Haven't had much time nor energy to be "creative," by which I mean, writing the crap I write here.

But it soothes somehow.  Even when you got nothing.  Even when regret is the first impulse of the day.  Work past that.

The soles of my feet are stiff and sore when I wake.  I walk to Georgetown, having been summoned by my brother without much notice to come down early to my nephew's birthday party, to drive my niece in the Range Rover back to the house;  she has the flu, contagious.  Inwardly, I grown.  I don't enjoy driving the truck through the narrow streets of Georgetown particularly with church-going traffic.  Then later, after an hour and a half or so, I will drive my niece back, and miss the party I was to go to earlier anyway.  Thanks for the help.  Sure.  I'm tired, from sleeping too much in the depressions of my own quiet solitary weekend in which I miss the visit of an old friend in town.  I walk up to work, knowing what a lovely time it was being with my niece, as she went about her school business.  Something grounding about being with young people, the peace they keep, the steadfast focus.


The trees over the river on both banks are bare now, the taller buildings of Arlington, VA, exposed now, naked their structures of right angle and clean-cut economic value.  A solitary Friday afternoon walk, as the sun nears setting over the ridge to the south, the parkway exposed, and I'm still sort of hungover from the date I fell for and the fool wine consumption to get through the foreign feeling and being questioned, sized up by my politically-involved acquaintance.  Just another dumb thing I've done.  The falseness of attachment.


And going to work, too, Sunday evening, my Monday morning, I feel stupid too, and lacking in energy, preparing for the tediousness of setting up, and I'm there now and already putting the bar into place and getting ready for the annual visit of the lady who brings in a dozen or so art curators and museum directors, notes of a vague hostility toward me as the sort of outsider left alone upstairs, being in such a weary mood before the door opens, wondering what I have to deal with, never predictable.  Down to the basement, to get a fresh supply of olives.  Restock the maraschino cherries. Finding cocktail shakers left out over night, still wet and sticky.  An update on the rodent wars from the boss, as he brings up a reserve coat rack for the fancy people of art.  L(M) will do the party, the boss tells me, much to my relief.  "Yeah, that's how I should have turned out, being an art critic, or something.

It all passes, my energy, relieved, improves, and after closing the place down and the lights all off, I set the alarm code, and out to get some groceries with a little list in my pocket, up a block and a half at the Safeway monster.  Then with many bags, giving my simpatico Uber driver a V8 can from my haul, I lug my stuff in, tea, cheese, cold cuts, hummus, lentil soup, bone broth, black-eyed peas, magnesium and B12 tablets, groaning as I mount the stairs of the apartment building.

I plop down, after doing the dishes in the rubber made tub finally, and my mind turns to Shane MacGowan's upcoming performance on RTE Irish television, Fairytale of New York, and the story of the creativity behind it.  They watched Once Upon A Time In America, taking in its Morricone soundtrack, back then on the tourbus, their first trip to America...  There is something that transcends or bypasses conventional language story-telling meaning to the lyrics...  I too could not do it without something like wine.


To write, as such, is a barren craft, as if it were fishing in waters devoid of anything worth catching.   You get the bones up first, then embellish with sinew and organs.  No wonder the first animal beings of nature are so strange and ugly in shape, in need of evolving.  Nature traces its path even for the poor wandering writer.

Writing too, whatever story might yield from any of it in any way, must be done with the same circumspection toward language as the Buddha noted.   In that the human mind has a great tendency to place all sorts of judgments, often dualistic in nature, this is good, that is bad, when in reality no one thing has any more significance than its own chaos, its own unpredictability, its own refusal to abide by exterior terms and values.

This is what the poor devil the honest writer is born unto.   And any writer that would attempt to nail down any concrete notion, such as happy or sad, will have missed the mark of what reality is comprised of.

This is what the work, the role of the writer is ultimately that of a Buddhist, and strangely, the things of his own life begin to fit into that tradition...

It's a scary realization, that in his best efforts what he was at all along was to embrace the crucial tenets of Buddha thought, all of which themselves are scary to the mindset, as a divorce from the meaning in terms like good and bad.