On to the next, tired of looking at the last, ill at ease with it.  We are all victims of our own egos.  I know I've done a lot of very dumb things, counterproductive things, things that cause pain and suffering, from being led around by ego.  In retrospect, you can only hope that some of your inner consciousness and peace shined out, as if in spite of yourself.  And a chief regret is letting myself be enchanted with the things of pop culture with its big story lines that infiltrate and desensitize, such that you are singing along to the words of "(I can't get no) Satisfaction" rather than thinking.  Everywhere you go, the happy music is on the sound system, asking you to be lazy and to slip right in to the comforts of ego, when even you know yourself that you would rather be sitting under a tree, if not to achieve sudden Buddha Enlightenment, at least to not be doing any harm.

What is there to report about a bar, let's say?  What good can a barman accomplish anyway, but to radiate a peaceful kindness, a compassion beneath it all that another human creature might somehow, if not totally distracted by all the necessities and practicalities of living and seeking pleasure on top of that,  pick up on.  It's probably not the wine that helps anyone, short of a muscle relaxant that I put to use way too often when I come home sore, inflamed, tired, dull aches and pains, finding the numbness attractive to the body.  But the mind protests against it, I find more and more.

One of two women, older, having arrived loudly at the bar, saddle up closer to a young woman who's been sitting by herself, loudly, 'oh, it's not that I'm hitting on you or anything...'  That's the beginning of the night.  What good am I doing anyone here, I ask myself.  My buddy, coworker, vents his discontent that other people are taking time off, backing out of commitments to work shifts during the coming 'restaurant week' when he is taking two classes.  True, it might be considered an odd time for the boss to be out of town.  Later on, the bass player of the trio is suffering, clearly, from food poisoning.  Pour him a home brew ginger ale.

I get home later, turn on the Olympics coverage, holding out a promise something interesting will happen.  No, not really, though it's hard to turn it off.  Some pure moments of athleticism, no doubt, but a lot of ego, ego grasped by other egos, self-perpetuating.  I take refuge, finally, in PBS show, The Buddha, produced by David Grubin, narrated by Richard Gere, commentary by Merwin, Thurman, practicing Buddhists.  And that, of course, works, though I do not have the energy to go sit under the fig tree that sits innocuously just up the street.