Manuel and I took the Indonesian couches down from the wine bar through the dining room and into the basement.  He was drilling the screws of table pedestals on to table tops for two.  There were two extra tables downstairs next to the copper bar, and three extra deuces up in the front of the wine bar near where the band will play, and then having done what we could do, departed our separate ways into the night around 1:30 in the morning.


And I wake up feeling like an old barn on Valentine's Day.   Stone and old wood, littered with straw.  Bones overlaid with muscle, the ache from a thousand motions, of pouring wine, serving, clearing plates, running, wiping off the glassware.  And again, one is left awake but not so willing to move, not even to do yoga, and a retreat to a place to lay down and meditate is called for.  The mark of Ash Wednesday, a television broadcast from Rome, the Papal Mass, like a cross, reminds me too of the stigmata, the image within the body, as we are reminded be our better purposes.

Horoscope for Capricorn, reads today:  Are the targets you are aiming for ones you have set yourself or ones that have been set for you by other people?  If, as the planets indicate, it's the latter then it's time to break free and regain control of your life.  Not later -- right now!

Is it Valentine's Day, or is it Ash Wednesday, rather.  Who are the sheep that must be loved and defended?

Valentine's Day, polite and anonymous, delivering the romantic dinner...  Now, I wait for it, and write useless words, looking forward to when my labors are done after the long night, the jazz offending our calm with its volume, throwing off the muscle memory echolocation.  It all strikes one as a postponement of the acts one is working on...

The Christian in me rouses me, and I pour a cup of yesterdays Moroccan Mint, mix in a little bit of Astragalus powder, and before I've seen that Karl Ove Knausgaard has done a piece on going in search of Turgenev in Russia in the New York Times, and today relatives will bury our Aunt Jean, old Auntie Jean-Jean, my mom's Aunt, with her good nature and all her stories, up by Lynn in Swampscott, a journey too far to take my old mom to, on top of the awaited week of Valentine's Day at the old Bistrot of the Dying Gaul and the special fixed price menu.


Is it depressing, being outside the church, the not belonging...  The original, He dealt with it.  It made his work less bound by strict custom.  He could heal and do good work, even on Valentine's Day.  Well, a day set aside for love, the celebration of love, after all, why not.

EWTN, the basic church of Santo Stefano, from the Twelfth Century, whose bells rang, by themselves, when Francis died, in Assisi, a good place to meditate and pray, a small treat for the distracted...

Would Jesus fully understand the fullness of his acts of generosity, or for Him were they more or less instinctive, no need to think them over, the ponder the logic of how they might fit in to polite society's normal way of doing polite business, marriages, professional friendships, community, and the like...

Awake, the awkwardness of existence, of being a conscious being, waiting to prepare for the shift, the big night, the last one of this guy's workweek.  What fuel to take in for the night...  What tea to brew, what nostrum to take.

A lament for the human race, a lament for all who say worthless things, not taking into account the sorry state of our perpetual affairs.  For all the kids who in love make dumb mistakes, that is human.  For all the people who do dumb thoughtless things, or who do not do the things they should, lamentations, as memory serves properly to remind us of things we wish we'd done differently, had a little more time for...