Unfinished notes from last week, attempts at getting things off the writer's chest:

The first day off is marked with some sort of pain, the body very tired, wanting rest, not too chipper.  The second day starts in shame that is overcome, eventually.  It's a day to mend the spirit, to return to non-dualistic thinking.  The green tea drinker experiments with coffee, reluctant to read what is written the day before, but for the psychological progress of it in the depressed and not bookish enough state.  Words, I need words.  Was there a dream had to bring out as a starting place...

The city is full of illusion.  Better to go back where there are books, the primary thing.

I lack action these days.

It feels like you have to hide your real self, she said, my therapist.

Yes, that's what I do tending bar.  It happens less when I'm writing.

It is not fun being broke.  It is not fun not knowing where you are going to end up, a living, a career, a profession, where to live, etc...  The whole D.C. experiment...  I stood up for the right things, I wasn't selfish as far as my job...

I talk to my wine guy down on Dupont.  The wine rep report, sommeliers of the new sort pick out a strange list, orange wines, natural wines, wine rep helps them out, then three months later, somm and the wine list are gone, replaced.  Yes, many new bars, but many new bars closing.  Mockingbird Hill closed, not a huge loss, in my opinion.  Were the banks giving out money to open all these places?  I found the place a bit tedious, weighed down by the sherry only theme.  And even there is so much wine out there, too much, too many little companies...

But after so many years humping it in the restaurant, cannot make the market's rent...  Five shifts?  Can't really do it anymore.  Stuck with the shifts I am stuck with.  Difficult enough.

Really, a year of difficult thinking, as if one's own mind on its own weren't bad enough.



So, I had often thought it was my version of Siberian prison.  A la Dostoevsky...

The writer is one of those (unfortunate) souls who does not know what he is doing with himself.  There is not a lot of thought given to profession, beyond the writing.  There have been too many things weighing him down for him to get on very far with life.


Allergies again.  I feel like crap.  Slept all day.  Nap on couch.  Earlier I speak to my mother about all the stuff I have, too much stuff.  Pani Korbonska's Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Fourteenth Edition bound in burgundy leather.  Sizeable, a book to hold.  Pages to open.  It already feels in our time like something from Gandalf, a tome of ancient sorcery, ancient realities to be plumbed, referred to, magic to work out from its pages.   I take out the W to look for the entry on wine.  I would like to toss its volumes into the recycling bin, but it holds within an older kind of knowledge, historically comprehensive, and each time I open one I see the superiority of its pages to the quick fix of going to Google.


The body is human.  You write when you can write.  It's a boring routine.  I go and get some wine.  It's Saturday night, I got up very late.  I will not allow myself to go out, because I'm broke, more or less, not enough money on hand even to get of D.C.  There is nothing worth writing about at the moment.  Tberapy has led me on to think on shame as a pattern.  Do I tend to place myself in situations which are shameful to my authentic self?  As a sort of martyr?   As a bartender, I am at best partially seen.  Too much noise, too many things to do for me to even open my mouth.  Do I do that in order to write?  On the day off, how far do I even get with this writing....

Writing is a strange process.  You never know.   You have to write shit.  You have to get out the list, all the items.