Busy eve of Labor Day.  Running around, regulars, a good night to talk, but I am stretched.  The job gets done, over and over, but, there are certain things that need attention.  Peace-making after an incident, the visit of one couple involved that got involved with another, the spark from the reaction to the hurricane in Houston.  The problem stemming from the familiarity, a good thing, in a barroom.  I wasn't there.  Four nice people got into an argument that got a bit ugly.  An old restaurant manager of mine comes by with a date.  He has a restaurant in Del Ray, very cool.  We'd been through a bunch of stuff together, and on Facebook, kind enough to look me up.  He flatters me:  "a hard-working guy."  What higher compliment is there.

"I like travel," every person on dating sites will tell you.  How about waiting on people, on accepting everyone who might walk in through the front door, to talk to, to figure out, to make reasonably pleased to expectations and beyond that that of their own individual personalities, as what is, finally, hospitality anyway.  I've done that act for more than twenty five years.  And doing that without having to create some kind of commercial personality beyond what I actually am, what I actually do. For whatever...

At the end of it, after counting the money and putting the wine away, I have to rest on the banquette in the wine room before I have energy to pack up and head home.  I sleep for an hour, wake up not refreshed, but better for getting back on the bike.  Back in the apartment, I cannot fall asleep, finally end up taking a pill, then sleeping 'til six in the afternoon.  Labor Day.  Brilliant, sunny, clear, the blue sky.  It's ragweed season, and that will take it out of you, believe me, not quite predictably.

Don't blame myself if I have nothing to write about.  I work, I have a job.  It's tiring.  

Writing is a commercial game.  You wouldn't do it, unless you were making money at it, no?  Why be stupid.  Learn to write copy.  Sell organic soap, or recipes.  Write something that will sell.


Therapist says, commit to something.  That will be the cure.  "Okay, honey.  Okay."  And what have I been doing, for the last thirty years?

It was my fate, to come to a city, a capital, of something.  There is a pattern in that, and staying  back in the old valleys, questionable.

One should be rich enough to travel, to take vacation.  Yet the poor cannot do this.  They travel, like I do, through practicing hospitality, innocent friendliness.

In that way, our own narratives merge with the story of a Jesus Christ, a Buddha.

To look forward to a work shift was often difficult.  Consuming, physically.  (well, what would you expect.)  But that it got you nowhere, as far as being in the logic of the reason of every other job, money, security, retirement, bells and whistles like travel.

But I found people on the vapid side, even as they were good people, when their own conversations leaned toward the pleasures of consumer travels.  Good, but not quite full of light.  Good chatters, good senses of humor.  People, real people.  Enjoying the comic, as people do in bars.

Every shift I worked, I worried.  Almost consumed by worries.  Prepare, prepare, then deal with it.  And it was very stressful.  For many reasons.

So, what was the way, the only way left really, to, as a good friend had asked, with much meaning and insight, to, as we say, Relax.