The job, I observed, had me cowed.   Physically.  The women I worked with were, had to be, strong people, strong minded, strong physically.   And sometimes it felt like to me, and this is part of my psychology, they had me in a corner, out of which I had to apologetically go about the business of getting my job done, accepting their attitude and opinions, a sort of just shut up and do your job and get through it.  And then when after they had gone home and I was closing, some relief from the bosses.


And so without it, in this uncertain break of the pandemic outbreak, I got to know my body again.  And when I went to bed, then was awake early, I would be able to get up out of bed, at 6 AM.  And again, as I might have once been able to do, I was able to just sit down and write, letting things sort themselves out.

I was back doing yoga, outdoors, a necessary back-drop of inspiration on some organic level I both could and could not, on a deeper level, explain.  The yoga was sore and slow.  And I wondered, as I groaned my way through the old poses, "what have I done to my body over the winter?" feeling ashamed of myself.  Yes, maybe there had been some stresses taken up and in, internalized.  My left shoulder, tight.  My belly, in the way.

Doing yoga helps you control your appetites.  It aids you in seeking what to do with yourself as the world swirls around you, as you seek a quiet place, to take it day by day, not hurting yourself nor anyone else.

The whole city, it seemed to me sometimes, was full of domineering types, people of logic who had found it necessary to shut themselves, to compartmentalize, to put themselves, as we must, separate from others.  Which made them not very conversational.  There were of course the people of the proverbial other side of town, service people, like the ones waiting out there on the same bus line as I, in their hospital blues, their crossing guard jacket and pants, security guards.   And there I was, in the middle.  Like my mom, able, and fond of starting up conversation wherever possible and potentially friendly.

I'm waiting for the bus and an older local gentleman in dusty blue, reflective vest, hardhat, boots, ambles by, returning back up the sidewalk with carry-out soup.  I'm trying to get into work, as the boss has asked me to come, to write some copy describing the different dishes, to promote the new delivery and carry-out trade.  "Nice day," the older gentleman offers, walking by slowly.  "Yeah, I'm a bartender, laid off, nice to see the daylight actually."  And he stops.  "Oh, yeah, I was too," he says.  Mm-hmm.  "I was an owner, of a club."  "Oh, man."  "Yeah, co-owner, for years...  a club.  We had four floors...  I got tore-up every night."  "It's hard not to," I nod, smiling, having found another soul on a hard day, not as sunny as the day before.  I ask him where he's working.  "I'm up at the corner." He's a quiet man.  He speaks slowly, formulating, putting his words together.    "I got to work.   Old man, have to."  "Yeah, you'd probably go nuts not working," I say.  "Good day to you," my new friend says, walking quietly, steadily away.  "Oh, are the busses running today," I say, frustrated with waiting, when already I could have simply walked and been there already.  Is it a Saturday metro bus schedule?  "Yeah, they've been running, all day."  "Thanks."

I get back to the apartment, feeling a bit depressed.  I'll be happy with my little blurbs and subtle polite tweaks of copy describing crusty boneless pig's feet, braised veal cheeks, salmon in potato crust, and other dishes, and how The Dying Gaul, after twenty-six plus years on Wisconsin Avenue, in the perfect neighborhood for it, is now on Instagram, as well as Facebook.  I'd walked back, talking to my aunt, and as soon as I got in, eyeing the couch for a little nap before the next effort, Mom calls again, again a little confused, "Eh, I'm not doing so well..."  But I'm gentle with her, as I putz in the kitchen, getting some hot water going again for an herbal tea, Moringa, or Dandelion Root, perhaps.  I patiently hear her out.  Maybe she's not been perfect about taking her vitamins and her little pill.  I feel I really should go visit her, though I know I should be looking for a job as well, and earlier in the day have gone through several websites, with new log-ins and passwords, and data-entry, and even a test, taken on my smartphone that determined I would not be good at grocery shelf stocking, a story I tell her, getting a chuckle out of her.  I've never even had a resume.  Shame on me.  I try to rectify this.  I have been very lazy, quite lazy about all this.   It's just that some of us don't always know what we are to do, what we need to do, what we should be doing, in the course of a day, and with a large enough of a psychological fault-line, that we think we might occupy ourselves fruitfully doing something completely on our own, like this, like writing, like "being a poet." Etc.


Well, it's overcast, rain will come later, and not particularly warm out, not in the friendly way it was yesterday, but I have a hooded SUNY OSWEGO sweatshirt on, Adidas track pants, and I don't even need a yoga mat anymore, I'm just going to go up on the bluff and do my yoga, and hopefully at least a headstand.  The workout of yesterday evening's yoga out in the late light of afternoon, a soft green day, with golden light in the clouds breaking through, and people out walking in couples and with dogs, some ambling in a jog along the old grassy trail that once was the streetcar trolley line out to Glen Echo, is still tight and sore in my muscles and joints and ligaments and all that.  I make a little joke to myself as I groan, straining at the weight of holding my arms at straight--remember when you were a kid and could run around so easily with arms outstretched pretending to swoop like a bird? well, it ain't so easy now, at least, at the beginning of the uncertain season--that I can call his "oh fuck this hurts" yoga.  It's very slow anyway.  I'm groaning away, and then it's mom on the phone again, but it's easier to reassure her this time, "you're okay, you're in the right place, there's wine there, things will be okay..."  We have another chuckle over something.  She's feeling pushed around.  Yes, we all feel that way, those of us low on the totem pole, with all the strain of uncertainty on everyone's minds, sure.  And I get now, how hard it is indeed to put words together, when there are so many in one's head to begin with...

Eventually it starts to sprinkle.  The fabric of my workout pants is too slippery for my foot to be planted on the inside of the opposite thigh under the crotch, sliding away each time, and unlike yesterday, having accomplished reasonably auspicious tree poses, it's not happening today, as I stand again barefoot on the clover chive grass looking down at the Gettysburg Battle Tree like trees, with the green murky river sinking into its own quiet mood, and the planes keep coming, as if on an invisible string extending all the way out west, with their landing gear down, going in my perspective so slowly that I'm reminded of a child playing with little toy car, rolling it along, just so.  Ah me...

I'm in lotus pose, the early in the season version, and I pull the warm hood over my head, and indeed I am a pretty good monk these days.

It's colder now, and dark enough now to appreciate the light of the street lamps.  The funny little friendly Jack Russel is sitting up in the window of a newly renovated house, and I limp along, all my connection muscles feeling pretty tight and pulled away from their usual lazy habits, and it takes some effort to walk the two blocks back to the avenue, then across the street, and reaching into my pouch pocket beneath my rain shell, to get my keys out.

I'm about to figure out a quiet bite to eat for dinner after all that,and from speaking to the boss as he hungrily ate his plate of rice, mushroom and spinach in the quiet of the backroom with the lights off, and as I relax some, the next apartment has a bass thumping going on.  I pour a glass of wine, and I get out the guitar, and I'm beginning to wonder, that perhaps glasses of wine put is into such a foreign place, that we exaggerate in our minds our own talents, even as we now are loosened up enough by that wine to woodshed, to go through, like the mockingbird, our little repertoires of song.

And anyway, from listening to all the birds as I settled into an okay I can do this yoga mood over up on the bluff, a robin precisely picking suddenly with beak into the grass just there not even deep, and up the bird pulls a worm, three inches long, and the bird takes it up like a strand of spaghetti, zup, listening to the birds, one hears where language came from.  A bird over on a wire somewhere, sings, "I miss You!" happily, sliding the note up playfully in emphasis.  Like the nice girlfriend I once had.



All the mad wino Shakespearean clown and hero and foil talents the human race thinks it has...  I stay up a bit, playing guitar and practicing my singing, still trying to find my voice, and when I wake, early I wonder, will the neighbor complain to the landlord, I tried to be quiet, I really did.

It's hard to not have a glass of wine, sometimes.  Does it do one any good, in the longer frame of time, or the next day?  Does it make you more efficient--perhaps not, but, a thing sent by God, as a gift from nature, a way of traveling vicariously, well, yes, hard not to, given the pressures on people, you, me, the poor people at their wedding...