On Sunday night, the wounds of the restaurant heal over somewhat, if it's not too busy.  Things are put back right.  The hard shift of Saturday night and its excesses are put behind.  It's hard to cap the end of the night off, and I treat myself to the veal scallopini special with mushrooms, bok choy and garlic potato.  It takes a while to put everything away, the juices to sleep in the cooler, the sparklings wines pushed down into the ice bin, the bar top counter wiped clean, the paper work and the money rolled up in decent order.  The barman has a few guilty glasses of Beaujolais, goes off across the street, locking the door behind him to grocery shop at the all night Safeway, purchases meats and pedialyte, comes back, puts the cold foods in the courier bag, slings it over the shoulder, closes the strap, and out onto the bike to head back home.  S to R, R to Q, how many times...

The ride back, mainly downhill, then up past the Turkish residence, before along the cemetery fence, the words of Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald play in through his mind.  The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound...  The last night, he had been somewhat foolish again, the last two, two women coming in after a party at the French Embassy, letting his plate of veal cheeks stay at 200 degrees in the oven, as much as he was very hungry.  Starting with a taste of the new Chinon, 12.5 percent alcohol, to ease through the final stretch of conversations, speculations of the nuclear situation in North Korea.  

When you get home, then the Sunday night wasn't so bad.  A couple came in for an anniversary, sat upstairs with you.  You just got tired at the end, but rode it out on the ropes, and then everyone went away silently, except the last, the dishwasher, with the flashing light of his bicycle already on as he departs with a call from the stairwell and out the blue door.  There is peace, and there will be enough to eat to get through 'til the day off.  Pretty simple living.

A glass of wine, chilled, in a tumbler, with a couple ice cubes.    Ken Burns' Vietnam War, Things Fall  Apart, the title coming from Robert Kennedy quoting Yeats that fateful year, 1968, Tet, "the center cannot hold."

Writing is like a moon shot, a calculation.  You start where you start.  You take your aim, you start out, you follow the trajectory.  And it's all on the subconscious, the unconscious, basically, what you are writing about.  You might have actually little to do with it, this life trajectory of what you will end up writing about.  No way of knowing, but just doing.  Just like a child draws;  drawing is fun.  You have no idea if you are just are not.  But you are aware of avoiding, I don't know, tricks, I guess.  You do have to be honest with yourself, and you will try, but still you have no way of really knowing.  Pot shot.  Dumb luck.  Flying more or less blind.  And with a lot of mistakes in your own personal life to remember, never able to forget, reminded as if by drumbeats, again and again and again, excel that perhaps the mistakes finally were actually a way of bumping around in the dark, as if hitting nubs and tree branches, in order to find a way.  You don't know.

But the earlier you make mistakes, or what might be the smallest error, a small percentage point of being off, or mislead, or simply not being yourself, not that you would really know. and then follow that mistake, the further and further off you will end up going.  I think of Hemingway.  He was close, he was well aimed, he was very careful, but still...  that small percentage point, the slight distraction toward what might lead to success of a sort, recognition, strong image creation, good character presentation.  And he was strong, a tough guy, brave, very good of talent and skill, very devoted.  You can find where he went right, but there where he is right perhaps there seems a comparable lack of energy and clarity, compared to his involvement in the mistaken illusory things.  Bullfighting, the drinking, the bars, the portrayal of characters, a bit of going overboard, a bit of bluster.   I myself find something redeeming about him, enough of it, but that is a personal assessment, coming down to a few lines of his in the later works.  

But if you go off a bit, early on, the improper angle will only be magnified, increasing directionally on the mark of the whole effort.   Thus it is better to begin very very quietly, unnoticed, rather than wishing to be popular, your work effected by that popularity you must absorb through explanations.  Hemingway brought us fly fishing, and the Big Two Hearted River, good things.  He did his best to ignore being popular, but he also participated in his image making like a politician might.  But he knew it:  It's best to write very simply, about things you've seen, things you know.  Very careful steps.  Hemingway wasn't the greatest of philosophers or saints, but he had a good touch, helping the writing of writers who would come after him, because of his earnestness.  Yes.  Scrupulous choice of words and theme, a brilliant enabling of the unconscious.  Psychology.  

It is worth mentioning the differential.  If that is the sole contribution, so be it.

But it is, as you well know, not easy to write.  It is not easy to write a single thing.  And in that light it is acceptable to speak of tricks, short cuts, the finding of the false purposes and less fruitful paths of writing.  Better to find its music, wherever that is.  That point at which it somehow becomes art, no more, no less, sufficient unto itself, a voice as natural as it should be...

The girl, the princess, what does that mean to you?  That is a subject that comes up when we are having some sort of interesting state about following our instincts.  Confusion.

You're not learning anything worth writing about unless you are experiencing misery.  I think that is true.  That is the story of the classics.  That is the story of war.  The chance to be informed by the experience of hopelessness and misery.