Sketches from the so-called week

I had planned on working tonight, having made a switch, an attempt to get Saturday night off, as part of a vague plan to join Betsy in the Big Apple for a quick trip, but the managers wanted and expected the normal guy Cisco, given what the night would bring.  "Not your cup of tea," the boss said, over the phone, politely enough.  Sure.  Quiet tired anyway.   No desire to do the lugging for the twelve top in the back right at 5:30, would prefer to take the silent treatment from LM Saturday night down the road.

The stone mason's saw revs up as it is readied to make its cut.  Can be heard throughout the neighborhood, and it's right outside my windows fifteen feet below.  There was quiet for a couple of days, but the men are at it again, with the nail gun and the half-shouting on ladders as the last of the siding goes up on top of the white Dupont Tyvek house liner sheet now that the window casements and the windows they hold are in place.  The mason is capping the balustrades of the stairs and walkway into the building.  The basement is still a bare shell of concrete, with PVC pipes rising out of gravel to be covered over.

It's cold out and overcast, and after reaching mom on the phone and dealing with the work confusion, with the wind blowing in the tree tops, I snooze on the couch in a form of meditation, taking the mind off its usual thought track.  The working men laugh in the distance, pleased to be working, dressed in heavier sweats and work jackets for the first time.

Lankavatara.

Tuesday night wine tasting, the regulars come in, one by one.  There's the Democratic debate, and a Washington Nationals series baseball game going on.  Monika's late husband's cousin is visiting from London for IMF meetings, arriving before, and though I recognize her there is no reservation for them and it is as if I have to be prompted to recognize her, though I do.

A pretty girl comes in, Jeremy gets her seated, as I roll around and take care of the two by the window, getting her a taste of the Haut Pila Roussillon red.  She is joined by a young man, and I pour him a taste, and then for her the taste of a comparable wine, the Minervois, Paraza, which she prefers.    Will they order food, who knows.  People are being sphinxes tonight.  A younger man comes up and seats himself by the window after the other couple has left.  He looks out the window.  Okay.   I let him sit there.  "He had a glass of wine downstairs.  He's waiting for someone," Jeremy tells me.

The local lady comes in with a tale from the art studio of breaking a glass shelf, and the bar is full with kibitzing.  Jake finally orders a rose.  Fine.  Run out the clock.

9:10, the kitchen closing, Jeremy informs me, when he comes by to stand at the bar's mouth and talk with local lady, helping out with wiping down the clean glassware from the washer.

At 9:03 M the busboy man comes up and tells me, kitchen close at 9.  Okay.   And just a good five minutes later, Cisco shows up with two young women friends.  To drag my night out.  I can barely look up.  "Kitchen's closed," I mutter.  He goes down the stairs and soon comes back up, and then he's behind the bar getting plates, silverware napkin set-ups, three of them, bread and butter.  No, don't do this to me...   Soon a plate of escargot, and two onion tarts arrive.  And then a salmon entree.  And I'm pretty exhausted at this point, having dealt with the holiday weekend... followed by jazz night, some crazy shifts.

I am frustrated by this move, and mom is on the line and I'm trying to explain where her phone charger might be.  No option, but to turn to the bottles and pour myself some red.

I clean the kitchen counters when I get home, I go take a walk down to the woods on a bluff, one deer running away, another invisible in the bushes puffing a warning at my closeness.  In my bedeviled mood I come upon one of those red Uber slightly powered bicycles and figure out how to take it for a spin, unimpressed with its pickup, but taking it off road for a whoop and I flush a young deer out of a field and feel like a bad intruder upon the night's peace.  Back in the apartment, I eat chicken salad from the Korean market and have more wine and damn I'm still frustrated.  Happens every time, every single time.  The last people, and when I go to work next day my shoulders hang down defeatedly, and it's going to be a busy night too.



In a dream between Tuesday and Wednesday I am with my family, brother, mother, father.  Or perhaps just by brother.  We are in Utica, in the midst of a tour of the grand old Italian restaurants there, and in the dream mind they are palaces, with great buffet like feasts laid out with tomato sauce gravy and cheeses and meats and all things, rigatoni, greens, meatballs, sausages...  And one, after seeing all number of magnificent dining rooms well-attended to, the last one is like a great theater, with a magnificent mansion like entrance of steps up to the grand doors, and inside a great well-lit lobby almost with a fountain and people have their pictures taken in grand style.  Not bad for old Utica.

And then the iPhone is rumbling silently and Mom is calling and with a dry voice I answer, and "did I wake you up..."


It turns out the fourteen in the back are familiar, members of the Norwegian military attache, largely, dressed in plain clothes, or maybe they are in a private enterprise now, but anyway, many of them very tall and beards and strong manly faces, Vikings.  Friends, straight forward, easy to deal with.  I get their wine order, running down to the basement to grab the Sancerre Reverdy Ducru with the yellow orange label and also the 2017 Gigondas, La Formoune, stopping to get cold bottles from MR, server of the main dining room floor from the cooler, four of the reds under my arms, running back upstairs and opening them up, then going down the table, who wants white, who wants red...   Mineral water served.

The day off, I finally warm to it later in the afternoon before going out for a walk in the light and then round to the little market for cold cuts and wine after taking in the river.  I wear my puff down light jacket and a winter hat for the first time in a long time.  The noise of the stone mason's saw follows me, and so do the thoughts in my head of a certain kind that make you feel down about yourself and where you are in life as an attempted adult with his fool habits, but also thoughts that are part of a stream, as well, a stream that leads one to try to wrap his head around the Transcendent thoughts of Buddha and what-not.  Things are, in the final analysis, projections from the mind, consciousness, in other words, as I walk slowly down by the woods, considering the Lankavatara Sutra.

My father wrote me, after he'd read my book, his analysis, which was that the main character is a Theosophist, one who is grappling with larger issues such as what comprises the nature of reality.  Of course, the Princess, the Beautiful Girl in the text, with whom one would want the things of a good relationship with, perhaps even she in time turns into less of a reality and more of a figment of the once imagination, know what I mean?  Something by which a Buddhist point is examined by, why make such a big deal...  And the Buddha considers this a very serious and central lesson for us here in the world...

And furthermore, as is more or less outlined in the Sutras, Lankavatara and other, that the whole point is to be the teacher teaching such a fine point, so as to liberate the suffering.  Hmm.

Much ado about nothing...  Nothing is but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare put in to his plays.