And then, and now, for the dreaded first sentence.

Invited by a West Coast friend into a little Zoom happy hour sort of a thing around ten at night, after an afternoon in the sun on the bluff doing some excellent connected yoga.  Dialed in, as they say.  I hold my Lotus for an amazingly long time, plus two good headstands, one of them doing some upside-down walking, which is strenuous and kind of fun.  You should have fun, when you can, with yoga, throwing in a little imaginative variety into your poses.

But I'm not impressed with myself when I get up.  Too much wine, and the same old blah feeling, waking up at noon, and then in such a low state all the failures of life creep into your low mind like old water flowing downhill, so I get up, look for green tea and some carbonation, and something to eat.  I drank a lot of water yesterday.  That was good.  I made a good new friend, it seems.  That was good.  The day starts with a call from mom, "who's going to take me home?"

Today, though, it's overcast.  One feels foolish, stupid, prodigal.  Anxiety rises with you as you make tea.  "It must be because of some effort on my part last night to banish the dark thoughts, and whatever effort you make of numbing the mind with wit, supposed wit, the dark doesn't go anywhere, just waiting for you in the morning..."  I think, cleaning out some of yesterday's mugs and dishes with the Dobie Pad in the RubberMade little tub in the sink with nice suds.  Something's got your ire up, in this whole long story of mine akin to The Vanity of Duluoz.

"Such as it is with women, with girls, you can never fix the mistakes you make in real time, and to try and fix those mistakes, once made, forget it, you'll only made it worse and yourself into a creep by doing so, even if you're trying to be as noble as a person can," my thoughts go, as I brew the tea in the old green chipped-now pot.   And, "yeah, poverty, that's kind of the deal, part of the writer's exploration."

But I say, yes, things are prodigal in nature.   Back at my quiet little not quite miserable Ikea coffee table with its plexiglas top, wth my mug before me, a little cloud of Ashwagandha powder arises after I drop in half a teaspoon into my cup of tea.  And now I stir, letting my iPhone dial mom's home number on speaker phone.   Yes, there was the little mouse again, visiting like a shadow last night.  I try not to live like a slob, but there are little piles here and there of books, and books in boxes.

Maybe this whole pandemic disaster will increase the forgiveness ratio in humanity.


Out further in day, I take the trash out, the tall kitchen white garbage bag now about half full, beginning to present aromas, with thoughts of discouraging my little mouse friend from her nocturne visits.

A nice old friend on Facebook remembers me as quiet and understated, but very funny, that she had her friend had a crush on me during our high school play, Oliver.


The thoughts are still with my old habits of masochism, of not participating in life, being passive, submissive, retiring, when you should be out there using all your energies and talents...  but maybe it is the tale of one of those talents sort of seizing upon me, taking hold, a strange fascination...  The dark daimon of literary effort.

When you're young you can romanticize a low income as part of the moral and upright life.  But later on you'll begin to see that as laziness, as off-putting, as a foolishness, the taking of wooden nickels... life's wooden nickels.



You mature as a writer.  You converge with life, in your work, on small scale and on the larger.  Would I have thought it worth all the trouble, starting out, probably not.

I'm doing yoga now, every day I can, and I am amazed by the changes, all of it working on me.

This has been a fresh chance, a chance to focus, all coming about as a result of the COVID-19.  Creatively, I could take a shot at breathing again, might have saved my health too, because it all takes time, and energy, a lot of it.

Can one ever view his life on a purely spiritual terms, as in the reason and meaning behind your own full existence, which he can never consciously know.  Only in special circumstances.

Am I sorry?  I might have a lot, a lot to be sorry about.  You pick up the pieces, and it's all intense.

The problem is always the gift, the talent, the individual's basic and inherent nature.  And the gift, just as life itself, is a matter of the soul, involving the spiritual realm.

And so one needs the appropriate form in which to explore this, say, or call it, the daily adventures and journey of the soul within.   Such a thing has no patent, no copyright, no established ownership, but through the little personal models that have glimmered out of sensitive people and made it on to page.  An act of self-love.

My brother calls, to catch up on all this, the COVID.


One wonders, how of all creatures of nature, the birds, all of them know what they are doing, what their business is, what to do.  And we it seems do not.  We must be clever and professional.

But green thoughts bud in my mind.