"Tadzio, write about the street."  This was something the old Polish lady would often say to me.  "Write about the street."  There were cats, and former generals, and the perfect general's wife.  There was Jean at the corner with her yew bushes overgrown in a good way, her Persian cat, friendly at night, Popeye, and her Chow dogs, more mysterious as to their moods.  There were her memories, and I was building some myself, but it takes a long time.  It takes a life.


Write about the street.  One true sentence.  I do not literally write about the street, because I do not enough about it to say much intelligent or worthy, beyond the animal life, the feral cats, the mailman, the friendly UPS guy who once dropped off a package from Martin Guitars to me, saying this was a happy delivery.

I wrote what I could of the bar, the restaurant, but even then, even on that street there really was not enough to write about.

Write about work, Tadzio, she would also say, people are interested in that.

The picaresque, the road of life, for the wanderer, the spiritual seeker.

Uli is gone now.  Still impossible to believe that all our communing are history now.  We had always seen something in each other, a friendliness, a kind person, a stand up guy (on his part.)  A true soul.

The saint is gone, and leaves the rest of us behind, to deal.


My friend Kirsten, bound for mission in Liberia, amongst the poorest of the world's poor, brings by a handsome Irish woman, who once was put in the trust of Shane MacGowan, back in 1993, for her interview at Oxford, in London.

The guitar, with some encouragement, finally comes out, after all have left but one couple, sweet people, she a professor from Georgetown who will give a lecture on Gandhi, he a big guy who flies C130s, I kid him he looks like Randy Quaid.  I sense kind people intuitively now.  As if being able to tell a robin from a red squirrel.  I see it.  And if people are kind, it's a fun thing, and the business of life and money will be kept a bit separate from such interactions.

So I pour a little bit more Viré, white Burgundy, for my friends at the table after their dinner, and myself a little more Beaujolais to channel the music of Shane MacGowan.

The guitar is out, and the ladies have sweet talking voices, one German, and one with her Irish lilt.  She lives in Argentina now, with her German husband.  Kirsten and Emily.  Kirsten, a regular, along with her economist husband, from Portugal, come in quite often with the Kapers, elderly Dutch, a prominent the environment and global climate change, global warming.

It takes me a little time to switch modes.  The first song effort will be a dud.  I softly riff the opening chords of Lullaby of London, finally take up taking up the first lines of lyric.  "As I walked down by the riverside, one evening in the Spring..."

Later on, she joins me singing Rainy Night in Soho...

Direct flights to Ireland, go to a musical festival, she tells me.


Uli, his last night alive, I wonder if he went to Du Coin.  He mentioned something about it, the last night I saw him, the eve of Labor Day.  I took a long pointless walk, got some groceries at Glen's I probably didn't even cook...  Just to save money, feeling broke...