I've come to a suspicion. People with Type O blood, natural hunters, are not as concerned with amassing material possessions. They like their tools, of course, after all, necessary for the hunt and the for the nomadic lifestyle that accompanied it. I like my wine key. I like my bicycle. I like my cooking knives and the honing rod that sharpens them. I like my Parker jotter pen (President Kennedy's favorite, by the way.) I like my tea pot. Perhaps somehow, the fixtures of a standard bar, the shakers, the ice bin, the cooler, all have a vestige, a residual of the practicality of the hunt, and I like the cooler, full of wine, beer and mineral water, as a good place to keep my roast beef sandwich cold, something to look forward to after all the customers have left. The fancy palace, appointed with trappings of luxury and idle cleverness, I do not like so much. I quickly get bored. Perhaps the acoustic guitar I keep around here in my own flat, along with the cat (who does not at all like the guitar, and runs for cover whenever I take it out of its handy case even before I have strummed it) is a way I cope with the modern cooped-up boredom a modern city-dweller must put up with.

There is a lot about modern life that makes me anxious. And I worry that its main securities are things I don't so well 'get,' even though I would like to get them. In my downtime, I have my little interests, one of them being natural herbal supplements and anti-inflammatory substances to go with a proper diet. And I imagine, the hunter has long amused himself, once he put meat and vegetables on the table, with healthy tonics and natural stuff that's good for you. Like green tea, or turmeric, or cayenne, or sparkling mineral water, or dandelion root, or licorice, or the tomato. Good for the stomach, good for digestion, good for the joints, good for the body, good for sleep.

Sunday night, the elderly couple comes. They are extremely nice, a retired physics professor, his wife, of German extraction. They and several other long-standing Sunday regulars like--or at least I imagine they do, from what they have told me--the mellow kind of music we have been playing, for as long as I can remember. Stan Getz, a touch of Brazilian, typical fare. But, even I must admit, somewhat painfully, that it grows boring, not in the least because its selections are entirely predictable. At a certain point in the evening, one has to admit to himself, 'this is boring, and has been boring for some time, and every one in the room has grown bored with it.' (Never mind its potential to foster, through a mirroring of sensitive neurons, peaceful, perhaps lackadaisical, tendencies in the moods of the customer, thus making everyone a little more mellow, if they are not by nature contrarian to such.)

And at this point I realize, guiltily, that it is my own choice of music station selection that has sucked the life out of everyone, never mind that at least one guest wears hearing aids, which make a noisy room an impossible jumble of clashing sounds. Then, in the middle of a rush for a round of coffees for the farthest away tables, in the midst of cleared plates and the ring of the walkie-talkie signaling that down below, a flight of stairs and another dining room away, there is food ready for a table of ours, someone needs to change the music. Tonight, the waitress, gives the signal, "I'm going to fall asleep," and the barman jumps to it. Lets change it to The Meters, I think. (She went to school and waited tables in New Orleans.)

By now the economist has planted himself at the bar, a small one, of seven stools. (Earlier on, one end of the bar was occupied by a large Tiffany-style lamp, until one day I took it downstairs and placed it on the long service bar in a free spot.) He has already become bored by the music, and will settle for the next round of selections, though probably not ideal, neither for him or anyone else. But we are busy still, the busboy, the waitress, the bartender, taking care of the upstairs, the so-called Wine Bar, as a team. Family and friends of the chef, locals, but originally from his country of Cameroon, have been sat up by the front window, and even though the kitchen will be closing soon, they haven't got the charcuterie plates the chef will send them.

They will become the dominant guests, and it is only at the end of the evening, when the Chef himself comes up (after a busy Father's Day service) to have a cognac and boisterous conversation, that it occurs to me we should be listening to music from Africa. And indeed, one guest, in a long white dashiki kind of a gown, proves to be a multi-instrumental musician. On a small iPod I figure out how to delete a station, one hundred of them being the limit, on our house Pandora to put on some King Sun Ade and his Orchestra.

Later, I close up by myself. The kitchen closed, took the last orders, at 9:30, but here it is midnight, and I am so tired I can barely take off my work shoes and pants, put my Levis on, and head home on my bicycle, where I collapse sprawled out on the couch, falling two thirds asleep with the television on, after feeding the cat.

And then I am awake again, and despite a bath in epsom salts, cannot fall back to asleep, and by now it is light out anyway, and I think that perhaps I have too much adrenaline still firing in my aging system from the last two nights of work.

Fortunately, there is Ian Frazier's book about traveling in Siberia, an excellent read, at least to the type O mind. Something to keep unpleasant thoughts about one's own impending old age distracted, at bay. Sleep can be an awkward thing for someone in my line of work, of having your button pushed repeatedly over the course of eight hours in a manner that necessitates a physical response.