"DC is bureaucratic," a wise man says, who grew up here in a prominent family of intelligent people.  Stifling, he means.  The road map, Ivy League, law school, law firm, etc., it's what's expected of you here.  Don't wander from the beaten path;  you'll disappear, become irrelevant.  " It's different out in Aspen.  You can be who you want to be."  There it's not weird, the being tired with whatever you're supposed to be doing.  Connections are made.  People can do more, be more, branch out, get some respect for what they do, get some help.

But DC?  Nope.  You're stuck in your pigeon hole.  And no one is going to help you gain recognition for doing anything beyond the bureaucratic.

I'm feeling bitter anyway, as I finally apprehend this great truth that I've somehow been overlooking these years here.  The waiter downstairs, who's life is easy, the kitchen right there, opens the door five minutes early for the flood of concert goers attending Dumbarton Oaks concert series.  The youthful guy who manages on Sunday is out of town.  My busboy tonight is known in circles as "Lento Gonzalez," as opposed to his brother "Speedy."  You'll be fine," French waiter tells me earlier, when I tell him it's the night of the concert and we need to be staffed for it.  It's in the waiter's interests that we run with as little staff as possible, not to dilute the tip pool, the amount of tips the staff gains for every shift, day and night, upstairs or down divided by the number of shifts you worked that week.  The Point, it's called, this measure of how well we did in a certain week.  Properly, it is rendered in French, so sounding like 'pwahhn,' with the n silent, sort of like the word for bridge, pont, but with a w sound.  ("C'est quoi, le point?" I mutter sometimes.)  So, I know full well, as soon as I get there, my Monday morning, the day the clock changes and casts us into darkness, I'm being thrown under the bus.  And before I know it, at 5:25, a regular couple, blithe with concert to attend, are sitting at the bar, and so it goes, and by 6:15 the bar is full, twenty dining.  And so it goes.  The beginning of a disorganized ride, a pile of unclosed checks sitting in the darkness by the computer register, glassware, dirty plates, each act not cooperating.


I have a restaurant dream.  I'm supposed to go and informally help out at French restaurant friendly to ours, as if the boss said, 'well, go down and check it out, help out one night, see how it goes.'  I slip in to this restaurant, my dream geography placing it down on M, and I wander in its labyrinths, unsure of where the hostess is, where an office might be to announce myself in, restrooms, dining rooms here and there, staff coming to and fro, talking, but not enough to engage, and so, just as I've slipped in, seeing what it's like, I make an exit, happily, my consciousness saying, 'no, you don't need ANY of that.'  Not that they aren't nice people, the chef there and his crew.  (And oddly, in a second part of the dream, a rat follows me out the door as I exit past a waitress through the outdoor seating, a rat I can't seem to get away from, which then, in perfect English, accuses me of being insensitive toward her...  But that's a whole 'nuther thing for Freud.)  It's enough to make me feel a Fellini moment, one I've never seen, one having to do with escape.

I guess I am hampered by seeing things in too much complexity.  Even if it weren't for instances coming out of past memories.  The many-sided quality to people and things that makes it hard not to be sympathetic to them, for one things.  But generally, something like Hamlet's issue of being, perhaps too intelligent, maybe that's it, or rather, seeing too much, sensing too much.  And after all these years, having gotten nowhere, yes, maybe it's time to see a shrink, to narrow down the complexities and see things simply and clearly, wouldn't that be nice.