"It's your art form," people began to tell me, mid December, as I worked my way through busy nights, left to my own devices on suddenly busy Tuesday night wine tasting, on Jazz Nights too busy, with big parties back in the wine room, the barman left to cover the bar and the front tables, one busboy between floors, running food, taking the stacks of dirty plates from the milk crates under the bar rail down through the main dining room and back through the two way swinging kitchen door, too busy just doing that to do more or be more attentive to little needs like lack of spoons...  By Wednesday, pretty fried, and a warning from the doctor concerning the liver...

Then the day off, in the monk's solitary quiet, tiredly awake, drinking green tea, and the attempt to get back toward some useful enabled form of writing out my thoughts, such that they could be gently kept, a wild baby from nature brought into society and civilization...  with quiet Buddhist thoughts about the shortage of language to arrive at anything accurate, easily truthful, the inability of dualistic conceptions to describe anything if one were to try to do so.

The animal wants to stay away from words, particularly the random, the words and messages of other human interests, reference points, speech, just in order to find his own thoughts, hiding, flirting, dashing away into the woods frighted by the possibility of discovery...  And the physical burden of four nights, two long, two exceptionally long, just to put the bar back in clean order after scrambling to provide all that might be asked for... from sparkling wines to specific cocktails...

And people telling me, seeing me uncharacteristically without much humor all of a sudden as I fret to bring them what they want, pulling in their orders out of the chaos, remembering to put them in through the computer screen's ordering system, two onion soup, positions one and three, after the charcuterie, and the wine order, and taking payment with credit card swipe from another table with the other hand, then turning to entertain the folk at the bar...  telling me that I work hard...

And the nice woman at the end of the night, whose husband is home sick, and she used to run a jazz program for the Smithsonian...   "This is your art form, you make the place happen..."

And I'm too tired to be embarrassed by the praise, as I am still even at my age, figuring out what it is that I am doing, what I should be doing, where to go, by understanding where I am now.

Accept yourself as an artist as a psychologically healthy thing to do, thou art that which is.

It was only because of the judgment of whether or not a thing is good or bad, rather than just accepting things as they are in their own nature, that makes one feel down.  A therapist will emphasize the negative feelings, when actually you have within a brilliant way of coping with such things.

And actually, you begin to see the positive, revealed over time, the extremism of other people, the Princess crying "racism" where none exists.  Who would want to live with that?  I wouldn't.  (Her reaction to the Peloton ad, decrying that a Northern European looking male should be present with a 'non-white' woman?)

I had found a way, natural enough, of surrounding myself with the decency inherent in people, when I needed them.  The artist had created a little shell to protect himself.

Give me the simple and decent people, the kind Jesus had a fondness for, for the people who represent the great genetic variety of humanity, each one different once viewed from personal perspective, having gotten to know them a little bit.

Ask yourself any question...  am I effective, or not effective?  am I helpful, or not?  It only matters the perspective from which one choses, really...


The day off, I venture out for a walk around the block.  The great river, laid bare, at dusk, the little market for a sub.  Chon Pam, or Jom Pam, or Jhon Bam, or add heseyo at the end to make the wish Good Evening more formal, as if addressing a respected elder.  Joh-eun Bam.