I get through the work week, and it has been busy, and the boss, who was running, delivering plates of food upstairs to be passed on to the tables, just as much as we were, is happy in that certain animal way of the busy restaurant, the adrenal high, the sense of mission accomplished, diners leaving pleased, the center holding in the amped-up whirlwind that the barman knows through his many years.  The week is looked back upon, and even the night of the wine tasting of Restaurant Week, when a server we could have used was let off, becomes part of a good week, a week we're finally making some money again, thank god.

A steak'n'cheese from Manny and Olga's down the street.  I always have a chat with the man taking orders behind the hot counter.  "Prince of Thieves," he says.  Hmm.  A few times ago it was who was more significant, Michael Jackson, or Prince?  This time he has me stumped.  (An incredibly talented man he is, and there behind the counter, his work floor is at least two steps down, so he has a special stage, really, and one that should be celebrated.  Oh, it's from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves... he tells me.  Along with how Presidents don't use words you have to look up in Webster's Dictionary when giving a speech...  The man had balanced how Presidents talk, with his ability of conversations, with how, and this is really interesting, to get great policy across, you should avoid, or rather, you don't need, big words.   I know this.  JFK...  We're all too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crises, JFK on TV, laying it all out in plain language, quite clear.   (Which leads to some talk about the current one on Adderall, who reads from the teleprompter, not giving a shit.)  Turns out he's referring to me, as the Prince of Thieves, I guess because I tip and add some genial conversation to his evening mix.  Remember the old PLO Cafe? I ask.  Arabian Nights!

And then across the street by the gas station to catch the D6 back to the apartment under the full moon.

I sit down, and have a glass of wine.  Maybe I'll go for a walk, to see the moon.

But before that, having some wine that tastes absolutely delicious, as everything holds, I call Mom.

And good thing.  She's concerned about the cat, who, to her sense, appears to be at death's door.  Mom, that may be so, but maybe she's just doing her usual hiding thing.  I calm her down.  The cat likes to retreat to her little corner in the cluttered room full of books that mom uses as an office.  Mom thinks the cat is dying, very sick, blaming herself for not taking her to the vets...  Mom...  If the cat is that sick, there's not much to do anyway, it's not your fault.  It's like when Cricket (the Corgi) had her kidney or liver cancer whatever it was, and you couldn't reach her.   She is calmer now.

I ingest my extra long steak and cheese, enjoying its sweet perfection, of gooey creamy mayonnaise, the texture of flat top thinly sliced steak with the softness of cheese, the acidity of hot peppers, the soothing bits of lettuce, the quietly earth sweet soft sub-roll cradling it and all, along with a glass of wine, and as I read in bed before sleep mom calls back, and miraculously the cat has come down the stairs, to investigate her food bowl, she reports.  Okay, cool.  I thought so, and we are happy for the moment, the time-being, I should say.



If not napping, Jesus, curled up in the ropes of the boat on the lake, is meditating.   And then the sudden storm blows up in the falling darkness of dusk, a thunderstorm, pelting downpour, raging winds, and the men on the boat look at Jesus, who is meditating, and go to rouse him, Master, the boat...  we're about to be sunk...  lost...  And Jesus, the master, who knows about storms, as we all do really, knows that the strong ones cannot last forever, and that this one will pass soon.  And, saying as much, as he rises, the violence of the storm passes on along its way.  Jesus, and his followers, a meditation group...


Some are born to see the light.  That's close to Blake, I know, but it's one way to put it, the instincts some of us have.  And it's probably a strange thing to be born with, one would imagine.  And maybe even Jesus would need a little bit of the wine to say things and be things so rather contrary to the prevailing attitudes, particularly those around wealth, wealth as an aspect of the order of empire.  Even today he would be denounced, told to stop preaching and get a job.   (Picture him fitting in to the modern economy, having to be, to afford his lifestyle and travels, a conservative tele-evangelist preaching and promoting his own name, perhaps under an alias, as the oil, snake or otherwise, it wouldn't happen... or by being a sort of stand-up comic laughing at the idea...  The poor bastard would have asked karma to put him into the world as the son of a scholar, who then took up a rather simple but useful common task, a carpenter, a story teller, a bar tender, an inn helper, a general good mensch...)

And Jesus might particularly have needed the fruit of the wine that night of the Passover, as he stood on the verge of completely defying conventional concepts of self and purpose through a sacrifice so imaginative that it is always deeply painful to comprehend, to just take a shot at that.

The Buddhists and the societies in which they might exist seem more open to the concept of monk and spiritual teachings, of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

Meditation is, of course, but the tip of the iceberg of the Jesus Buddha philosophy of the perennial nature.  Deeper down, what would you find?  Buddhism spells this out, and in Christianity such things are told through parables, for poetic comprehension.

But how to do it?  How to connect?  How to connect that which is so real, so true, so goes-without-saying, the bedrock of existence as seen through the prism of thought and imagination, completely divorced from the things of financial security and prosperous gain, how to connect such and other things with the realities of the lives of people living in society?