used to keep copies of that book around to give to people, but I don't have any at the moment. David said he'd check the used book store for a copy.

We talked some about zen, and seeing reality free of opinions, illusions and delusions.

I ended up buying his lunch, anyway, over his protests. I was grateful for the conversation.

I hope things work out for him.