But then, you know, the humanity of people, you're reminded of it when you look into their eyes, talk to them a bit.  Then, yes, you say to yourself, well, this is what I do.  I don't go out.  This is going out for them.  For me, it's merely who I am.

When you join in you become part of the broken world.  Less is the chance you are stepping outside of it to look for the real answers to the problems it sets up.  You hear stories from the broken world, but you have to return to your own solid ground, to that which has no motive.

No worldly logic will do.  No worldly solution.  No worldly ambition.

There are good notes in any evening, that come along when you need them.  "Has anyone told you how good you are at your job today," the nice lady asks me, observing my chit chat with the mid-bar pair, talk about a French tall ship, the Hermione, arriving at Old Town.  (I had mentioned the successor of the Edmund Fitzgerald parked over the winter at my mom's harbor up in Oswego, waiting to make the St. Lawrence passage in spring before the last voyage to Houston to be cut up for scrap iron.)  I thank the nice lady and tell her I appreciate the good word, having probably ruined the surprise of a signed book for my retiring dentist, my blabbing like an idiot earlier in the day.  "You have so much humanity, the way you get people to open up."  Thank you, that's really nice.  And that is the benefit of my job, not always seen by me.  Humanity.  "Yeah, but no retirement plan," I say.  "You don't need one.  You could do this anywhere."  "Yeah, but when we professional bartenders get together, we say 'any idiot could do it.'"  "That's what we say in the mortgage business," the kind lady counters.

A broken world it is, and it drags me down into it.  Today I am shot.  The inner benevolent energy drained out of me.  Twinges of headache, the stupid feeling of not being up out of bed before three.  The memory of taking in the newspaper and turning off the front stoop lights.

One night of too much wine can easily lead to another.  I put down the guitar and join Jeremy for a steak at Du Coin when he gets down with his shift.  The next day, two days after, again I get up late.