It had been a long week at work, the grind of closing too late, and I felt tentative and in a bad mood.  I had things to mull over with my therapist, Dr. H.:

I don't know, Doctor, it's like I've self-deprecated myself into this strange existence.  That put-down voice is inside my head...

The data collectors, the techies, have all this self-confidence from the world they've created to their specs.  That doesn't make them good or really anything that they do good, in any sense of the term.  Look at that Times article about the college girl and her mentor at Stanford... They are as blank of morals as their work is.

And I'm this poor Cinderella guy, living with the selfish step sisters...  And I take put-downs too seriously...  I wake up remembering an episode...  I dunno, maybe the wine that gets me through the end of the night brings me down the next day, such that I wake up replaying in my mind stuff from years ago.   Like, 'she's come to the dining hall after I brought her flowers the last time, and she's offering an olive branch,' but I was negative and self-defeating... didn't live in the moment, didn't express my values.  Hindsight...  I'm sure she had a full list of grievances about me too, a whole list, and that's why she was obliged to be the way she was, because those mistakes were a disappointment to her and she had to get them out of her system...  I don't blame her at all.

And that sense of screwing up all my chances with the beautiful princess and being haunted by that doesn't help my feelings of self-worth.

End of the week I can barely go get a haircut.  Draining to have to deal with people, like it's too complicated, or I'm so...  I don't know what... feeling a sense of, I dunno, futility, I guess.  Like it's all just futile.  Everything you do, can never be enough, so why not just get it over with, quit everything, find another way...  change all your assumptions, change...  It's like going out at my age;  what's the point?  I'm a nice guy, I talk to strangers, I'll make friends with the bar people, but clearly I don't fit in, wherever I go.

No, I don't need any put down.  I got enough poor stuff going on in my own mind.  Fragile, I guess.  So vulnerable you don't even want to know...  Life's hard, man.  Does anyone show mercy?  Does anyone take pity, without making it seem like a great affront to the whole system of humanity, a coddling of weaklings...  And all along you sense this core reality of incredible illogical kindness toward everyone and everything, this poor Christian thing inside of you...  And maybe that's what Jesus is talking about like when he says The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head...

And maybe Jesus was this incredibly nice guy, good sense of humor, kind of like a really good bartender...  Or else the disciples would have gotten mortally bored, fed up with him... He had to keep their attention, their friendship going; 'c'mon, guys, let's go into town, see what's up...'  You can almost hear a working class carpenter's sense of humor, 'we got bigger fish to catch,' or 'render unto Caesar.'  Lincoln didn't speak in the deep ponderous baritone the early talking movies show, but rather he had a sort of higher register to it, which lent itself to his sense of humor...  He wasn't some talking statue of perfect morality;  nor was old Jesus.



My phone vibrated.  And here's another email from some marketer, some website I did some Christmas shopping on and now the great computer in the sky pokes me, 'hey...'   When I was expecting, instinctively, human contact, a voice that could care, or simply say hi, maybe even a conversation.  I find it kind of jarring sometimes...

Then I go off to work and hear about everyone else's problems...  They never ask, how are you...  I told a couple who came in Sunday with their little daughter, I've known them for a while, 'yeah, I'm seeing a therapist;  I hear everyone's problems and then I go home and have no one to talk to but the History Channel...' and the guy says, 'it's a zero sum game.'  Yes, meaning that what goes in has to come out somewhere.

But you know, maybe what the Buddha thought is true.  After a while, you sort of lose yourself.  Everyone has problems, cancers, surgeries, stuff...  The problems of another, that line sort of blurs, becomes a sort of communal thing.  And that sort of spills out onto the way I approach say going out, or even going out into the world.  It's not about, like, happiness, or trying to make the most possible fun out of a night.  How can you?  There's suffering somewhere, maybe nearby...



Yes, Doctor, on one side, the good side, there is love from Corinthians, Buddha, Jesus, and on the other side there are the data harvesters, who are trying to bend us to the data they see of us, as if the data were all of us...  They take and sell the all information there is about us.  But behind all that, and for more important, is the fact that we love, and what we love, our only true reality...  All of them get rich quick with some great way to spy on us, to make us insignificant, to make our humanity into numbers...  And given their fascination with numbers they make the things that are complicated and deeper and harder to say and more from the soul than one's shopping habits less significant, less valuable, more the lone voice in a sea rather than a voice representative of all people, like in the way Nelson Mandela was.




Maybe the whole thing with the princess transpired the way it did was because of my loyalty to my mom.  I mean, Hamlet has a loyalty... He certainly hasn't forgotten his mum, and he's trying to save her, as much as anything else...  And I think of my sweet humble intelligent mom who goes through her own bouts of moody things and anxiety and discomfort, and I know myself all those things, now that I'm old enough to know, like, how scary, profoundly, life can be.  A loyalty to your mom is a loyalty to her way of life, her sweetness, her Andrew Wyeth painting quality...  poor tender brave strong thing, struggling on, and she got a Ph.D later in life, figured out a way to survive...  I would have participated in that anyway...  Did it get in the way of other things?  I don't know, hard to say...

Doing yoga you reach down into the tenderest parts of the self, and that's why it puts you back on even keel...  It can hurt to look down into the tenderest parts of yourself, your weakness,  your shyness, your vulnerability, your nakedness...  And maybe that's how you feel deep down when you meet someone you really like, like this great vulnerability comes out of you, like a flower to show another, hey, I'm really here for you, this is me, who I am...  Being vulnerable, yeah, you get hurt, and then you act stupidly, or insecurely...

And there is that yoga ring to Jesus, like when he says take this, this is my body, about the bread, and that this wine is my blood...

You get through the work week and you've done things and you've gotten out of touch with that simple vulnerable creature.  You don't know what to do with him.  You've disappointed him.   It takes bravery to bare him before other people.  How could we not have this side to us, the very fact that we have a behind part, a back of the head, a back, that defines us as vulnerable...  I guess gay men might tend to be more in touch with that vulnerability...

I guess there are parts of being a bartender that are in touch, or in keeping, with the Yoga Buddha Jesus you, but it's hard sometimes.  Maybe the work discourages you sometimes....  But it's not inherently bad work, I mean, to show a kind of serving kindness to people who come...

I guess you get afraid of that vulnerable thing inside you, like it's not going to protect you or help you fit in with the world and the powers that be...  Stands to reason, fear...  But then you're no longer willing to be a student of life, because to be a student takes a lot of vulnerability and openness and trying things out...

Maybe it's that scary thing, vulnerability, that we are afraid of, that we malign.  The ability, which includes the ability to be depressed, maybe thats the truer self that is our salvation.  But maybe it's hard to go through, being vulnerable, being that geek we're afraid of being... It is a higher state.  It just doesn't appear on the radar of... like, how to operate in society and look happy and all...