""He's not a nice person, he's a *******," HI is telling me at 9:45 on a Wednesday Jazz Night at Bistrot.

We've just got busy again.  The Italian couple has come upstairs.  Gray and elegant, with spectacles, Mr. Italian Diplomat, who once revealed to me the necessity not for a post-prandial walk but for, rather, a nap, for the good of the heart, comes over to shake my hand in particular.  We share a few quick laughs about the Tour de France.  "The Italian guy didn't win," each word separate just right, from Mr. Diplomat.  We joke of how we all used to smoke here upstairs at the Wine Bar.

And a three top, more traffic, for dessert back in the wine room.  The order is in for food, three entrees, for the band, singer, guitar, bass.  And then a couple comes in, a former semi-regular to the wine tasting, known as a kind of weird sort of taster but never really ordering more than a single glass of wine, with his date.  Not seen them in a  while.  Getting busy, all of a sudden, at the end, when it's been kind of a evenly slow slog all night long.

Busy things to attend to.  We are full still, and added on to, at the bad time of dessert.  The kitchen, a floor below us, reached through passing through the entire length of the main dining room, has gotten sluggish, inconsistently attentive.  They want to clean up and go home.  Water will soon be poured on the tile floor.  HI is busy.  This, that.  Busier with ten minutes to kitchen close.

HI:  You can go wait on cock******.

And a few minutes later.  HI:  "Give them tastings.  Give them 5, 6 tastings.  Give them all they want!" he says, shouts, really, with a raised voice, staring at me, sweaty face, through wire framed glasses, staring at me again.  The boss comes by, hears this, takes a bread basket and olive oil back to the office, a hint of a shrug, but not getting involved, no, not at all.

Gomer, the busboy:  "what's up with HI."  Tone of a statement.  We share a small chuckle.  "Fuck, what did I do?" emphasis on the I, I wink to Gomer, not really wink, but some form of short hand that when you do is just a whole body thing.

Over to table of longtime customer, referred to as c.s. by HI, who has dealt with him in my absence, and reached said conclusion.  "Hey, what's up, what's going on.  Good to see you, my brother.  Yeah, got up to my 25th college reunion, train goes right up there."  I go back to the bar and bring them three tastings, a pinot noir, a Languedoc, and a Bordeaux.  Mr. P is usually a Bordeaux fan.  He probably has something to do with aircraft.  He has a family up outside of NYC.  He is in good shape.  A smart guy.  A guy worth talking to on personal level.  Like mine, his favorite wines are from the Languedoc.

"Meet my friend, Wes.   Ted here, now if you come in 5 months from now, Ted will remember your name and everything about you."

Wes, how you doing, nice to meet you man.  What did you guys do for the Fourth?

"Oh, we had a family reunion, in Chicago, and we had a little pool for the kids.  Hot, it was hot.  60 people by."

HI still fuming, getting worse maybe.  Glass of sauterne, glass of lbv port, out of Jurançon, an Armagnac VSOP.  Coffee, a decaff cappuccino, two espresso.  A bottle of sparkling water.  Clear the appetizer plates on table 54.  Bread for the coming cheese plate on 60 back in the wine room.  All the last customers from the dining room have come upstairs for dessert it seems, at an uneasy time.

The pinot is a hit with Mr. P.  HI looks at me.  The squirrelly cheapo wine taster, HI shouts at me, will have three tastes, one of the Corbieres, one of the Ventoux, and the Malbec.  This too is all my fault.  Ted the Enabler.  Special Treatment.  Give the house away.  They won't even order any wine.  HI is almost about to point at me with his finger, as if to say, 'you, you...' Yup, it's all my fault.  Free wine tasting Ted.

"I can't stand that guy.  Really, he's not a nice person."  I have explained, I think, to HI, that Mr. P's great second cousin made an important astronomical discovery in 1922 from an observatory in New Mexico.

I bring the two glasses of wine over to Wes and Mr. P., who've already had dinner, so we don't have to deal with that, cool.

I ask Mr. P. how the kids?

"They're good."  Mr. P, as calm as could be.  That's all it takes.  About ten words, a question

"Are you watching the Tour?"

Conversation ensues,  a fellow road biker, the history of doping, the joy, the beauty of the sport, and both of us, Mr. P and I, have been back riding again lately.  He on a LeMond, a sweet bike, me, Cannondale or Bianchi depending.

I've come to learn about them over the years, in the absence of a particular waitress with a low voice to match, about the kids, about what they eat, when on vacation, what dad cooks for them.

"We have a neighbor, an older woman who lives by herself, right next door, with a beautiful swimming  pool.  She's invited us over...  once, maybe, in the ten years we've been there.  So every summer, I inflate the little kiddie pool next to our house on her side.  This year it's a dragon, so when I put the hose through the dragon shoots water and the kiddies go nuts.  And I tell them to scream, yell as loud as they can, as we look over the fence at the swimming pool that never gets used."

I smile, and enjoy that.  I get that.  And Mr. P is a good friend, a good heart, once you make the effort to know him.

"That's cool, man," I say, to Mr. P.  And to Wes, I say, "This man knows me better than I know myself."  Smiles all around.  Wine is a great thing to bring people together, if for but a moment.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone.

Disclaimer:  HI, fictionally, completely fictive, is a nice guy.  A dear friend, actually.  A good person, un comrade.

The Tao has an elegant way of putting things.  This includes its opening, its first verse (if that's what it's called.)

My own sense of it, it goes something like this, and I'm reading, or enlightened to the particular subtlety through the excellent Penguin Classics version translated by D.C. Lau, a venerable, obviously, scholar of Chinese Philosophy.  And I will simply quote it directly.

     The nameless was the beginning of earth and heaven;
     The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
     Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets;
     But always allow yourself  desires in order to observe its manifestations.


Interesting.  Let's take wine, for example, not exactly one of the myriad creatures, but a product of nature just the same.  In order to observe the manifestations of the range of wine, yes, you must allow yourself a measure of gastronomical desires, to gain a sense of the great mystery.  But, also, we are called upon to rid ourselves of desires toward wine, in order to observe the great secrets of its creation.  So, a yin and yang, desire and non-desire, manifestation, secrets beyond manifestation.

How do you read this?  One involves the gratification of ego, and the other the deep consciousness, the awareness within.  And, perhaps, there is a subtle leaning toward the necessity of the latter, after having observed the manifestations.  I mean, if you're going to be a philosopher and comprehend all there is to comprehend.

The Ted Treatment, that's what we came to our 3 o'clock meeting on a Monday to talk about.   It all started, this time around, with a guy who just is trouble.  You're nice to him, it works for awhile, but then suddenly, one day, unpredictably, the guy, let's call him Tony, a telecom exec, drives a Mercedes or a Porsche, or both, nothing against him, turns into an asshole, meaning, an egotist.

Okay, and then all the blame, comes my way.  "Oh, Ted must have been treating him well, buying him drinks, yes, Ted buys a lot of drinks, let's people taste wine, so much that they don't buy any."  And then another co worker, who's habitual hardiness and hangover I put up with, pipes in and renders, "four half glasses of wine on the table, and some more, and nothing on the check."  Which I consider an exaggeration.

You sit around on a slow night, with nothing going on, and try to entertain.  You do this for several years.  In    the     same    place     .

Proposed solutions from the negotiating International Team.   A charge, servers choice, 3 wines.  On the menu.

I could just shrug.  Just trying to entertain.  People bring in wine questions, preferences that need the shrink.

Well, so much for trying to do your job.




Oh, here's a nice BMW ad.  A military jet tanker refueling plane drops down to pour coffee for your driver of latest BMW.     Apparently fuel is an infinite resource if you have the money to buy a nice motorcar.


Two days later, couple comes in, used to the basic treatment, taste what we got.  "No, sorry, no more special treatment.  We had a meeting," I tell the guy.  "Everyone was down on me.  Everyone gets treated the same."  I made no effort to save them two bar seats on wine tasting night.  That would be special treatment.  Finally, after making plans at Equinox, the two seats become available.  They order dinner.  And a 2001 Haut Brion.  Of which they make sure to share with staff and fellow customer.


I get home finally, after setting the boss up to do inventory in the cleanest way possible.  Group like things together.  And I have here a simple gift from Bruno, the chef himself. which took the same foresight and sensitivity one might not attribute him, but which makes for a decent restaurant.  One of the simplest and most respectful gifts I've ever gotten from a boss, totally quiet.  Incense sticks, more or less.

I'm beginning to observe that modern technology, the cell phone, the internet screen, the television, brings us enormous distraction, feeding our egos, interfering with our need for simple clean innate consciousness.  Ego enabling.  Addictive.  Really not good for the human being.  Detaching, through heavy us, something vital and stabilizing and sensitive to the Universe.

"Oh but look, look at all it can do.  How could one live without it?"  Ego ye seek, and Ego ye shall find.  The invasive species upon our true minds.

I would know.  I'm as much an addict as anyone else.  But just that there is another way to see the whole problem.  As wiser writers than I have said, all those thoughts and forms that comprise the Ego, that's not who we basically are.  Just a bit hard to get around it.

Well, okay, a necessary state in our evolution, the ego stuff.  So that we could go beyond.

For anyone who has looked over a long period at the photographic record of Abraham Lincoln, there is the question, what do I see in him, what do you see in him.  There are the accounts of how he had to sit still for a good deal more than an instant, propositions that having to do so makes him coming out looking sleepy or detached, far away in his own space.  And yet in a good many of him, he is right there.  There is a palpable electricity coming out of him, as if we were to feel the atomic level energy field whirring within him, attuned to something, powerfully aligned.  And so I ask myself, what is it that I see, at gut level, when I look at his airy fellow who means so much to history American, not in the least, the self-made man with an early love of books and knowledge, who somehow cultivated himself so well.

And the conclusion I come to, at this point in my own life, neither here nor there, is that we see in Lincoln something remarkable.  We see an absence, to the extent it is granted to mortals, and to mortals in high offices, a clarity, a removal of the ego, of the beam in the eye.  A state of egoless-ness.  And because of this, in each and every one of his pictures, there is something organic, a bit different, a little bit of playfulness, and certainly of not being attached to this particular place and time, though of course, 'I am.'  It let him focus.  It let him do the right thing.  It let him hide, and wait it out to the next round.  And it let him make, from his small letters to his big ones, from the debates of houses divided to addresses on portions of battlefield and dead men, on hopes and prayers, in a way quite singular and unknown throughout history--who knows what Vercingetorix had to say--a strangely important and powerful example of putting one's foot down for the morally right thing to do.

And yet, the poor fellow has been co-opted, quite often probably, a symbol up for definition.  Or, to put it another way, we might gather that a large part of his significance is not well-understood.  And he is misunderstood if we think all his goodness and wisdom and acts came from ego-based purely rational thought.

However, let's just say, or rather wonder, or think, or have a fantasy, that if he were alive today, he would read Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone Magazine of August 2 about the state of the planet, global warming and greedy egos of the major oil corporations, Exxon, BP, Shell, who, blinded by profit, and even full of scientific understanding, go right ahead with the profiteering that will lead to great destruction and doom on the planet.  Lincoln, he would be up for such a challenge.  He would have grasp of the great issue of the day.  He would have focus, and he would put his foot down.

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war, might speedily pass away."  He would take take this battle to everyone's living rooms.

This, definitely, is an issue, he, were he here today, would take up, as it revolves around the fault of greediness leading people to commit great and actual harm.  A moral battle, one hard to fight in the current time.  Consider how recently Dick Cheney, pride of the oil industry, champion of the many tentacles Halliburton, himself enough of an egotistical creature to have someone else's heart put in him, had such an influence to shape policy for share holders and believers.

--A House Divided, a speech, a phrase, very close to identifying the civic problem of the egotistical.

Tales of This Week:

It's ended with a beautiful blowing light summer deep night breeze, the kind where you see stars again, even in a small backyard in Washington, DC.  You are home from your last shift of the week, famous Wednesday night Jazz at Bistrot de la Rue de la Upstairs de la Wine Bar de la poor bastard who works for little money but has the Chance to Learn about wine.  In poverty, and good hard work to keep from your hands being idle, comes spirituality, and a gift.

Man, chart the ups and downs, the zigs, the zags, the whoa!, the hail mary, the my god I gotta go home and listen to a few Pogues songs and wear out the last of this beauty of the Universe that is the night, the time of artist, the time of communion, the time of dreams and poetry, the time you kiss your little cat, so glad that she is with us still in this wonderful flowing hair-raising river that is always a beach, always a storm, always a forest, on firm ground, even in fixed daily drudge time, always a river, a great estuary, and this perhaps is the main reality of our lives here as we feel them actually, wondering all the while, what to do with ourselves.

It's a pure job, I would imagine, as all jobs are meant to be pure.  It's just a matter of seeing what is, what it is, that is pure, that is pure which you commune with.  It's a matter of twisting the dial (once you get warmed-up) and tuning in to whatever can be tuned into.

In this way, art is seen as that which happens when we vibrate in tune with the Universe.  And art, therefore, can have many modes.  One reason why, of course, we praise musical variety, variety of cuisine, of literature.

But let me tell you, seriously, when you vibrate in sort of how to say simpatico with the great Universe, a lot of neat things happen.

My co-workers, they often blame me, as if I invented humanity and human behavior, as if I were responsible for a good portion of the 'difficult people' who come, as if they had come by my special invitation, the customers, the ones who come and say, when it's obvious I'm not there, a rude thing to do, 'where's Ted,' regulars, as we say. ( They do present a burden, the burden of making conversation.)

I'm not there.  They don't get the best service, for one reason or another, and they make it known.  Justly, or probably unjustly, they complain.  Their egos have come out, and apparently feel they have been shorted somehow, and the one person, it seems, who could disarm their egos through his own study of the matter is not around.

And so a sort of bickering arises.  'Ted gives special treatment, lets people taste any and all wines they want, cuts them deals that we don't do.'  The usual talk that goes around the workplace.  Oh, Ted's people.  Ted's people who suddenly feel slighted even as they are getting perfectly good and normal service.  He works the slow nights, who knows what he does, what he promises, what he, basically, gives away.

And the latest incident of this leaves me up at 5:17 in the morning troubled by all this.  The regular who comes in with his wife, who got so upset about the service he received one night that he went downstairs to seek out the manager with complaints about everything.  100$ check comped.  "the food was awful, the service was terrible, etc., etc."  And what do I want to do now really the next time he comes in but show up at his table with a bowl of soapy water, dip my hands in, rub them, dry them with a towel, hold out clean hands and say, 'bro, I don't know you anymore.'  Maybe my coworkers are right, on certain levels.  Maybe my tolerance is too high.

I've always sensed that it is foolish to enter into confrontation and childish things.  There are certain people in the world who aren't into ego, and humanity needs such people.  The customers come, and before the inner light, they are calmed, and find their own inner light, or at least so might you think, a Tolstoy on a good day.

But my coworkers at the old bistro do not always see it that way.

Tao Lesson to be learned:  Never show up to work in a good mood.
(sound of gong in background)


"Here Comes Everybody," accordionist James Fearnley's book about the Pogues, brings across a MacGowan condemned to his own private hell and sleeplessness.  I have no doubts about that, but his music is amongst the most calming I know.

There is a place for kindness, beyond whatever roles we are stuck in.