The nine-top for the back room has not arrived yet, but for one. A customer who has become a good friend is bringing project members by; it maybe business related to defense contracting, which I can rant about on a given day, but over the years here at the Old Gaul, a deep and sincere friendship has arisen between us. One, a large man, has come to the bar, preferring to my pleasure, the Cahors wine to the Argentine Malbec. I talk to him about the menu, as local good friends meet for a chat, coming from nearby. He spends his week working in DC, goes back to Florida on weekends.
I smelled a storm coming getting to work, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist when it's Jazz Night at the old Dying Gaul, to smell a storm brewing. And by the end of it, I will be hurting, in need of wine, and sustenance, and friendship, and the zombie-sleep of drunkards when it's all over, waking enough to pee, and get another glass of water, to turn over a few times, remember a strange dream or two, but not enough of a wish to get up out of bed.
Earlier, I muttered to my friend, who will work alongside me, about Jazz Night. "Yeah, the holidays, stressful. I'm taking my Vitamin D..." I tell him. "Ted, you need to give out some Vitamin D," and I chuckle with good humor, and shrug, "yeah, you're right. Sorry," I say. That's probably what the whole entire front of the house staff probably thinks, seeing my depressed face come into work to set-up, often alone, with enough to do, needing a bit more help. But then, that is the ritual that has always worked for me, the physical sorting out, the putting things together in their place for the crucial set-up, everything ready to go, 5:30 sharp, a lime to cut, fresh lemon twists ready to go, mineral water chilled, wines cold in their ice buckets. Often left alone to do all this and to greet the first customers, which is fine and good.
A familiar face comes in, up the stairs, and she needs a table, for her and her husband, and I show her back to the four top table by the back window, and she is pleased. The kids have now grown up a bit, away at college. She is from Chicago, good taste, down to earth, polite, expecting good manners, but with a good enough sense of humor and a genuine care for fellow humanity. The family would come in on Sunday nights, and I'd take care of them, and at one point she mentioned to me a weekly meeting group for the spiritual minded up at the National Cathedral, which I never made it to.
I ask her if she still goes, and she asks me if I'm still writing. Yeah, I go see my therapist, and then I write, I say, implying some vague connection. And then she makes clear, there needs to be a relationship with Jesus in all such matters. "It wouldn't be faith if it were not tested," she tells me as we wait for her husband to arrive. And I could get rid of the therapist, the Lexapro, and the Zen Buddhism, and consider deeply the words of the Gospels. Church is okay, but too much based on the letters of Paul, which are not quite the same as what Jesus as recorded, she tells me. Getting Jesus directly, as God is pleased in him, is the thing. She emphasizes, again, the actual words of Jesus Christ, mentioning the Lord's Prayer. I can say, sincerely, that I say it every day, at least once, and that I thought Pope Francis's attention recently to the "lead us not into temptation" part worth mentioning. The real God would not lead us into temptation, she tells me. It's just that we are weak, and I feel a bit guilty about this, must say, as I am now feeling awkward of my having mentioned D.T. Suzuki and The Training of the Zen Monk, embarrassing, as well as the mention of therapy, and so forth. I do tell her, that yes, after my session, I'd go catch the Twelve Oh Five over there at St. Matthews, which I am proud of. Yes, we are weak. Boy, we are weak, and I feel responsible, or rather, irresponsible, for tempting people and making them weaker and less disciplined than they might be otherwise.
(On the other end, it might be said, that providing a place where people might talk freely, supported, is a good thing, in these terms of Christian life. Who knows?)
Well, the night gets busy. Very busy. Very very busy. Cocktails for my friend's table, French 75s, Tango Mango (without the mango), Last Word cocktail, at the time of the first hits of the rush, soon people lined up for space... Regulars arrive, without reservations, and it takes a hustle to find them space and get them started out.
The night draws to a close with my friend coming up the bar, and I pour him a port, and a bit of wine for me, as would only be expected. We go out for a drink, at not the holiest of places, for some "fun and dancing girls." He'd been my friend for years before I told him I wrote a book, which he identified with very much. There are similarities of experience, college days.
And so I sleep in. Tired out anyway, from the party on Saturday for fifty, from the ropes of Sunday night by myself, from the staff luncheon at Fogo De Chao, from Tuesday night wine tasting, making it interesting for the regulars, and finally, the unstopping steam-roller cluster-screw of Jazz Night.
I've been a Buddhist, sort of, I've meditated, over chakras, I've read up on Zen, but perhaps in the end you need Jesus, your faith being tested. How do you follow better? How do you act better, in accordance with what the good quiet woman told me, at this vulnerable time of year, when another whole year of the grind dawns on you. How do you become a better person, able to get up at a decent hour and bring goodness to the world, and "what am I doing now anyway..."
How do you get less chewed up by work, to put more time and energy into being a real true Christian, real and true? And I'm not the only one in the restaurant business to walk that line. To bear the serving of people, the personal torture than often resolves itself in becoming Born Again, and that sort of thing. Seen it more than once.
When you drink, I suppose, even if you don't drink more than the allotted three glasses of wine in two hours with food, even then, it's hard to make decisions. It's hard to break out of the rut. Add on top of that, the prohibitive hours, hours prohibitive of doing something normal people would do. You start to feel kinda like you're not good Christian folk...
Thursday, January 11, 2018
In a dream I tell my brother the story of Buddy Holly. His father ran a refrigeration repair company. I have a hard time not tearing up when I tell him the story how he was tired of freezing in the long bus rides on his tour in the deep of Wisconsin winter. So he rented a plane, to get to the next gig. Unlike Buddy Holly with his music, the kid flying the plane didn't know what he was doing. The plane did not get far, crashing down into a frozen cornfield. They found Buddy Holly's glasses in the field, years later.
I cannot help but think of the war profiteers as I lay awake at night. Dick Cheney would be a good example. Long a fan of unfettered executive powers and secret dealings, favoring, guess who, oil companions and defense contractors, he put into play the privatization of the nation's defense functions. The revolving door, from the big oil/defense corporations, to the corridors of the nation's power, became the pattern. All of which facilitates the selling of arms, profit, profiteering, favoring the share holder's bottom line. And guess what, behind all this, not even an attempt to pursue the best thing for people and countries far and foreign, no desire to do well, to do the right thing, to actually help people in far-off countries beset with problems, no attempt to understand and then act in a beneficial way. Nope, just start a war, preferably one that will go on forever. Sell munitions at $6 million a round, Lockheed Martin, and send in Halliburton to do whatever it is that Halliburton does, energy related.
But it didn't use to be that way. The nation had to be convinced, to do that right thing, even in World War Two, and not all were convinced that fighting Hitler's war machine was a good idea. A great vaguely distantly volunteer effort to fight arose, to protect the free world. It was the right thing to do, morally, a good argument could be made, was made, and men, and women, signed up to fight, and possibly to die.
And toward the end of it all, the reconstruction effort in Europe, Eisenhower, a general himself, warned America and Americans, to be wary of the Military Industrial Complex, the mighty power grab of the mighty. Famous enough, the retiring President, old Ike, a good man of good will to the world, a thoughtful man, his speech before Congress.
So, what is foreign policy now? How is it not tainted by the profiteers, by the Cheney, the Rumsfeld, the misled W. Bush, all a matter of good economics, growth charts, as Robert F. Kennedy once warned us of what the great GNP also included, weapons hired for murder. What do we have as a common crime, a legacy, arrogance? And Saddam, he would have died of prostate cancer anyway, something like that... Foreign policy for the share holder and his cronies.
And what did our friends, as once they might have been, from that other part of the world, but grasp that the war, the upsetting of old balances and borders and old tensions, this war imposed upon them by the foreign power was not about people, but about money, a simple matter of bigger profits. And as the general attack against their way of life, they would attack in like matter, economically, as 9/11 was a strike at the American economy, soon to be felt in every airport, etc., etc.
Truth is simpler than it's made out to be in grasping.
Yes, jobs, the argument can always be made, defense contracting equals jobs, but still..
Later in the day, recovering from the paranoia of the workweek and its conscientious labors, I call my mom, mentioning the nice visit from my defense contractor buddy who comes to town now and then. Always clear on things, a good check, she offers, "someone's gotta protect us." And this, yes, is true.
I cannot help but think of the war profiteers as I lay awake at night. Dick Cheney would be a good example. Long a fan of unfettered executive powers and secret dealings, favoring, guess who, oil companions and defense contractors, he put into play the privatization of the nation's defense functions. The revolving door, from the big oil/defense corporations, to the corridors of the nation's power, became the pattern. All of which facilitates the selling of arms, profit, profiteering, favoring the share holder's bottom line. And guess what, behind all this, not even an attempt to pursue the best thing for people and countries far and foreign, no desire to do well, to do the right thing, to actually help people in far-off countries beset with problems, no attempt to understand and then act in a beneficial way. Nope, just start a war, preferably one that will go on forever. Sell munitions at $6 million a round, Lockheed Martin, and send in Halliburton to do whatever it is that Halliburton does, energy related.
But it didn't use to be that way. The nation had to be convinced, to do that right thing, even in World War Two, and not all were convinced that fighting Hitler's war machine was a good idea. A great vaguely distantly volunteer effort to fight arose, to protect the free world. It was the right thing to do, morally, a good argument could be made, was made, and men, and women, signed up to fight, and possibly to die.
And toward the end of it all, the reconstruction effort in Europe, Eisenhower, a general himself, warned America and Americans, to be wary of the Military Industrial Complex, the mighty power grab of the mighty. Famous enough, the retiring President, old Ike, a good man of good will to the world, a thoughtful man, his speech before Congress.
So, what is foreign policy now? How is it not tainted by the profiteers, by the Cheney, the Rumsfeld, the misled W. Bush, all a matter of good economics, growth charts, as Robert F. Kennedy once warned us of what the great GNP also included, weapons hired for murder. What do we have as a common crime, a legacy, arrogance? And Saddam, he would have died of prostate cancer anyway, something like that... Foreign policy for the share holder and his cronies.
And what did our friends, as once they might have been, from that other part of the world, but grasp that the war, the upsetting of old balances and borders and old tensions, this war imposed upon them by the foreign power was not about people, but about money, a simple matter of bigger profits. And as the general attack against their way of life, they would attack in like matter, economically, as 9/11 was a strike at the American economy, soon to be felt in every airport, etc., etc.
Truth is simpler than it's made out to be in grasping.
Yes, jobs, the argument can always be made, defense contracting equals jobs, but still..
Later in the day, recovering from the paranoia of the workweek and its conscientious labors, I call my mom, mentioning the nice visit from my defense contractor buddy who comes to town now and then. Always clear on things, a good check, she offers, "someone's gotta protect us." And this, yes, is true.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Stupid thoughts fill the mind, distractions are myriad, the iPhone is clutched, but it's time, time to write. Put Facebook aside, the Google news, Tinder... The Weather Channel in the background, NPR, the background coffeeshop chatter...
If you were a superstitious type, Irish, prone to ghostly and half mystical thoughts, you'd wonder if you'd been played by your grandfather's dark soul, as if his presence in your life dragged you down into the DNA of his life... skeptical of scholars, a man of the school of hard knocks, the restaurant business, viewing his sensitive grandson wishing for a poetic life as laziness, go get a job. He'd stifled you on the Easter night you'd met the beautiful princess, and that you didn't pick up the phone and call her that night proved to be something to rue over. And so was a young college graduate dragged down into a certain kind of a life, a bitter quality, an unfriendly quality to it, and the kid had no defenses against the old man's DNA of life.
I read such a theory somewhere in the gnostic works of a Samael Aun Weor. It made a certain amount of sense. How one could fall to such thing, unprotected, vulnerable, a strong minded dark old man there in the room with you... The sins of the grandfather are visited upon the grandson... Not something the logic minded would lend credence to, but in a way, it makes a certain amount of sense, particularly if you've lived it out, sort of scratching your head. Which is not to speak ill, necessarily of your grandfather, but just a note upon the human condition, fallen nature, sins, bad behavior.
A surprise as I get to work. The busboy, from Cameroon, announces he is quitting. This is his last day, this the first jazz night shift, a Wednesday, early in January. I'm leaving, he says, after his embrace, affectionate enough. I like the guy. Why, Jonah? I want to be at peace. I am not at peace here. Everybody talks, Jonah, you didn't do this, Jonah, you didn't do that. Nobody is perfect. Nobody.
This does not appear to be good news. Those doomed to work upstairs, at the Gaul's so called Wine Bar, have benefited from having our own busboy on these difficult and tedious Jazz Nights. Not a shared one, paying more attention to the affairs of the main dining room, visiting now and again to drop off food or take dirty plates downstairs...
Johan prays over the corner, by the cutting board on top of the stove, in his native language. He is a Jehovah's Witness, quietly. He will not tell me anything, just some vaguely stated words about how someone he won't name is 'very powerful,' and that one has to watch himself, and that the boss knows everything that happens in the restaurant. Of course. That Jonathan is no longer at peace here, that he just wants to work in peace, is interesting.
It's snowing now, blowing down at a fifty degree angle in the street lamps of quiet S Street as a DC police car saunters around the lot of the Boys and Girls Club parking lot. "Not good for us," says Jonah as he heads down to change out of his work clothes, to bike home, as I might bike home too, unless laziness overtakes me. I'd like to get to the Safeway, but I'm running out of gas. I go down and talk to him down in the basement for a moment, but he doesn't have much to say. He has thick sweat pants on over his muscular legs. I put Michael Jackson on on the Pandora as he did the last part of setting up the tables, but a part of him had already gone, and after singing a few lines, returned to praying, eyes clothes, standing upright in front of the cutting board, which seems now to me like a shrine of some sort, and the literary part of the mind cannot help but somewhere think of Melville's Queequeg praying in his own language before his own idols.
Then later, I follow him out in the street, still in my work shirt. He's locked his bike out on the avenue. He gets on his bike, turns its flashing taillight on, and rolls away without looking back, without saying a word. His shouts from the bottom of the stairs announcing his departure, the flashing lights of the bicycle headlight shining up the stairs of to the wine bar, calling out my name are a thing of the past, and I watch his departure in the cold silence, nary a car or a bus or a cab on the street. Maybe I was his Judas, the one who let him down, though I cannot remember anything in particular, supportive, and it rings as a relief to me, that he told me about how he had expertly opened bottles of champagne, like I showed him, at a holiday family gathering.
And I myself, not so happy there, as they come late and leave early, leaving me, the closer to drift with the last duties. I'm close to being my own boss, sure, I like that part, but I'll have a glass of wine there, and the next day, wake up exhausted.
It seems, or perhaps one wonders about it, there is an efficiency with which the family patterns are passed on, one could call it the family craziness. One wonders if perhaps it's not a bad thing that society organizes people, giving them structure, and too bad there are the eternally rebellious amongst us, yet to be bred out of us, better sense prevailing, the ability to join the rank and file and the army coming as redemption. One thinks of Larkin's line, your mom and dad, they fuck you up, they might not mean to, but they do, and throw in a little extra, just for you, shines out in a new light in moments of introspection.
I look at my little piles in the kitchen, the recycling, in a double grocery paper bag, wine bottles, tomato sauce cans, plastic containers, the Rubbermaid tub for dirty dishes, the drying rack, the stove, the sort of clutter of spices and the toothbrush upon the counters, the little can for green tea. I look at the small pile of books upon the bed, slowing growing, until one day, it will be like hers. I try to keep the paper and bits of cardboard moving along, and also, the plastic bags and empty meat wrap. Just like my mom, headed her way. There is a beauty to it. I think of Wyeth, Christina's World.
And who knows when, why, or what, we shall write. And errands even on a cold day seem welcome, the list drawn up, green tea, razor blades, rubber dish gloves, a charging cable, meat, vegetable, soda water, wine. Small anxieties as I bundle up, make the last annotations to the list, skin moisturizer. And the genes, the DNA within, comes up with an old Beatles song, "she was a girl in a million, my friend. I should have known she would win in the end."
If you were a superstitious type, Irish, prone to ghostly and half mystical thoughts, you'd wonder if you'd been played by your grandfather's dark soul, as if his presence in your life dragged you down into the DNA of his life... skeptical of scholars, a man of the school of hard knocks, the restaurant business, viewing his sensitive grandson wishing for a poetic life as laziness, go get a job. He'd stifled you on the Easter night you'd met the beautiful princess, and that you didn't pick up the phone and call her that night proved to be something to rue over. And so was a young college graduate dragged down into a certain kind of a life, a bitter quality, an unfriendly quality to it, and the kid had no defenses against the old man's DNA of life.
I read such a theory somewhere in the gnostic works of a Samael Aun Weor. It made a certain amount of sense. How one could fall to such thing, unprotected, vulnerable, a strong minded dark old man there in the room with you... The sins of the grandfather are visited upon the grandson... Not something the logic minded would lend credence to, but in a way, it makes a certain amount of sense, particularly if you've lived it out, sort of scratching your head. Which is not to speak ill, necessarily of your grandfather, but just a note upon the human condition, fallen nature, sins, bad behavior.
A surprise as I get to work. The busboy, from Cameroon, announces he is quitting. This is his last day, this the first jazz night shift, a Wednesday, early in January. I'm leaving, he says, after his embrace, affectionate enough. I like the guy. Why, Jonah? I want to be at peace. I am not at peace here. Everybody talks, Jonah, you didn't do this, Jonah, you didn't do that. Nobody is perfect. Nobody.
This does not appear to be good news. Those doomed to work upstairs, at the Gaul's so called Wine Bar, have benefited from having our own busboy on these difficult and tedious Jazz Nights. Not a shared one, paying more attention to the affairs of the main dining room, visiting now and again to drop off food or take dirty plates downstairs...
Johan prays over the corner, by the cutting board on top of the stove, in his native language. He is a Jehovah's Witness, quietly. He will not tell me anything, just some vaguely stated words about how someone he won't name is 'very powerful,' and that one has to watch himself, and that the boss knows everything that happens in the restaurant. Of course. That Jonathan is no longer at peace here, that he just wants to work in peace, is interesting.
It's snowing now, blowing down at a fifty degree angle in the street lamps of quiet S Street as a DC police car saunters around the lot of the Boys and Girls Club parking lot. "Not good for us," says Jonah as he heads down to change out of his work clothes, to bike home, as I might bike home too, unless laziness overtakes me. I'd like to get to the Safeway, but I'm running out of gas. I go down and talk to him down in the basement for a moment, but he doesn't have much to say. He has thick sweat pants on over his muscular legs. I put Michael Jackson on on the Pandora as he did the last part of setting up the tables, but a part of him had already gone, and after singing a few lines, returned to praying, eyes clothes, standing upright in front of the cutting board, which seems now to me like a shrine of some sort, and the literary part of the mind cannot help but somewhere think of Melville's Queequeg praying in his own language before his own idols.
Then later, I follow him out in the street, still in my work shirt. He's locked his bike out on the avenue. He gets on his bike, turns its flashing taillight on, and rolls away without looking back, without saying a word. His shouts from the bottom of the stairs announcing his departure, the flashing lights of the bicycle headlight shining up the stairs of to the wine bar, calling out my name are a thing of the past, and I watch his departure in the cold silence, nary a car or a bus or a cab on the street. Maybe I was his Judas, the one who let him down, though I cannot remember anything in particular, supportive, and it rings as a relief to me, that he told me about how he had expertly opened bottles of champagne, like I showed him, at a holiday family gathering.
And I myself, not so happy there, as they come late and leave early, leaving me, the closer to drift with the last duties. I'm close to being my own boss, sure, I like that part, but I'll have a glass of wine there, and the next day, wake up exhausted.
It seems, or perhaps one wonders about it, there is an efficiency with which the family patterns are passed on, one could call it the family craziness. One wonders if perhaps it's not a bad thing that society organizes people, giving them structure, and too bad there are the eternally rebellious amongst us, yet to be bred out of us, better sense prevailing, the ability to join the rank and file and the army coming as redemption. One thinks of Larkin's line, your mom and dad, they fuck you up, they might not mean to, but they do, and throw in a little extra, just for you, shines out in a new light in moments of introspection.
I look at my little piles in the kitchen, the recycling, in a double grocery paper bag, wine bottles, tomato sauce cans, plastic containers, the Rubbermaid tub for dirty dishes, the drying rack, the stove, the sort of clutter of spices and the toothbrush upon the counters, the little can for green tea. I look at the small pile of books upon the bed, slowing growing, until one day, it will be like hers. I try to keep the paper and bits of cardboard moving along, and also, the plastic bags and empty meat wrap. Just like my mom, headed her way. There is a beauty to it. I think of Wyeth, Christina's World.
And who knows when, why, or what, we shall write. And errands even on a cold day seem welcome, the list drawn up, green tea, razor blades, rubber dish gloves, a charging cable, meat, vegetable, soda water, wine. Small anxieties as I bundle up, make the last annotations to the list, skin moisturizer. And the genes, the DNA within, comes up with an old Beatles song, "she was a girl in a million, my friend. I should have known she would win in the end."
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Do you ever get that feeling, this just isn't my town. That feeling, put down well in the old expression, no one is a prophet... Do towns have a kind of DNA? This is the creative side of it, this set of people... Each town has its imagination, its own codified way of getting things done, its own limitations on what can be done. New York is different from Washington, D.C. You have to find your niche, or live in obscurity. You have to fit in. And fitting in is fragile.
The old stories, of the Testaments Old and New, they too are a form of entertainment. A tale told to keep an individual from getting too gloomy, as happens when one is entertained.
Otherwise, boredom sets in. The old stories seem the best remedy, alongside good humor, an antidote for that feeling. Any big city is a kind of Jerusalem. An original home, but potentially a place of persecution, a place of strange valuations placed upon certain activities.
The kind of story the individual finds interest in is as much a product of their own DNA. There are news people specializing in China or politics, and then there are comedians, who might be said to have a broader range, as educators potentially do.
What does one wish to occupy one's imagination with?
This is the problem the writer faces. What interests him or her enough to express an effort in. What subject matter, and how to express it?
No wonder, then, writers suffer from boredom. No wonder, the gravitation toward a soothing glass of wine, to let the wheels spin, to find the story where there seems hardly a breath of one. The time, a mood relaxed and not distracted enough, to find a thread of coherence.
You can't really blame Hemingway for his flung adventures. Not a government bureaucratic clerk was he. Boredom. Need for open waves of the Gulf Stream, open land for camping.
The collection of writers, Saramago, Kerouac, Pio Baroja, whoever you might name, comes across as a group of eccentrics. That's how they work. The common denominator might be that they have a strange sensitivity toward story. Always looking for, able to absorb, the tangent detail from life, like Hemingway brings in True At First Light's posthumous tales of interactions with the Masai, pictures not often found in general reading. That a writer is instinctively careful, particular about his exposure, makes sense, whether it suits him well or less so.
Faulkner's example, the small town, the one county, sufficient, filled with all the archetypes known to humanity... each form of disciple.
The sense of humor in Gospel, the accent of Galileans... Larry David written all over that... I swear, I don't know him.... And Jesus, a nice guy, really not wanting to be angry with Peter, joking with him...
The sexual identity of a person--their soul. Not to be messed with.
And so the main battle of the writer, which is to find the story/the stories. This is why the writer is tenacious about holding onto story, the personal history, things like that. True engagement is rare, can easily go wrong. The connection... the most important human thing.
The genius of reality TV, Moonshiners, to remind the city dweller of a local community, tangible.
I never really had any clue of what to be doing as a profession.
The old stories, of the Testaments Old and New, they too are a form of entertainment. A tale told to keep an individual from getting too gloomy, as happens when one is entertained.
Otherwise, boredom sets in. The old stories seem the best remedy, alongside good humor, an antidote for that feeling. Any big city is a kind of Jerusalem. An original home, but potentially a place of persecution, a place of strange valuations placed upon certain activities.
The kind of story the individual finds interest in is as much a product of their own DNA. There are news people specializing in China or politics, and then there are comedians, who might be said to have a broader range, as educators potentially do.
What does one wish to occupy one's imagination with?
This is the problem the writer faces. What interests him or her enough to express an effort in. What subject matter, and how to express it?
No wonder, then, writers suffer from boredom. No wonder, the gravitation toward a soothing glass of wine, to let the wheels spin, to find the story where there seems hardly a breath of one. The time, a mood relaxed and not distracted enough, to find a thread of coherence.
You can't really blame Hemingway for his flung adventures. Not a government bureaucratic clerk was he. Boredom. Need for open waves of the Gulf Stream, open land for camping.
The collection of writers, Saramago, Kerouac, Pio Baroja, whoever you might name, comes across as a group of eccentrics. That's how they work. The common denominator might be that they have a strange sensitivity toward story. Always looking for, able to absorb, the tangent detail from life, like Hemingway brings in True At First Light's posthumous tales of interactions with the Masai, pictures not often found in general reading. That a writer is instinctively careful, particular about his exposure, makes sense, whether it suits him well or less so.
Faulkner's example, the small town, the one county, sufficient, filled with all the archetypes known to humanity... each form of disciple.
The sense of humor in Gospel, the accent of Galileans... Larry David written all over that... I swear, I don't know him.... And Jesus, a nice guy, really not wanting to be angry with Peter, joking with him...
The sexual identity of a person--their soul. Not to be messed with.
And so the main battle of the writer, which is to find the story/the stories. This is why the writer is tenacious about holding onto story, the personal history, things like that. True engagement is rare, can easily go wrong. The connection... the most important human thing.
The genius of reality TV, Moonshiners, to remind the city dweller of a local community, tangible.
I never really had any clue of what to be doing as a profession.
sketch 10/14/2017
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 knowing where you are going to end up, a living, a career, a profession, even where to live. 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 souls who does not know what he is doing with himself. There is not a lot of thought given to profession, beyond the writing.
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. I take out the W for wine.
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.
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 knowing where you are going to end up, a living, a career, a profession, even where to live. 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 souls who does not know what he is doing with himself. There is not a lot of thought given to profession, beyond the writing.
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. I take out the W for wine.
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.
a sketch. 5/1/2017
I liked the physicality of the job, and that's what it was, the whole thing, from getting there, on bike and foot, through woods, to the putting all the wines that needed chilling in the places they needed to be, stocked in cooler, in bucket, in the sink plugged with a champagne cork, the reds, plenty of back-up, mineral water, beer, soda, I was a true engineer of beverages. And thus I was ready to deliver them, along with silverware, menus, bread warmed when in an oven with butter, and all the while, really the main point, besides the relaxation the wine allowed people, conversation, for those who wanted it, and judicious around those who were not of such need. So I wore many hats, many roles, one to this person at the bar, some to others.
That's what it was, that was what happened all night long, til the early hour I asked for a busboy man's help, until I was left alone and had, my energy fading as quickly as the last footsteps went away down the stairs, to do all the last physical lifting and carrying, up and down myself.
No need to add tension to a barroom. It should be like a pub, a salon, literary talk, an ease, a place free of consumerism, trends, and hollow things. Yet, oddly this is what many establishments are built on. The old and venerable long standing places having that karma of deserving that tenure we all crave so badly in this world of flux.
One thing the bar does not like, like the feline who buries her scat, is that sense of being watched, monitored, observed. The same tension a writer has, to be candid and truthful of observation. And thus to publish anything is necessary, but also the great risk, what if I show what I have upon my sleeve, and this is Hamlet, the need to tranquilize with words, to stab that busybody watcher behind the curtain with all his life's wisdom, when there is none that really applies but that of their own world and not your own necessarily.
That's what it was, that was what happened all night long, til the early hour I asked for a busboy man's help, until I was left alone and had, my energy fading as quickly as the last footsteps went away down the stairs, to do all the last physical lifting and carrying, up and down myself.
No need to add tension to a barroom. It should be like a pub, a salon, literary talk, an ease, a place free of consumerism, trends, and hollow things. Yet, oddly this is what many establishments are built on. The old and venerable long standing places having that karma of deserving that tenure we all crave so badly in this world of flux.
One thing the bar does not like, like the feline who buries her scat, is that sense of being watched, monitored, observed. The same tension a writer has, to be candid and truthful of observation. And thus to publish anything is necessary, but also the great risk, what if I show what I have upon my sleeve, and this is Hamlet, the need to tranquilize with words, to stab that busybody watcher behind the curtain with all his life's wisdom, when there is none that really applies but that of their own world and not your own necessarily.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Oh, the holidays...i
Snapshots:
On the way back, stopping in Ravine, PA, for a Double Whopper (no cheese), french fries, a chocolate shake. I have fries, and potatoes in general, very rarely, wanting not to get that aches in the joints of the extremities, as happens with blood type O. But they offer some form of salty comfort, and I eat the Whopper whole, the bun included, though I normally, for the sake of my waistline, indulge in bread. A chocolate shake, like the hot chocolate I got at the last rest stop in New York, will keep me alert. I've driven up to get Mom, days before Christmas, driven her back to DC on Christmas Eve, going straight to work after dropping her off at my brother's, and the day after the day after Christmas, getting off of work, I drove her back to Oswego, to the three feet of snow that fell the night before, and this, after helping her with a new car battery, her furnace, her groceries, cat food and wine, this is the last leg. I have to be back for work New Years Eve, and I don't feel up to that drive, two hours too long, and going straight to the wine bar for a long night. I like Whoppers, but there is not much happiness and joy in my system as I pull back onto Route 81, getting lucky with the traffic in the short merging lane, for the final three hours, Harrisburg, Route 11/15 through the Gettysburg farmland, down to Frederick, 270 to the Beltway, lanes of traffic to cut across to get onto River Road... Not much joy at all. The Mid-Atlantic has always felt a bit foreign to my brain. My place will be a bit of a mess, with all the holidays, and not much time to take care of the usual things.
And let's face it. I have failed. I am a loser, a fuck-up. A nice guy, sure, sometimes, a decent barman, friendly neighborhood guy, but as far as my own life goes, an ongoing disaster. An artist, frustrated, I suppose I'm not the only one.
In times less stressed, you know, you tell yourself and your therapist, in one of those positive attempts toward living life, that you are over your obsession, that you aren't still mentally fixated upon that object that in the therapist terms is a situation of wanting a different outcome from the same old behavior, from expecting an end of the pattern of misery. But in the rare mix of the Christmas holiday and the pagan Solstice, in that rare blend of soulful good spirit toward all things human, including yourself, including those you've trespassed against, the spiritual nature of the holiday, and the negatives like the days of short daylight, stressful shifts when you feel the rest of the world relaxed and on holiday, stressful travels of nine hour drives into unknowns of weather and traffic, endurance of muscle, stressed-out passengers clenched as whiteouts fall upon Route 81 around Lafayette, south of Syracuse, the finances, in the nighttime, this is the perfect recipe, the perfect recipe to remember all the instances of regretful behavior and actions from some thirty years ago.
Yes, you thought, or you sort of hoped, that you could turn a page and be over whatever you'd call them, feelings, sentiments, physical reactions, memories, remembered reactions, images of the brain. You might have thought, 'enough,' or "I'm over her," but you come upon the rub that this is really not true. Do you really want to admit this to yourself? It sneaks up upon you, again, now again, and it tells you the bad news that you have, quite simply, and in bold letters, not lived your own dreams.
It's like, the crowd told you to shut-up, just about everyone, and rather than making the effort of fighting back, you slinked off, feeling ashamed of yourself.
But why? Why, the shame? And this is hard to unpack. It seems a complex issue is at play, involving just about everything, a totality.
Like all people, within, you have a great personality. Everything you could hope for. Wit, friendliness, a real happiness around other people, selfless wishes for them to do well. Well-spoked, once reasonably well-read, informed, with a good basic sense of things, and not too shy to make the effort to speak your mind.
But what happened? What the fuck happened? Why did you retreat, and get all private about things? The musical elements, skilled enough, the talents of the stand-up, in the native intelligence? Why did you chose the haunted house up on the hill away from campus, rather than your best friend's room group down on campus that senior year? Some stupid ill-advised wish to be overly introspective, thus not using your great gifts of friendliness and engagement... And there was the drinking, encouragement to the supposed romance of it...
These are not the thoughts one is supposed to have on New Years Day. The conventional wisdom is, think positive, healthy, freedom from regrets...
But is the artist right, the collective of U2, "nothing changes/ on New Years Day..."
You can never really get that far away from your true nature, and this philosopher, through experience, speaks that you can never turn away from your good wishes to fellow humanity. You cannot stop that, turn it off, when the perfect girl perfectly meant for you gets completely frustrated with you, had enough disgust in your own general direction and your "lonely thinking heart that is to a woman/ but a kind of ghost" (John Donne) that she went and married some other guy, some other guy who admittedly would be a far better provider than the disorganized Buddhist Jude-Christian overly sensitive depressive coward who did not follow his own heart even as he promised himself he was making every effort to...
So now what? As they say.
This life as it is, based on some sort of endurance, the heartbroken misery of carrying on, as the Irish soul seems drawn to, out of instincts of great candor and self-honesty, some fascination with the human condition, set off from the attempt to being encouraged to doing better for yourself. Life a matter of hard work, endurance, the low life of someone less capable of planning for the morrow, a belief in quiet toughness, coupled with some sort of monastic spirituality ingrained deep in the DNA as much as the desire to sin.
I take the rental car back to the parking garage. It's black body is covered with white salt roadspray. I walk back over the Connecticut Avenue bridge, back to the house, take a hot shower, SNL and off to bed.
Recollections of NPR, interview with Broadway Producer, of Rent, Hamilton... The new form of musical, telling our stories, with our music.. I missed that line of work somehow. And entertainment is important, keeping us distracted and positive. Never underestimate. The ability of the made up world, day dreaming, to keep us insulated from the horrors of our own lives, to distract us during long drives.
New Years Eve shift leaves me tired. The boss says, kill the balloons before you go, and while I relay it on to my co-workers, take some home to your kids, I don't have the energy, pulling them free and tying them in the corner. To pop them all seems like a waste.
And New Years Day, not much energy. I get out for groceries, just enough to make a chili for dinner and cold cuts, gluten free bread, fresh eggs, to keep me going into the workweek. It is cold here too, and seems like a danker kind of a cold than up there in New York State, and it hurts. Pay my American Express bill. The new Brooks Brothers shirt worn on New Years Eve has red wine and blood stains on it, foil cuts from opening wine, is treated with Shout and soda water, preparations for a load of whites, work shirts.
Snapshots:
On the way back, stopping in Ravine, PA, for a Double Whopper (no cheese), french fries, a chocolate shake. I have fries, and potatoes in general, very rarely, wanting not to get that aches in the joints of the extremities, as happens with blood type O. But they offer some form of salty comfort, and I eat the Whopper whole, the bun included, though I normally, for the sake of my waistline, indulge in bread. A chocolate shake, like the hot chocolate I got at the last rest stop in New York, will keep me alert. I've driven up to get Mom, days before Christmas, driven her back to DC on Christmas Eve, going straight to work after dropping her off at my brother's, and the day after the day after Christmas, getting off of work, I drove her back to Oswego, to the three feet of snow that fell the night before, and this, after helping her with a new car battery, her furnace, her groceries, cat food and wine, this is the last leg. I have to be back for work New Years Eve, and I don't feel up to that drive, two hours too long, and going straight to the wine bar for a long night. I like Whoppers, but there is not much happiness and joy in my system as I pull back onto Route 81, getting lucky with the traffic in the short merging lane, for the final three hours, Harrisburg, Route 11/15 through the Gettysburg farmland, down to Frederick, 270 to the Beltway, lanes of traffic to cut across to get onto River Road... Not much joy at all. The Mid-Atlantic has always felt a bit foreign to my brain. My place will be a bit of a mess, with all the holidays, and not much time to take care of the usual things.
And let's face it. I have failed. I am a loser, a fuck-up. A nice guy, sure, sometimes, a decent barman, friendly neighborhood guy, but as far as my own life goes, an ongoing disaster. An artist, frustrated, I suppose I'm not the only one.
In times less stressed, you know, you tell yourself and your therapist, in one of those positive attempts toward living life, that you are over your obsession, that you aren't still mentally fixated upon that object that in the therapist terms is a situation of wanting a different outcome from the same old behavior, from expecting an end of the pattern of misery. But in the rare mix of the Christmas holiday and the pagan Solstice, in that rare blend of soulful good spirit toward all things human, including yourself, including those you've trespassed against, the spiritual nature of the holiday, and the negatives like the days of short daylight, stressful shifts when you feel the rest of the world relaxed and on holiday, stressful travels of nine hour drives into unknowns of weather and traffic, endurance of muscle, stressed-out passengers clenched as whiteouts fall upon Route 81 around Lafayette, south of Syracuse, the finances, in the nighttime, this is the perfect recipe, the perfect recipe to remember all the instances of regretful behavior and actions from some thirty years ago.
Yes, you thought, or you sort of hoped, that you could turn a page and be over whatever you'd call them, feelings, sentiments, physical reactions, memories, remembered reactions, images of the brain. You might have thought, 'enough,' or "I'm over her," but you come upon the rub that this is really not true. Do you really want to admit this to yourself? It sneaks up upon you, again, now again, and it tells you the bad news that you have, quite simply, and in bold letters, not lived your own dreams.
It's like, the crowd told you to shut-up, just about everyone, and rather than making the effort of fighting back, you slinked off, feeling ashamed of yourself.
But why? Why, the shame? And this is hard to unpack. It seems a complex issue is at play, involving just about everything, a totality.
Like all people, within, you have a great personality. Everything you could hope for. Wit, friendliness, a real happiness around other people, selfless wishes for them to do well. Well-spoked, once reasonably well-read, informed, with a good basic sense of things, and not too shy to make the effort to speak your mind.
But what happened? What the fuck happened? Why did you retreat, and get all private about things? The musical elements, skilled enough, the talents of the stand-up, in the native intelligence? Why did you chose the haunted house up on the hill away from campus, rather than your best friend's room group down on campus that senior year? Some stupid ill-advised wish to be overly introspective, thus not using your great gifts of friendliness and engagement... And there was the drinking, encouragement to the supposed romance of it...
These are not the thoughts one is supposed to have on New Years Day. The conventional wisdom is, think positive, healthy, freedom from regrets...
But is the artist right, the collective of U2, "nothing changes/ on New Years Day..."
You can never really get that far away from your true nature, and this philosopher, through experience, speaks that you can never turn away from your good wishes to fellow humanity. You cannot stop that, turn it off, when the perfect girl perfectly meant for you gets completely frustrated with you, had enough disgust in your own general direction and your "lonely thinking heart that is to a woman/ but a kind of ghost" (John Donne) that she went and married some other guy, some other guy who admittedly would be a far better provider than the disorganized Buddhist Jude-Christian overly sensitive depressive coward who did not follow his own heart even as he promised himself he was making every effort to...
So now what? As they say.
This life as it is, based on some sort of endurance, the heartbroken misery of carrying on, as the Irish soul seems drawn to, out of instincts of great candor and self-honesty, some fascination with the human condition, set off from the attempt to being encouraged to doing better for yourself. Life a matter of hard work, endurance, the low life of someone less capable of planning for the morrow, a belief in quiet toughness, coupled with some sort of monastic spirituality ingrained deep in the DNA as much as the desire to sin.
I take the rental car back to the parking garage. It's black body is covered with white salt roadspray. I walk back over the Connecticut Avenue bridge, back to the house, take a hot shower, SNL and off to bed.
Recollections of NPR, interview with Broadway Producer, of Rent, Hamilton... The new form of musical, telling our stories, with our music.. I missed that line of work somehow. And entertainment is important, keeping us distracted and positive. Never underestimate. The ability of the made up world, day dreaming, to keep us insulated from the horrors of our own lives, to distract us during long drives.
New Years Eve shift leaves me tired. The boss says, kill the balloons before you go, and while I relay it on to my co-workers, take some home to your kids, I don't have the energy, pulling them free and tying them in the corner. To pop them all seems like a waste.
And New Years Day, not much energy. I get out for groceries, just enough to make a chili for dinner and cold cuts, gluten free bread, fresh eggs, to keep me going into the workweek. It is cold here too, and seems like a danker kind of a cold than up there in New York State, and it hurts. Pay my American Express bill. The new Brooks Brothers shirt worn on New Years Eve has red wine and blood stains on it, foil cuts from opening wine, is treated with Shout and soda water, preparations for a load of whites, work shirts.
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