So, I drove up on Good Friday, making good time on the quiet roads, getting in about 10 at night, the stretch of the road up from Fulton along the river, and then, past the cemetery, the river again, over the dam, bright colored lights marking the waterfall by the power plant on the other side, up over the bridge, past the Big M, and over up the quiet town streets and Ellen Street and around the curve to my mother's apartment in the Cedarwood Townhouses.


I end up staying from Easter weekend on past the next, driving back on Wednesday, leaving at 4 in the afternoon, the road endless and lonely again, back to what?  What am I going back to, what am I leaving...  A double Whopper in Great Bend, just over the Pennsylvania border...


I take the car back downtown, driving down Canal, onto the Whitehurst Freeway, past Georgetown and the broad river, past the Kennedy Center and the Watergate below, onto K Street, and on into the inner innards of the city grid, to the little parking garage on 14th, just above L, shedding the car with the rental company.

And then I walk back.  Crossing 16th, the White House to the south, along K Street and onto Pennsylvania Avenue, past the JFK church, Trader Joes, might as well, no line at the moment, just a few things, then through the checkout line, then back to the street into Georgetown, over to my brother's house to check on the mail in his house, and then after all that, walking back, rather than taking his SUV, walking back along Canal Road, and back to the little apartment building and the quiet life therein, still with my bags strewn about and laundry to do, and paperwork, and general disorganization, cleaning out the water pitchers the night before, and the late night grocery run while I still had the car, unnecessary, a waste of time, spending 120 bucks, the strangeness of a Safeway now, up late, woken by the blast of a generator motor power washing something below outside my bedroom window, drilling through me before I could finally wake.


So now you're back.  A damp day, go down for a walk along the bluff under the new leaf trees, the grass clover and wet, the whole readjustment thing, not so happy.  The accomplishment of making a beef stew, at least, and the end of the first night back.


And the walk even down by the river bluff is dull, damp, overcast the sky, even with the little buttercups having come, even with the new leaves, and I don't even want to do a headstand, after the 1 PM meeting over Zoom with my co-workers...  enough to raise my anxiety, when will the restaurant ever truly reopen, not that this is what I should be doing for work anyway.  I feel a distance from my old co-workers now.  What part of me wants much to do with that job anyway...


In the morning, as I get up, here, in my apartment, or up at my mother's, the two of us poor people now, the voices in my head when I awake ask, what happened to me?  Where did I go bad, where did I go wrong?  Where did I become self-destructive?  What happened with all those innate talents I never used nor cultivated enough...  I think of the girlfriends I could have had, who are now doing decently and well, married, children...  Not having anything to do with old bum bachelors...


Thursday, Friday, and now it's Saturday.  Just after noontime, I get out the front door of the little building to check on the weather, and there's my friend the psychologist, George, out for a walk.  He's reading Marcus Aurelius.  "I'm an introvert anyway, so it's not so hard for me as it might be for other people," he says to me gently, after asking how I am.  He mentions Eckhardt Tolle, the past has fallen behind a curtain, the future we cannot worry about yet, and all we have is the present.  "Just write for yourself," he tells me.

So I'm out of the house, and I walk down to the bluff, warming up slightly as I walk along, a flannel shirt over a tee shirt, Adidas track pants.  The yoga is still within me, and the sun comes out through the clouds just enough, and the ground beneath me, the grass, the little chives, the buttercup universe, is warm, and all my poses come back to me, as good as before, and some even better.