Late August, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday morning, before work:

The hack science fiction writer had refrained from unreasonable indulgences at the end of work shift, Monday Jazz Night at the old Dying Gaul's wine bar.  An excellent trio led by a man playing guitar, saxophone and flute, singing, hitting his foot on a floor-friendly tambourine, Eric Preterre had played to a meager crowd.  People were in a relaxed mood, and there were no loud intrusions in the later part of the evening.  The hack writer was recovering from a long night the night before on top of a busy Sunday night, so it goes, and as he had awoken earlier on Monday, nervous, anxious, depressed, not even wanting to rise nor feeling up for anything more than a pint glass of water, in a state of exhaustion, finally able to go back to deeper rest, so was he awake early on Tuesday, after sleeping some four hours or so.


Summer:

There had been the trees and their pollen, then the grasses, pollen on top of pollen, and finally was the rise of the weeds, copious, growing everywhere that was not paved to top it all off, to cover the city and its places with redolent and opulent green growth, as if their own right to Springtime had come, as crickets chirped, sawing away politely in little invisible hollows in the vegetation, as cicadas droned electrically invisibly in trees, calling back and forth in orchestra sections at the hand of some unseen conductor who had no need to make show of himself nor baton gesture.  It all worked, and the weeds, many of which had already begun earlier to vine over everything within reach, had come again, to insure that the processes which had buried themselves in layers of healthy mucky deposits would continue, even as human beings tried to suck the earth dry, in order to produce fire and dust and worse things upon the planet's waters, airs, winds and surfaces, watched over by the trees.



For now, late August it was very quiet.  Gone were the big flashing powered motorcades of Harleys and fully armed black Suburbans preceding the long black bullet proof limousine chambers of wheels, all prickly with guns, sunglasses, if that was the mood of the car's principal inhabitant, representatives of Halliburton and big industrial policy, would emerge from the woods and come down the hill of the long avenue of Embassy Row, roaring away with sirens and lights wailing.  Ferrying the Vice President through the town and up to the Capitol Building.  On a bad legal day for Trump the big green helicopters were called into action, rumbling overhead, more activity even than usual, into the night, he remembered from the week before.

And the weeds would continue to grow, the crickets kept it up, and after the tree pollen and the grass pollen, there would be the ragweed pollen.  Crabgrass, weeds thick of stem and leaf shape rising into the thick humid air of morning, as he took a walk just at first blue light, down to the bank, calling his old mother as he did so, to send her some cash.

He was awake, and again he was anxious, but he was going to endeavor to not be ashamed of himself, nor paranoid, nor angry at himself for his failures, he was going to go out into the city early morning as trucks rumbled and early joggers set about on the avenue sidewalks.  Unlike Sunday, the night before, he had not hurt himself too badly with the wine, the dehydration.  He'd ordered himself a decent dinner.

It seemed to him like he was having a kind of invisible dialog, with his therapist as if in her office (which lacked a proper traditional lay-back couch), where he would be the next day, a bit too early.

He felt like he was finally absorbing the wisdom of a good neighbor.  Don't be ashamed of yourself.  Don't get angry and take it out on yourself, with too much wine to quiet the anger and frustrations and voices of deep fears and feelings of uselessness.   The efforts to mask it all might have worked better before, but now, those efforts had morphed into feelings of poisoned mood in their aftermath.  He, in so doing, was not following his own path to happiness, and even in shame, he was awakening, or attempting to awake, to get over the awful fears and anxieties that made it hard for him to get out the door of a place without wishing to slink away and hide, even from his own moods.


As he walked, his thoughts:

Throughout historical time we get only snippets of the truth from the good teachers.  A sketch to follow.  The flowering of Christian enlightenment comes briefly and passes into a political system run by bosses who must protect and continue, power to reinforce.  Jesus and his teachings remain, to inspire good-hearted people, but in becoming a system, as much hard work and sacrifice....

Yoga.  The Buddha's strange teachings.  The flowering of India...  The travel of the Noble Truths...

Coming from the other side of it, the side of innocent ignorance or, rather, unawareness, not exactly taught to think or believe so, there is us.  Some will take it upon themselves to take that personal journey of life as the opportunity to live life happily to a standard, family and home, kids.  And then there are some of, stranger flowers, more rare, who seem to sense that it is their personal duty to live a life that itself will bring us upon a path toward the enlightenment things, regarding that as the serious stuff, that we must all go through prodigal state, the pleasure palace, the trials of Biblical Jonahs and Abraham and Moses and so forth, to come upon, through life's errs and mistakes, something that saves us, that protects us, that works, works for the self, and in so doing, probably the rest of us too, were we to the time to stop and think.

And who am I, loutish G.I. Joe, hardworking country boy, not always in tune with his own sensitivities and sensibilities, a product of American culture, cowboys and James Dean, Ernest Hemingway, the Protestant work ethic, capitalism, the democratic politics belief system, as if all that would save all of us, and the planet and life.  But no, it is more complicated, and one must feel very sad when he realizes how he himself has been, despite occasional effort, a real ignoramus, just simply not serious about Noble Truths and the Paths that rise up to meet you.  One has pursued, even if not even really half-heartedly, merely struggled along, knowing his own dissatisfaction with the material set-up of inherited modern culture.

Taking short-cuts and panaceas.  To get by.  And he knows, even, within, that the conventional is quite unsatisfactory.

And he finds himself in the now, in the present all of a sudden.  Probably still with a  job to go, a physical thing, but, I don't know, slightly wiser, maybe.  And the only guide is the Noble Truths and the Eightfold Paths, and the strange words of Jesus on the Mount, and a handful of other things, perhaps made note of by our ancestors.