Blogger had logged me out of my account as the holidays arrived.  I had zero energy to be wrangling with passwords on top of gifts and the vagaries of a physical job.  There were tasks weighing on me, going up to pick up mom and bringing her down, work over the holiday nights, then after the family celebration at my brother's, getting her back and then making it back to work, which I managed to do, just barely.  And then you begin to clean up after the holidays, after all that time on the road...

"It is not easy being a saint," I said, at one point, and my mom said, "write that down, that's a good start to a book right there."

I used to write in legal pads, with a Parker Jotter ball point pen, and while I liked the privacy of the notebook, there is something to be said for typing it out as far as a way to access the mind's stuff.  Blogging is not the same thing as the illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells, but, if it's what you got, it's what you got.

So, I pack up mom into the car, say goodbye to my brother's family.  My brother helps me with getting mom into the rented Nissan Rogue, and when I get in, she's in tears, "I see so little of him."  I roll down the window as we pass his front steps, and sternly he waves me on.  After everyone had left after the Christmas feast of rib roast, turnip, potato, after cleaning the dishes, putting away the nice porcelain, my brother and I sit at the kitchen table, a Brandy and Benedictine for each of us, some jokes.  We talk.  He emphasizes the thing he often tells me, that he doesn't care, he does not care, and, later, the day after Christmas, a dump truck pulling up behind me, and men shouting, I can see it on his face as I drive away, above the construction noise, right, on 30th, then down to busy M Street, then out west out of Georgetown to the quiet Palisades.  "Get me out of here," I say to myself, passing all the weary material store fronts promising this or that.  I still have to go get some things from my apartment, on the way anyway, and then on the road.  I am relieved by the point we are back in the quiet of my new neighborhood.

We stop at Gettysburg, for some fresh air, after Christmas Day and Night and the big dinner had come and gone, first to the McDonald's at the edge of the old battlefield, and then for a quiet slow drive around, Longstreet's position there on the right, then down through a dell, then up to the Roundtops, looking down on The Slaughterpen and the boulders of Devil's Den below, reading the informative National Park Service placards.  The air, clean and the sun out, making all the dried grasses the dominant textural color, and mom in her long purple overcoat, is deeply effected by it, and then we get back on the road, getting into Oswego just before Nine PM, looking for something to eat and a glass of wine, Canale's just about to close and no one paying a word of attention to us, so we to the good old Press Box, which is quiet too, but open till Ten, for the usual, glasses of wine, chicken wings, a burger for me, fajita for her, and when we got back to the house there finally, I came in and saw that the cat has passed away, laid out near the old Eames Chair, half of her body on a green towel we will have to throw away later, her body not cold yet, still a gleam in her eyes...

I was going to leave Saturday afternoon, but after some wet vac rug-cleaning after the poor old cat's passing and mom beginning to cry, about how sad I was at lunch, or depressed, not wanting the visit to end this way, we had the left-over homemade Canale's fettucini and meatballs and some wine for dinner, then I crashed, then I got up early and got on the road, nervous about everything, but able to put it all together, on the road by 8:15 AM, having to be at work at 4:30PM, as I listen in on an NPR story about The Battle of the Bulge, and before that, an interesting piece from Studio 360 on Kubrick's 2001.

There had been feelings of despair, and I soldiered through them, and I dropped off my suitcase and canvas shoe-bearing tote-bag, and managed to make it to work.

Reflections, too personal to share.


There is some truth, one discovers, to Jesus' take upon the rich man, that it is poorer folk who end up providing most of the love and care for those in need.  The eye drawn to the things of wealth is less likely to find within a heart that reaches out in kindness.  The materialist professional of the modern city returns to his prominence, apparently accustomed to caring little more for another being than to find a way to use him for an unwanted task.

These things must be observed up close, personally for us to see them, to be able to make sense of them.   A general commentary, an observation, hardly worth noting given the way the world works, but yet, revolutionary.  Re-arriving at something you'd long pondered, took as some sort of truth, and yet now it rings out of the Gospels with expansive applicability...  And all of a sudden the light broke into a way you could see it, the basic truth by which to make sense out of just about every human interaction you'd had with the people you've encountered over the years.


I too have material sin...I suppose, things I do to counter, to put away, to forget the strains, the thoughts of bad choices...  wine, to numb the pains mental and physical, late night soothing after the crowds leave, after dodging everyone trying to do their jobs in and out of the small bar space...  hedonism.  Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, and those who sit in the foremost pews, the prominent respectable citizens of model lives (viewed from the exterior)  would be quick to point out my ridiculousness, my poor behaviors, my friendships with the sinful and the crass, my indulgent propensities... my use of language unsuitable for polite company, all of that.


What emerged into the observational mind was the realization of a vast hypocrisy, a deeply seated willing capability of cruelty on the parts of those acting on economic privilege, with the desire for material benefit.  Church is not for the poor people, though it helps them too, but really for the wealthy, to remind them of something.

My back hurts, strained by a very busy and bitter night up at the wine bar, the rookie 18 year old server coming upstairs finally to help us out, dodging, anticipating, delivering drink order, taking food orders, keeping the bar checks straight.  I have to go in early, to get the bar ready, decorated with balloons, for New Years Eve, serving another special menu.   Another long dragged out night...

Another night I have some wine to ease the pain of standing before people, getting them what they want out of the offered choices...  I'm told the kitchen is closed by the time I want to order something.    It's a long day, the jazz trio doing the countdown for us.

I pack up hastily at the end of New Years Eve shift to join the boys, down to Martin's Tavern after it all, a Guinness.  At this point, people do not care much about the bartender, a sturdy flush cheeked man, but more about their drinks.  My boys give me a ride back to the apartment.


We don't get the miracles.  We don't get much from Jesus.  We don't get the solutions to our problems.  But we do get something.


"As long as you have your integrity..." my mom offers, still rendering good advice for me, even as I am poor, too poor to help her out any better than I can.

And so I fail, fail by the ways of the world, but still making the good fight, to be right.

The thoughts come now as a rain storm, as weather, random, a wind first, then the first physical touch...  I remember the night before, two true nice men who seat at the bar here before me for the New Year's Eve dinner, familiar, one an Irish face, white hair, Irish kindness, and John, from Louisville, Kentucky, they've come down from Grosvenor, we weave in and out of conversation as the night picks up, the big Russian kid moving slowly, getting in the way, a man of not many words--he wants to be let go early, because New Year's Eve is a big thing for Russian--and amongst things Louisville is Thomas Merton, and on top of talking of food and travels, this too is a hit, a silent retreat, yes, maybe some day, wouldn't that be nice.

Maybe I have emphasized the wrong thing, thinking it honorable to work, a sloppy disconcerting disrupting waste of good energy, sometimes, pearls before swine, kindness to people who do not really need it, who are intent on a product to consume, an opiate, a physical pleasure, the release of the verbosity of the mind.  So one thought goes.

People from humble places, with less the distractions, they get it, and somehow as you grope your own blind way out in this world, when you need it, I hope, I suppose, they find you, you get a bit of their light too, when your own gets dimmed.  And you can say, yes, I was right all along, not a fool to have struggled through the reading of A Seven Story Mountain, and all the spiritual stuff we can say, "but oh, that's crap, it don't get you anywhere..." about, but which is there as a help, even just to flag your disappointments in life, from not getting the memo, grab what you can of that which is offered up...  Because we are all fools, sometimes, or at least I am, maybe because of believing in things in the first place...

Sometimes you get shy, fearing that now, because of all the mud tossed upon your light, and your own submission to such treatments, because of all your failures, people won't recognize you, or that if they do, they might be horrified by your current appearance...

Our own living-out-imitations, our impersonations of Jesus or Buddha, are of course laughable, but, still, you have to follow the mind where it goeth...

Our own lives begin when we say, when we admit, "I'm nothing but a bum."  To get it, we have to be such.  We have to go through that, in order to awaken, and it's a hard place to admit to anyone, not solely for fear of how another person might react.  Deep down, they get it too, of they don't, then they are hard of heart and hypocritical, and need more time and karma to bring them by.

The reason we go through loneliness and suffering, anxieties, rejection...  so that we too would get it in our time.   And to say as much is to keep the writer's job, to the extent that he might have any science, medieval, or other, that you will always keep your song, even if other people might not get it, or let you play it, or be willing to listen.

It's New Years Day when I see my brother comes up on my phone ringer.  I pick up.  A small chorus of children's voices, Happy New Year, Uncle Teddy...  Then my brother takes over the phone, "how was the ride back..."  Hm, hum, yes, yes, well, this and that...  "You should take that photo down... (of mom's deceased cat, I put on Facebook, as a tribute to a fine cat and life in general, and to that old 19th Century familiarity with death and its poetry, and to its mysteries...)  You knew that cat was dead, right...   If he were present physically, I would be staring at his broad cold face.  Yes, I knew.  "Did you take a picture of mom together with the dead cat?" he asks.  "Sure," I tell him, "in the rocking chair, just like Psycho."