Well, I get bored just sitting home on the couch not so comfortably, reading about meditation in Pema Chodron, and I send Jeremy up at work a text, hey what's going on at Dying Gaul...  He mentions who is at the bar, sounds quiet, an interesting German woman with a familiar visitor...

So, I get on the 9:50 D6 heading into town.  The kitchen's closed by now, but maybe I'll do some grocery shopping.  I get on and up the stairs finally, and then I see that this is only better than where I came from through my old friends who are here.  I'm joining the conversation late, and don't feel much like being a part of it, nor my younger friend's stories about hanging out with girls.


My server friend A. comes up to the bar.   Do we want to go out to Mari Vanna tonight...  I demure.  What, you don't like girls anymore?  You're going grocery shopping?  There will be lots of Ukrainian out tonight...

And then, the plan changes, as Jeremy gives me a ride.  L2.  I should have escaped then...

ESL, to meet M., and then M. now wants to go to Flash...

I end up out on the street, making my escape, and I am in the urban area now...  Weed fumes...  Tattooed African American DC people clogging the sidewalks having their night...

Cabdriver gets me home finally with my lamb gyro, telling me tales of black men in cabs...  Guns pulled.  Punches.  Not paying him for the ride out to SouthWest DC, Benning Road.  Best country in the world, and their attitude...

But I've been led around by the nose, again.  Unhappy in the onslaught assault to the senses that DJs work.   What am I doing here...  I intended to walk home from Georgetown along Canal...  Just by my lonesome.  Would have saved me money...


I had meditated after some excellent yoga under my pine trees, reflecting in meditation on an array of emotions and feelings, sensing them in a way to describe them physically, the weight upon my brow for instance, on my shoulders, my face being pulled down by some form of sadness....  I reflect on Kerouac in The Dharma Bums, when he's down visiting his sister in Rocky Mt., North Carolina...  St. Jack of the Dogs.

Act like a saint and maybe you'll be one.  I got about as good a chance as anyone being one, whatever that means...

I meditate.  I feel vaguely terrorized by some form of professional circumstances, but that's all part of meditating, feeling ultimately what all sentient beings are feeling now, suffering, change, anxiety... This being the lesson that turns us around so that, less selfishly minded, we turn to help our fellow beings...

There is lovely oxygen needled air around me, falling down gently on everything in this little part of the world, the saintliness of trees, a squirrel heading easily down the pine, in no rush, nonchalant, at peace as everything else is at peace and as butterflies coast with remarkable speed and span, chasing each other through the high branches above me and my gray yoga mat.

And everything about the urban area, as I reflect, as I sense, there with the bass thumping and the lights flashing and the old cocaine real estate guy thinner and more haggard over there by the bar alone, a myriad of miseries, the contrast between the health of yoga outdoors and meditation, and all this urban life, trapped down here in streets, looking for aggression and pleasures and escape...

Why am I so easily led...  Why was I not able to stand up for myself, no, I'm not in the mood, I just want to grab a hamburger and walk home... But one thing after another, the Uber is here,  then the plan changes...

I write, in the usual state of some form of sadness, and I begin to wonder...  The story is what we are attached to.  If we can ease off with the story, perhaps we could find some form of a new way to use energy

I go out and do my yoga again, and again, nature is there for me..

Wine doesn't seem so bad, compared to all flashing light pounding loud music club stuff.  Wine can abide in the hermitage...