Anyone who has been in therapy knows it's torture.  There's the weird place you start, discombobulated, fresh from walking down the street, worried where you left your ATM bank card, in a pocket, at a Karamazov bistrot tavern with your friends, fellow sinners, goddamn, hope they don't steal my accumulated wealth of $6000...  And you're supposed to talk to a professional, who therefore by definition is to some extent faithless and blind, like, out of the box, like a race horse, or a great dog risen from a fireplace library stand with pipe smoking master to go trot  your deepest thoughts out, when really all you want to do is pee and if, god willing, the bowels want to work, drop a nice warm shit out into the cold and snowy world, then to be wrapped up by the drying airs of the atmosphere and rendered into the same harmless dirt we came from and to which we shall return.

Ain't that a mouthful.  And your therapist, being a professional, does not have, like you a runny nose, an unshaven face, hair sticking up from being pulled out of a winter hat...

So what do you talk about, having discovered on the way your bank card is not in your wallet, and no checkbook, so you dig into wallet, what the f., into your courier bag which has, admittedly, been handy, scrape up, $25, you know, for the copay...

Okay, ten, nine, eight, seven six, the poor woman is waiting for you to say something meaningful, or just to start, and, first of all, you are distracted.  Why, because the night before was the night after Valentine's Day, but incorporate with President's Day, day off for most people, and, you know, like the date night for those who didn't want to do it on the actual day....


So I start, greyhound I am, with Sturgill Simpson, I think, a wise move on my part, because, goddamn, the guy brings meaning to me like no other.  I'd seen his NPR piece and 'learnt' about him, but, I'd forgotten... shit I deal with makes it happen.

Drink of wine... "Marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, DMT, but love's the only thing that's ever saved my life..."  Well, I'm not going to go into the lyrics, so my approach is talking about this guy and how his family was coal miners in Eastern Kentucky, and, like, their one day off was a Saturday night....   This guy is legit.  He hit a wall.  He met a woman who cared and saved him and told him fuck you don't suck at it, you're going to drive you or me crazy so why not write some songs...

By this point, early, I could tell my therapist was fatigued with me.  And reasonably, taking a yoga teacher training course...

So okay, I'm grasping for things to say...  And she's looking at me because it's her job to study my strange illness, to ask pointed question, but, I guess, the fish has to go swim its rounds before coming back to the boat or whatever makes sense.

(Walter Brennan would have been good as Lincoln, by the way.)

Random stuff I talk about.  I'm grasping at straws.  I'm distracted by lost bank card, she's got enough on her mind, so it goes...

Should I explore a bit with mushrooms?  I've never done psychedelics.  Pot, sure.  Maybe wrecked my ambition.

"Well, if anything, marijuana, I wouldn't worry about it.  Neuroplasticity..."

But, I've said it often, you know, music is music, and 'people just put in boxes,' as Shane MacGowan says.  It's all related.  Blues, soul, Irish music, skiffle, bluegrass, Elvis rock'n'roll, cajun, conjunta, jazz, hard country, soft country, new country, Lyle Lovett, Hendrix, a song is a song.  A Clash song can be played country.

And that's where I'm getting to my point.  Great literature.  It's all played on a simple stringed instrument that someone made at home, doesn't need to be a Stradivarius, just needs to be good, like a Martin is pure of tone and you're singing like you want to sing.

This speaks of the finest literature that is.  And it might be almost obvious, basic, simple.  It might seem crude almost, like a puppet show.  But, here are the greats.  What do they talk about?  They are, you know, willing to be so stupid and obvious and basic and straight.  Like Dostoevsky.  The Brothers Karamazov.  He's opening up the pages of the Gospels.  He's pulling out new stories, new embellishments, and they can be quite complex, but the story is basically the same, the healings, the sufferings, the sicknesses, the pride, the honor, the relationship between man and woman, father and son, it's all there, in both.  The big questions about the world, about sin, daring to take on the meaning of life if there is one.

And that's country music.  That's blues.  That's classical music.  That's molecular Newtonian Einstein physics and chemistry.  That's what rock n roll is, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Mahler, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong...  Hank Williams.

And that's why separate, you know, the wheat from the chaff, from worthy readings and the rest.  There is, ultimately, the literature, the great stuff, which really speaks of the problems we have, the morality we need, the faith we must keep...

But it's simple basic stuff to write a book, and Dostoevsky shows us this, in his own convoluted way. There are characters, basically human, sinful, a mix of things, in need of the Gospels.


This is, however, embarrassing things to bring up in front of your therapist, like what it might mean to 'take up the Cross,' like what it might mean to act upon faith, no longer quibbling.  She lets me talk, silently, then asks how I'm doing as far as relationships go.

And the next day, after being allowed to stay home with my sore feet due to the snow storm, but still having kept odd hours, I wonder about faith and what it means to have, to implement such a thing, and I feel embarrassed, as perhaps Jonah must have before getting serious.  I soak my feet in a tub with epsom salts and let my mind not worry too much about the coming shift, how to get there, what I'm doing with my life personally and professionally in the bright light of day.

Tending bar has always made me a bit nervous, the pre-game at least, and that's why I always set myself up pretty well.  But there's the voice in the back of your mind wondering about your professional development, your future, where you're going to end up, things which getting through a night shift does not solve.  For the time being, I make my pot of green tea, cook burgers simply under the broiler and prepare to shower and otherwise get ready.

Wine.... in the good book it is either good, new or old, and by implication, not so good.  To go on about it longer, in the eyes of the eternal is, as Robert Parker would know, is like going on about stereo equipment.  Yes, sure, there are finer points, but this is not helping my sign of Jonah spiritual crisis as I get ready to face, as I've faced for twenty five years, a shift behind a bar.  Okay, sure, what's to worry about?  You're in control, of some things anyway.  You are doing some form of priestly good, listening to people talk, hearing them out.  But...  much of it you see is misbehavior...  And this leaves one with a  nagging conscience.  Which serves me right...

In mild desperation to be calmer I do a plow, a shoulder stand, a headstand, to get the chi back up toward the top.