I've got the dishes soaking at noon, hot soapy water, I've made the green tea last night, so that's ready, and just when I think I'll have a moment, after doing some of the dishes--mom will object to the noise of it--to get them out of the way, down she comes and into the kitchen.  I thought I heard water running, but no, she hasn't taken a shower, her hair in greasy strands, and as every time, I mention it, and she tells me I'm making her life difficult.  But as she comes in, she asks me, do you have any food for starving people, yes sure, I do, would you like some turkey or I can make you some soup.  "Whatever's easy," she says.  I bring out the supermarket ziplock bag of turkey from a couple of days ago and she opens the bag while standing at the counter.  Mom, here, have a seat.  I get out the bag of pre-washed romaine lettuce. 

For conversation I show her the photographs my sister in law has posted on Instagram, mom's grandkids with their maternal grandparents, everyone having a happy time.  I inwardly cringe when I hand over my phone and she looks into it and puts her finger on the screen.  I demonstrate how to scroll through it, left to right, and she is curious and interested.  I've heated the soup up with added bone broth and she has slurped and gurgled at it a bit, holding left hand under her right hand as she raises the spoon to her mouth.  She mangles the names of who is who, and I correct her.  "Well, I never see my grandchildren...  Do I have his number over at my home?"  Yes, mom, it's right here.  I'm getting antsy and irritated, and now she's scrolling downward, coming across an earlier photo of my brother testifying explanations to Congress on C-Span, and she says, "Oh, look."  Yes, mom, he does look like your side of the family.

I suppose I was going to write something, but it gets garbled in my head, and now mom is getting testy again, okay, I'll get out of your hair, jabbing me with that, making it a fault of mine.  I never have any fun.

Mom, I don't have much fun either.  

And in fact, I no longer think that having fun, materialistically speaking, is really all it's cracked up to be.

I had a line in my head from earlier.  I have made a study of Buddhist truth by making many many mistakes, being studious about them, a real scholar, almost, of personal mistake making.  I would move now to simplify life.

I had a decent time meeting some musicians after the band had packed up at the little outdoor bar down by the marina that calls itself an Irish pub.

True that musicians like the dark hours of the night, the creative opportunity.  These guys are further along in musical careers, and I'm glad to meet them.  It's late by the time I park the little old Corolla in the parking lot, and the cat comes up to me from an unexpected angle, from the north west end of the parking lot when I turn to see him trotting toward me in a light gallop.  He's the reward for the night.

The cute sexy chicks all seemed to be in the black Jeep SUV crawling over themselves with a confident young strong African American man at the wheel when I pulled in the Byrne Dairy to see if they had any of the late night cheeseburger offerings my new musical guy friends had mentioned.

"If you wish to take shamatha all the way to its ground, however, it requires a supportive, serene environment, good diet, proper exercise, and very few preoccupations. The necessary internal conditions are minimal desires, few activities and concerns, contentment, pure ethical discipline, and freedom from obsessive, compulsive thinking."  B. Alan Wallace.

I'm back downstairs after the shower and shave.  Should I just sneak out, not take mom out on the tedious grumpy ride to the newspapers and the grocery store...

Whatever fleeting form of happiness you might find, it seems to me, you have to be going along with it, having your wine, etc., in order to be in the mood for it.  Then you're in the mood for it, but have to maintain this, "sure, I'll have another one, you guys are my buddies," with another round.  So when you get home finally, you have to ask yourself if it was really all that worth it.  Yes, you came into contact with human beings you'd never spoked to, that's all good, but... as far as your own life and the shape you want it to take, it gets thin then.

The mysogynistic scene from Hamlet, from Act 3 Scene 1, comes to mind for a reason separate from the dramatic intent:

... for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them...  I have heard enough of your paintings well enough.  God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.  You jig and amble and you lisp, you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness ignorance.

You get tired of the show, of all this that is supposed to be fun, and you have to return to your own consciousness at the end of the day, your own awareness, regretting your foolishness.

You have your wine, it sings you its songs, you jig and amble and you lisp, you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness ignorance.  The Bard is speaking not so much to poor Ophelia, but to himself.  Out of experience, and wisdom.

Listen to the stupidity on the radio, even on Public Radio.  It's the same thing, marketed at you in different ways.  

Hamlet, the beginning of the same scene:

I am myself indifferent honest but yet would accuse myself of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.  I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.  What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?   We are arrant knaves all--believe none of us...  Let the doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house.

The mind does not really need any new information, it's all a distraction anyway, boiled down.  The dumbest things are spoken in front of crowds, played along by the mildly enraptured crowd’s response.  (As Trump knew and mastered.)  Even Live Wire.

This is why I like the characters from Seven Samurai, the elevation of the Confucian monk traveling on the road.