And so, I'm up again, at a reasonable hour, no hangover to speak of, awake, classical music on the Bose, a moderate light through a covering cloud.  I had a grocery list, but had no energy once completing my medieval doctor barman Sunday night with the regulars rounds, than after looking the door, having made simple syrup on the bar's stove, wearing vinyl gloves to take the pimentos out of olives with a drink garnish sword, filling each one by one from the plastic pastry bag with roquefort with anchovy paste...  My feet hurt.  Cold.  Wanting to walk, but getting an Uber from the Gaul down past the cemetery and then Q, up to the foot of the old quiet street.  Exhausted.  Another round of shoveling anyway.

I start out with a few clarifying edits, a few missed memories to embellish recent accounts of the old barman lost in space.  The writer's day starts.


I find myself taking care of things, one by one.  Bills paid, a birthday card off to Vermont for my father's Patricia, a renewal of Nat Geo Kids for niece and nephew, forgotten during the holiday rush and the sore back from 1700 miles driving...


A slow panic is constantly brewing on the stove, but still, one must deal with necessary evils sufficient to the day thereof, and Restaurant Week is coming to the old town, snowed-in Washington, DC.  What should I do now, for the barman entering the week of his birthday, armed with good horoscopes, generally...    But wondering, as the poor must, how will this end, what job or profession can I find to keep my stuff off the street's piles of junk...  The problem of attempting a spiritual life, looking for insights we as human are unable to do much more than grasp for...  A fresh uncertainty arising over my living circumstances, and in such a frame of mind, one can only blame himself for not working hard enough, not helping out humanity enough, just being an idiot.

On-line shopping, to ease the nerves,  Take care of things, one at a time...A fender to keep the mud and trail spray for the yellow mountain bike.  Vacuum cleaner bags, another recent order from the inevitable mass company from which we all buy from, having not expected, foreseen as much, when they just seemed like a bookseller...

Again, a tea of lemon or lime muddled, with a dash of sea salt...

A balm of mentholatum applied to the yearly January crack at the tip of my right thumb, from wiping the glassware as it comes hot out of the washer with a bar linen napkin...  covered with a band-aid.

"Americans like technology.  That is there solution.  They don't actually teach anyone anything.  Look at TSA..."  a line remembered from the night before... a perspective from the U.K.



Easier to bash people than to feel their pain.


January.  With new energies, trying to keep on top of clean, cleaning, dusting.

I'd let a considerable pile of hard copy of writings go, and probably several wine case cardboard boxes of my old scribbled in legal pads with blue cover and yellow paper.  The latter I regret most.  The truth was I was too tired and hungover from spending time with Chef Bruno's pal, the chef of the bistrot of the corner...

But maybe there is something about a writer's life where at some point he has to lose a good pile of his writings...  Or it as Satan taking something away from a good effort of the soul, finding you in a moment of cowardice and spiritual depression....