Things get so, in such a state, that you can't not write. Not just that you can't face writing, but that you can't avoid it, as if it were the only healthy and positive thing to do in a cluttered life.
Charlie Rose--to continue a dialog started below on 'self-confidence'--interviews chess master Magnus, a young guy with the right kind of tousled hair. Maybe he, as a young player, was over-confident, but that he grew into it. But anyway, he knows that a player can perceive danger or trouble or a threat, thus wiring himself into a failure self-created. And so, yes, unless we are confident, and building on our confidences, we hold ourselves back. We don't speak up, we don't apply for jobs that could lead somewhere, we don't go and talk to the pretty girl who had just rebuked us, and down the line until we create living hells for ourselves, because, yes, everyone else 'gets it,' gets the 'be self-confident thing.' Fake it to you make it.
The author of Lincoln's Melancholy, Joshua Wolf Shenck, gives us a very interesting portrait of a man who's own mind could mess with him rather severely. "I'm not a well man," the poor guy is quoted as saying, his head down in his hands even as he should be celebrating a moment of political gain. One can posit that to have to deal with such things, as his own moods, intangible stuff made awfully real and unhappily so, might have ended up giving him a kind of wisdom. If his mind may have been telling him, so that he could almost feel it, that the sky was falling, he may have learned a circumspection, an ability to ignore it, thus having a perspective on human behavior. But yes, it would have been a journey for him. And it is also true that he seems to have always possessed a fair amount of self-confidence, maybe in no small way attributed to his own physical strength (and ability to win a wrestling match.)
I putter away at this blog. It speaks to the few strengths I have, I suppose, whatever those might be, as well as my weaknesses.
Chekhov went and wrote about the prisoners of Sakhalin, with the knowledge that no one really cared, as far as the public view, about all these souls rotting away and dying in such condition. But that lack of caring and public will or interest was not going to change what he himself saw as necessary and worth reportage.
Maybe you fight a battle for a long time, take the wounds inflicted, lick them, and then over the years you slowly begin to realize, that a large part of the enemy in it all, is within. And maybe that sort of liberates you from holding back so that you can do the right thing.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
I pretend to be a wine expert. I do offer advice, cover the bases, give out a sip here and there. Taste with food, this ought to work with what you're having--that sort of thing. And wine pretends to be something worthy of expertise, beyond simple enjoyment of what's good about it or how it reflects from where it came. Wine is a weakness, a bit medicinal, one of life's mellow pleasures, and I know, as far as weaknesses one could do far far worse.
I mean, take Hemingway: he's simply one of the great variety of writers. (And perhaps limited from seeing himself only as that.) None of us have any more talent or great insight beyond the rest. Just a kind of spilling of one's guts and leave it as it is. Maybe he's not even particularly good, but that somehow he makes his point, and Kundera applauds him for this, that in the scale of things, the art of writing is good. Journalistically? For bringing out the bad guys from disguise? For showing what makes us tick? Academically, I know full well, you would do a lot better studying some other guy, Robert Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Larkin perhaps. Someone with a better diction than "the horse smelled the water." Someone less of a lout. (But Hemingway is a sensitive guy, I would argue, just dealing with being alive. I have him as a Type O.)
There are, I suppose, Hemingway experts. And then there are legions of people who are drawn back to nature by him, by his trout holding themselves steady over pebbled stream bottoms, or who get oysters or Paris. Simpatico types who sense his simpatico type.
But I am reminded of a story. A fellow goes to President Lincoln, wanting to be a doorman. Have you ever been a doorman? No. Have you ever attended a lecture on being a doorman? Uh, no. Have you ever read treatises on the subject? The guy quietly leaves.
I guess, on the other hand, you have to pay your dues.
I mean, take Hemingway: he's simply one of the great variety of writers. (And perhaps limited from seeing himself only as that.) None of us have any more talent or great insight beyond the rest. Just a kind of spilling of one's guts and leave it as it is. Maybe he's not even particularly good, but that somehow he makes his point, and Kundera applauds him for this, that in the scale of things, the art of writing is good. Journalistically? For bringing out the bad guys from disguise? For showing what makes us tick? Academically, I know full well, you would do a lot better studying some other guy, Robert Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Larkin perhaps. Someone with a better diction than "the horse smelled the water." Someone less of a lout. (But Hemingway is a sensitive guy, I would argue, just dealing with being alive. I have him as a Type O.)
There are, I suppose, Hemingway experts. And then there are legions of people who are drawn back to nature by him, by his trout holding themselves steady over pebbled stream bottoms, or who get oysters or Paris. Simpatico types who sense his simpatico type.
But I am reminded of a story. A fellow goes to President Lincoln, wanting to be a doorman. Have you ever been a doorman? No. Have you ever attended a lecture on being a doorman? Uh, no. Have you ever read treatises on the subject? The guy quietly leaves.
I guess, on the other hand, you have to pay your dues.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
I'm watching Coldplay on Austin City Limits from 2011 on late night PBS--they come out of the box rocking, singing "Hurts Like Heaven."--after enjoying a bit of "Song of the Mountains," a bluegrass show out of the Lincoln Theater in Marion, Virginia. At night, alone, the ability to perceive is freed up; one is left with the deep memory of all the things that have washed over the sub-conscious as the higher mind has led his interests, tastes, curiosities. In the deep of the night, connections are made. And if you're feeling too much like crap from what the trees are doing, well, the same thing is going on in your mind.
In the old days, before the great economic encroachment of the self-interested, before real modernity as we know it, people, like the Irish people who still were able to live in the countryside, would gather on Saturday nights with their musical instruments and play music. "You name it, they played it," Shane MacGowan's mother says with a lilt in a documentary explaining the great background, speaking of her family, uncles, aunts, her parent's generation, her grandparent's. They would gather at the Tipperary farm house, and play, and drink, and sing, and talk about life. And this is what Shane MacGowan experienced as a child, in bare farmhouse in the countryside. It was here, he learned, being placed on tabletops, about music and how to sing. And why does that stick with me? Why should it resound in you, you being not as obsessed with the roots of music as I?
But in my middle age, it dawns on me. MacGowan describes Irish music (which is folk, if we had to place it here in the US) as one of the roots of music, a parent of blues and rock'n'roll and all such things. And watching Coldplay go through all their hits here, I see that all this anthem rock of theirs is Irish music played by people on a Saturday night. And maybe the political point is to give people back the musical instrument and a place to play. The main point, though, this is all familiar. And that to think there is much distant from what Chris Martin is singing, "up in flames," for example, and, say, the Clancy Brothers, is a complete fallacy. What works about this music is its truth, its roots, its tradition, its lyrical loyalty. It's Irish music. It's music normal human beings play to express themselves, to express the deep beautiful stuff in their hearts. There is an element of conservation, preservation, to it. And I'm not surprised by the instrumentation of it. Congratulations to Coldplay for translating, for being creative with the form. More ambitious than the Pogues perhaps. They aren't singing, directly, Greenland Whale Fisheries, or The Auld Triangle, of A Freeborn Man of the Traveling People, and the instrumentation, thanks to what an electric guitar can do these days, has preserved the quality of fiddle reel and bass, tin whistle and guitar.
Oh sure, the tempo changes drastically sometimes. But the thump is the same. Coldplay, then, a direct descendent of The Pogues, and that, in some ways, is fairly unique. Simple melodies, or clips of them, that would be home in any Celtic setting or bar.
In the night, one remembers that musicians are heroes, heroes of that difficult thing called honesty (the honesty of Larkin when he says, in Aubade, "I work all day and get half drunk at night.")
"I used to roll the dice... "
And this is all something lost, I think anyway, in our habits. Maybe that's why it would now seem utterly ridiculous to adopt being a musician in the face of economic reality.
No one ever said it would be easy when you started a blog. No one ever would know, myself included, what the point would be, how it might be anything, how it would 'amount.' The great thing about a democracy, in the end: we all can speak our minds. And somehow through that process, we can iron it all out, find some wisdom, appreciate leaving things as they are.
And that's the way the Irish (i.e., all humanity) are, loving staying up too late and indulging in the freedom of music and lyrical drink, by singing a simple song, even alone, able to share with all the world all around the world. Musicians are, like Louis Armstrong, the great ambassadors of the world, the ones who express our pain, and to put it away in a box, to forbid it (like Islamist reactionaries in Mali), well, that's never a good idea.
Maybe that's why my old dad, a botanist was always tolerant about taking me to midnight movies where musicians like Hendrix played.
A Saturday Night, without the playing of music, as Milan Kundera knows, is anomaly, useless, strange.
In the old days, before the great economic encroachment of the self-interested, before real modernity as we know it, people, like the Irish people who still were able to live in the countryside, would gather on Saturday nights with their musical instruments and play music. "You name it, they played it," Shane MacGowan's mother says with a lilt in a documentary explaining the great background, speaking of her family, uncles, aunts, her parent's generation, her grandparent's. They would gather at the Tipperary farm house, and play, and drink, and sing, and talk about life. And this is what Shane MacGowan experienced as a child, in bare farmhouse in the countryside. It was here, he learned, being placed on tabletops, about music and how to sing. And why does that stick with me? Why should it resound in you, you being not as obsessed with the roots of music as I?
But in my middle age, it dawns on me. MacGowan describes Irish music (which is folk, if we had to place it here in the US) as one of the roots of music, a parent of blues and rock'n'roll and all such things. And watching Coldplay go through all their hits here, I see that all this anthem rock of theirs is Irish music played by people on a Saturday night. And maybe the political point is to give people back the musical instrument and a place to play. The main point, though, this is all familiar. And that to think there is much distant from what Chris Martin is singing, "up in flames," for example, and, say, the Clancy Brothers, is a complete fallacy. What works about this music is its truth, its roots, its tradition, its lyrical loyalty. It's Irish music. It's music normal human beings play to express themselves, to express the deep beautiful stuff in their hearts. There is an element of conservation, preservation, to it. And I'm not surprised by the instrumentation of it. Congratulations to Coldplay for translating, for being creative with the form. More ambitious than the Pogues perhaps. They aren't singing, directly, Greenland Whale Fisheries, or The Auld Triangle, of A Freeborn Man of the Traveling People, and the instrumentation, thanks to what an electric guitar can do these days, has preserved the quality of fiddle reel and bass, tin whistle and guitar.
Oh sure, the tempo changes drastically sometimes. But the thump is the same. Coldplay, then, a direct descendent of The Pogues, and that, in some ways, is fairly unique. Simple melodies, or clips of them, that would be home in any Celtic setting or bar.
In the night, one remembers that musicians are heroes, heroes of that difficult thing called honesty (the honesty of Larkin when he says, in Aubade, "I work all day and get half drunk at night.")
"I used to roll the dice... "
And this is all something lost, I think anyway, in our habits. Maybe that's why it would now seem utterly ridiculous to adopt being a musician in the face of economic reality.
No one ever said it would be easy when you started a blog. No one ever would know, myself included, what the point would be, how it might be anything, how it would 'amount.' The great thing about a democracy, in the end: we all can speak our minds. And somehow through that process, we can iron it all out, find some wisdom, appreciate leaving things as they are.
And that's the way the Irish (i.e., all humanity) are, loving staying up too late and indulging in the freedom of music and lyrical drink, by singing a simple song, even alone, able to share with all the world all around the world. Musicians are, like Louis Armstrong, the great ambassadors of the world, the ones who express our pain, and to put it away in a box, to forbid it (like Islamist reactionaries in Mali), well, that's never a good idea.
Maybe that's why my old dad, a botanist was always tolerant about taking me to midnight movies where musicians like Hendrix played.
A Saturday Night, without the playing of music, as Milan Kundera knows, is anomaly, useless, strange.
Here's something honest.
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 27, 2013
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 27, 2013
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Friday, April 26, 2013
I got a text from my friend Dan Tuesday night, just as wine tasting at Bistrot L was running down, and I was even let go early by my friend Jay. Changing out of my work clothes, I see 'do you want to help us out Friday night Supper Club?' I think about it a moment, being lazy, jealously guarding my time off to do the usual grocery shop/cook/clean/study Buddhism/yoga/exercise/walks in nature/meditations/maybe even reading, and text him back. "sure." which can be read on any level of enthusiasm. Dan and I, we go way back. Supper Club is a cool idea. I need to check it out.
Anna sends me an email early Thursday, probably not long after I've gone to bed, as the work week pushes my sleep back further and further into the late night, and I take a look when I get up around one in the afternoon. Canapes, Salad, Venison... Menu looks good. Very professional. What wines to pick out? Where to find them? How to get them there? Am I in charge? How much wine? Well, fortunately there is First Vine (firstvine.com), and I like the wine selections, French, some Spanish. Dan has poured me a Gaillac white before. Really, just the sort of unimposing wines that work well with food, a reflection of the earth they come from, just as food is. They make life easy--they deliver, and Dan has used them before for tastings at GoodWood--and the simple choice is logical, a white, a rosé, a red. White to cover the lobster with herb pistou, foie gras with fig compote, smoked caponade with basil trio of canapés. Rosé to go with the salad with asparagus, duck egg, morel mushroom, pickled ramps. A red would battle with the vinegar. ("The French don't cook in the summertime," my great sources tell me, meaning that they marinate everything, and eat when they are hungry. "They drink rosé.") A rosé gives you enough oomph, enough to sink your teeth into, and the wine will still taste good. And finally, a good serviceable red to go with roasted saddle of venison with sauce poivrade. Simple. As it should be. Cover the bases to make everyone happy. (Chacun, son gout. To each, his taste.) And in a way, you could get away drinking any of the three the way it works out, credited to the innate wisdom of French wines as they have emerged naturally from the countryside and Gallic practicality.
So, lets go to the Rhone Valley. A Cotes du Rhone White, that will do quite nicely. Grenache, Bourbolenc, Marsanne/Roussane, Clairette. As you would expect. Good acidity, freshness, and also, a reflection of terroir, the wine reflecting the sorts of herbs that grow here in villages in the Vaucluse. Fruit trees. Herbs. That dry scrubland with pine trees. The Mistral winds blowing to keep the grapes healthy. Think of those paintings we know from Van Gogh, the olive trees, the fruit trees and the like, the glass of licorice/fennel absenthe. This will work with seafood, this white, it will work with pesto, it will work with basil and all those other marvelous anti-inflammatory herbs, rosemary, thyme. Minerally wine, good to excite the palate. Foie gras, maybe more ideal to have gone with an Alsatian white, which could have also gone with seafood, but, I think the CDR will work, given that if apricots grow there, maybe figs do too. Recommended reading: A Village in the Vaucluse, a fine ethnographic study from the post WWII era, depicting the poverty of the 50s.
And then the rosé, to go with the interesting salad of fiddlehead ferns. (Chefs are fancy these days.) The latest City Paper has a sneering reference to the latest trendiness of ramps, but it wasn't long ago that I read about them in the NY Times, probably over the winter. That's about right, for things to come down to DC. The wine is from Ventoux, a blend of Grenache and Cinsault. It will be stone dry. Think of those rocks over in Chateauneuf du Pape.
The red, I can't resist going with a Gaillac, over there below Toulouse, where they've made wine and amphora for it since Roman times. The Romans at one point encouraged the locals to grow wheat rather than the fruit of the vine, I was told once. Two thousand years later, the Empire is long gone, and they are still making wine in this part of France. Syrah, blended with local varietals no one has ever heard of, Duras, and Broucal. The wine will have pepper and maybe the right hint of chocolate, to go along with Mr. Venison.
Well, time to hop in the shower. Then we'll see how it all goes. I'm taking a relaxed approach to the evening, not to get alarmed. Unlike a shift at the old bistrot, the energy expenditure probably won't kill me and my legs. Hmm, this may be something to get into.
I am a bit nervous, as I have been since the invite, as I get ready to leave the hermitage. (A hermit nursed poor old Lancelot back to health when he'd lost his mind, forgot who he was, had taken to be a wild man off in the woods and brambles, subsisting on nuts and berries and insects--the whole Guinevere thing.) I tell myself I've been doing wine tasting every night of my professional life for the last eight years really, and in the perfect setting for it. And you have to look at it, as not work, but something you do out of good will, wanting to share, really. "Who am I, to know what wines to bring and serve and what to say," I ask, but then, it's the entertainment business. So, go for it.
And things go well. The chef does an excellent job. (The chef, going places, is a whole 'nother story, a rising star.) I help out. The party goes smoothly. The setting is brilliant. The wines are good but for the Cotes du Rhone white wine. They deliver the 2008 vintage; some bottles have oxidized, and some are about to when left open for thirty minutes. The golden color is a little suspicious, and the wine has lost its fruit. The two other wines worked perfectly. And then we all hung around too late. The next day, I've absorbed too much Spring tree pollen to do anything.
Anna sends me an email early Thursday, probably not long after I've gone to bed, as the work week pushes my sleep back further and further into the late night, and I take a look when I get up around one in the afternoon. Canapes, Salad, Venison... Menu looks good. Very professional. What wines to pick out? Where to find them? How to get them there? Am I in charge? How much wine? Well, fortunately there is First Vine (firstvine.com), and I like the wine selections, French, some Spanish. Dan has poured me a Gaillac white before. Really, just the sort of unimposing wines that work well with food, a reflection of the earth they come from, just as food is. They make life easy--they deliver, and Dan has used them before for tastings at GoodWood--and the simple choice is logical, a white, a rosé, a red. White to cover the lobster with herb pistou, foie gras with fig compote, smoked caponade with basil trio of canapés. Rosé to go with the salad with asparagus, duck egg, morel mushroom, pickled ramps. A red would battle with the vinegar. ("The French don't cook in the summertime," my great sources tell me, meaning that they marinate everything, and eat when they are hungry. "They drink rosé.") A rosé gives you enough oomph, enough to sink your teeth into, and the wine will still taste good. And finally, a good serviceable red to go with roasted saddle of venison with sauce poivrade. Simple. As it should be. Cover the bases to make everyone happy. (Chacun, son gout. To each, his taste.) And in a way, you could get away drinking any of the three the way it works out, credited to the innate wisdom of French wines as they have emerged naturally from the countryside and Gallic practicality.
So, lets go to the Rhone Valley. A Cotes du Rhone White, that will do quite nicely. Grenache, Bourbolenc, Marsanne/Roussane, Clairette. As you would expect. Good acidity, freshness, and also, a reflection of terroir, the wine reflecting the sorts of herbs that grow here in villages in the Vaucluse. Fruit trees. Herbs. That dry scrubland with pine trees. The Mistral winds blowing to keep the grapes healthy. Think of those paintings we know from Van Gogh, the olive trees, the fruit trees and the like, the glass of licorice/fennel absenthe. This will work with seafood, this white, it will work with pesto, it will work with basil and all those other marvelous anti-inflammatory herbs, rosemary, thyme. Minerally wine, good to excite the palate. Foie gras, maybe more ideal to have gone with an Alsatian white, which could have also gone with seafood, but, I think the CDR will work, given that if apricots grow there, maybe figs do too. Recommended reading: A Village in the Vaucluse, a fine ethnographic study from the post WWII era, depicting the poverty of the 50s.
And then the rosé, to go with the interesting salad of fiddlehead ferns. (Chefs are fancy these days.) The latest City Paper has a sneering reference to the latest trendiness of ramps, but it wasn't long ago that I read about them in the NY Times, probably over the winter. That's about right, for things to come down to DC. The wine is from Ventoux, a blend of Grenache and Cinsault. It will be stone dry. Think of those rocks over in Chateauneuf du Pape.
The red, I can't resist going with a Gaillac, over there below Toulouse, where they've made wine and amphora for it since Roman times. The Romans at one point encouraged the locals to grow wheat rather than the fruit of the vine, I was told once. Two thousand years later, the Empire is long gone, and they are still making wine in this part of France. Syrah, blended with local varietals no one has ever heard of, Duras, and Broucal. The wine will have pepper and maybe the right hint of chocolate, to go along with Mr. Venison.
Well, time to hop in the shower. Then we'll see how it all goes. I'm taking a relaxed approach to the evening, not to get alarmed. Unlike a shift at the old bistrot, the energy expenditure probably won't kill me and my legs. Hmm, this may be something to get into.
I am a bit nervous, as I have been since the invite, as I get ready to leave the hermitage. (A hermit nursed poor old Lancelot back to health when he'd lost his mind, forgot who he was, had taken to be a wild man off in the woods and brambles, subsisting on nuts and berries and insects--the whole Guinevere thing.) I tell myself I've been doing wine tasting every night of my professional life for the last eight years really, and in the perfect setting for it. And you have to look at it, as not work, but something you do out of good will, wanting to share, really. "Who am I, to know what wines to bring and serve and what to say," I ask, but then, it's the entertainment business. So, go for it.
And things go well. The chef does an excellent job. (The chef, going places, is a whole 'nother story, a rising star.) I help out. The party goes smoothly. The setting is brilliant. The wines are good but for the Cotes du Rhone white wine. They deliver the 2008 vintage; some bottles have oxidized, and some are about to when left open for thirty minutes. The golden color is a little suspicious, and the wine has lost its fruit. The two other wines worked perfectly. And then we all hung around too late. The next day, I've absorbed too much Spring tree pollen to do anything.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
"Of course, people like self-confident types. So much better to just go and do things and get them done without a lot of worry, so that there won't be any worries later on. Have confidence and go do something. Get a job, build a career, do well for yourself. Work hard, support a family. Chicks dig self-confidence. For good reason. Man knows what he wants, makes it happen. Fun to be around. Not a lot of self-questioning, existential feeling-lost kind of crap. Work is work. Play is play. I mean, wouldn't you rather feel good and confident about what you were doing? Makes things a whole lot easier."
"Yes, that's true, but remember, self-confident people can lead us into bad stuff. They're so sure they're doing the right thing, and no one stands up to question it, and then boom, you have people dying in wars, environmental disasters, genocide, all because some egotistical fool can't take a look around himself and see the rest of the world. The world's a lot more complicated than some make it out to be. Manifest Destiny doesn't work. Not for everyone."
"Idiots, the easily-led, those who don't think for themselves, that is who finds the self-confident so great. Anyone with depth knows that just about everything has its ups and downs. If you do one things, you're taking away from something else you might do. And take a look at the human condition itself. That's enough to make you sensitive to the needs of others. What kind of shallow moron race would we be encouraging if we only praised and listened to the self confident? What kind of selfish culture would descend upon us? Where would go for respite from it?"
"Gehrig himself would go back to the dugout and cry sometimes. Doing something well has nothing to do with self-confidence. It's like playing the blues. You do it because it's real to you. The thing you do exists on its own, inside you. Maybe it develops over time, and then it's just easy enough that you can overcome anxiety to do it. Or it's just natural enough you don't have to think about it. And your own relationship with the things you do is related to how you deal with other people. You might seem shy but have perfect confidence in your own way, comfortable with yourself."
"If you really had confidence, if you really were comfortable with yourself, than you could do what people must ultimately do, which is, in a way, to succumb to the prodigal nature within. You just have to admit that about yourself, the great weakness we all have. And ultimately, you can't be judgmental about it. If you really had confidence, I'm sorry... It's true... You'd have to fall, lose everything, become a monk... and not do any of this smugly, because you had some 'holy light,' but because you approached the human condition honestly, learning a lesson."
"Yes, that's true, but remember, self-confident people can lead us into bad stuff. They're so sure they're doing the right thing, and no one stands up to question it, and then boom, you have people dying in wars, environmental disasters, genocide, all because some egotistical fool can't take a look around himself and see the rest of the world. The world's a lot more complicated than some make it out to be. Manifest Destiny doesn't work. Not for everyone."
"Idiots, the easily-led, those who don't think for themselves, that is who finds the self-confident so great. Anyone with depth knows that just about everything has its ups and downs. If you do one things, you're taking away from something else you might do. And take a look at the human condition itself. That's enough to make you sensitive to the needs of others. What kind of shallow moron race would we be encouraging if we only praised and listened to the self confident? What kind of selfish culture would descend upon us? Where would go for respite from it?"
"Gehrig himself would go back to the dugout and cry sometimes. Doing something well has nothing to do with self-confidence. It's like playing the blues. You do it because it's real to you. The thing you do exists on its own, inside you. Maybe it develops over time, and then it's just easy enough that you can overcome anxiety to do it. Or it's just natural enough you don't have to think about it. And your own relationship with the things you do is related to how you deal with other people. You might seem shy but have perfect confidence in your own way, comfortable with yourself."
"If you really had confidence, if you really were comfortable with yourself, than you could do what people must ultimately do, which is, in a way, to succumb to the prodigal nature within. You just have to admit that about yourself, the great weakness we all have. And ultimately, you can't be judgmental about it. If you really had confidence, I'm sorry... It's true... You'd have to fall, lose everything, become a monk... and not do any of this smugly, because you had some 'holy light,' but because you approached the human condition honestly, learning a lesson."
Being born, really,
in the world is
tragic.
The only way to understand it all.
You'll do a lot of good in it,
but still be taken
as a stranger,
weird and too polite.
The good you'll do,
if you find a place,
chances are,
won't be fully used.
But there we are.
Incorporated here in atoms,
as if by magic,
some guide, some figure
we're built around.
Dust from fires deep in the heavens,
cold space
the opposite of all we do in life,
whether noticed
or not.
in the world is
tragic.
The only way to understand it all.
You'll do a lot of good in it,
but still be taken
as a stranger,
weird and too polite.
The good you'll do,
if you find a place,
chances are,
won't be fully used.
But there we are.
Incorporated here in atoms,
as if by magic,
some guide, some figure
we're built around.
Dust from fires deep in the heavens,
cold space
the opposite of all we do in life,
whether noticed
or not.
Monday, April 22, 2013
NPR piece on divinity student Nate Klug, (sorry, ffed that up earlier), with a fine poem on visiting hospitals for National Poetry Month.
I'm always impressed with people who work as chaplains. The things they must see.
It reminds me of something restaurant people do, in the course of work, in situations far more regular, less extremities over sickness and death, more just simply that day-in day-out struggle with keeping the mood up, providing a social environment, injecting a little good cheer where necessary in the battle against lonesomeness, hunger, the need to get out of the house. That's close to where the majority of life and sanity is fought. Not with God (all-knowing, personified wisdom) alongside as a parent is dying, but in the realities of daily life. And in the realities of daily life, perhaps you have as good a chance to see meaning behind daily events.
Not always sung about, 'the scumbag waiter.' An incidental. And yet part of providing a place for people to live and talk, who goes home at night to face what we all face, his affable kindness and generosity coming out of a knowledge of the edges, wisdom coming if not through the awful grace of God through living.
What if we, being misguided or silly enough,
took it upon ourselves to be natural as creatures are natural,
to be like birds or beasts, going about our natural business,
not hemmed in by a thousand practical decisions,
were a bit like Christ was, just normal healthy run of the mill human.
Would we have to bear the cross of pain, to feel the good pass out
when touched by another's need?
He wasn't a divinity student, never a show-off,
but just could keep up with them, the priests and the wise,
the elders, singing youthful natural song,
a bird perched on their steps.
"Thou art that which is." Therefore natural.
Would we then have the ambition to conduct terror,
ruin the planet for personal profit, put poor people in jail
because there aren't any jobs for them?
I'm always impressed with people who work as chaplains. The things they must see.
It reminds me of something restaurant people do, in the course of work, in situations far more regular, less extremities over sickness and death, more just simply that day-in day-out struggle with keeping the mood up, providing a social environment, injecting a little good cheer where necessary in the battle against lonesomeness, hunger, the need to get out of the house. That's close to where the majority of life and sanity is fought. Not with God (all-knowing, personified wisdom) alongside as a parent is dying, but in the realities of daily life. And in the realities of daily life, perhaps you have as good a chance to see meaning behind daily events.
Not always sung about, 'the scumbag waiter.' An incidental. And yet part of providing a place for people to live and talk, who goes home at night to face what we all face, his affable kindness and generosity coming out of a knowledge of the edges, wisdom coming if not through the awful grace of God through living.
What if we, being misguided or silly enough,
took it upon ourselves to be natural as creatures are natural,
to be like birds or beasts, going about our natural business,
not hemmed in by a thousand practical decisions,
were a bit like Christ was, just normal healthy run of the mill human.
Would we have to bear the cross of pain, to feel the good pass out
when touched by another's need?
He wasn't a divinity student, never a show-off,
but just could keep up with them, the priests and the wise,
the elders, singing youthful natural song,
a bird perched on their steps.
"Thou art that which is." Therefore natural.
Would we then have the ambition to conduct terror,
ruin the planet for personal profit, put poor people in jail
because there aren't any jobs for them?
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Like proverbial "women!" we all change our minds. Our minds are, in fact, changing constantly. This is basic Buddhism, to understand that the thoughts that race through our minds are not "us." Which puts us in an odd position. Good news--we can deal with it.
And this is why it's better not to do things which are undoable. Like terrorism, blowing someone up, that someone a person who will never come back.
The children's history book gives us that moment, of American Revolution in the name of great freedom and democracy, Paul Revere, riding on a horse at night, warning everyone, mustering the forces, "the British are coming, the British are coming." The British are coming to do things which cannot be undone, willfully, with weapons and soldiers, antagonistic force motivated by economic concerns. We rebelled against that.
No one, however, warned us, when Dick Cheney was coming, to start wars in the name of Haliburton profits, to coerce the legislation of the Clean Water Act to stipulate that the chemical formulas and poisons behind fracking would never be made public. No one warned us when Glass Steagall was repealed, to clear the way for deregulated speculation and profiteering. No one warned us when NAFTA was passed, shipping jobs overseas. No one warned us when Ronald Reagan was coming. No one warned us when poverty and lack of jobs led people to participate in underground economies, when those actions carried prison sentences far beyond justice. No one warned us when we handed over the ecological health of great natural seas and bodies of water to BP.
And this is why it's better not to do things which are undoable. Like terrorism, blowing someone up, that someone a person who will never come back.
The children's history book gives us that moment, of American Revolution in the name of great freedom and democracy, Paul Revere, riding on a horse at night, warning everyone, mustering the forces, "the British are coming, the British are coming." The British are coming to do things which cannot be undone, willfully, with weapons and soldiers, antagonistic force motivated by economic concerns. We rebelled against that.
No one, however, warned us, when Dick Cheney was coming, to start wars in the name of Haliburton profits, to coerce the legislation of the Clean Water Act to stipulate that the chemical formulas and poisons behind fracking would never be made public. No one warned us when Glass Steagall was repealed, to clear the way for deregulated speculation and profiteering. No one warned us when NAFTA was passed, shipping jobs overseas. No one warned us when Ronald Reagan was coming. No one warned us when poverty and lack of jobs led people to participate in underground economies, when those actions carried prison sentences far beyond justice. No one warned us when we handed over the ecological health of great natural seas and bodies of water to BP.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
There is a show about Eels on PBS when I get home from the bar. The eels slip and slide and wriggle around each other when you put them, say, in a bucket, or in a confined stream. Out in nature, they have a basic, and remarkable, sense of direction. Born in the sea, the Sargasso, they head toward shore and then upstream in rivers and creeks here in the Mid Atlantic, up through New York and Maine and the Great Lakes.
I have a brief vision as I wake of the human experience too being one of wriggling, running into, moving round, slipping and sliding, randomly bumping into other human beings as we go about our survival-in-society thing. And like the eel, whose natural setting of beautiful cold streams and even the native ways of catching them are a tribute to their lives, we have a sense of direction. Some might well construe that direction as not just 'north,' say, or 'get married, have kids, stay employed, become grandparents,' but a kind of spiritual direction, one that all must eventually take.
There are the sketches, fleshed out, of this direction stuff, about the meaning of how we might occupy our own individual time upon the earth. People make art to move in that direction of understanding, conscious of their own awareness of seeking meaning. People who have 'lived some,' been through some stuff, they too, are closer, closer to an awareness, to an understanding about 'the monkey mind' and the Ego's self illusions, closer to understanding Buddha, or Christian meaning and symbol, or simply to fulfilled meditation.
Are the more question-prone, the deeper thinkers, more prone to seeking out the healthy within themselves, more apt to come across the sicknesses and vanities of life? Will they be better inclined to understand the sufferings that come along with life, and admit eventually to the need for being a bit easier on your own life and the self you may have made of the life that came your way.
The eels wriggle, and swim on, intent on their directions upstream and downstream according to the phases of life, aware of going the same way as their fellows, of being the same as their fellows.
When I, you know, got out of college, I didn't feel quite finished with it, which is how it goes for a lot of people. I hemmed and hawed, dragged my toes through the dusty ground, stared at my reflection, alternatively took up high ideals, read a few more books (I hope), and basically had no idea how to catch that train that takes one on to a profession. The great majority of my peers seemed to have absolutely no problem whatsoever with getting on their respective trains, and transformed immediately into bankers, med school, business school, law school, prep school teachers, editors, academic types, lots of things, whereas I just stood there wondering what to do, a bit at a loss. I went home. I hung around for awhile, and finally, the next Spring, I literally got on a train, in Utica, bound for Washington, DC. No idea what I was going to do. Some fondness for speeches, history's ghosts, as many hicks do. In my mind, I was going to be a writer, which is a dumb idea, trust me, as one will only perpetually recreate the same sense of trying to figure out what one will do with himself without making much headway. I went to work as a barman in a restaurant, and slowly this kind of took over that 'profession' thing, that 'who you are' on paper and resumé. "A decent guy," I can patiently put up with a lot. I'm too shy to be much of a journalist. Always wanted to, theoretically, stand in a classroom and teach, but never made it happen, as if waiting for an invitation, based on what I already sensed I knew, on a few shifting interests gathered from here and there into some crude philosophical school. We do what Jesus tells us to do, sit humbly at the lowest place at the table, that our host will kindly bring us up front to a place of honor that the humble deserve. And slowly we find out that the people who think highly of themselves take the good seats, talk with sophistication, having few inhibitions, dress well, and stay in those precious seats, regarding themselves as being very well behaved and of the best manners, while the humble suckers like me, while having basic deep sense of manners, never get invited in to the inner circle, being regarded as poorly behaved, lazy, uncouth, too radical, strange or odd a dinner guest for conversations. The egoists like their places and their successes, and a great inclusive program to rehabilitate those that society seems to have discarded is far from their minds.
Now I know, that to be treated with respect you have to act the part. Dress for success. This is true. But the years go by and I just kept writing. Not even with any plot in mind, no particular story to tell, but just trying to get at something that, perhaps, we all can share or understand. Is there benefit to that? Is the basic story one has to share kind of like a Twelve Step Program, a placing oneself before the grace of God, admission of great sin, apologies to all we've hurt through our behavior, a turning away from the egotistical pleasure seeking that only brings us woe and horror anyway, as writers have portrayed before, Jack Kerouac's Big Sur coming immediately to mind. Indeed it might well be. Lincoln had the courage and ambition not to end up another backwater whisky drinker, that largely propelling him forward to be the moral voice of a crucial time and generation. The horror of feeling responsible for the Civil War would have well imparted in weaker types a strong desire for drink, but it seems he knew that wouldn't have helped the matter anyway, so why bother. "... As courage gives us to see the right..." Lincoln was a radical thinker in that he saw doing the right thing as having a great power to it. And being a bartender, I often wonder about where I stand, morally. Wine, okay, they drink it in the Bible, but it's a slippery slope, you have to admit. If it was up to me, I would just write, and not have much to do with it, and that, maybe, is a bad attitude.
The novel I wrote, years ago, I admit to a dear old friend that it is sometimes hard for me to even look at it. That's probably some egotistical part of me, not willing to accept it for what it is with all its faults and the difficulties of making a reading of it. The better part of me should accept it, and at least say, 'well, it's just human to be that way and do such things.' Maybe even embrace it. Strangely, you find that other people, the dear old friend, understand as much. Love yourself. That is all. It would be a lack of courage not to.
All of it, like for the eel, is done less consciously, from a deeper understanding often beyond logical thought and strategic planning, more just a revelation of inner nature sustained on until it acquires some meaning when viewed from outside it.
So intriguing, complex, interesting were European societies of the 16th and 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries that of course, European artists had to paint their scenes, playwrights catch their theater, novelists create a form to record mental life. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace. There was Dutch and Flemish painting, Rembrandt's portraits, scenes of Venice, court music, all to capture the great array and novelty. But behind the pageant, the same eternal stuff going on, basic, served by religious art just as well...
When you work as a barman in a city of professionals, you can feel a bit down on yourself. Who knows why exactly. When I feel that getting to me, I am less prone to see the point in writing down the random-seeming thoughts and observations from city life. And when writing less, of course I'll get feeling more down about my job. It gets easier to get distracted. You feel like you don't own your own thoughts, or have less right to them. You lose track of the larger deeper purpose. It happens from time to time. It's not the end of the world. You just need a day off.
Walking home from the woods I pass by the statue of the Irish Patriot, Robert Emmet set in the shade of a small grove of two cherry trees and one larch. Once when I was coming back on an evening bike ride, I heard the rush of a branch falling from the larch. I stopped. A wiry elder Japanese man with spikes, belt and a handsaw came promptly down the trunk from halfway up. He explained himself. He wanted to open up some space so the statue could be seen from Massachusetts Avenue. I looked up at the tree and nodded. He had cut the limbs off very neatly at the trunk, as an arborist should, to protect the tree from infection. I wondered for a moment whether he had overdone it, as I am an admirer of the tree, but I could see his point. He was very earnest about his mission, his duty, his English a little stiff, but a man of conscience obviously. There was a bit of stealth to his project, at such a time of day, the hurried way which he explained himself as fully as he could to a passerby, obviously not a cop. And I went on my way without telling him to desist. That was a few years ago, and as I pass, I see his point, and wish him well, though how the hell he ever thought he should take it upon himself to prune a public tree I can only be impressed with. That an Irishman might not mind a bit of tree cover, well, something to take up with a spry Japanese male in his early sixties adept at tree work next time I see him.
We're all able to cook up such stories of gloom and pessimism in our heads, the special ability of the human being to make himself crazy from within. On top of that life as we know it is is presented as a matter of choosing between being a busy ambitious striver or a lazy good for nothing slacker. But what is reality, taking the world as a whole?
PBS environmental shows, one on Aldo Leopold save the night, and remind me of the need to be in nature, something hard to do in a city.
I have a brief vision as I wake of the human experience too being one of wriggling, running into, moving round, slipping and sliding, randomly bumping into other human beings as we go about our survival-in-society thing. And like the eel, whose natural setting of beautiful cold streams and even the native ways of catching them are a tribute to their lives, we have a sense of direction. Some might well construe that direction as not just 'north,' say, or 'get married, have kids, stay employed, become grandparents,' but a kind of spiritual direction, one that all must eventually take.
There are the sketches, fleshed out, of this direction stuff, about the meaning of how we might occupy our own individual time upon the earth. People make art to move in that direction of understanding, conscious of their own awareness of seeking meaning. People who have 'lived some,' been through some stuff, they too, are closer, closer to an awareness, to an understanding about 'the monkey mind' and the Ego's self illusions, closer to understanding Buddha, or Christian meaning and symbol, or simply to fulfilled meditation.
Are the more question-prone, the deeper thinkers, more prone to seeking out the healthy within themselves, more apt to come across the sicknesses and vanities of life? Will they be better inclined to understand the sufferings that come along with life, and admit eventually to the need for being a bit easier on your own life and the self you may have made of the life that came your way.
The eels wriggle, and swim on, intent on their directions upstream and downstream according to the phases of life, aware of going the same way as their fellows, of being the same as their fellows.
When I, you know, got out of college, I didn't feel quite finished with it, which is how it goes for a lot of people. I hemmed and hawed, dragged my toes through the dusty ground, stared at my reflection, alternatively took up high ideals, read a few more books (I hope), and basically had no idea how to catch that train that takes one on to a profession. The great majority of my peers seemed to have absolutely no problem whatsoever with getting on their respective trains, and transformed immediately into bankers, med school, business school, law school, prep school teachers, editors, academic types, lots of things, whereas I just stood there wondering what to do, a bit at a loss. I went home. I hung around for awhile, and finally, the next Spring, I literally got on a train, in Utica, bound for Washington, DC. No idea what I was going to do. Some fondness for speeches, history's ghosts, as many hicks do. In my mind, I was going to be a writer, which is a dumb idea, trust me, as one will only perpetually recreate the same sense of trying to figure out what one will do with himself without making much headway. I went to work as a barman in a restaurant, and slowly this kind of took over that 'profession' thing, that 'who you are' on paper and resumé. "A decent guy," I can patiently put up with a lot. I'm too shy to be much of a journalist. Always wanted to, theoretically, stand in a classroom and teach, but never made it happen, as if waiting for an invitation, based on what I already sensed I knew, on a few shifting interests gathered from here and there into some crude philosophical school. We do what Jesus tells us to do, sit humbly at the lowest place at the table, that our host will kindly bring us up front to a place of honor that the humble deserve. And slowly we find out that the people who think highly of themselves take the good seats, talk with sophistication, having few inhibitions, dress well, and stay in those precious seats, regarding themselves as being very well behaved and of the best manners, while the humble suckers like me, while having basic deep sense of manners, never get invited in to the inner circle, being regarded as poorly behaved, lazy, uncouth, too radical, strange or odd a dinner guest for conversations. The egoists like their places and their successes, and a great inclusive program to rehabilitate those that society seems to have discarded is far from their minds.
Now I know, that to be treated with respect you have to act the part. Dress for success. This is true. But the years go by and I just kept writing. Not even with any plot in mind, no particular story to tell, but just trying to get at something that, perhaps, we all can share or understand. Is there benefit to that? Is the basic story one has to share kind of like a Twelve Step Program, a placing oneself before the grace of God, admission of great sin, apologies to all we've hurt through our behavior, a turning away from the egotistical pleasure seeking that only brings us woe and horror anyway, as writers have portrayed before, Jack Kerouac's Big Sur coming immediately to mind. Indeed it might well be. Lincoln had the courage and ambition not to end up another backwater whisky drinker, that largely propelling him forward to be the moral voice of a crucial time and generation. The horror of feeling responsible for the Civil War would have well imparted in weaker types a strong desire for drink, but it seems he knew that wouldn't have helped the matter anyway, so why bother. "... As courage gives us to see the right..." Lincoln was a radical thinker in that he saw doing the right thing as having a great power to it. And being a bartender, I often wonder about where I stand, morally. Wine, okay, they drink it in the Bible, but it's a slippery slope, you have to admit. If it was up to me, I would just write, and not have much to do with it, and that, maybe, is a bad attitude.
The novel I wrote, years ago, I admit to a dear old friend that it is sometimes hard for me to even look at it. That's probably some egotistical part of me, not willing to accept it for what it is with all its faults and the difficulties of making a reading of it. The better part of me should accept it, and at least say, 'well, it's just human to be that way and do such things.' Maybe even embrace it. Strangely, you find that other people, the dear old friend, understand as much. Love yourself. That is all. It would be a lack of courage not to.
All of it, like for the eel, is done less consciously, from a deeper understanding often beyond logical thought and strategic planning, more just a revelation of inner nature sustained on until it acquires some meaning when viewed from outside it.
So intriguing, complex, interesting were European societies of the 16th and 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries that of course, European artists had to paint their scenes, playwrights catch their theater, novelists create a form to record mental life. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace. There was Dutch and Flemish painting, Rembrandt's portraits, scenes of Venice, court music, all to capture the great array and novelty. But behind the pageant, the same eternal stuff going on, basic, served by religious art just as well...
When you work as a barman in a city of professionals, you can feel a bit down on yourself. Who knows why exactly. When I feel that getting to me, I am less prone to see the point in writing down the random-seeming thoughts and observations from city life. And when writing less, of course I'll get feeling more down about my job. It gets easier to get distracted. You feel like you don't own your own thoughts, or have less right to them. You lose track of the larger deeper purpose. It happens from time to time. It's not the end of the world. You just need a day off.
Walking home from the woods I pass by the statue of the Irish Patriot, Robert Emmet set in the shade of a small grove of two cherry trees and one larch. Once when I was coming back on an evening bike ride, I heard the rush of a branch falling from the larch. I stopped. A wiry elder Japanese man with spikes, belt and a handsaw came promptly down the trunk from halfway up. He explained himself. He wanted to open up some space so the statue could be seen from Massachusetts Avenue. I looked up at the tree and nodded. He had cut the limbs off very neatly at the trunk, as an arborist should, to protect the tree from infection. I wondered for a moment whether he had overdone it, as I am an admirer of the tree, but I could see his point. He was very earnest about his mission, his duty, his English a little stiff, but a man of conscience obviously. There was a bit of stealth to his project, at such a time of day, the hurried way which he explained himself as fully as he could to a passerby, obviously not a cop. And I went on my way without telling him to desist. That was a few years ago, and as I pass, I see his point, and wish him well, though how the hell he ever thought he should take it upon himself to prune a public tree I can only be impressed with. That an Irishman might not mind a bit of tree cover, well, something to take up with a spry Japanese male in his early sixties adept at tree work next time I see him.
We're all able to cook up such stories of gloom and pessimism in our heads, the special ability of the human being to make himself crazy from within. On top of that life as we know it is is presented as a matter of choosing between being a busy ambitious striver or a lazy good for nothing slacker. But what is reality, taking the world as a whole?
PBS environmental shows, one on Aldo Leopold save the night, and remind me of the need to be in nature, something hard to do in a city.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Naturally, I take note of the bottles of wine left unfinished at the end of the restaurant's night. There's a glass or two left in some, maybe three, and depending, I will put some of them in the cooler to sleep in the cold darkness, the delicate reds, the Pinot Noir, the Brouilly, the Cotes du Ventoux. Someone, table 50, a nice couple, has left a half a glass of 2009 Cahors for me to pour in a glass and finish, the first taste a getting used to, and then getting over its awkward roughness, its queer overripe fruit taste inherent in Malbec wines, to find the smoothness within, the blending in of Tannat and Merlot doing exactly the trick in this inky dark wine. I taste two bottles of the same Lascaux from Pic St. Loup, one comment from the night being 'left open just slightly too long.' (They taste the same.) There's a Carignan from Chile, a Miguel Torres, imported by Elite Wines, and an odd but tasty on its own terms red from La Clape down below Perpignan. There's always the Bordeaux, a 2009 Haut Medoc. Three ladies have come and sat since the high busy of 7:45, along with a white Costieres de Nimes, two bottles plus of that, shots, not often done, not a typical feature of a night here, shots, of Martinique white rum as a kind of a petit punch, and at the last moments, before leaving, the tall Danish lady puts one of the opened Bordeaux off the bar and into her armpit, or some other place. She is indignant when I mildly frisk her. If she'd have asked, I'd have happily contributed in good faith; why spoil the fun, her friends have tipped well, and we're not after making enemies. But instead she won't admit her thievery. Fine. Come back next time sister and we'll just see how you get treated. (a Gemini, she is, multiple personalities of an opposing nature.)
What makes some wines left behind, for me to care for, as I eat my grilled piece of salmon, ordered rare, so I can bring it back up to some warmth in the over up at the wine bar without killing it, in complete loneliness, everyone in the restaurant down to the dishwashers gone on a Saturday night. What makes some forsaken lovers, unsure of what to do, what to say, where to fit in, there body of flesh and juice left for the lonely saint to finish as he sits and listens to David Brubeck, before doing the checkout math counting money and checking credit card tickets. One says, 'delicious food as I remember, mediocre service,' and this is a guy who sat down, wanting a glass of water no ice, ordered veal cheeks without hardly looking the menu, proceeded to sit with headphones of his iPhone or blackberry on, conducting business, just as the bartender got frantically busy, very obviously busy, early in the evening. What do you want, buddy? He got his food on time. Sat down just as a couple got up off the slate counter--did my best to ask the bus boy to clear the spot for him. I am busy helping out the waiter in the dining area right there opening a bottle of wine. Aamir, here's to you, buddy. Sorry about your mediocre service, but you expressed absolutely no interest in anything but your water without ice, which was refilled when the barman had a chance, did not need to be prompted, your $4.50 tip on $31.85 so much appreciated, along with your silent comment written on a credit card dupe.
I put everything away, wipe down surfaces, do the checkout, sip from the wines leftover, here and there, and then I too will go out into the night, go home on a bicycle, have a sip of wine at home, cook some black beans with red pepper and onion, watch Kid Rock and then bluegrass on PBS and then call it a night, this night I was called in to work.
I've never had a harder job in my life, I've never had any other job in my life--I'm sure we all say that. There are the imposed difficulties of feeling strange about it all, as if one had psychological issues such that one was compelled to sit in rooms with crazy people, uninhibited people, people in need of something even as they feel insistent on passing on, perhaps going over to Virginia, Arlington, with some other women who show up to meet the first group of two or three.
And talents that once were, opportunities to find a path toward being a congressman or a professor or some form of intellectual are wasted in the duties, another shift piled on to you via a phone call, and the kind of simple suffering that life is, calling one to need company, settles in. It is a small happiness to find out that Cancellara overcame a rough week to win the great race over the cobblestones, Paris Roubaix, a sign that heroic types may hold on.
Oh, one of the three women was kind enough to bring back the bottle of Bordeaux, embarrassed, the server who worked brunch the next day told me. Well, that was nice, I said to myself, and went about my business.
What makes some wines left behind, for me to care for, as I eat my grilled piece of salmon, ordered rare, so I can bring it back up to some warmth in the over up at the wine bar without killing it, in complete loneliness, everyone in the restaurant down to the dishwashers gone on a Saturday night. What makes some forsaken lovers, unsure of what to do, what to say, where to fit in, there body of flesh and juice left for the lonely saint to finish as he sits and listens to David Brubeck, before doing the checkout math counting money and checking credit card tickets. One says, 'delicious food as I remember, mediocre service,' and this is a guy who sat down, wanting a glass of water no ice, ordered veal cheeks without hardly looking the menu, proceeded to sit with headphones of his iPhone or blackberry on, conducting business, just as the bartender got frantically busy, very obviously busy, early in the evening. What do you want, buddy? He got his food on time. Sat down just as a couple got up off the slate counter--did my best to ask the bus boy to clear the spot for him. I am busy helping out the waiter in the dining area right there opening a bottle of wine. Aamir, here's to you, buddy. Sorry about your mediocre service, but you expressed absolutely no interest in anything but your water without ice, which was refilled when the barman had a chance, did not need to be prompted, your $4.50 tip on $31.85 so much appreciated, along with your silent comment written on a credit card dupe.
I put everything away, wipe down surfaces, do the checkout, sip from the wines leftover, here and there, and then I too will go out into the night, go home on a bicycle, have a sip of wine at home, cook some black beans with red pepper and onion, watch Kid Rock and then bluegrass on PBS and then call it a night, this night I was called in to work.
I've never had a harder job in my life, I've never had any other job in my life--I'm sure we all say that. There are the imposed difficulties of feeling strange about it all, as if one had psychological issues such that one was compelled to sit in rooms with crazy people, uninhibited people, people in need of something even as they feel insistent on passing on, perhaps going over to Virginia, Arlington, with some other women who show up to meet the first group of two or three.
And talents that once were, opportunities to find a path toward being a congressman or a professor or some form of intellectual are wasted in the duties, another shift piled on to you via a phone call, and the kind of simple suffering that life is, calling one to need company, settles in. It is a small happiness to find out that Cancellara overcame a rough week to win the great race over the cobblestones, Paris Roubaix, a sign that heroic types may hold on.
Oh, one of the three women was kind enough to bring back the bottle of Bordeaux, embarrassed, the server who worked brunch the next day told me. Well, that was nice, I said to myself, and went about my business.
Monday, April 1, 2013
My Greatest Hit
The innate animal dignity of the creature leads us to fool people, particularly those who see themselves as clever and wise. It runs deeper than the explicit intention to deceive, based on some motive and a greater scheme. It's probably just something we do in the course of being human.
Lincoln is the classic example. It was not his intention to come across as a bumpkin or a rube, but people, including political operators, saw him as such, as 'a baboon.' He was who he was, in no need of change of manner. Anyone exploring the matter would quickly see he was well-spoken and articulate, a writer of clarity and intellect.
And Hamlet, Shakespeare's great exploration of inner landscapes, too. He cannot help himself from putting on the play and the antic disposition. It's who he is, not so much the carefully considered choice it might be made out to be, as we interpret the play. He has no choice. It has to do with the fiber of his morality, of defining right from wrong.
Perhaps we're all too good at it sometimes. And so too, we're too good at buying into face value, missing the subtlety, the wit and the humor and the deeper sensitivity that lets us appear flawed without being ashamed of it.
Lincoln is the classic example. It was not his intention to come across as a bumpkin or a rube, but people, including political operators, saw him as such, as 'a baboon.' He was who he was, in no need of change of manner. Anyone exploring the matter would quickly see he was well-spoken and articulate, a writer of clarity and intellect.
And Hamlet, Shakespeare's great exploration of inner landscapes, too. He cannot help himself from putting on the play and the antic disposition. It's who he is, not so much the carefully considered choice it might be made out to be, as we interpret the play. He has no choice. It has to do with the fiber of his morality, of defining right from wrong.
Perhaps we're all too good at it sometimes. And so too, we're too good at buying into face value, missing the subtlety, the wit and the humor and the deeper sensitivity that lets us appear flawed without being ashamed of it.
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