I'm thinking of the classic Zen tale.  The male of the family the monk encounters is out drinking and gambling, while his family suffers the dictatorship of his disease.  The monk:  get me a nice bottle of wine, and a fish dinner.  The drunkard comes back finally, eats the entire fish, kills the whole bottle, and quite content, he passes out.  And then the next day, the drunkard wakes up, remembering nothing of the night before (the truth of Zen tales.)   Respecting the monk, the man is highly embarrassed by his own behavior.   Quit this behavior, this drinking, the monk tells him.  You must so that you will have the time to take care of your family.  The tale ends with the drunkard following the monk as he departs the town.  Five miles he walks with the monk, and then five more.  And so he is converted, no longer a reveler, no longer an abuser...


At the end of my workweek as Wednesday night jazz night the Bitter Dose Combo playing away Gypsy Swing in the corner, I swear to myself I will take it easy.  As the night draws down, my co-workers speeding up and running about and piling things upon my workspace, cleaning the glassware, the busboy running in and out so that I have to dodge him and all others, I crack open a Goose Island IPA, to soothe all this battering at the vulnerable end of the night, as I slow down, and finally get a chance to chat with the regulars, introduce them to one another, etc.  I'm going to drink ale, and not be hungover.  Beer is your friend, remember...

Finally,  everyone has left.  Including the last guy and the last conversation, the literary turn, as I sit down, finally, at the bar, and eat my dinner, a little salmon tartar, a small order of Medallion de Boeuf, with spinach, skip the mushrooms and the gruyere polenta...  and for dinner, only proper to have wine.   A lovely philosophical friend, he is, a foreign service guy, Irish and literary, and I enjoy his friends, and one, tells of how his old man went from DC 3s, or maybe it was the old 707, and, as a pilot for Pan Am, was finally forced on up to flying the 747.  That's a cockpit 80 feet or so above the tarmac, and this is confusing, when you're used to flying a manageable plane.  "Ten seats across in a row, humans weren't made to fly that way," the old man is quoted as saying.   Truly, fun with customers, including asking John, of John and Maria fame, where he gets his handsome devil pro skier turtlenecks as he is wearing underneath a neat sweater at the bar after closing a Napoleon Bas Armagnac after the tastings I've given him, Champion, being the answer...

At the end of the night there is a lot to explain.  The horse, the body, is basically high, from its long run low on air, pushed to the edge, in the same way a horse loves a good race, a chance to bust out...  There are many conversations, and these are all gems.  They represent in some ways the frustrations we have to be able to talk truth and honestly and openly in these weird days.  That Hunter Thompson enjoyed Wild Turkey is a good base hit single with the interesting older couple as I pour them a little bourbon tasting to satisfy their curiosity...  The Knob Creek, Abraham Lincoln almost drowned in it when he was seven, is the one they choose after deliberation.  It turns out they like live music.  I speak of Eric Preterre, and of Quiet Life Motel, and of the famous luthier, Craig Bumgarner, who fixed an old Larson Brothers dried out guitar out of the goodness of his heart, for we are all connected.

When they are all gone, on this cold very cold night, I change into street clothes, and take a little nappy-poo, there at the foot of the Wine Room, sleeping a good hour, then getting up, turning the lights out, heading up the Safeway, shopping, frozen gluten free pizza, hot dogs, ground beef for chili, a few odds and ends including dishwasher fluid free of Sodium Laureth Sulfates...  "You're late, my friend," Mr. Bruce tells me at check isle 7 here at 3:30 in the morning.

Finally, back to the old pad, even as I have to move out in a month, Jesus Christ, after twenty years...

And somehow, coming out of sleep to the sound of a herd of elephants above, a crew taking out the Persian rugs from upstairs for whatever reason, even as I went to sleep after quietly reading my D.T. Suzuki... after Face Time with mom at Five A.M., after a frozen pizza, I am rather strongly hungover and absolutely down and exhausted, and on top of all this, I have to move.  Yeah.  And that's a lot of books to deal with.

 The day is wasted.  I'm unable to move, and arguably, I need to move.  I'm not really able to be there to respond to my mom's texts just after noon...  I'm pretty much just trying to sleep, and I feel awful.    After being harassed out of bed by a guy who thinks he is to collect the rugs on my own old floor around 1 PM, I take to the couch, and in truth I haven't been able to sleep so well with all the noise, nor the day before with someone jackhammering the wood away to make for a new lock after the Emergency Responders came to take my good old friend away...  Finally, I guess I'm able to move around 6 PM, and to find out that mom's cell phone is out of charge...


So, the day off, no stomach for the news today, and mom not answering the phone...

My horoscope seemed to suggest  that I get out.  So I dragged myself out to Glen's Market, got a cheap bottle of Sangiovese, 12 percent, some cheese, a can of tomato sauce, just to get out of the house, maybe meet my starred soulmate, and after the checkout line I moved over the bar, a short one, and sat unobtrusively, by myself, and by law the bartender has to open the wine for you...  and I still feel like crap anyway, and no one wants to hear any of my being a barman for twenty five years, these happy little girl faces who don't need to know such things.

The horoscope suggested that I also stay close to home, alone, and chill out.


And so, and so...   I think of all the hangovers poor Mr. Anthony Bourdain must have had to suffer in his line of work.


Somewhere along the line, one concludes that even Jesus was, by our terms, a loser, a big loser...