Where to start, where to start.

It was all about the adrenaline.  He'd fallen for the job, because it kept him active.  Continuous motion for eight hours plus.  And the adrenaline always fired, even as he groaned his way to walk and through the mis-en-place crucial set-up, always extensive, the building of castle walls to last through the evening through the last wave of invaders.  The adrenaline always fired, just about when the first customer came in, and hopefully he'd gone through his list and gotten everything in place down the last extra lemons and limes, the hot water for tea, folded cloth napkins for the glassware, terrycloth towel bar rags to wipe down and also to keep his hands dry, one through his belt worn behind him, as he often washed his hands.

And when they were all gone, after the busy hectic night, controlling what could be controlled, toward the end, the glass of wine tasted pretty good, particularly by the end of the week as he completed his last duties, the cash-out report, the last wipe-down of the slate bar top that had born his hands and the work of his hands for fourteen years now, he could have a moment of perfect peace, the top of the mountain finally reached, and no particular need to leave after clocking out, but to enjoy, even alone, the view from the summit.


The adrenaline.  As a Type O blood type, he had come to realize the need was not for stimulants, like caffeine, nor alcohol, but for ways to naturally harness the flame of the blood lest it push his mind too much, to walk it all off at the end of the night.   Emphasis on the importance of aerobic exercise, the calming influence of yoga...

After four nights of it, the human being was tired.    The throat was dry, and lethargy had set in.  Bed was a nice warm cave, extremely comfortable for the old body that had done so much without so much realizing it.  The hunt, just like a big cat, the stalking, the movements of stealth, and then the attack, the lunge, the wild chase, the final closing the distance and the take down.  The big cat needed rest.

It was hard enough, hard enough even understanding this about himself.  Who could blame the non-type Os, the officious farmer type As, the Mongol horde city dweller omnivore running roughshod, no real issues to deal with, a vinegar eater, for not intuitively getting it...  An A would be perfectly happy eating legumes and being a vegetarian.  The Mongol B was too ruthless to worry about his own body.  Such strategies would not work for an O, not for a day, not for a momentary lapse.

High strung nature itself, to blame...

Washed up upon this alien shore of modern life.  The body craved physical activity, projects for the hands.  Even reading could be difficult.

He had read voraciously as a child.  But then, somewhere in college, to his surprise and consternation, it suddenly became hard to read, and hard to read quickly.  He wished to physically feel, to sense each word, and it was this that caused him to leap up at the art of the early Hemingway short stories, boyhood up in a vanishing Michigan of Twain dreams and nature writing.  The physicality, jumping up off the page...  A museum rendered in words, a safari in an Eliot poem hiding in plain sight...

The body.  That is all we know.  The body.  Its ways of motion.  And thus each living being able to take somewhat decent care of himself is, by wits, a doctor.  And perhaps when you are such a doctor, for your own make-up, your year and model number, then you are adapted to render forth from it, out of the inner glow, the inner light, the engine room, the furnace, the invisible agreements that keep the blood flowing, a doctor of your own, if you will, your own church.


He woke with an uneasy memory.  A memory of drinking days, wasted years.  The Austin Grill.   A wild man, unsupervised but by other restaurant people and barkeeps.  A man craves for his tribe, and at the end of the dayshift, grab a bite to eat, and then friends come in, a tribe, and so you stay and have a beer.

Now such days made him sad.  Wasted years now witnessed by this career, or rather lack of one.  It did not help the big cats to hang out so, in such company of such a tribe.



It occurs to him, a continuous sense of it running all through his adult life, that the judgments rendered against him were essentially unfair.  Those who judged him, one way or another, were not taking the larger more intimate full picture of this human being washed up upon an alien shore.  And their habits of judgment were set within a group of behavior that had created notions of property, mine, not yours, my land, not yours, my wealth, not yours, that had created things like the Nazi, the Stassi, the Gestapo, the KGB.  There simply exist people who take great relish in the power trip of calling out other people for their sins, finger pointers, accusers, the mis-intrepters of the fundamentally well-intentioned kind generous healthy human being.  The human being is au fond an animal, thus prone to hi-jinx, to getting into places and situations, perhaps out of boredom, where it is not always best for him to be.  But can you blame the individual for that?  Can you blame the animal for that longing need to pace for miles and miles in the jungle of the night, indeed burning very bright...

We give the animal who would naturally roam unencumbered a key to a certain set of things given financial value in society, allowing the beast to participate in trade, quite blindly, but for the very shrewd and the accusative types, the cop mentality.  The proverbial fox in a henhouse... what to do?  A very sad situation.


How else could you explain the harshness in the air, the electricity of hatred and charges...


What is it that ails you, O Lazarus?

I am man of cravings, O Lord.  I crave death.

No, you don't.  That's nonsense, Lazarus.  You're  a good man.  It's just your blood type.  And who can help that, my friend...  Go howl at the moon.  In good health.

But of my literary career, O Lord, what should I do...

Eh.  Don't worry about it.  Less worry the better.  As with all things, as with the bird and the bird's nest, nature takes care of itself, knowing what to do in time.  Rely upon thy natural sense to figure things out.  In the meantime, what can you do but go for a walk, underneath the stars, which also take care of themselves.  I went out to the desert for forty days, knowing nature would take care of everything.