Again, there was no winning, except the house, not this particular soldier.  Starting with the last night of Restaurant Week.  Ending with Barbara's Jazz Wednesday night, brutal.  Exhausted, the day off at the end of four nights, barely make it off the couch.  Finally, a shower, around eleven at night, an attempt to feel limber again.  No desire to recount a single story of it.  Ibuprofen.  Thoughts of a dry February, but that doesn't last, for the need of energy enough to cook dinner and pull a yoga stretch.

The therapy session was the interesting thing of the week.  Be honest.  Trust your own judgment.  Feel secure about your own judgment.  If something doesn't feel right, say so, mention it, start a conversation.   Trust yourself, acknowledge your own feelings, don't hide them.  And that opens up space.

And that may be the thing.  The great usurpation.  From going along with things, this is what you get, more of going along with things.

The night endured, listening to the singing, somehow not quite right.  The wish for a place to call your own shots.  Maybe even to play your own music, rather than enduring that of other's.  Something like that.

But I reflect on my chronic dishonesty, my lack of adult to ability to speak up, the tendency to go along with things, as if I would miss out if I didn't.  Then on the other side, the workaholic.

"Rock bottom, that concept has been debunked," she tells me.  And anyway, it's a matter of perspective.  I ask about Enlightenment.  "Same with the Ah-ha! moment."

Sounds like a scary place, she tells me, from her chair, that place of wanting to change, but being unable to.


I can't blame myself for wanting some time to myself after all that.  The guy who was loud a week ago Monday Jazz Night offers an apology.  He comes in with a group right as the door opens, and it being a full moon out, and just about every table reserved, I'm not too psyched about it.  They end up being very sweet, and even manageable, and incredibly generous, going through about eight bottles of Bordeaux.


I have always needed the time alone.  I have always needed the keeping of my own time.   My own hours.  And for me it is always the social that is the problem, as other people might not readily admit.  And the people who cannot spend time alone, perhaps they are less the kind that it is really worth spending time with.  That's something we can not readily admit, in this time of 'this great communal project of the internet and the corporate world of big tech,' and I will admit that I find time spent alone quite worthwhile.  Even that time, we need insight, and energy for.  And this is time we do not always respect in this culture of ours.

And other people's problems, well, what can you do, you really have your own to worry about.  It's that we get suckered into being nice.

That is the problem.  We seem obliged to to fall under the illusion that our customer acquaintances at the bar are our friends, and they can only know us from the context within which they see us.  And the problem is, that on your end, you've quite had it with that context, feeling a Lou Gehrig desire to pull yourself from the line-up.  None of this do they have any idea of.  You great them with a smiling face, and witty banter, and yet, they have no idea, no idea at all of what you go through.  Nice they would invite you somewhere, but the bourgeoisie have not the greatest inkling.  Their politeness is considerable, and welcome, but...


They respected me at work, as a hard worker, but also for all the shit I put up with.  Would it be okay, though, if I asked for my own life, after my years of service?  Not a lot to show for it, but, one can change, or at least try and welcome it.

God, no wonder Kerouac was a drunk, after all his exposure.  He earned his perspective, all he dealt with, the college athlete Catholic intellectual football scholarship kid strong enough to deal with Ginsburg, Corso, Cassidy, but the freshness of his view, his insight, had to come from all that time alone, reflecting, the notebooks, his mom's basement, Long Island, ultimately violated, the Kerouac pattern of letting himself misled and interrupted, and ultimately he had a kind of hatred and disgust for the Beatniks, the Merry Pranksters, ending up as, justifiably, a conservative, and, at the height of his game, a spiritual thinker you have to give credit to.

Then the bar personality I had to keep up became a kind of antithesis, not exactly, a wizened disguise in a world of fake and show, sham personality.

If he, Kerouac, had not had the rewards--and they were simple, and written long-hand in notepads, on the road, as much as type-written at girlfriend's apartments, insight, prose, and his bringing back that one tenth of it in writing is still enough to convince another person that this is writing, worthy of book form--he would not have written, written the things that are, of course, found in his works.


Trust your own judgment.  Be honest.  Thoughts that make you wonder about your supposed chosen occupation...