Well, you outgrow things.  That's how it goes.  Maturity.  Hard-earned, only through time and experience.  The clues are out there.  And sifting, slowly, through reality in all its bits and pieces, you come upon a kind of information that relieves, that explains, that shows out who people are, shows what is or was at work in a situation.

I had never thought of her as harsh, but other people saw it, and where I just shrugged, that's life, eventually, well, I saw it too, her ability to take exception, to make vast charges of a cultural conspiracy, one generally based on a kind of militant Virgo dislike of white men, as white men are inherently corrupt and party to the great racist structures that exist to tear down all that is feminism.  I had been in her cross hairs, and it was an unpleasant place to be, irksome, tedious, crazy-making, maddening.  You couldn't win.  I wrote about it.  Mind you, I have nothing against her.  I still would consider her a friend, it just that it is I am quite thankful I am not part of that thing with her anymore. We were both kids back then.  You can't blame young people, for such mistakes, you forgive.  Except that with her, in her world view, there could never be any forgiveness.  Whereas I believe, though I might be lazy for doing so, forgiveness is what it is all about.  Anyway...  I have my own problems, much the same perhaps, but just not involving her anymore.  I woke up.  Finally.  Don't be so hard on yourself.  And thus, I don't think of her anymore, or at least not in the same way, as, so I have said, my life has moved on to quite more distinct and serious problems that have nothing to do with anything as frivolous as trying to please anyone external, anyone like her, with her fancy city life and imperious being.

And these days, given the great speed-up, and the consequent removal of much of actual life, the way we used to live it, in common places, on common ground, over landline telephones that had not the scope of the personal cellular computerized phone, unfortunately, or fortunately, you come across the mind of other people, old acquaintances...  Just through the way it all works, through a sort of agreed upon spying, a sort of odd presentation of personal thought and private life over the new phone lines...  as if we were all going back to the insect life, droning on through the trees in summer like electric current.

Anyway, that is my long introduction to the current moment, to memories of the experiences of the last week.  Which, in my case, are out on the sailing ship in the watery part of the world that is my little eye on the restaurant business, hospitality, they call it, for that is what it truly is, an odd legacy of an ancient world, an ancient agreement, where, in which, one comes to be waited on, to have a desirable meal served to them in a pleasant way, with the addition of having the choice of being able to ignore the basic spiritual message potentially in the server serving, or to participate, to gain through that subliminal message, one not for away from the heart of the basic Buddhist activity...   You feed me, present me a bill, I pay the bill, I put a tip on top of that, and in the payment, the monk's food bowl is filled.

It was a miscalculation on my part.  To be a part of that.  But, so was it a miscalculation on the behalf of Ishmael...

So there I am, Tuesday night wine tasting, and it's getting quite busy.  They could have had Jeremy come, but no, and now it's full downstairs, the regulars are having 'round the bar, I'm taking the overflow...  the old one busboy, shared up and down...  And then the Tributaries of Chaos team arrives just as about the ship is about to take on Cape Horn's treachery, and I'm familiar with about 90 percent of all the people and in most cases knowing them quite well and having waited on them for years, with years of mutual stories shared of paths joined, how could you not and be doing your job.  The waiter server barman who gave a shit...  Who become a repository, a guardian of all this mutually added to body of personal contemporary history...

And in the midst of it all, on top of two nice phone calls from mom, uh, mom, yes, I'm at work, it's pretty busy...  (damn, I forgot to decant the bottle of Bordeaux for 43...)  On top of that, a message from the doctor, Dr. Patel, finally, getting back to me here in December on the results from my physical and the jarring LabCorps report item about my GGT level....    So, there's his message, which I have figured out, because I'm completely too busy and engaged in all the conversations and the traffic flow and do they want dessert or more to drink and if so what, and how to make it happen, and this while I'm running around like a silent film comedian with Keaton-like stunts.

Then throw into that mix the return of old friends, a community celebrating its connections, on top of that, here come along the holiday, Christmas...  Travel, presents...


And then Wednesday, after all this, too much...  It gets to be a late night, for the reward of a small easy going friendship...


Then from that, from all that, then dropped down late at night, in the early morning, to finally slump on the old leather couch. and after four nights, just lying there still is a nice thing, a pleasant reward completely sufficient to itself, along with something easy to find to eat.  I figure I have Ken Burns, The  Civil War dvd ready whenever I might like to view it for the thousandth time...but, on top of doing Vonnegut schoolboy afternoon things, as he put it, "jerking off and making model airplanes," I've had this bent toward the Lankavatara Sutra, and you can find D.T. Suzuki's introductions and summary of its basic point easily enough, acknowledging the insufficiencies of language...  And that also, or maybe this is the main point, don't get ahead of yourself trying to impose any artificial understanding or value judgment, because you're just going to make yourself frustrated and sad that things aren't working out, such that you're a financial genius with lots of people beckoning to your powers... societal rewards of security and friendship and thing that are far away (and yet maybe not) from the monkish life...  So you just have to go at things with some sort of positive, as best you can, attitude...



Good karma or bad karma...  who knows...