"What am I supposed to be doing?"  Mom is on the phone, amplifying my own thoughts of uselessness and doubt, after resting the day away.

It's five in the afternoon.  I've not had much energy all day.  Well, I was up 'til late at night, after the workweek at the bar was over, doing my "pointless" writing activities journaling, after starting to learn the guitar part to The Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn...  1965, the year I was born.

Mom's bored with her books, even the 19th Century women writers...  Yeah, I know the feeling...  I am feeling the pointlessness of literary work myself, on such a day.

Do I want to read Pema Chodron again today?  Mom, I'm feeling the same way...

You should go for a walk, my mom tells me, awakening from her aloneness and isolated thoughts.

Yeah, maybe I should go for a walk...

You like the river, Mom says.  We can help each other out.

Yes, I've been subjected to the wandering monkey thoughts of my own isolated mind.

I know nothing.  I'm not an expert in anything, but as a waiter, a barman...  labor, physical...  Nothing to be proud of, really, so it seems..

"What should I do, should I just kill myself?  I don't know what to do?  Should I just wait here?  I don't know what I'm doing...  Is someone going to invite me for dinner?"

I'm feeling the same way, Mom.  Must be August.  We sense the school year coming...  the last chance for vacations, and I can't get out of DC because of work.

I'm up finally, make a pot of green tea.  Dress, across the street for groceries at the little market, my friends, and she has quarters for me, a roll of them so I can laundry, and they give me some peppers, the kind they put in their subs, after I ask quietly about them.  Yeah, wine, why not.  Just in case.  Yeah, right.  Sliced roast beef.  Tomato sauce to make a quick ragout with the ground bison...

And then, making a plan, after dropping off the groceries, I catch the 7PM bus headed westward, so I can take back overdue books someone has placed on hold, a Wendell Berry, and Suzuki's Zen Mind Beginner's Mind at the Palisades Library.  And since the market had run out of coffee at such an evening hour, perhaps I'll stop at the independent coffee shop, along the avenue, give mom another try on the phone, tell her I'm doing okay...

So I get my coffee, in no rush, in a to-go cup, regretting the plastic lid, and sit outside facing the street, along the bench, and there is a striking woman having a salad, looking through a little book of poetry, reading them one by one, quietly.  And I ask her, after standing up and trying to reach mom again, with my earbuds ready, after sitting back down with my notebook, if she'd been to the library...  I should go, she says, a missing Jackie.

Obviously organized.  She asks me about the books I returned...

Oh, essays by Wendell Berry, farmer poet, proponent of local family agriculture... Dharma Bums... maybe not doing me so much good anymore...  Do you think of him as a member of the patriarchy, that's what a friend was telling me...

No, I don't think so...

Yes, that's nice when someone in Washington, D.C., is not particularly judgmental over a Kerouac type.

And then, I explain, the other ones, Zen, peace, meditation, that sort of thing...  With the enjoyment of nature, meditation comes up, and I tell her about my pine trees back over there, and sitting in Lotus pose...  Seems to help...

Do you belong to a meditation group?

Well, I'd like to...  I'd like to get up to Tara Brach...

I bring up local bookstores, after mentioning I'm a barman, Frenchy, etc.  Local independent, they're doing well...  Kramerbooks...

I met my therapist there, she was bartending...  (I'd mention my job at the Dying Gaul...)

No kidding...

Going back to school is fun.  You get to read what you enjoy...  talk about it, write about it...   She's a therapist too, I find out.   After I mention seeing mine, and how she's moved away...


There's lots of good stuff to talk about with this person, under no illusions, walks down by the river, oh sure, and she went kayaking recently, and another time she saw an owl...


It was one of those conversations, transpiring easily,  and later on it keeps a meaning.  Parts remembered, in no particular order, like a crossword puzzle, back and forth.  Beneficial echoes.  Remembrances from an encounter with a being vibrating at a higher more spiritual frequency, such things stand out in your sense of things.

Yes, when I talk to my mom I tell her, you know, that's just a thought, that's all it is.


Afterward, with a coffee refill I probably don't need, after stopping at the CVS to put more money on my metro fare card, I walk home, an orange sunset back over the reservoirs.  And I think, yes, maybe that is it, therapy, just like mom has always told me I'd make a good one.

It's not about serving up drinks, it's about the therapy behind it all, offered freely, as it should be, and even the writing, comes down to a certain point, I guess.


Later, after putting together supper, and a bloated feeling nap, it's quiet time, and I hear an owl above in the trees.