As the first day of not having a job came into evening, St. Patrick's Day, I come to the little bluff, talking with my aunt with my earbuds in, and then afterward, in need of quiet time to absorb everything, I have a craving for doing a headstand.  How long has it been, I can't remember.  The ground is soft enough, the light coming across the river above the bluff on the other side.  I'm wearing jeans, Merrill hiking shoes.  I try one while still on the phone, but it doesn't get far, and there's the tangle of the wire and the lack of concentration.

So now it's the big moment, can I still do one, and this time I line things up more carefully, the base of the forearms planted so, hands cupped to hold the  back of the crown of the head, then tiptoeing in carefully and closer, the spine almost vertical now, and then after being able to tiptoe hardly any further, pull the thighs in, let the pelvis roll the sacrum backwards, the belly tightens, the knees raise, and then the shins are coming forward as they elevate.  And I can do it again, and the spine straightens out, and then the adjustments, pulling in and upward with the buttocks, and here I am, ready even for a few minutes of it.  A Blackhawk military helicopter skims the grey clouds upside down, below the river now, and below and in the fluff of cloud, the light is shining again with some gold, and the only thing is the little twig that is beginning to dig into my right forearm, which begins to hurt, so I have to pull out of it, feet back to the ground.

I do another one, marvelous.  A ladybug traverses and then up a stalk of chivy grass blade, and this is a good way to look at the world, and maybe particularly when that world has turned upside down.  I can hold this pose a long time, a satisfying feeling.

God, it feels good to be doing the yoga again.  There is clunky soreness in the body, but surprisingly the old pose are remembered well enough, even in street clothes and without a yoga mat.  There's a family with a daughter, tossing the ball around.   I think of Kerouac the fire-watcher, and his fondness for pulling his own headstands, and five minutes too, great for the circulation and the phlebitis he was prone to.  And I can do that five minutes, as well.  I still can, to my surprise.  The child pose, hunching over, is almost more of a strain.

Doing a tree pose before the old mulberry tree near the picnic bench is enlightenment of tree detail and the imparted lesson of tree balance, and somehow despite the soreness I can get the object of these poses, unwinding with them, and I feel like a quiet Zen monk again, flexible, getting strong again, after a great period of winter cold and stress and too much work and too much worry.

Thoughts of The Seven Samurai pass through my mind, and I say to myself, there's a bit of each one of them in each of us.  There's the drunken caricature one, Mifune, there's one in every crowd; and in order to deal with the considerable stress of tending bar where I do, there is some of that in how you get through the night, being a little silly toward the end perhaps, along with the stoic head samurai with the poker face and all the rest, as they are called upon.  Maybe that's a bit of how they see me at work, the boss and the girls who run the place who let me close the place every night.  Oh, he's worth it, I guess they say, lightly shaking their heads while I yortle with customers of late night, and chat with the jazz musicians.


I take of my shoes, and hike up my pants a bit, grassed stained, and pull myself into various other recognizable poses, warrior, headstand, plough, pigeon, the one that's good for your liver, and a few repeats too for good measure.  God, I feel light again, and after all my long battles, and truly lonesome times, I can maybe catch hints of another kind of a life, or, at least, a healthy break from the nightshift routine.

And there's birds.   All kinds, morning doves, of course, two on the phone lines.  A Mockingbird graces upon a tree landing in through the ivy as if coming back onto an aircraft carrier, and then after hidden traipses, comes back out on the brach, silent, in profile as I do my yoga, and then finally, and tentatively, he starts to go through his routine, very quietly, workshopping it, woodshedding it, just like me with the sore left shoulder too tight.  The male cardinal comes with a bright zap of warning.  Another kind of a call and I look up into the tree above me as I walk barefoot across the grass and oh, there it is, a little redhead woodpecker inspecting the layout of his mission.  There are robins hopping along the ground, and up again near the street, a grackle, solitary, small lets go a whistle.  And over in the mulberry's higher branches, one with a high pitched little trombone glissade upward or was it downward also in a whistle, more cheerful, less lonesome, less introspective than the grackle with his pointy feather ends around the neck.  Daffodils still out and by the entrance to the field of the Urban Ecology Center there at Eliot Place.

Earlier on my mental health walk, the crows were chortling and gurgling primitive word calls to each other as they lined up along the trees high above the chainlink fence of the reservoir banks.

God, how nice it is to get up in the morning, have a reasonable day, get out in the sunshine, and then have a time around dusk to go for a stroll, to relax at day's end, as people do, not just heading in to work.

Not bad for someone who was so completely discouraged, by the perpetuity of the difficulties to the job of being the friendly neighborhood barman scapegoat who gets ears filled beyond the brim every evening, one way or another, god, can't you just leave me alone now, when I sit down finally to eat something, you start saying toward the end, when people are warm and fuzzy and of an affectionate quality you would like to have too, or a line cook comes up on Sunday night, a bit tipsy himself.

Ahh, that's why that old film as its resonance, to the old barman samurai, who is now down on his luck, lucky if he can afford some rice...

The nightshift will make you so disgusted with yourself and everything, and in your anxiety for a decent living and survival, you blame yourself, and you look down on yourself, and many forms of unhappy things, fearful of abandoning a post so much that life passes you by in great foolish foolhardiness, and for being taken advantage of, all, the stupid kid thought, many years ago, so he could write.  And his mother cried at that, knowing full well, having watched in her parents.