All I'm saying is that it would be very difficult not to write.  I don't know, that's life in a nutshell for me.

Wake up on couch after dream of remembering the bright face of the Princess expectant of my not being awkward with her after our affection for each other came out from some old classroom long ago, the way her face would shine, the brightness of her look up at me, and then I'm awake and I have to go get ready for work, after three exhausting nights, and this one is going to be shitty too.

I get a text from old Phil Tombow, you working tonight...  Oh, goddamn, the night I'd rather just dial it in, anonymously, and there's more coming the barman's way because there's a large party, say, 24 Frenchies in for a planned menu dinner, they'll churn it out downstairs, but upstairs, I'll take the spill over and it's not going to be pretty and the kitchen at the old Gaul will be backed up, and when the regulars show up for wine-tasting night it will amount to them watching gleefully as I bleed out my enthusiasm on the floor, disgusted, sad, trying to entertain, all of them smiles, but me having to deal with New York Bar lawyers and their wives, and the delay from down below from the kitchen after I fire entrees has become ridiculous, and the wine we are supposed to be tasting is only about four bottles so what's the point I have to improvise...

And oh, people who usually eat downstairs have decided it would be better to come up and dine up at the wine bar, but I've got a whole show and here they all come, clamoring, telling their stories, and reservations are made and I don't even know about them but here they are, all showing up...  Just as they did at 5:45...  expecting me to jump for joy upon their arrival, oh, how nice to see you, except that they are kind enough to mention my Facebook post acknowledging the strange fact that it's been fifty years since Kerouac met his death, working in his favorite chair, writing about his father's print shop and all of a sudden he has nausea and goes to the bathroom vomiting a hemorrhage of blood...

I finally get rid of the last neighbor at the bar, a good Christian woman, who has invited me to Spook-eghti and Meatballs...  I get the bus home, fall upon the couch with the kitchen light still on, and now, errh, erhr, erhrr, my cell phone is vibrating off the ikea coffee table, or course, guess who...  1:30 AM...  my heart is not in a good place as far as beating...

But you have to remember, how the web works for the spider...  the connection, the circle, all points framed, reachable, tangible, the spider's patience, waiting for any tick on her radar graph.  She needs speed sometimes.  Patience other times.

The tree has its web.  Vertical, spread out in all directions, up and down, limb and leaf.  Catching sun and dew...


And any great idea or thought, or moment precise, for the thoughtful of humanity, those with an ear turned, vigilant, participate in the craft of a strand in the collective unconscious web.

Any great imaginative conception...  Be it done, be it done by, be it done to, be it thought of by the subject of the imaginative conception who becomes what imagination wants to conceive, or be it represented by, who knows, all these lines become less clear divisions...


And so here is Peter, looking at Jesus, the man, the prophet, the strange poet of live theater of a very important kind of news...

And Jesus does not know the answer when he asks the question, and maybe it's even a vulnerable moment...  What do they say I am, what do you think I am...  And the fledgling apostle friends, what do they say, but words bandied about.  "What do you say I am, old Peter?" the man with his followed visions must ask, knowing that by now they are all outside of the norms of accepted behavior and jobs, moving into a field that has no system of credential granted unto it safely recognized by the rest, and they were just as scrupulous about paperwork and documentation then, as they are now.

So here's this rather reckless kind of a guy, Jesus, who really seems to thrive, as it were, on a way, a path, a walk, a journey, a strange professional choice...

He's the guy who was out there with them on the lake when the storm was coming.  He was the one who associated himself with the publican and the sinner.  He was the one who did such things as to be eyed with some suspicion by the normal media gatherers as a man "gluttonous and a wine-bibber," not to mention his habit prone to parables, beautiful poetic statements that really cut so deep and into everyone's basic understanding of existence, whether or not they hid from it, the childlike ability to get it, how did all these beings of nature come into existence, and being so perfectly created that they have just the right and perfect means to gather sustenance just as they are, the bird having its seed, the violet having its own perfection of raiment such to catch the sun and the rain from down up the ground...

Here's the guy who gave a long talk that captivated people, and then he did something strange, which was feed them...  Out of nothing.  Here's a guy who knowingly took his friends out on the boat when it was the season of storms and all the conditions just perfect for them to sink to the bottom.  Here's the guy who made faith come out in certain individuals by doing strange things that only a stranger would be able to understand or being to account for.  It's even in his parables.  Who the hell are you, Jesus, and he gives them the story of the Good Samaritan on the road, saving the poor guy who robbers beat the hell out of, because they are logical, robbers, robbers who need money, preying on travelers by surprise and thuggery.  And here's Jesus telling us this whole reckless story, of not only saving the poor bastard, but then giving money, giving money to the innkeeper to take care of him, until he is "better," as the pay the innkeeper until the guy is healthy and able to walk out on his own two feet is definitely a part of the story...

(And if you've listened to one of Jesus's parable stories about the vineyard and the owner and the vineyard keeper, you know yourself, that the guy is hard to understand sometimes... downright mystifying...  It only makes sense perhaps, because Jesus likes his wine, a fixation...  It's telling, that he would chose the particular setting for his little lectures...)  Jesus, WTF, the apostles, would-be, texted each other, on their cell phones....

Who do they say I am, who do you think I am?

And old Peter, he gets it.  He's the mortal bridge.  You're not the reckless, you're not the whatever they might say you are...  You're something...  Let's call it, The Son of Man...  I don't know.

And old Jesus is pleased, of course he is. For Peter hasn't judged him.  Jerk.  Asshole  Winedrinker.  Peter has acknowledged that the man, Jesus, is working, working on something, doing his job.

His job.  We might speculate about that now, or compare it.  Jesus delivered sutras.  He did yoga cures.  He was a reader, a thoughtful person, a scholar.  He knew from inside out, sin and stupidity and lust and all that, but rather than letting it get to him, he chose to live in the present and be sin free, as that's what living in the present is, not imposing any kind of great plan or selfishness, as such things are foreign to us anyway.

All we know is things like "driving down the road."  We are on the road.  We're in a car.  We're driving from Clinton, down College Hill, and out Bristol Road, Route 233, to either catch 5, the slow way, or on to Westmoreland, to gas up, to get on the New York State Thruway westward, out along the flats, past Lake Oneida, and on through toward Syracuse, and then off to catch 481 to Route 48, on up to Oswego..  From Dad's, your old home town, up to where Mom is, and her life at the SUNY town...



Kerouac, On The Road, by this point you're read a lot and your tired out by it all, and we're out in San Francisco now, and Dean Moriarty, his thumb is up in a great bandage, and he's being called out, by the women folk, for caring nothing about anyone else but for the thing hanging between his legs...  And Kerouac, as Sal Paradise, despite it all, and even what the reader might want, or feel up for, offers a quiet defense of Moriarty, who is of course Neal Cassady, son of good tinsmith worker father gone wino in the depths of old Denver and railroad tramps and jails...   It's not been an easy life for Dean.

In some quiet mimic, one we have to go look for backward, unconvinced upon the first careful reading, and readings afterward, here is Kerouac, a gentle Catholic Christian sensibility kind of a guy, offering a pronouncement.  Here is IT.  Dean is The Holy Goof...  Dean is Beat.  Beatific. Beatified.

You'd miss it if you weren't' careful.  After the Holy Goof passage, Part Three, Chapter Three, reading On The Road is easier, more fulfilling, less a torture of irresponsible travels, the writing grounded, falling into a tradition.

Another crazy Saturday night, selling almost five thousand dollars worth up at the wine bar.  There's that point in the night, head down, running, opening a Gigondas bottle at table 53, a five top, one guy wanting martini with blue cheese anchovy stuffed olive, but we're out of them, because barmen are run pretty hard, and then back to the bar and you've got a familiar pretty kind face, happily married, commercial real estate guy, and they all want cocktails, and who is sitting where...

I watch episodes of Chernobyl on my lap top, eating black eyed peace and rice, having some wine to unwind, when I finally get back, letting everyone else go, and the paper work drags on, entering all the tips into the system.  Alone.  Bar cleaning some to do still.  Before the Uber cab home to the apartment.

I wake tired and it's pouring rain, Betsy's up in New York City, I'm headed to work, mom is calling, telling me there's no food, and she's had some wine...  After the shower I pull a box marked winter stuff out of the closet and cut it open, and there's my good winter jacket.  I go out and catch the D6 bus in, waiting under the overhang of the little bus stop there by the curve with the field of the Urban Ecology Center behind me.  Mom has left some voicemails...  My pant legs are wet with the rain by the time I come into the restaurant.

And to my relief, there aren't many reservations made for upstairs, though the downstairs is booked solid.  Which means we will be running at some point...


But at some point, walking in the rain, careful at an intersection, standing aside in the tall grasses to let some Georgetown University girls go by, looking up at the scene of the rainy sky above the row houses of Reservoir Road--did Bobby Kennedy live in one near here when he first came to town?--I get to read my little snippets of blog entries.  They aren't much, Lord knows.  But...

The spider makes a strand, from here to there, pulls on it a bit, attaches another strand.  And eventually, a web begins to form, and in accordance with its own form and the principle of the integrity of the circle, attached to its surroundings just so, it makes sense, and the spider can abide there and its little part of the greater doing its little spider stuff, activities best seen at night, but that depends.

After the drone useless galley slave work of Saturday night, ignored for all but my gopher go get it, Sunday night there is a vibe, a more personal kind of engagement, regulars, neighborhood, comfortable people.

Things are thrown off a bit from the start when Marie Reine brings up a four top of elderly couples who swear they have made a reservation, they are over by the window, but there's a draft, and everyone starts fumbling over it until I cut through...  So much for stuffing olives project.


As the night winds up and then down, I speak in French to a couple of ladies in a humorous way, je vais a la plage, mais il pleut, je suis un jambon, as they sit next to a lady friend of mine whose friend from Sweden is from originally the Dordogne region...   I give away a copy of my old book to the lady who comes and has liver then an endive salad in the corner as she listens to books on tape, and at the end my psychic sense is rewarded for my good treatment of a woman with husband and boys, as she is a celebrity chef, Pati's Mexican Kitchen, come to find out.

But there's something, something about the work of a bar...  valid, honorable...


I can't seem to move before 2:30 in the afternoon to get ready and go do work again, but that's how it goes.

I see the art in it, but I get sad reading On The Road now.  The misled.  The great unproductive.  Bad decisions, willfully chosen.

I'm not the only writer led astray for the sake of, for the need for, lyricism, I say to myself, turning the book face down on the bed, but picking it back up again, "oh, now they're driving down to New Orleans to see William Burroughs, a strange chapter indeed, the whole thing...  the drug addiction, the madness, the lack of control..."


I turn to a yoga book I found at the library.  Kino MacGregor, The Power of Ashtanga Yoga, reading therein about the history of yoga and also its benefits.

I sip a Nicolas Pinot Noir, as I do so, being awake at this hour, attempting to entertain myself in the hours of sleep and then waking after the work week's vicissitudes.  I read about the conscience of a responsible yogi, about going vegetarian, about Ayurvedic diet...

I try to find a place in On the Road to read from, but every passage I pick it up, it's the bleak waste of time, so it seems to me...  Which hits home, I gather, as I know it all myself, misdirected, misguided, along for a ride, tho' in my case, trying to make a living while keeping something creative going.

I wake up to the phone call from Mom.  Yes, dad died nine years ago...  "Am I being abandoned..."  No, mom.  I'm coming up to see you soon.  I was just there.  "There's no food, no wine."  I convince her to look around a little bit.  She finds a bit of both.

I'm still tired.  The last of the siding is going up, but after lunch break now, out comes the radio blasting whatever that music is, cumbia, bachata, merengue, repetitive guitar chords spelled out note by note, the same single note guitar sound in each song after song, string by string, singing over the top, the same predictable rhythm...  some sort of weird marching music, ant like.  I put in ear plugs...

I read through the beginning passages of the yoga book as it describes a sequence of poses and the mechanics of each pose.  Lift the sacrum, pull down the shoulder blades, expand, flex the quadriceps while the hamstrings stretch...  To do a pose is to wring out the poisons accumulated through living that sit within the body like sediment, like plaque.

Another nap, and then I get out to the field by the Urban Ecology Center out in the sun, flat enough for the yoga mat and go through my usual poses and some difficult ones new to me, rotated triangle...

Ending up with a good five minute plus headstand in the breeze, and then a solid lotus pose.  When I stand I can barely walk, but it's good, you can feel it, progress.


I reflect on the week.  Funny how we get accused by the others of their own worst faults.  That is a two way street, yes, but if you step back, you see it, you see the connectivity, you see how angry people are, how they make your life miserable, temporarily, at least, while not seeing their own behavior that's even worse and more demoralizing to the human being.


Somewhere, I think there is a place for such writing as this, a kind of journalism that catches how people act around each other, a recording, maybe it's yellow journalism, maybe it's small potatoes, things no one wants to hear or might care to ponder out very much, a sort of detailed note taking about human behavior, and maybe so, if such were established, if we had the talk of the ever observant person wise to how people actually act, say, out on the street, or in a bar, well, maybe we'd be better at getting the truth of a person, say, a Trump, as Trump was observed by bar people to be cheap, a tight wad, a big spender only if he thought there was a chance he might get some action...  how he was the shitty miserable to deal with person who wanted to talk about himself, and this after only a Coors Light, maybe two, tops.  If bar people had spoken, come out as a tribe, telling their truth--and their truth portrayed the man in the light, revealed, as he is, not a nice person, nor a good person, nor a genuine thoughtful honest person, nothing of the like, just in it for himself,who cares--if that truth had come out, the bartender's Middle Earth Elf Union had spoken out, "this, Pennsylvania, is the asshole you will be getting, if you vote for this lying chump in it for himself and greed and megalomania and bullying...."

It was left, however, to journalists of a journalist sort of profession, and they could not talk the truth enough, covered the aberration of Trump as a phenomenon, gave him air time...

Sketches from the so-called week

I had planned on working tonight, having made a switch, an attempt to get Saturday night off, as part of a vague plan to join Betsy in the Big Apple for a quick trip, but the managers wanted and expected the normal guy Cisco, given what the night would bring.  "Not your cup of tea," the boss said, over the phone, politely enough.  Sure.  Quiet tired anyway.   No desire to do the lugging for the twelve top in the back right at 5:30, would prefer to take the silent treatment from LM Saturday night down the road.

The stone mason's saw revs up as it is readied to make its cut.  Can be heard throughout the neighborhood, and it's right outside my windows fifteen feet below.  There was quiet for a couple of days, but the men are at it again, with the nail gun and the half-shouting on ladders as the last of the siding goes up on top of the white Dupont Tyvek house liner sheet now that the window casements and the windows they hold are in place.  The mason is capping the balustrades of the stairs and walkway into the building.  The basement is still a bare shell of concrete, with PVC pipes rising out of gravel to be covered over.

It's cold out and overcast, and after reaching mom on the phone and dealing with the work confusion, with the wind blowing in the tree tops, I snooze on the couch in a form of meditation, taking the mind off its usual thought track.  The working men laugh in the distance, pleased to be working, dressed in heavier sweats and work jackets for the first time.

Lankavatara.

Tuesday night wine tasting, the regulars come in, one by one.  There's the Democratic debate, and a Washington Nationals series baseball game going on.  Monika's late husband's cousin is visiting from London for IMF meetings, arriving before, and though I recognize her there is no reservation for them and it is as if I have to be prompted to recognize her, though I do.

A pretty girl comes in, Jeremy gets her seated, as I roll around and take care of the two by the window, getting her a taste of the Haut Pila Roussillon red.  She is joined by a young man, and I pour him a taste, and then for her the taste of a comparable wine, the Minervois, Paraza, which she prefers.    Will they order food, who knows.  People are being sphinxes tonight.  A younger man comes up and seats himself by the window after the other couple has left.  He looks out the window.  Okay.   I let him sit there.  "He had a glass of wine downstairs.  He's waiting for someone," Jeremy tells me.

The local lady comes in with a tale from the art studio of breaking a glass shelf, and the bar is full with kibitzing.  Jake finally orders a rose.  Fine.  Run out the clock.

9:10, the kitchen closing, Jeremy informs me, when he comes by to stand at the bar's mouth and talk with local lady, helping out with wiping down the clean glassware from the washer.

At 9:03 M the busboy man comes up and tells me, kitchen close at 9.  Okay.   And just a good five minutes later, Cisco shows up with two young women friends.  To drag my night out.  I can barely look up.  "Kitchen's closed," I mutter.  He goes down the stairs and soon comes back up, and then he's behind the bar getting plates, silverware napkin set-ups, three of them, bread and butter.  No, don't do this to me...   Soon a plate of escargot, and two onion tarts arrive.  And then a salmon entree.  And I'm pretty exhausted at this point, having dealt with the holiday weekend... followed by jazz night, some crazy shifts.

I am frustrated by this move, and mom is on the line and I'm trying to explain where her phone charger might be.  No option, but to turn to the bottles and pour myself some red.

I clean the kitchen counters when I get home, I go take a walk down to the woods on a bluff, one deer running away, another invisible in the bushes puffing a warning at my closeness.  In my bedeviled mood I come upon one of those red Uber slightly powered bicycles and figure out how to take it for a spin, unimpressed with its pickup, but taking it off road for a whoop and I flush a young deer out of a field and feel like a bad intruder upon the night's peace.  Back in the apartment, I eat chicken salad from the Korean market and have more wine and damn I'm still frustrated.  Happens every time, every single time.  The last people, and when I go to work next day my shoulders hang down defeatedly, and it's going to be a busy night too.



In a dream between Tuesday and Wednesday I am with my family, brother, mother, father.  Or perhaps just by brother.  We are in Utica, in the midst of a tour of the grand old Italian restaurants there, and in the dream mind they are palaces, with great buffet like feasts laid out with tomato sauce gravy and cheeses and meats and all things, rigatoni, greens, meatballs, sausages...  And one, after seeing all number of magnificent dining rooms well-attended to, the last one is like a great theater, with a magnificent mansion like entrance of steps up to the grand doors, and inside a great well-lit lobby almost with a fountain and people have their pictures taken in grand style.  Not bad for old Utica.

And then the iPhone is rumbling silently and Mom is calling and with a dry voice I answer, and "did I wake you up..."


It turns out the fourteen in the back are familiar, members of the Norwegian military attache, largely, dressed in plain clothes, or maybe they are in a private enterprise now, but anyway, many of them very tall and beards and strong manly faces, Vikings.  Friends, straight forward, easy to deal with.  I get their wine order, running down to the basement to grab the Sancerre Reverdy Ducru with the yellow orange label and also the 2017 Gigondas, La Formoune, stopping to get cold bottles from MR, server of the main dining room floor from the cooler, four of the reds under my arms, running back upstairs and opening them up, then going down the table, who wants white, who wants red...   Mineral water served.

The day off, I finally warm to it later in the afternoon before going out for a walk in the light and then round to the little market for cold cuts and wine after taking in the river.  I wear my puff down light jacket and a winter hat for the first time in a long time.  The noise of the stone mason's saw follows me, and so do the thoughts in my head of a certain kind that make you feel down about yourself and where you are in life as an attempted adult with his fool habits, but also thoughts that are part of a stream, as well, a stream that leads one to try to wrap his head around the Transcendent thoughts of Buddha and what-not.  Things are, in the final analysis, projections from the mind, consciousness, in other words, as I walk slowly down by the woods, considering the Lankavatara Sutra.

My father wrote me, after he'd read my book, his analysis, which was that the main character is a Theosophist, one who is grappling with larger issues such as what comprises the nature of reality.  Of course, the Princess, the Beautiful Girl in the text, with whom one would want the things of a good relationship with, perhaps even she in time turns into less of a reality and more of a figment of the once imagination, know what I mean?  Something by which a Buddhist point is examined by, why make such a big deal...  And the Buddha considers this a very serious and central lesson for us here in the world...

And furthermore, as is more or less outlined in the Sutras, Lankavatara and other, that the whole point is to be the teacher teaching such a fine point, so as to liberate the suffering.  Hmm.

Much ado about nothing...  Nothing is but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare put in to his plays.

"People really like you, you're well respected and trusted by everybody.  Be positive.  Nature is not all directed to making you unhappy," my mom tells me.  Okay.

And this is as I'm trying to get my body through a very busy and difficult long weekend, for normal people, Columbus Day weekend, Saturday a stream of people honing in on the bar right when the door opens, walk-ins on top of reservations, and every other server downstairs leaving me to deal wth this most agonizing part of the night, which is my Monday morning anyway, then Sunday, hey, just me, left to deal with an 8 top, a 6 top, walk ins who are regulars and want to chit chat, catching up (the real purpose of a bar), other walk ins who aren't, who want a strange mix of things--downstairs, all they get is diners, appetizer, entree, desert, coffee, on top of cocktail and wine, but upstairs at the wine bar, you wear many hats, particularly as the barman.  Sunday night the two regulars at the bar see what I go through, catch my self-mutterings, Jesus Christ, perseverance the only way to get through a night, boom boom boom, one thing after another, not looking up so much, and just as I'm about to head back into the wine room to deliver drink round to nice fancy Georgetown lady who has famous Pre-Raphealite paintings hanging in her living room, another couple walks in and want a bite to eat and wine before going downstairs for dinner, while I'm juggling about five other tasks at the moment...

This is Sunday, and it's not always easy how the phone call goes with her, as she might wonder aloud where she is, thinking she's not at home, or that there are other people to feed there besides her, and sometimes very temperamental, but she must be taking her medicine as I hang on the phone wearily getting ready for work...

I go out and wait for the bus, but the bus doesn't come, and I know it's going to be a shit night, and finally when I get the pool Uber cab, in a beat up car, me in the front seat, he has to head into Georgetown, M Street, and that's just going to be a traffic nightmare, and there was the damn bus anyway...  passing by the line of people not knowing what to do with their time but wait in line outside cutesy Georgetown Cupcake to feel a sense of belonging, as I grumble to work in a state of anxiety through the crowded touristy streets of Georgetown and people walking across intersections without regard, and I wanted to get there early, at least on time, but the public bus, the D6, has betrayed me, too.


So I am exhausted as I try to get ready again, after another noontime of fitful rest, depression, anxiety, poverty dread, for work, for the actual Monday Federal Holiday, with no idea what I might be facing, except of the live music with Quiet Life Motel, my friends, great musical artists...  The little market is closed, and this time, screw the bus, I'll just walk, despite the lingering ragweed pollen in this Autumn of drought.  So many signs of something different with the climate...  The last few nights I'd taken to the depressing task of reading from On The Road.  How do you live like that, like Kerouac did, spending the last of his few dollars, the hitchhiking craziness, the sad characters of America, sad in that they all are poor and living on the edge...

Fortunately, the book has its shifts.  Reflections familiar to one who has read later Kerouac.  And there are lines to sift out and hold, like the early line when, if he has any advice to offer Dean Moriarty about writing, it's that you have to pursue it with the mad energy of a benny (benzedrine) addict.  Yes, don't kill yourself, Jack.  Take good care of Jack.  Take a look at all this writing business, and remember to give us the wisdom, the scholarly wisdom you've found, along with the beauty.

I make it to work.  Monday.  Set-up isn't too bad.  There are people at 5:30, but they are mellow, and all the mosquitos, we will have to deal.  The musicians, two of them, David and Tillery the horn player arrive early.  We can make it work, despite the fact that there are only three servers, meaning one downstairs, and one "floating" between the two floors, where I will end up holding the bag for the millionth time in this shit ass business.

And again, I am busy, as because of the different hats, serving to listen to bar people, to get the bossy little waitress what she wants, this and that, this and that, holding down whatever gaps in service I see in the dining room before me...  taking care of things, dodging the galoot busboy man as he gathers these insane piles of dirty plates we stack on milk crates, me on my knees often trying to stack them after scraping the remains into the garbage bin there to my right, stooping, it goes all night, no break for me, and by 8:30 there's a pit in my stomach and I'm starving about to bonk and fall to my feet, and thankfully there's a can of V8 stashed away and a bite from a chocolate bar to keep me going.  The young woman at the end of the bar (the bar was full earlier and she sat down at a little table to get an order in) has come in from Virginia, broke her arm in a bike accident, wearing a cast, shows me the X-ray with the metal plate and pins...  ouch.  My friend Drew comes in late. The hustle of the busboy man gathering the recycling and then the trash and then sweeping with the energy of a mad gorilla behind me, yes, there's no way to get through all of this--unless you could really just turn away from people and bother not even acknowledging them as familiar faces, which of course is impossible and would be offensive, to them--without a little promise of some wine to carry one through the last trenches.  Whether one wants to or not.

I'm heading to the bus stop to get back home to the apartment, but suddenly my guts are riled and I have to make a run for the bushes by the school, uh oh, too late,  no choice.  I manage to catch the bus, get in at last, and take a shower, rid of the holiday weekend which no holiday.

I'd not even had a chance, nor any inclination, to write for a while.  There was jury duty, early on a Monday morning, taking the bus across town...  reading the Wikipedia entry on the Lankavatara Sutra, a good thing to turn to when feeling overwhelmed and no longer in control and feeling poorly.  The judge let me out of it, somehow, when I told him I was a bartender, who works at night, but who in theory will dutifully set his alarm clock to listen to this exhausting civil case before the court, and finally I get sprung and miraculously catch the bus back to the little apartment, but then mom is on the phone wondering in dramatic fashion if she should just end it.  And then a nap for me to absorb all of this, before going to work.  Lankavatara.  It's all in your head, the whole thing.


What is there to eat today?  I've got mom calm with a phone call, and she's on her bed upstairs in front of the television reading Van Wyck Brooks, New England Indian Summer, and still taking her medicine and the cat's still alive.  Her new helper was able to find her stash of checkbooks.  There have been wars started, Kurdish allies abandoned, clearly dirty things going on with the man who took over as President, so much crap, so much bad stuff, incitements to violence and fascism...  I drink my green tea what my stomach can handle, and there are hotdogs to heat up in the toaster over, before I get ready to go to work, Tuesday night wine tasting.  I do the dishes in the sink, and take a breather.   Mom and all her lovely books, great books, books I have not read, having gone my own fool rebellion way, thinking that writing would be better than reading...  reading and then teaching.

In my own mind I will always be the idiot who messed up that scholarly life, to which I was given a grand head start opportunity to perform,

Energy takes a lot of writing, and writing takes a lot of energy.  An amateur, like me, will derive small amounts of satisfaction through the exercise, and maybe even verge on coming up with a few good kernels, but it's too much to come up with more than, say, one attempt at a book, and if that doesn't pay your way, and certainly it won't, you are left with such little steps as the one I write now.  There are other things to worry about anyway, the guts are still working it out, and now it's time to shower and go off to work, wine tasting night, the Haut Pila, a hearty red from the Roussillon.  There's baseball on tonight, plus a debate for the Democrat field.  And yet, slow nights can be as difficult as busy ones.

"Poetry helps us live intelligently in uncertainty," I hear on the radio, Harold Bloom died yesterday at 81.  Hear and Now, Robin Young.

The city is sexually entrepreneurial.  Decisions done at a fast pace.  And this is where the character (of a Hero for Our Time) goes wrong, for missing the invitation placed before him, to look back with regret at all the missed chances for erotic adventure and satisfaction, a voice stuck in his head.  Simple appalling stupidity.  The attempt at sainthood, gone horribly wrong.


The writing serves as an exercise, not far off from taking a walk, an attempt to counter depressive thoughts by giving them some time and work.  The little bit you chip at...  The great mental block.  The little bit you gain.