The things one has to write are quite boring.

So I went down there, walking, in a hurry, to arrive on the hour.  Down the hill, across R, down to the big avenue, crossing the other one, past the Cosmos Club, a light rain, the winter coat too warm a choice, then across Massachusetts and into the downtown.  I get to the corner of 19th and L.  Where are the food trucks?  And then I realize, oh, the appointment is for two not three, I should know this, what got into my head...  It's always been two, after it changed from eleven am.  I hate to let my nice therapist down.  She listens to me patiently, devotedly, looking, poor thing, for ways to help me.  My iPhone is out of storage space and acting funny, and it takes time for emails to load.  Oh, yup, she sent me one around 2:15, but it had not come at the time.  Standing there, I write her back.

Going to see mom, a week away, and then starting to write again, yes, kinda threw me off a bit.  And I have to go back to work.  But in a way, the week away, it kinda of cured me a little bit, reminded me of things.  And it is a sign of good health that I am writing again, and that I was writing so seriously that my mind arranged me taking a pass, unintentionally, well, I'd rather be writing then focussed solipsistically on hopelessness itself and all that bleak future stuff.

So I walk back.  Now with the clock ticking for another thing.  A few minutes, a bite of packaged turkey, a change of tee-shirt, sweated through and jackets, folding a Brooks Brothers button up shirt in thirds and pressing it into the pages of the legal pad, the legal pad which I used to have a different kind of faith in and use for.... and then back out, down in the other direction to the avenue with all its embassies, backed up traffic, Secret Service police cars, then finally through the woods, and up along Dumbarton Oaks, to the other big avenue, and back to work, the little yellow painted building with the blue awing, the first shift back, and right on time.  How have the kids left the bar;  I was worried, a concern in the mind for days now.  My return.  How painful will it be?

Out of soda water, of course.  The beer not stocked back up in the cooler so I have to get down on my knees and go fishing for the different ones on the shelf.  The wine restocking also lacking.  I see they've left me with one can each, Coke and Diet.  No fruit but two lemons.  Who knows what else, in my triage.  On top of the usual set-up.  Oh, boy, here we go, put the wines in the bins to chill with the old ice, grab a milk crate and down the two flights of stairs to the basement, and here comes the busboy at least, reasonably on time, he's got kids;  I take it in stride.  The Russian gal wakes up from her meditation in the quiet back room, and tells me stories of her grandfather, empathizing with my trip to go see my mom, even as the horse within me is pulling at the reins of it.


Then to the end of the night.  There's nothing I particularly want to eat off the menu.  I've lost the taste, the desire.  Nothing strikes my fancy.  Only utility, something for the stomach.  A plate of duck leg confit in the oven, and I'd rather have a cheap gyro from the late night pizza down the street.

My feet ache, even though I've worn the Brooks running shoes all night.  I can barely walk, get a cab home.  I have a glass of wine, finally take a bath, listening to a TV show about a great World War Two Japanese battle ship, the Yamato, the brain child of poor old Admiral Yamamoto...  Epsom salts to soothe and lacquer the skin with mineral protections.  It's five am before I'm settled, before I can fall asleep.

And today, up late, two thirty, waking from a dream, and my poor skinny butt along the base of the spine is raw and red from scraping against the tub, and I am still tired and achy.  The signs are clear.  You cannot do this much longer, my friend.

And after looking for it, concerned for hydration, I realize I've probably left my Nalgeen bottle, filled with homemade electrolyte water, in the lady's cab, nice African American lady, gracious, her brother a pastor down in Southern Maryland, driving a Honda Fit.

The realities of the working barman's life...

(And even Jesus I've let down, even in Holy Week, watching certain imagery to help myself relax before bed, committing adultery in my heart which doesn't want to but the body does, and anyway, a check on my health, male and otherwise, but sad.   Alone, an act which leaves you with little to say, your powers of writing empty, thus its sin, even though no good doctor could blame me.)

So, what are you going to do, for a life, for a job...

The writer cannot write.  He's terrible at it.  He shouldn't even bother.

And worse:  nothing to write.  Have farted around too much.  Too much radio, then calling mom.


You're too earthy to follow the regimentation, my mom tells me, when we talk of the church, much as I'd like to feel a belonging there.  Too many rules.

Like this town.  It's odd combinations...  Not offered much in the way of a career after all the hard work and the wasting of the best years of my life, as they call it.  The writer is not one for the city and all its so-called opportunities.  The writer doesn't care.  His nuggets of gold are found in self-reflection from his struggle.  He could be laboring anywhere.


Holy Thursday for old me, poor old Tranowsky...  The tired aches from work leaving me ready for a nap.  It's seventy seven degrees at the end of March and I need another nap, another dream, another Jesus lay down in the ropes to ponder what he needs to say to them all.  Jesus knows it's not writing (the things he is working on and saying), that he's a literary failure, too lazy to write a narrative account with believable fleshed-out characters, and having no desire to fictionalize real people, too tired from work to edit out whatever he has recently laid down on paper...

Out to the grocery store before they close at ten.  Hair still with epsom salts in it, and the body too old to give a fuck how I dress, just old green LL Bean chamois shirt over black tee shirt, Dockers chino type pants, stretch fabric, not too tight, sneakers.  A few things, half-heartedly in the bag, but not up for the bigger grocery mission perhaps at the midnight Safeway near the McDonalds, and a cheap bottle of wine, which might be okay over ice with lime.

And as I'm dragging the stuff home I end up wandering down Connecticut Avenue, walking along sadly from not having done any writing of any kind on my day off, I decide to go to my old haunt, since it is so nice out, and I have a craving for gyro meat, the little cheap Greek place, Zorba's, where I used to sit as a moony young man writing in his notebooks mooning over old girlfriend and wishing to convert his own sad life into a kind of Parisian Hemingway sort of a thing, appreciating the spirituality of the street, the passers by, the buildings, older style, brick, most of them, across the avenue, the quiet of the triangle part insulating you from the cars, the busses, the cop cars, and enough conversation, a place where young people go, on a limited budget, and still it's not cheap for me, just cheaper.  And so, bravely, looking like a bum, I go in and there's the guy.

Nice guy, like me, been there forever in the restaurant business, he's the manager.  And sometimes, you know, you get shy, and you don't go places because you want to remain anonymous, just in and out, not have to make the extra effort, and I, bad with names...  So it's hey man, how you doing, and what the hell why not I'm not hiding anything, I'm not kidding anyone anymore, life is tough, work is hard, and me with all my bad career choices (but solid, very solid and steady work effort, never calling in sick but a few times when it was really obvious...), and I cannot muster much happiness, but, yes, a gyro platter, yes, I'm starving actually (and by the time I get home I won't have the energy to cook anyway, even my simple way) and yes, why not, for $4.95 a glass of cheap Greek low alcohol  red.

I go in and wash my hands, get a glass of water, lug my reused grocery bags up and out onto the patio, find an unwobbly table, and he's given my a second glass of wine.  I didn't mean to milk the situation.  And I've found out his name, as a nice young couple comes back in and gives him a big thank you.  And his same is Saul.  How 'bout that.  And he says it the old way, two syllables, old school like in Old Testament tone.  I'm taking my tray out at that point.  Good.  I know his name, finally.  (And in this go-round he has fed me, at a reasonable and modest price, taken good care of me, given what he can do, rather than persecute, hey, that's good, you take what you can get.)

I wolf down the gyro glistening and with the tzatziki sauce on top, skip the pita bread below it, get into the fries, usually skipping all forms of potato due to the arthritic joint issues eating them causes, as I avoid dough to avoid fat belly, am happy, or not unhappy, the moon almost full, cracking atmospherically through the dark quickly moving enveloping clouds, and the salad is perfect as always, the best in town to my own humble tastes, just so with the red onion, fresh romaine, tomato sprinkled with oregano and little bits of pure white feta, even eat the black olive which I don't necessarily like.  And then, still very hungry, I go back in and order up a beef shish kebob.  Another glass of wine, why not.  Thank you, my friend, behind the counter, with mustache, our hair grayer now...  Saul.

And there it is, dinner, on Thursday, Holy Week, no disciples, no feet washed, no bread, but french fries and the very good consistent white rice along with the two little skewers and after the gyro meat, yes...  I finish my glass of wine, not having intended to splurge (though I am getting money back from the Feds this year), and I'm tired enough and I walk back home, up to R, past the old coffee shop patio where I used to sit with my legal pads with no luck writing, no story to tell, just my own little reflections and little birds to watch, sparrows picking at the sidewalk, and now at last, at least, it looks like we're through winter almost, one can go outside.

Back up the stoop, I barely have the energy to put the cold things away in the refrigerator.  It's almost midnight anyway, and I take the trash out, the recycling, pour myself a glass of water, and hit the hay.   And tomorrow it will be Good Friday.



To be a writer, yeah, you have to be a weirdo.  You can never go mainstream.  You're an outsider, almost even to your old former self.  Quite possibly a let-down as far as your family goes...

Sitting at home in the apartment, the quiet textiled living room, sitting in my father's old brown chair, I think of Doctor Torrey, old R.E.T,. the Theosophist, my father's mentor.

And for me, finally, some form of self-respect, as I come across a picture, Kerouac's Navy Reserve military induction sort of mug shot--he was about five nine, incredibly handsome, obviously French, a very strong face and a strong personality coming through, determined.  Some self-respect for having tried to be a writer, anyway, not necessarily a good one, no, nor one devoted enough to really get at it.  Enough to not take shit from anyone, and maybe I'll go tell them, look, we need a busboy, at least when it is Jazz Night, because I don't want to walk out of there crippled anymore...

No, I've not turned out the way I might have intended to be, but, still, you take your shot at it.  And maybe one day...

The wine thing...  I work in the business, sure...  But somehow I never really wanted to be a sommelier.