I found that during the workweek, the new one, five shifts, closing every night, I didn't have time to write much.

I spent a lot of time alone.  Which might be okay, in some ways, given the steady stream.  But that was hard.  To go from lots of people, to none.  To go from seeing so many people having conversations, talking amongst each other, than when you feel you might be ready for your own, what? nothing, isolation, odd hours...

The neighbors didn't seem too thrilled with me, when I moved in.  It was a shitty snowy weekend in early March, and I'd been through too much to want more than just to sleep.  And when I brought out my natural defenses, such as trying out new songs on the guitar with a bit of singing attempt, they really didn't like me.  The place was new, completely different, and no local friends, beyond the friends I made at the little Korean market.  That too was a study in humanity, to walk in there, the little hub.  DC Lottery Tickets, a religious homage to the basin of holy water just as you walked in.

Thursday afternoon, first day off, naps, I set an alarm just to make sure I get there for basics before it closes at 8PM.  The News Hour wakes me up.  From outside, I see through the glass door, a tall giant of an African American woman in spandex with midriff, she's talking into her cell phone on speaker talking about Drake, or someone named Drake, as she waits at the counter, no acknowledgment, ignoring the lady behind the counter, and I order some Boars Head Roast Beef, no nitrates, not too high in sodium--though I wonder about the swollen lymph gland now below my right armpit--get my bottle of decent Sideways South of France Pays D'Oc Pinot Noir, and the big tall woman is out in the street talking loudly into the phone on speaker.  "I'm going to behave the way I want to behave."  Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with that attitude.  Just a contrast from the nice tea room polite Korean women who work from 7AM to 8PM at their little market, six days a week.  Coffee, breakfast sandwiches, tuna salad, curried chicken salad, Boars Head deli, sandwiches, specials, produce on offer if you ask, such as celery, broccoli, little packets of handy frozen parsley...  Old school, but very good, and a deluxe cold cut sub I have fallen for, sub roll with olive paste, hot and sweet peppers...

The other morning, two guys come in from across the street, after I've sheepishly ordered my cold cut sub, still feeling furtive about it, but rather sick of the flavors of The old Dying Gaul, even the veal cheeks osso bucco, and one of them is talking in a friendly way with the nice ring leader lady about  how his haircut and look must surprise her. "I'm auditioning for a role that takes place in the Forties, so I had to get a haircut."  His friend is tall too, quiet, polite, and it turns out he's looking to be cast into something for the 1850s...  bearded.   My mind is working on a Ken Burns Civil War little friendly quip, but, it's stinking hot out, blah, and I gotta get to work, lot of good it fucking does me, no retirement plan, no plan at all, and they willingly abuse me and my soul and my goodness, and no wonder when I walk up the alley behind the old Yassir Arafat PLO Embassy rear quarters, with the mulberry trees, with the fences, with the back end of the Chinese restaurant, and the odd abandoned yard, no wonder it's my Via Dolorosa, as if wearing a crown a thorns too, that vanishes from view when I enter the garage door at the basement of the old restaurant, to say hello to the kitchen guys napping, enter the hallway, lemons and limes and an orange from the walk-in, knowing no one else is capable of stocking...

Most people have some form of recognition in this humble neighborhood, the Palisades, regardless.  In the market, out on the street.  But not always.  And because of my music, and my hours, persona non grata.  That's how it goes.


I don't necessarily hold myself in high regard, you know.  I think that comes with the territory.   You look back at some episodes and crucial turning points of the kind that were not always as well thought out, and you see more a passive person than an aggressor.  And unfortunately, the world needs, if things are going to turn out well, good people to become aggressive.  Fighters.  That attitude never occurred to me.  It's been rather observed in the negative.  People don't tend to jump to the side of the peaceful and the kind.  They're still too busy trying to plan and overrun, or keep up, however they see it.

Well, I'm in such a state, one I shouldn't really be in, given my background, therefore proving my slacker laziness, my misguidedness, my Elie Weisel stand up for what's right or the bad people will take the selfish day and be horrible and evil...  which I never got, being a peaceful person.

I guess war is the story where the peaceful people suddenly find themselves shipped off to this... I mean, Good God, the trenches, the worst you could imagine.  Masai African elite athlete warriors sent to face off against the German machine gun...  Always the story, the brave men, the Irish brigade, the six hundred, Picket's charge, they keep coming, even unto the bullseye, and then slaughtered, ripped limb from limb by object of physics far far out of scale with anything human and directly available, the tree, the daffodil, the grass, the primula, the lilly, the cattail, the bird, as to be utterly ridiculous.  Unlike horse and carriage...  like the highway, the beltway... stop for a second, you are dead and a lot of other people nearby you will probably be so too.

It seems so little a payoff, to be able to deliver a small story from the struggles of the workweek  and the commutes and the phone calls and the other stuff, decisions not made that will then be made for you, poor mister forest dweller, to then be able to sit down, even hunched over like St. Jerome at the Ikea plexiglass coffee table and write a bit, to deliver a little Jesus Buddha homage, a little parable, but I too am very guilty for hiding my light under the bushel basket, who does that, not smart, hiding away talents, talent that chicks would have definitely enjoyed, except now I have become as the tree, watching the horizon and the clouds and heavenly objects and small creatures aboding, more and more everyday.

But if you can enter the slipstream, whether or not it will ever sell, or ever be recognized, that's a feeling of a lost decency, of a Jude the Obscure regaining status as a freshman with good roommates and lots of learning to have overlooking the quadrangle...

Yes, if you held to the cliff wall all week, careful with pitons, and then got to a place safe and clear and protected, then you could write a little bit.  And you didn't care about some form of magnificent prose or a well-told story, no, you wanted to talk about the loaves and the fishes you had created out of nothing, out of jack,

All one needs is a bit of stimulation, a little entertainment.  This is the basic point of education.  Get a good grade or not, as long as in, through, the deepest riches of education, at the very point where science falls, disappears into poetry and the art of God, when the political realm and the entire history of diplomacy (along with its subsets of earthly wars, colosseums, open air amphitheaters, shady dealings, imprisonments, exiles, bloodshed, economic tortures, losers and winners) can be reduced to the basic language of the equality of spiritual beings acknowledging their spiritual nature, as plants do every day, the golden rule, the Good Samaritan, Job not blaming anyone but himself, nor Jonah blaming anyone either, do unto others, fear God and divine retribution and justice...

And so did the barman do his job, providing that little spark of entertainment, as underestimated, as little compensating as it was, he did his job, entertaining, broadening, allowing for openness...