So I turned to yoga.  That seemed to be the best thing I could do at such a point.


I got up after Betsy texted me.  I wasn't about ready to get up, but I wasn't doing anything but lying there anyway, so I got up, walked on sore feet into the little galley kitchen, found a wine bottle with yesterday's dragonwell tea in the fridge, not much of it, turned the burner on below the orange kettle. The old green tea pot, beat up now, the end of the spout chipped off, put back on with super glue several times but now left separate in the cupboard.

I call mom and got her new helper on the phone, about to go out to lunch, mom calm and happy.

Then out across the street to the little market.  I'd left the two small containers of chicken salad, one regular, one curry in the cooler at work, after I came back from the Safeway around 1 AM, finding the wine bar smelling heavily with gas and a small rat stuck to the glue board underneath the back counter, sorting my groceries as to what would come with me on the cab home.  I heard the rat chewing on something, possibly trying to find a way into the stove for bread crumbs.   The rat squeaks after I turn away from it, standing up from my crouch with my iPhone flashlight.  Help.  I would like to save it somehow, which you can do by putting soap on the creature, putting the glue board outside back in the alley, but I'm too done at this point.  The Uber driver in small Mercury four-door turns out to be a man about to go back to Jordan and start his business with all its risks.  I've got some V8, some shaved beef, grass-fed beef organic hotdogs, an onion and an orange sweet pepper.

Out across the street to the Korean market to start my day.  Roast beef, a small head of romaine, a cup of coffee, chicken curry salad, I take a little walk around the block overlooking the river.  The ragweed pollen is still in the moderate to high range, but I need to taste the air coming in from the distant sea...


And now it feels good, in a simple way, to be writing again.  It feels good for the old paws as I sit on the old leather couch, hunched over like St. Jerome, my fingertips on the keys of the hand-me-down MacBook Pro, having turned off public radio after listening to Kojo Nnamdi with a panel on the DC food scene, something I should take a professional interest in.

What thoughts were deeper, I don't know.  The radio drowned them out.

I get out with my yoga pad under the pines.  A five minute headstand, after warm up poses, dog poses, warrior poses, pigeon...  lotus.  I wear a little mask, like nurses wear, to keep the pollen away.


A healing time...  under which I do not really care to write anymore.


At night, there is Kerouac's verbosity, nice to listen to as one winds down, not having too much wine, picking up the apartment...  Desolation Angels, his turn to brief chapters of prose poems.   You can read them in backwards order or forward.


Jury duty looms next week, Monday 8 AM.  Calling mom, but she's lonely, and says she's been up since 5 waiting for her men to come.  Hurry up and wait, she says, tiring...    RBG at Amherst, an accomplished person whereas I am about the biggest bum you could possibly be, by such standards, having completely abdicated my responsibilities as the student of American history I once was.



So I go out across the street for a coffee, to quell my anxieties by being seen in public and interacting with fellow beings, who also are nervous.

My own silly life...

Am I a more ecological being than my fellow Westerner, not having a car, not having "a real job," not having "made something of myself..."  I take my silly little walks under the trees and and along the path on the bluff above the old river.    The essence of my not fitting in...