But somehow it was a tough week on the body, what with driving back from up north, Oswego to DC, back to work for one day, busy, then off two days, then out to dinner with amigos and then back to work for a hard Saturday night, then Easter Sunday night shift, the anniversary of my father's passing, the Monday jazz with my coworker bearing down on me and my pains, then off on Tuesday, then my buddy calling me saying I should come by, back to the wine bar, and meet the three young women from Paris the retired arbitrator gentleman has brought by.  And I wake up early in the morning feeling some sort of Kerouac panic, "old man, lonely, no family, and fat."  Thrown off, I guess.  Worried about adult stuff like jobs that pay the bills and aging mothers who are lonelier than I am, whom I am at least faithful about calling and visited her for birthday.  Well, I retreat to the bar rather than trying anymore to chat up the young women from France here for a business seminar, talking to my friend J the bartender who gives me a ride home at the end of the night.  Better to go out then stay in, but sometimes you can't really tell and maybe it's all the same misery anyway.

Early early in the morning I lay awake, get myself a fresh glass of double filtered water in the plastic Foxhall Smiles pint glass from the dentist, and crack open the book on the bed next to me, Kerouac, Big Sur, which is almost too much for me, delving into the horrors of alcoholism, and the only real bright spot beyond the touching stuff about Tyke the beloved cat back at his mom's in Long Island and the comfort Kerouac has giving us a bit of his Canadian French personal family talk like that of his dying father's groans is the bit at the end about seeing the Cross, after all his Buddhist readings, he sees the Cross there as clearly as he's ever seen anything, finding that remarkable.  The poems written to the sea soothe the harrowing read.

And why did I get into this foolish line of work anyway, the grey sky of April the fourth tells me, in its stillness before the wind picks up as predicted.  Yes, it is not easy when your work schedule gets thrown off, you feel jerked around.

But I have other books of Kerouac, his Book of the Dharma, and after warming a can of black-eyed peas, green tea, a chat with mom whose day is also cold and raw, and doing the dishes so that I have clean forks again and all the cups are clean except for the ones I am using, more or less, and the plates from the shelf where the cockroach was are rinsed in comforting hot soapy water, the spiritual life, with ETWN on in the background, and Mom too was just watching TV with Mother Angelika praying the Holy Rosary and I've lit some incense, Frankincense and Myrrh.  Not to be gross, saints in their little cabins such as Kerouac have their little encounters with the living creatures of the world like mice and spiders who go about their business in the outhouse...

Hungry, I eat, and yoga later on this odd day off before the winds come...  Otherwise I feel pretty useless, and that is how we are these days anyway, entranced by our little on-one devices, Google News, Facebook, emails, whatever else we might find out...