For thirty years, I listened to people talking.  Then one day, the job, such as it was, disappeared.  And I had nothing to show for it.

I entered a dark night of the soul.

Writing, it's always there for you when you come back to it, like a dog who misses you.  I didn't want to be writing any more, but there it was, an old friend, a tool in the darkness.

My own dark night of the soul happened to coincide with my mother's issues.


The irony, in such a state as the world fell into, I found that I suddenly had no one to talk to.  All I had was the river bluff, a walk to take, yoga.  No talking to any strangers, as I had always been able to do.  It was an odd situation, and there was no real way to fight it.  Who would want to talk with an unemployed 55 year old who'd fallen from grace anyway...  a writer... an out of work neighborhood barman...  no decent folk would want any part...


But as I do my yoga and sit in lotus pose, in meditation, after mountain, tree, warrior, shoulder stand, plough, it's the judgmental quality of human nature that comes out, striking me as not necessarily worth subscribing to.  My own self-judgments have always haunted me, but, healthier to let them go, to let the judgmental go the path of the judgmental, people of the past, the scars and pain caused by them, not by me.


Drinking...  I loved the Jesus aspect of it.  But, but once you started, once you had one sip, then you had to keep it up, and then it was too much and you felt lousy the next day.  And you got sick and tired of being sick and tired.   You wake with a haze over the evening's conversation, a false agreeable mode you'd been in, sure...  Part of your inability to do much besides being a people pleaser.

Listen to your gut, my old neighbor, a psychologist offers to me, and he too is concerned with me and my welfare.  He reads Marcus Aurelius to me, stoic influenced stuff.  He shares with me a bit of his dinner from the pan on the stove, cooled down, Trader Joe's Fettucini Alfredo with grilled chicken breast strips, also from the frozen section, with the asparagus he cooked in.  And when you're drinking wine, your stomach needs something.  The pasta soothes.  He had an encounter with Tony Perkins once.  He remembers the Kennedy assassination for me, and how the city has changed in his lives here.  Mom calls in the course of our conversation.  "You need a protective armor," he says, gesturing toward his breast, as I mention my stress.


Mom has called, at 4:30 in the morning, to tell me that she is okay where she is, okay good, and then she calls again, at 9 AM, so that's how my day starts, with her sharp at me, I can't help it, because I ask her if she is keeping her iPhone charged, but she can't do that because "that's back at her real home and she's not there," and am I coming today to take her back there...  And I don't much want to get up out of bed and face the day anyway, even though there's a farmer's market just a twenty minute walk up past the reservoir, good eggs, good meats, I got my own significant problems though anyway, would be a possible definition.  What the hell am I going to do now, now that I don't have a job, and don't even want to be the touted wine expert, I don't care too much about that...

It's overcast anyway, and cooler, so yoga outdoors doesn't look like the top thing to be doing today anyway, and maybe I'll brush my teeth after a little chicken salad, a little tuna salad, both from the little deli, as I drink a fresh pot of green tea, yes.

A few books to read, maybe.

That's the lousy way I start my day, my whole life false, full of falsenesses, and I don't even want to deal with anybody, it seems like.  I wake up with the tea, and the phone rings again.   The cat has disappeared.  I tell her to look around, maybe he's sleeping up on the bed, given the weather.

I call her again, after several tries to get through.  Mom has found her cat, I discover, and after that, I need a nap.  The cat is wet.  She wants to towel him off, but he resists.  Yeah, cat's are like that.  I know, she says.


Maybe the thing is, I don't want to drink anymore, I don't know.  That's what my heart tells me some mornings, thump thump thump.

After the nap, I dial mom's landline, and this time she's not so happy.  No crackers in the house.  Only half a bottle of wine.  I gently ask her to look around, the check in the fridge, for food, wine...  She's losing weight she says, "because there's no food in the house!"

"I'll just kill myself," she says, and after I order her groceries on line, which won't come in these times for five more hours, and a Chicken Parm sandwich and wings from her local Dominoes for something more immediate, I foresee some wine in my future, after a walk on a dreary day...

And I'm a shitty writer with nothing to say.  Today and every day.

It's always something, these days.  It's always something.


I call mom back, after giving her time to eat.  She is a lot better, in a more cheerful mood, her voice energetic.