The Covid-19 pandemic crisis came along, and I wondered if there was a single purpose to it for me, to confirm the wisdom of Buddha.

I put each part of Buddha wisdom through analysis, and the truth came resoundingly through.  On each and every level.

Tuesday night, I was studious, as I should have been in life, a scholar.  I read a book.  I sat in my father's old brown chair.  He sat in it night after night, reading, going through papers, grading his college student's papers, sometimes writing on a legal pad, often a cat by his side, a dog by, near the fire pot.  And so I went through this book in which I found resonance, Siddhartha's Brain, by John Kingsland.  

I saw a lot in it.  I felt so good, I didn't even want any wine.  I've long been examining what good wine does for me, and more and more I see the downside, the after effects, the side effect of finishing a bottle in my isolation.   Wine is a social drug.   You get on social media, think you're in touch with people, engage in witticisms.  

Yesterday, a big thunderstorm came through with Flash Flood warnings for the District of Columbia.   I stood on the patio between the small GI apartment buildings talking to the neighbors as the winds came up and the sky darkened and the rain started.   Afterwards, after the radar cleared, no more lightning, I went for a walk, raining and muddy enough so much it was not easy.  I wanted to go find a stream and the walk below the reservoir banks on the old trolley track path above the Canal got long and dull in a way, though all I wanted to do was meditate.  Finally I saw mist rising.  Planes came along skirting the clouds, coming in and out of view.  

When I got back, I was wet and tired.  I had to take my iPhone out of its Otterbox case and dry it out, and I didn't feel very happy, and, again, rather lonely as unemployment can make you.

I had a little bit of tobacco around, figuring it would make me less lonely, but I soon felt worse, more guilty, more lonesome, more seeing how I had betrayed everyone and how tenuous my perch on adult life is.   There is the family depression to deal with, seen in my mother's anxiety, my own habits...

I thought of doing some yoga, but when I tried it, indoors, on the carpet, I was not inspired, and creaky anyway.  I had to cook, what to cook, I asked myself, and so, there was a two day old glass of wine sitting out on the counter, and I had a sip, and then I finished that, and then I had some more, as I made chicken soup, cutting up a carrot, celery stalks, onion, heating olive oil with a dash of turmeric, ginger and cayenne, then bay leaf with the onions.  Then chopping another onion, to begin on a meatloaf.

That seems to be all I'm capable of these days, feeding myself, doing yoga.

But I had wine, and it didn't make me feel much better, and later I went for another walk, the sky clear again, around midnight.  Two deer stood and looked at me, still, from out in the field below the long bank dam of the reservoir, as I stood looking up at the Big Dipper.  And I saw again, the wish to relax in a glass of wine wasn't doing me so well, a kind of numbing that made me want more.  I got back, had another sip of wine, then put the bottle back in the fridge and said to myself, enough, that's it.

It's hard to look back at your own life and see how and where you have gone wrong.  I didn't want to be serving alcohol, I didn't particularly want to be serving meats, each a classic Buddhist what-not-to-do.  The mind needs to be clear and free, not make excuses by altering itself.

One can write, and go along with all one's illusions, but there's always the greater truth out there.


It seemed there was a point to it all.  A situation one went through in order to make connections.  There was my mother, calling often.  Guilt.  Then there was me, just hanging on in my apartment with all my treasures, and wondering about the next chapter of a professional life.

But I want a new chapter in life.  I wish to be a teacher, but of the big things, the things I have learned through my mistakes.

First, deal with depression and anxiety, largely through yoga and meditation.