And then it was like I felt I lost the ability to write, or rather I began to see how dire my employment prospects truly were after all my years of fooling around working as a bartender.  All my years of playing, not being serious.  The only real work was a half-assed attempt at writing, amateur stuff, completely.  Honest self-explorations, perhaps, but useless.

But not all of us know how to act as professional breadwinners and adults.  I don't know why this is so.

What a week.

The spiritual stuff, that angle on life, you can wear that out.   You can get yourself to a point where you really don't know what to do with yourself.  It's like Don Quixote, your head gets soft.

And nothing much to report.  Waiting on Congress, for the crucial Federal unemployment addition to DC.   The Republicans are talking 200 instead of 600 bucks per week, and that's not good if you're trying to pay DC rent.  And now it's been pushed off 'til next week.  I've applied for an overnight grocery team member at Whole Foods.  I've done an application for a tutoring company, an online interview.  My resume still sucks, half formed.  I am sad, depressed.  My mom calls from time to time.  Says kind things.  I feel guilty.  What am I doing here anyway...  There's not much, it seems to put down on my resume.  Shamefully.

And now I see clearly where thirty years in the restaurant business as a bartender with no plan has left me as far as being employable.  I feel it in my bones, too.

What's in a day?  Scroll through Facebook again.  Check a couple of job suggestion web sites.  Scroll through at all the things I'm not qualified for.  Well, I didn't listen.  I wasn't a good kid.  I have been dulled down.

I've worn out my thoughts.  My therapist suggests maybe perhaps I should move out of DC.

Moving hits me psychologically.  An old theme.  I've barely unpacked things here, after the move from old George's house, where I had space and bookshelves fit for a king.  Moving... It's like being ostracized.  And there's a cop element to it, too, the old "move along," if you escape being evicted.


So what have I done this week...  Linger in bed and on couch, as the window air conditioner chugs along, wondering how I'll ever get out of this mess...  Job descriptions are quite daunting, foreign to me.  I'm an organizer on the ground, there's lots I've done, create a little friendly community where all are equal, but that's nothing you can really point out and put down on your piece of paper.


I took walks.  Slow ones.  I did yoga.  I ate a combination of black-eyed peas and black beans on a Saturday night, and after a walk to the farmer's market, and then back, all sweaty, and then down to the pines for yoga, waiting the return of Mitch McConnell and the Senate to decide my fate, on a hot day, doing my yoga things began to move, gaseous, unsettled, such that I calculated I should use the woods behind the Urban Ecology Center building, careful to take a good handful of large leaves from the Paper Magnolia tree, soft of the underside to help doing nature's bidding out in nature, which I was careful about, succeeding, leaning up against a chainlink fence after removing my flip-flops, yoga shorts, boxers...  Relieving myself a large green katydid alighted upon my calf, not budging.  My bowels relieving, moving away to the side for the last, then peeing as I squatted.  Finally, having cleaned my bottom off well, I whisked away the cricket, as it seemed very intent on me, coming out of the green to present itself, put my boxers back on, then my shorts, then my flip-flop sandals, and still no one around.  I felt a lot better, too.

That was as exciting as my week got.   And then on a Friday night just sitting around, after a walk around the neighborhood in the noontime drizzle, the first cool weather in a long time, then to say hi at the little Korean Market for some pastrami and sliced chicken breast, a bottle of ten dollar pinot noir from the south of France.  A nap, out of a lack of anything else to do, not feeling productive, anxiety levels skyrocketing, try to just be quiet, let it blow away if it can.  Then another walk, longer. The grass wet, along the old trolley track.   I move over to the side, putting my mask back on, as a couple with dogs comes toward me, then a tall woman, lithe and attractive like a model jogs by from behind me.  She gives me a thank you wave as she passes, and she jogs up ahead and I go along at my own slow pace.  It's been difficult of late.  Just to keep moving.  Later, she passes me the other way, just as a man without his shirt on runs by very fast, as I stand off the trail in the higher weeds.


The night.  I cook a filet of black cod from the Farmer's Market, kept in the freezer from months ago. Turmeric, ginger, cayenne, flakes of salt and a quick modest grind of pepper.   I put the old Bianchi on the trainer, the bike tire tread lifting off in one spot, flap flap flap, as I pedal the wheel rolling forward over the rolling bar.  I get HBO's Chernobyl series going on my laptop, which starts to heat up, then the little wheel on the screen spinning round and round, the screen frozen, so I have to work at it, putting the old laptop in the freezer to cool off at one point.  I manage to keep entertained.  Later I read from Visions of Cody, not the dialog parts, and yes, Kerouac has his style, his schtick, and it feels a little transparent to me.  Except that he creates a style, a way of talking that you can only do by writing.  The writing of his way is very close to the mind, to speech, but translated, in a way that couldn't be done in normal talking.

And when I get up, finally, and make tea, have a bit of cold sliced low sodium chicken breast from the little deli, I realize I am a bum, nothing but a big bum.  A lot of that has had to do with drinking, which causes missed opportunities and great regrets and a kind of dishonesty.  Yes, memories of college, just messing around instead of all that priceless reading and priceless classes I could have done or taken.  There's the pull of a Christian glass of wine, but that can be dangerous too, a slippery slope.

Sensuality is one of the five hindrances.  I know it all too well.  And the other ones too.  In addition to Sensory Desire, as I suppose the senses must be attached to something one finds desirable, there is Ill-Will, there is Sloth-and-Torpor, there is Restlessness-and-Worry, and also, Doubt.  Yes.  "The food of delusion," as the Buddha said.

I almost feel afraid of myself, as I sit here, like how it would have been easy to lounge in bed, and I did that long enough anyway.  Yes, it is scary when you realize that you really are a bum, given all you could have been.

When I call my mom, for the second time today, now that it's about one or so in the afternoon, and when I tell her I'm feeling this way, a recognition, she immediately tells me, "no, you're not a bum, you're a very polite person..."  and other kindly things.


Perhaps Kerouac drank in order to find, or create, some kind of adventure.  You could, when drinking, kind of make up a story, fall into adventure and mis-adventure, you could meet crazy people who were also drunk and going about things in an uncontrolled fashion.  And I know.  I have fallen myself, in with bad people, as I grew up out in the countryside where less advanced and enlightened views and prejudices, and other bad habits, can take hold.

There was, of course, another side of him, the studious side, delving seriously in the Dharma, knowing his terms and his sutras, and being able to apply them.  But, he would lapse.

How's being a good Buddhist going to save me, I wonder...  I say to myself.  I could use some improvements as a person in this world, in society as well.  To be less distracted...