One true sentence, that's all you can do.  One true sentence as a talisman.  One small foothold for the mind to start the day in its own space, good or bad, meditative or not, troubled or calm.

Hemingway's "the horse smelled the water."

The man made coffee now on the gas stove, with the small Bialetti Iris espresso maker, then pouring the brewed coffee into a cup, dribbling, and then with ice cubes and one creamer from Korean deli.  He went and sat down on the old black leather couch from Decatur Place and opened the laptop, connecting it to the internet with the iPhone hotspot.

Light a stick of incense, worked yesterday, yeah.  Ragweed pollen and mold spores reported high.

And into the tangles of the mind...

One true sentence...


Sunday night, the eve of Labor Day.   The door opens and, after having polished the bottles of Amaretto and Baileys and the other liqueurs on the shelf, a stretch to reach, along the wall above the cooler and the computer screen, dusting, nothing is happening so I might as well go sit down up by the front window in one of the low pod chairs and take a pretend nap.

A few people trickle in and I rise and tell them to sit wherever they'd like, grab the menus and then a regular comes in and sits at the bar, telling me I look flustered.

It's a quiet night.  A couple comes in, and a neighbor, dear old Monika, has thrown a welcoming party for them, one I was unable to make because of working Saturday nights now, when I put two and two together, oh yes, I remember you (her) from a couple of Tuesdays ago, but I've not met him, and they're both Ph.D.s.  They're cool.  They like wine.  They hiked around Mt. Blanc for the their honeymoon, tasting the local wines along the way.  Sure, taste this, taste that, sure, here's some bread to chew on, a quick discussion, where allowed by the primness of fair service, of academic specialty...

What I'm worried about as the clock ticks on to 8:40 in the evening is the late crowd.  And in particular, the late diners, the ones who like to drink, particularly the ones who might remember our friend from the IMF.   It's been a year, this night the last I saw of him, quite a chap.

But no one comes in, I try the Dire Straits Pandora channel for a moment as homage to Uli, but I'm not into it, back to cool jazz Coltrane and the like, and I really don't even want a single sip of wine, and when the kitchen closes, it's not long after that I sneak downstairs and turn the button on the knob of the blue door.  The other door is open, still a few diners around, no biggie, but soon they are gone too.

I clean the bar, put the bottles away in the ice, we're closed tomorrow, I clean off the bar, organize things a bit, go through the little bit of paperwork--they're already done, the servers, downstairs, and A. throws out an invite to Flash, the techno music club, as she leaves after changing--do the checkout, and all I want to do is detox and get home and meditate.  As I'm doing the last bit, about to check on the bus schedule, D. from the last few nights...  I get a text, "too late for a glass of wine?"  Meaning he's probably close by.  "Yes."  With a bit of guilt, but yes.  By the time I text him back he's already up the hill anyway, on to Breadsoda.  But let's just pack things up, the cold cuts, the water bottles, into the old backpack, and get on with it, walk to the bus stop by Ellington school, no wine, no nothing, just get back to the apartment, hit the couch, take a goddamn nap...


I do take a nap, and then later I wake up, putter in the kitchen, put a load of laundry in, now that it's about 4:30 AM, trying to keep quiet footsteps, take a walk down to the bluff, overcast, decent air, the river there down below but hard to see and feel, but for the airs it channels.  Socks and colored underwear into the dryer now, and now, feeling lonesome and defeated, a slave to the bar and all its comings and goings, quite hard work, actually, both mentally and physically, chosen perhaps because the body's inherent dislike of lack of motion and boredoms, I summon up a bit of Chernobyl, having failed to really want to get into Rashomon at this our, and I break down and have a glass of wine from the open bottle of Loire Pinot Noir, the cheapest wine I could find at MacArthur Beverage.


And now, after rest and sleeping 'til three in the afternoon to recover from it all, I look out the window, as the AC whirrs its breaths steadily, I see birds fly over, gathering now in early September.  I have the night off, and the sky is grey, light milky opaque, the bricks of the adjacent small GI apartment building stony brown gray too and also opaque, stoically solid and utilitarian.


The mind wonders:  I have not fought for things.  I should have been braver, made a stand.  I should not have been shy, nor retreating, but jumped at many offers, sang out loud in Grease the musical, as my music teacher in junior high school recommended to me after seeing my crazy man rock music performance in the talent show...  I have stood up and fought, yes, I should have stood up already and made a stand for literature and poetry and moments of the mind.  But sadly, somewhere along the line I became a working man, lonely, isolated, being entirely stupid for having made the bargains with the devils one must make, so it seems, like to work at night and to be around drinkers and their voicings of bullshit every working day...

I was a coward.  I hesitated.  I was not the early bird, not early to bed, not early to rise, not a seizer of the day...

In choosing my line of work, I suppose I had some naive idea of Lord of the Rings Christianity, working where tribes of man came..

But what you get, the pains of old teeth, lonesomeness of interactions with strangers only, anonymous, of old not fully taken muddy shits from efforts to keep energy, various hungers, self-pleasuring late at night to check to see if one is still alive or not, a waste of vital energies.

And meanwhile the nuclear core, all the talents, all the music, all the song, all the recitations, all the acting, all the soliloquies following the dramatic action, lies fallow.

At least, a day of rest, no work tonight, thank god and labor unions.

Later, I get out for a walk to the trees with my yoga mat.  It's been a while.  The basics, easily enough remembered.

Walking, after yoga, is always interesting.  Muscles more deliberate.   The tight joints of the pelvis stretched out some, a tiny minuscule realignment.

Tree pose with trees is good.  A remembrance of posture.

When I get back to the apartment, leaving mosquitos but also the interesting glow and pink light of clouded sunset, I meditate, and then later, here I am, just bored with myself, time for a glass of wine.

Writers, just lonely males trying to make constructive with their self-centered thoughts...  Boring thoughts of the outmoded patriarchy...