Vis a vis iPhones left at work that disappear, traced to a certain neighborhood, but thievery denied, the boss of a small restaurant, asks that we move on, not wanting a dark cloud hanging over the place. "Let's just not talk about it." And for the psychology of the place, that's probably a good idea. You move on.
Do you ever wake up with a dark cloud hanging over you? Yeah, well, I seem to. Had that feeling for about 25 years, actually. Something unresolved. You wish you could do something about it, but you can't. 25 years ago you could have, but your idiot buddies distracted you when you were due for a meeting. And what can you do about it now? It would be ridiculous even to pretend for a moment that you could. Too much water under the bridge anyway. Times change, people change, commitments are made, directions are taken. You count your blessings, and move on. You were a decent person, acting decently, just got confused. Maybe some form of ADD. The only thing that, it's hard to forget it all, and it causes a lingering air of being unresolved.
And perhaps this is where the tactful genius of Buddha's simplicity has a place. Remove desire, and you remove suffering. An important lesson in life.
Sometimes in life, it seems heavily to be the case of Murphy's Law. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. If you don't leave something protected for a moment, someone will come along and steal it. And this is the horrible truth behind things like the death of President Kennedy, that if, for one moment, he is not completely protected, boom, he is gone and then there's nothing you can about it. It's simply randomness, the billion egos all clawing for something they want, taking away the things of other people in multitudinal acts of selfishness and strange will.
The wiser of us realize such things earlier. They come to regard people in a negative way, about to be incompetent often enough, except for the rare few that you can count on. And so they nail things down, take responsible action, don't leave things up to the whims of the gods and personalities, nor allowing for the sanctity of art to let things all come out in the wash.
And then, I suppose, there is art.
Moods are products of our chemistry, the quarks, the quirks, the physical adjustments our systems make and take. To a great extent, we are just born the way we are. Some are happy, some are smug, some are prone to melancholy, some need the juice of adrenaline to keep them on even keel. Some are fighters, believing in their own righteousness, and some aren't, prone more toward reflection or the curse of being a sensitive guy. And all of us are trapped, really, in our little systems, sometimes within the ticking time bombs of our personal chemistry. Which of course does not excuse anyone from being a pedophile or a murderer, rapist, what-have-you. Some people like incessant chit-chat. Some are self-serving.
Well, anyway, you find a little bit of a rhythm in your daily life, and odd as it is to maybe someone else, if it works for you, you keep at it.
When I'm at a loss, I lay down on the rug and look up at the ceiling. I guess it's a form of meditation. I think of the opening of Islands in the Stream, where Hemingway gives us a self-portrait of a man staring the fire in his fireplace, the driftwood of Bimini lending different colors to the flames. There might not be a plot to it, but it strikes one as accurate, and worth its observational space. In another place (A Moveable Feast) he writes of going to the Paris apartment he used exclusively to write, how at a loss he'd eat oranges and through the peels in the fire and watch the colors. I think random thoughts, I feel the flow of breath and atoms within me, and then I gather the strength to start the day's tasks.
Friday, March 1, 2013
One had the feeling it was Lincoln himself, finally, winning the Oscars for best of the best, what we all do, act. Mr. Day Lewis, a fine genetic relative, from frame and brow and skin down to a closeness of the very same voice, prone to need to rise to be itself and make a good point, to make itself a little bit louder, serves an excellent choice of stand in, with plenty enough of the same soul that we all have inner access to.
It came down to scenes like the telegraph office, a shawl around the President's sleepless shoulders, asking the kids (the young guys working), 'what do you make of it all,' or, 'what do you think this is all about,' with complete interest, then, offering, as we all do, our own story.
These stories of Lincoln we are prepared for, from Sandburg and the like, the work of historians, interviewing Herndon, common people's memories lasting 'til the end of the 19th century. Oral history. The gist of his personality coming through letters, all easy to get sentimental about. An every day guy.
Did he, as Kushner places emphasis, have great tension with oldest son Robert about signing up for the war? Narrative arch stuff, keeps the eye, misleading in some ways, true in other ways, if, say, you really wanted to get down to the nitty gritty between, as Spielberg's Lincoln is intent on, Abraham and Mary Lincoln.
But, I myself wonder, why was the final dream, of Lincoln's ignored and passed over? His dream of coming down, just days before Good Friday, April 14th, to see the muffled casket, and asking 'whose it was?' Day Lewis certainly would have read, rehearsed in his mind, such a moment, the deep sensitivity, and even alignment with dreams as Lincoln, the poet, had. That would have refocussed the energy, the dynamic between the intimate husband and wife in a different way from Kushner's script. It would have given us a script where we all face the ultimate, in which we all know, at some point, we will die. Would not the math of Lincoln's life experience, as a lawyer, seeing people's life shit, as a depressive, as a dreamer, the dreamer an integral part of all his aspirations, of seeing his own mortality (why else would you help a pig up out of complete mud?) lead him to a conclusion about doing the right thing, and doing the right thing only. Strong, fearless, sensitive, perhaps he sensed, in his subconscious, in his dreams, the backlash for what he willed, but that not stopping him. He may too have sensed his wife's afflictions, as part of all the diseases of mortality, a token of his understanding of human frailty and foible.
One gathers, though, that it's hard to make a movie, commercially successful, depending on Dreamworks funding, that tells a tale, as the classic Japanese films of the post WWII era might, of mortality, of a striving to do the right thing, met by equal and opposite forces, the ultimate meaninglessness, or, rather, the ultimate meaning gained through the grace of human respect and decency, the sense of honor and golden rule. It would be hard to really lay out the life of Lincoln and the death of him, as our guts might understand the whole of him. It would be hard to lay out the close up of him dying, even as the great photos close in on that same face we want to see, want more of, a fascinating thing. It would be hard to interrupt the plot arch with the sudden cruel death, and yet we know that life does such things. Fatalistic as he was, would Lincoln have sensed his own death as more tangible, closer, more inevitable, an understanding steeped in whatever spiritual understandings he may have come across.
It came down to scenes like the telegraph office, a shawl around the President's sleepless shoulders, asking the kids (the young guys working), 'what do you make of it all,' or, 'what do you think this is all about,' with complete interest, then, offering, as we all do, our own story.
These stories of Lincoln we are prepared for, from Sandburg and the like, the work of historians, interviewing Herndon, common people's memories lasting 'til the end of the 19th century. Oral history. The gist of his personality coming through letters, all easy to get sentimental about. An every day guy.
Did he, as Kushner places emphasis, have great tension with oldest son Robert about signing up for the war? Narrative arch stuff, keeps the eye, misleading in some ways, true in other ways, if, say, you really wanted to get down to the nitty gritty between, as Spielberg's Lincoln is intent on, Abraham and Mary Lincoln.
But, I myself wonder, why was the final dream, of Lincoln's ignored and passed over? His dream of coming down, just days before Good Friday, April 14th, to see the muffled casket, and asking 'whose it was?' Day Lewis certainly would have read, rehearsed in his mind, such a moment, the deep sensitivity, and even alignment with dreams as Lincoln, the poet, had. That would have refocussed the energy, the dynamic between the intimate husband and wife in a different way from Kushner's script. It would have given us a script where we all face the ultimate, in which we all know, at some point, we will die. Would not the math of Lincoln's life experience, as a lawyer, seeing people's life shit, as a depressive, as a dreamer, the dreamer an integral part of all his aspirations, of seeing his own mortality (why else would you help a pig up out of complete mud?) lead him to a conclusion about doing the right thing, and doing the right thing only. Strong, fearless, sensitive, perhaps he sensed, in his subconscious, in his dreams, the backlash for what he willed, but that not stopping him. He may too have sensed his wife's afflictions, as part of all the diseases of mortality, a token of his understanding of human frailty and foible.
One gathers, though, that it's hard to make a movie, commercially successful, depending on Dreamworks funding, that tells a tale, as the classic Japanese films of the post WWII era might, of mortality, of a striving to do the right thing, met by equal and opposite forces, the ultimate meaninglessness, or, rather, the ultimate meaning gained through the grace of human respect and decency, the sense of honor and golden rule. It would be hard to really lay out the life of Lincoln and the death of him, as our guts might understand the whole of him. It would be hard to lay out the close up of him dying, even as the great photos close in on that same face we want to see, want more of, a fascinating thing. It would be hard to interrupt the plot arch with the sudden cruel death, and yet we know that life does such things. Fatalistic as he was, would Lincoln have sensed his own death as more tangible, closer, more inevitable, an understanding steeped in whatever spiritual understandings he may have come across.
I wonder sometimes about those great artistic achievements that came out of living Paris in the Twenties, the community of artists, the poets and painters, survivors of the Great War like Apollinaire, joined by the ex patriots of the English speaking world. Picasso, for instance, kept a great circle of friends, and when done with the work of the day, they'd gather, eat, and drink wine, and they'd talk, and compare notes, argue, expound. And they seem to inhabit a last, or perhaps a new and wild and different, finger of the Renaissance, as if on an outpost of it, meeting the sea. They had, of course, hang outs. They had Picasso's 'laundry boat' up on Montmartre near the top of the hill above a gentle bend in a road. They had places like The Dingo, along with all the cafe spots the folks like Hemingway celebrated through utilization and fully living. For the artists, such places were gentle, accommodating, and alive with possibility, and the art that was spawned in the subconscious revery and relaxations and wordless thoughts that happened within their confines was, of course, art that matched them. The art that sprung from them was the art of the lives that wandered through, and so cubism was born, paintings of prostitutes, war survivors, free spirits, talkers, artistes, as the pages of A Moveable Feast sketch out for posterity, there Joyce, with his glasses, eating over with his family, encounters with Gertrude and Sylvia and Evan the poet, Fitzgerald. (History will conjecture later of Joyce's afflictions--knowing certain habits of his--and the medical treatments that ruined his eyesight.)
And now places have changed. Times have changed. Economies have changed. And somehow it is hard to recreate, in the current business model, an environment where artists might thrive, have productive discussions in public meeting places. To create a flicker of such a place where people could meet, shake off their day and all its impositions like a dog shaking the wet out of her fur, relax, take comfort, have conversation, enter into discussions that go beyond all the tedious specifics of the day, to be transported, to have a little daily break, a teeny tiny vacation yet one that acknowledges all the personal realities, that would be, and is, an achievement. And such a place would serve as a classical thing, and rise above its earthly duties of providing food and drink and other people's presence, to shine and accept its charges. Such a place would be no small accomplishment. It would have to rest on a good reservoir of the waters of hospitality, and one wonders if these times are prone to drought and 'here's your check.'
Show me a writer, and I'll show you a place the writer inhabits, as if he or she were a certain kind of wild creature, prone to certain habits. Some people like mass behavior, loudness, thumping bass and displays of strength (shouting), for kicks, some like Bistro Du Coin, some like clubs called Dirty Martini, some like hipster hangouts, and some people are like the sweet creatures of nature, prone to find spots where they are comfortable, tree tops, overlooks, safe forests, undisturbed streams, where they might encounter other beings like themselves, with that flicker of nature. Like things of the green world, healthy art and thought (effecting all aspects of life) must find a healthy place to grow, generous of water, sunlight, breeze.
(And I am relieved to find that the earliest of humanity is exonerated for enjoying fermented fruits, as the latest study of a particular branch of the digestive enzymes of our closest ape ancestors suggests that folk like gorillas left the trees, came down to enjoy the fruits fallen from the tree tops, dealt with it digestively, whereas folk like orangutans preferred to sleepily stay up in their tree top havens. Humanity, in other words, didn't have to go to great agricultural lengths to whip up a little vino, or, at least, were capable of taking benefit from fermented fruit, even if they didn't immediately set up portable hunter gatherer stills. That booze is traditionally brewed up in the natural cover of mountains doesn't seem to far off the general direction of humanity. The soothing effects from digesting fermented stuff told the animal, 'this is okay.' We're going back about 10 million years in evolution, so it's okay if you like a glass of wine. It ain't no sin.)
After a few longer than normal weeks, Valentine's Day, Restaurant Week, someone on vacation, at the restaurant, I leave the restaurant without my phone. The door locks behind me, I have the key to the top lock, but not the door knob. Bundled up, courier bag on my back, it's not in all my layers. Well, I'm tired, I'll get home, and come back to tomorrow and it will be there, like it was when I left my old iPhone behind on the bar or at the table by the chair where I took off my work slacks, changed into my dungarees, put my shoes on and packed up to leave, turning the lights off and all alone. I get home, have my glass of wine in peace, find sleepiness somewhere down the line, get up around one, get ready, go to work, and, guess what, my phone, a new iPhone 5, isn't anywhere to be seen. Hmm.
"Well, hey, check it out on 'find your iPhone.'' Okay, thanks. I put my password in on iCloud. A compass wags, and then a dot appears on a map. New Carrolton? Lanham-Seabrook? WTF?
This happens to be exactly where the honest sweet steady venerable Salvadoran cleaning lady who's been there forever, back to when the restaurant was a Greek restaurant, matron figure of much of the staff, happens to live. Chef gets here on the phone. "She says she doesn't have it." I sit with the waiters and we watch the little dot on the map, and it moves, a little, then finally settles, at a particular corner, a block or two from, well, someone's house. So, we get ready and do our shift, swallowing the sickened feeling. "She'll bring it back tomorrow," someone says.
But she doesn't. She keeps to her story. "But, but..." We consult the surveillance video. Nothing. It was Oscar night. I called my mom around midnight that night. Where exactly did I leave it?
I go and grit my teeth through Monday jazz night, through Tuesday wine tasting night, through Wednesday night, summoning vestiges of hospitality, reluctant hospitality, such that I have to grab each piece of it by the tail while people arrive and smile and want to relax. I want to blow my stack. Each night, I walk home from work. I get home late anyway, but these too are late nights, maybe particularly so.
Finally the week ends. Whatever avenue anyone might pursue here, as far as getting my phone back, leads nowhere. What we all want is for the dark cloud and the suspicions to pass and be forgotten. The boss is extremely kind, and solicitous, and it's obvious he cares about me personally and values my hard work as one of his main barmen.
I sleep all day. I don't feel like dealing with ATT. It turns out to cost quite a bit to replace your phone. You already have a contract and have to pay full retail. I have my old phone still. Soon I'm eligible for a discount 'upgrade.' Upgrade. Try, 'replacing my stolen fucking iPhone5.' Next time, I'll get the carrier's insurance, as Applecare doesn't cover loss, theft or normal wear and tear. A hot shower abates a headache lingering the last 24 hours.
I order Chinese, do some laundry, try to ignore the thumping bass and yells from the idiot kids next door while contemplating filing another noise complaint, take another nap. It's only finally when I look for a PBS documentary on YouTube about Appalachia, (finding the meantime some nice scenes of Caroline waterfalls) that I come across a soothing mountain air, played on mandolin, that I feel some kind of catharsis. (Music always draws us in.) It's a song that is the opposite of the jarring sort of message of the modern advertisement's attempt to overwhelm your innate humanity with seeds of lust. It's told in an old pentatonic scale that a child could put together, and it belongs to no particular country. It could be originally Japanese, or Indian, or Middle Eastern, but anyway, it, or the basic scale and notes struck the Irish and the Scots as something worthy, so that they brought it with them, and played it on whatever tuned instruments they took the time and trouble to build in the midst of their hardscrabble existences. And the music is the same as the teapot that whistles, as the octave reached in the sound of filling a vessel of water, or the same notes we have within us when we react honestly to something. Music, as the ancient Chinese might say, reflects the order between Heaven and Earth. Buddha's early lesson talks about the string tuned just so, quite centrally. The song is, in one carnation anyway, called Beech Spring, an old harp song, an ancient air and maybe a dance. The opening strains of it soundly oddly familiar and close to Happy Birthday. It's played well in D, basically the key of Beethoven's 9th.
And as is my habit, I will refer to some wisdom of Shane MacGowan, that you can hear music everywhere, in the water, in the ground, in the wind, in the rain. "We just put ... it in boxes." (While delivering a lesson on the relationship of Irish music and the blues.)
Yes, the blues.
It is then, in the quiet of the night, that I feel my ancestors, that I feel music, that I feel that old scale and it's old song cheering me, letting me morn the potential loss of the last little iPhone videos of my kitty cat licking away at her bowl, or tossing a little furry catnip mouse around, stuff like that. Downloaded to the computer, at least, but playable? In the end we lose everything, health, home, life, so why not the dress rehearsal played out in some cheap but expensive scale, plus the hassle.
That's life for you. Thank god for music. For a glass of wine for digesting, when you are ready and capable of digesting. Apes, we came down out of the trees, even as we admire our friends the birds, down to earth.
And now places have changed. Times have changed. Economies have changed. And somehow it is hard to recreate, in the current business model, an environment where artists might thrive, have productive discussions in public meeting places. To create a flicker of such a place where people could meet, shake off their day and all its impositions like a dog shaking the wet out of her fur, relax, take comfort, have conversation, enter into discussions that go beyond all the tedious specifics of the day, to be transported, to have a little daily break, a teeny tiny vacation yet one that acknowledges all the personal realities, that would be, and is, an achievement. And such a place would serve as a classical thing, and rise above its earthly duties of providing food and drink and other people's presence, to shine and accept its charges. Such a place would be no small accomplishment. It would have to rest on a good reservoir of the waters of hospitality, and one wonders if these times are prone to drought and 'here's your check.'
Show me a writer, and I'll show you a place the writer inhabits, as if he or she were a certain kind of wild creature, prone to certain habits. Some people like mass behavior, loudness, thumping bass and displays of strength (shouting), for kicks, some like Bistro Du Coin, some like clubs called Dirty Martini, some like hipster hangouts, and some people are like the sweet creatures of nature, prone to find spots where they are comfortable, tree tops, overlooks, safe forests, undisturbed streams, where they might encounter other beings like themselves, with that flicker of nature. Like things of the green world, healthy art and thought (effecting all aspects of life) must find a healthy place to grow, generous of water, sunlight, breeze.
(And I am relieved to find that the earliest of humanity is exonerated for enjoying fermented fruits, as the latest study of a particular branch of the digestive enzymes of our closest ape ancestors suggests that folk like gorillas left the trees, came down to enjoy the fruits fallen from the tree tops, dealt with it digestively, whereas folk like orangutans preferred to sleepily stay up in their tree top havens. Humanity, in other words, didn't have to go to great agricultural lengths to whip up a little vino, or, at least, were capable of taking benefit from fermented fruit, even if they didn't immediately set up portable hunter gatherer stills. That booze is traditionally brewed up in the natural cover of mountains doesn't seem to far off the general direction of humanity. The soothing effects from digesting fermented stuff told the animal, 'this is okay.' We're going back about 10 million years in evolution, so it's okay if you like a glass of wine. It ain't no sin.)
After a few longer than normal weeks, Valentine's Day, Restaurant Week, someone on vacation, at the restaurant, I leave the restaurant without my phone. The door locks behind me, I have the key to the top lock, but not the door knob. Bundled up, courier bag on my back, it's not in all my layers. Well, I'm tired, I'll get home, and come back to tomorrow and it will be there, like it was when I left my old iPhone behind on the bar or at the table by the chair where I took off my work slacks, changed into my dungarees, put my shoes on and packed up to leave, turning the lights off and all alone. I get home, have my glass of wine in peace, find sleepiness somewhere down the line, get up around one, get ready, go to work, and, guess what, my phone, a new iPhone 5, isn't anywhere to be seen. Hmm.
"Well, hey, check it out on 'find your iPhone.'' Okay, thanks. I put my password in on iCloud. A compass wags, and then a dot appears on a map. New Carrolton? Lanham-Seabrook? WTF?
This happens to be exactly where the honest sweet steady venerable Salvadoran cleaning lady who's been there forever, back to when the restaurant was a Greek restaurant, matron figure of much of the staff, happens to live. Chef gets here on the phone. "She says she doesn't have it." I sit with the waiters and we watch the little dot on the map, and it moves, a little, then finally settles, at a particular corner, a block or two from, well, someone's house. So, we get ready and do our shift, swallowing the sickened feeling. "She'll bring it back tomorrow," someone says.
But she doesn't. She keeps to her story. "But, but..." We consult the surveillance video. Nothing. It was Oscar night. I called my mom around midnight that night. Where exactly did I leave it?
I go and grit my teeth through Monday jazz night, through Tuesday wine tasting night, through Wednesday night, summoning vestiges of hospitality, reluctant hospitality, such that I have to grab each piece of it by the tail while people arrive and smile and want to relax. I want to blow my stack. Each night, I walk home from work. I get home late anyway, but these too are late nights, maybe particularly so.
Finally the week ends. Whatever avenue anyone might pursue here, as far as getting my phone back, leads nowhere. What we all want is for the dark cloud and the suspicions to pass and be forgotten. The boss is extremely kind, and solicitous, and it's obvious he cares about me personally and values my hard work as one of his main barmen.
I sleep all day. I don't feel like dealing with ATT. It turns out to cost quite a bit to replace your phone. You already have a contract and have to pay full retail. I have my old phone still. Soon I'm eligible for a discount 'upgrade.' Upgrade. Try, 'replacing my stolen fucking iPhone5.' Next time, I'll get the carrier's insurance, as Applecare doesn't cover loss, theft or normal wear and tear. A hot shower abates a headache lingering the last 24 hours.
I order Chinese, do some laundry, try to ignore the thumping bass and yells from the idiot kids next door while contemplating filing another noise complaint, take another nap. It's only finally when I look for a PBS documentary on YouTube about Appalachia, (finding the meantime some nice scenes of Caroline waterfalls) that I come across a soothing mountain air, played on mandolin, that I feel some kind of catharsis. (Music always draws us in.) It's a song that is the opposite of the jarring sort of message of the modern advertisement's attempt to overwhelm your innate humanity with seeds of lust. It's told in an old pentatonic scale that a child could put together, and it belongs to no particular country. It could be originally Japanese, or Indian, or Middle Eastern, but anyway, it, or the basic scale and notes struck the Irish and the Scots as something worthy, so that they brought it with them, and played it on whatever tuned instruments they took the time and trouble to build in the midst of their hardscrabble existences. And the music is the same as the teapot that whistles, as the octave reached in the sound of filling a vessel of water, or the same notes we have within us when we react honestly to something. Music, as the ancient Chinese might say, reflects the order between Heaven and Earth. Buddha's early lesson talks about the string tuned just so, quite centrally. The song is, in one carnation anyway, called Beech Spring, an old harp song, an ancient air and maybe a dance. The opening strains of it soundly oddly familiar and close to Happy Birthday. It's played well in D, basically the key of Beethoven's 9th.
And as is my habit, I will refer to some wisdom of Shane MacGowan, that you can hear music everywhere, in the water, in the ground, in the wind, in the rain. "We just put ... it in boxes." (While delivering a lesson on the relationship of Irish music and the blues.)
Yes, the blues.
It is then, in the quiet of the night, that I feel my ancestors, that I feel music, that I feel that old scale and it's old song cheering me, letting me morn the potential loss of the last little iPhone videos of my kitty cat licking away at her bowl, or tossing a little furry catnip mouse around, stuff like that. Downloaded to the computer, at least, but playable? In the end we lose everything, health, home, life, so why not the dress rehearsal played out in some cheap but expensive scale, plus the hassle.
That's life for you. Thank god for music. For a glass of wine for digesting, when you are ready and capable of digesting. Apes, we came down out of the trees, even as we admire our friends the birds, down to earth.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sir Lancelot and the Irishman
You start your career, naively or not, wanting to be kind to everyone. You go and put it into practice, and it feels good. You feel a part of chivalry and courtly tradition, receiving a stranger as if he or she were Sir Lancelot in disguise, or if you were. How could a professional life be any different, separate from kindness itself?
But you know in your own mind that there were times when all the kindness within you didn't get to come out, went misused, then maybe misplaced. And so, naturally, the mind focusses on such occasions, assesses what went wrong. And maybe doing so will help you figure out what it is you are doing wrong in your own career now. You may have wanted to then put all your kindness to good use, but things went wrong, and you yourself are a good deal to blame. Not to dwell on the past, but just to guide yourself in the present.
"One way ticket to Palookaville," someone close to me commented, wisely enough, early on in my ostensibly 'professional' career as hard-working barman. And, like a fool, I didn't exactly listen. I said to myself I wanted to be a writer of some sort, and that to get by, I would tend bar at night. In so doing, repeating the same mistakes I always make as far as implementing the deeper kindness within, manifesting it in humble form in the world of passing strangers.
Fool small town country boy... what did I know, when I was making my choices.
Shakespeare makes the point another way, to ramble on. Just where you'd like your own kindness to come forth most, Hamlet's for Ophelia, for one important instance, it somehow goes completely wrong, as if fated to. And the same for Lear, although he doesn't realize he, as a king, is capable of much kindness, love for the daughter that loves him. Why all the misunderstanding, why all the being trapped in roles and ego?
And now, kindness becomes more and more of a cyber charade, a matter of Facebook, someone making money off of it.
Early on in a shift, before the gypsy jazz guitars have started playing in the corner, a man walks in and sits down at the bar. He smells of cigarette smoke, has a motorcycle/chopper-buildout kind of mustache, and says he's going to have dinner, likes cabernets, with a New York Irish accent. He's down in DC to take his high school son to a homeland security student seminar at a local 4H. He's staying at the Holiday Inn, has walked the town pretty well from here to the Capitol. Down from Western Mass, the Springfield area, he's happy to be here. He looks at you brightly, squarely, and somehow it's a good deal refreshing to have him in (as it was to have the NYFD Irish New Yorker kid who survived a 9/11 stairwell collapse) after the initial semi-nervous summing up of a different from the norm and assertive person, yet one who reminds me of people who are people. I let him taste the Bordeaux, the Pays D'Oc Malbec, and the Pic St. Loup Syrah. He likes the Syrah. It will be great with lamb, I tell him, as he loves lamb. Staten Island growing up, touch of red in his hair still, in possession of physical vitality, bars in Hells Kitchen as a young man, I could picture him digging the NY subway. I would go have a drink with him, and for an anti-pipeline tree hugger liberal who cries over the thought of how Appalachia, wondrous area of Eden, oldest mountains and biodiversity unparalleled, was so clearcut and destroyed by outside interests (don't we ever get it?), I'm cool with him, and he's not a crazy you would have to worry about, as retrospection might make you wonder about some folks you've given rides to back to Oriskany Falls, New York. Salt of the Earth. A guy like, if one were to get sentimental, the original Peter. One you'd trust. One who doesn't give a shit over assholes and the self important. An undershirt, a good sweater, white, probably from a Marshalls somewhere, and a tight fitting jacket, a trip outside for a cigarette, enough to keep such a fellow warm. Nothing gets this guy down. We all can get along, I don't care where you're from, his main message.
He's a talkative guy, the foreman of crews for a big energy company, travels quite a bit, Ohio, PA., Texas. Goes to gym to keep up, as he deals with young knuckleheads, I don't doubt. I ask him about the blizzard, and about New England in general. 2 labs, 2 kids, 2 cats, a snowblower, one wife, he likes his life, he has a philosophy. He doesn't live out in the country, by any means. (An hour to drive to get a pizza and it's ice cold by the time you get home? No way.) "I'm a city boy. You can't teach an old dog new tricks," he says. A good conversationalist, a friendly guy, he has his refrains. "I tell my son, it's all about getting out and talking to people. And you're nice to people, people will be nice to you right back. I keep telling him..."
Type Os accumulate stress. They have a hard time getting rid of adrenaline and noradrenaline. It takes a certain amount of dopamine to convert and break the stress response down, which is why I have a hard time going to bed when I get home from a shift. I suppose smoking cigarettes is a way to get around the ups and downs, particularly when waking up when you haven't gone through the whole long calming down and the whole long sleep.
He talks of going to Ireland with his son. Cork. Just go, don't plan. Me and my son. Let it happen. The man has a lot of refrains. I like him. He doesn't like the soup special. (I take it off his check.) He loves his lamb, has another glass of Languedoc. He get to work early, leaves later, and keeps up with a lot of younger guys on his job, work crews doing things probably related to pipelines and fracking. His attitude on protestors: some people just protest, that's just what they like to do, it's part of human nature.
Irish music works, I think, because of its refrains. The Old Triangle. A Freeborn Man of the Traveling People. "One summer evening drunk to hell, I lay there nearly lifeless..." The pikes must be together at the rising of the moon. I'm the last of the Irish Rover. Oh Danny boy... It was down the glen on an Easter morn to a city fair... The foggy dew. Mnemonic device to cool the brain. Jack and Bobby.
And the refrain of words, the pattern, to hold on to, I think it helps enormously to deal with the stresses of modern life. And you could easily say, 'the product of a sick mind, all this talk of rebellion, poets, drinking glorified.' This is the gift of Irish music, though. It gives a refrain, a kind of mantra to repeat by which to dispel the pains of work and odd hours and the crippled personal lives that result of them. (Which we all have in common.) And goddamn if it doesn't work. You need something to divert a part of your brain to clean the house, put some Irish on your head phones.
And to top it all off, who has done better than The Pogues' lyricist MacGowan, to revive the ancient art of giving us a body of ballad and refrains to sink teeth into and identify with. The words seem to slide easily out of him. "Bless me father, I have sinned. I got pissed and I got pinned. A guy can't help the state I'm in. There's a Tesco on the sacred ground, where I pulled her knickers down." He has the same brain problem a lot of us have, a lot of the Irish have, a lot of us blood-type O people have. A way to calm down in a very complicated world that isn't doing well as far as nature or anything else is concerned is. (Even Hells Ditch, the famous downfall, yields wonders. And indeed, one wonders, where did all those riches come from, given the reports of how difficult it was to deal with MacGowan in those times. Song after song, even as they are partly slurred, even as their notes are pure.)
I must admit to myself, reflecting over the decent guy at the bar, with his sayings--"Supporting a family, you got to do what you got to do, you know"--that there is an elitist part of me, or rather, more accurately, a part that believes in Buddha's truth. And because the Buddha's truth is so high, so out there (so it seems) it leaves one less with the tendency to be 'involved' in the world, because we are here to see the truth, to represent the truth. And the truth is bigger and higher than pipelines. (Don't get me wrong, I like my heat just like the next guy.) It could well be that the world is largely run by meddlesome idiots centered on their own particular selfish interests, and such a world will never run harmoniously, were it not for the very underlying Buddha nature of everything that is a natural check on things. Anyway, after a week of tending bar, isn't it a joy and a comfort to read The Threefold Lotus Sutra, lines of how we are all meant for the enlightenment of Nirvana. This is probably how I keep my calm.
But you know in your own mind that there were times when all the kindness within you didn't get to come out, went misused, then maybe misplaced. And so, naturally, the mind focusses on such occasions, assesses what went wrong. And maybe doing so will help you figure out what it is you are doing wrong in your own career now. You may have wanted to then put all your kindness to good use, but things went wrong, and you yourself are a good deal to blame. Not to dwell on the past, but just to guide yourself in the present.
"One way ticket to Palookaville," someone close to me commented, wisely enough, early on in my ostensibly 'professional' career as hard-working barman. And, like a fool, I didn't exactly listen. I said to myself I wanted to be a writer of some sort, and that to get by, I would tend bar at night. In so doing, repeating the same mistakes I always make as far as implementing the deeper kindness within, manifesting it in humble form in the world of passing strangers.
Fool small town country boy... what did I know, when I was making my choices.
Shakespeare makes the point another way, to ramble on. Just where you'd like your own kindness to come forth most, Hamlet's for Ophelia, for one important instance, it somehow goes completely wrong, as if fated to. And the same for Lear, although he doesn't realize he, as a king, is capable of much kindness, love for the daughter that loves him. Why all the misunderstanding, why all the being trapped in roles and ego?
And now, kindness becomes more and more of a cyber charade, a matter of Facebook, someone making money off of it.
Early on in a shift, before the gypsy jazz guitars have started playing in the corner, a man walks in and sits down at the bar. He smells of cigarette smoke, has a motorcycle/chopper-buildout kind of mustache, and says he's going to have dinner, likes cabernets, with a New York Irish accent. He's down in DC to take his high school son to a homeland security student seminar at a local 4H. He's staying at the Holiday Inn, has walked the town pretty well from here to the Capitol. Down from Western Mass, the Springfield area, he's happy to be here. He looks at you brightly, squarely, and somehow it's a good deal refreshing to have him in (as it was to have the NYFD Irish New Yorker kid who survived a 9/11 stairwell collapse) after the initial semi-nervous summing up of a different from the norm and assertive person, yet one who reminds me of people who are people. I let him taste the Bordeaux, the Pays D'Oc Malbec, and the Pic St. Loup Syrah. He likes the Syrah. It will be great with lamb, I tell him, as he loves lamb. Staten Island growing up, touch of red in his hair still, in possession of physical vitality, bars in Hells Kitchen as a young man, I could picture him digging the NY subway. I would go have a drink with him, and for an anti-pipeline tree hugger liberal who cries over the thought of how Appalachia, wondrous area of Eden, oldest mountains and biodiversity unparalleled, was so clearcut and destroyed by outside interests (don't we ever get it?), I'm cool with him, and he's not a crazy you would have to worry about, as retrospection might make you wonder about some folks you've given rides to back to Oriskany Falls, New York. Salt of the Earth. A guy like, if one were to get sentimental, the original Peter. One you'd trust. One who doesn't give a shit over assholes and the self important. An undershirt, a good sweater, white, probably from a Marshalls somewhere, and a tight fitting jacket, a trip outside for a cigarette, enough to keep such a fellow warm. Nothing gets this guy down. We all can get along, I don't care where you're from, his main message.
He's a talkative guy, the foreman of crews for a big energy company, travels quite a bit, Ohio, PA., Texas. Goes to gym to keep up, as he deals with young knuckleheads, I don't doubt. I ask him about the blizzard, and about New England in general. 2 labs, 2 kids, 2 cats, a snowblower, one wife, he likes his life, he has a philosophy. He doesn't live out in the country, by any means. (An hour to drive to get a pizza and it's ice cold by the time you get home? No way.) "I'm a city boy. You can't teach an old dog new tricks," he says. A good conversationalist, a friendly guy, he has his refrains. "I tell my son, it's all about getting out and talking to people. And you're nice to people, people will be nice to you right back. I keep telling him..."
Type Os accumulate stress. They have a hard time getting rid of adrenaline and noradrenaline. It takes a certain amount of dopamine to convert and break the stress response down, which is why I have a hard time going to bed when I get home from a shift. I suppose smoking cigarettes is a way to get around the ups and downs, particularly when waking up when you haven't gone through the whole long calming down and the whole long sleep.
He talks of going to Ireland with his son. Cork. Just go, don't plan. Me and my son. Let it happen. The man has a lot of refrains. I like him. He doesn't like the soup special. (I take it off his check.) He loves his lamb, has another glass of Languedoc. He get to work early, leaves later, and keeps up with a lot of younger guys on his job, work crews doing things probably related to pipelines and fracking. His attitude on protestors: some people just protest, that's just what they like to do, it's part of human nature.
Irish music works, I think, because of its refrains. The Old Triangle. A Freeborn Man of the Traveling People. "One summer evening drunk to hell, I lay there nearly lifeless..." The pikes must be together at the rising of the moon. I'm the last of the Irish Rover. Oh Danny boy... It was down the glen on an Easter morn to a city fair... The foggy dew. Mnemonic device to cool the brain. Jack and Bobby.
And the refrain of words, the pattern, to hold on to, I think it helps enormously to deal with the stresses of modern life. And you could easily say, 'the product of a sick mind, all this talk of rebellion, poets, drinking glorified.' This is the gift of Irish music, though. It gives a refrain, a kind of mantra to repeat by which to dispel the pains of work and odd hours and the crippled personal lives that result of them. (Which we all have in common.) And goddamn if it doesn't work. You need something to divert a part of your brain to clean the house, put some Irish on your head phones.
And to top it all off, who has done better than The Pogues' lyricist MacGowan, to revive the ancient art of giving us a body of ballad and refrains to sink teeth into and identify with. The words seem to slide easily out of him. "Bless me father, I have sinned. I got pissed and I got pinned. A guy can't help the state I'm in. There's a Tesco on the sacred ground, where I pulled her knickers down." He has the same brain problem a lot of us have, a lot of the Irish have, a lot of us blood-type O people have. A way to calm down in a very complicated world that isn't doing well as far as nature or anything else is concerned is. (Even Hells Ditch, the famous downfall, yields wonders. And indeed, one wonders, where did all those riches come from, given the reports of how difficult it was to deal with MacGowan in those times. Song after song, even as they are partly slurred, even as their notes are pure.)
I must admit to myself, reflecting over the decent guy at the bar, with his sayings--"Supporting a family, you got to do what you got to do, you know"--that there is an elitist part of me, or rather, more accurately, a part that believes in Buddha's truth. And because the Buddha's truth is so high, so out there (so it seems) it leaves one less with the tendency to be 'involved' in the world, because we are here to see the truth, to represent the truth. And the truth is bigger and higher than pipelines. (Don't get me wrong, I like my heat just like the next guy.) It could well be that the world is largely run by meddlesome idiots centered on their own particular selfish interests, and such a world will never run harmoniously, were it not for the very underlying Buddha nature of everything that is a natural check on things. Anyway, after a week of tending bar, isn't it a joy and a comfort to read The Threefold Lotus Sutra, lines of how we are all meant for the enlightenment of Nirvana. This is probably how I keep my calm.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Literate part of the mind that dogs me, were I to engage in dualism--what the Buddha tells us not to do--I might be down on things myself. A poor effort. Laziness. Foolish idle years.
A friend of a friend comes to the bar, wine tasting night. A very quiet Mardi Gras; we get to chat. "You're an intellectual," she says. "You get to watch people interact, watch people open up, start to talk." She's put off by the cheekiness of the man who sat down next to her, an Englishman in a ribald mood who has just completed a big project. But there are good conversations, that aspect aside, about people and their own intellectual history, a hint of their spiritual life. People who hang out in bars are quite intelligent, Shane MacGowan says, from the talk, from spending time in their own heads, while other people go about professions and things like that. "You're an observer," she tells me.
And later on, when she leaves, I think her for helping me feel okay with my job of serving people. She's lived in different parts of the world, Russia, England, France, Alabama... She strikes one as wise, and that helps too.
Is it 'real,' what I do, any more real than anything else? Yes, and no, or neither. But, in a comfortable place, I would say, people do open up. They do share things. They engage in conversation, talk a bit about their life and experiences, like Jake tells about taking his young daughter on a camping trip to Chincoteague. Everyone else is cooking hamburgers and hotdogs; he's grilling a rack of lamb.
I guess that's why I do it, to talk to people, to ask them where they have been or coming from, if they are relative strangers, alone with no one to talk to. "Ted's the smartest guy here," Jake says, more than once on a Tuesday wine tasting night. We usually have a chuckle over that, as I deny it, as if it were a secret to be kept to not be off-putting, too far out of place, else society would ground, grind to a halt, here in Washington, DC.
A few words help. Empowered when I get home, I pick up my mom's book, about Literacy and Women in the Nineteenth Century and letter writing and book collecting, and awake to how excellent it is, and how beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, (even) with all its academic paper references that are necessary to establish its foundation and progress. And for a time, that intellectual life appears as suddenly quite useful to a society, one dumbed down by constant checking of a ringing, beeping, buzzing, vibrating in the pants pocket. That life of the mind and ideas, a salvation, light, an endeavor to bring out the full power of the human mind and soul, and to celebrate the beauty of books and correspondence and words. And maybe that literary light, that spark, shines down even to where I am and spend my time, 'professionally,' beneath the blabber and the rot, the pleasantries, the postures and stances.
Drop me down a rope, mom. If only as something to hang on to, as the grind of serving plates, clearing dirty ones, getting the glassware washed and put away, the wine served, goes on and on and on and on and on.
(This is part of the secret appeal of Casablanca, that Rick, played by Bogart, is not just a smart guy, but an intellectual. And also the inspiring beauty of Dostoyevsky, the intellectual life of Karamazov brought to school children, of the same in the context of daily life in a Siberian prison camp.)
How brave she was to go off later in life and get her PhD, to bring out what was inside of her. Every intellectual life is a journey, like Dante's, like Lord of the Rings, like Lincoln's...
I don't blame anyone for attempting a moment of serenity in this world. Of course some ways are a lot better and long lasting and fruitful than other ways, like meditation, contemplation of Buddha's thoughts. There is an intellectual quality to that, I should think.
A friend of a friend comes to the bar, wine tasting night. A very quiet Mardi Gras; we get to chat. "You're an intellectual," she says. "You get to watch people interact, watch people open up, start to talk." She's put off by the cheekiness of the man who sat down next to her, an Englishman in a ribald mood who has just completed a big project. But there are good conversations, that aspect aside, about people and their own intellectual history, a hint of their spiritual life. People who hang out in bars are quite intelligent, Shane MacGowan says, from the talk, from spending time in their own heads, while other people go about professions and things like that. "You're an observer," she tells me.
And later on, when she leaves, I think her for helping me feel okay with my job of serving people. She's lived in different parts of the world, Russia, England, France, Alabama... She strikes one as wise, and that helps too.
Is it 'real,' what I do, any more real than anything else? Yes, and no, or neither. But, in a comfortable place, I would say, people do open up. They do share things. They engage in conversation, talk a bit about their life and experiences, like Jake tells about taking his young daughter on a camping trip to Chincoteague. Everyone else is cooking hamburgers and hotdogs; he's grilling a rack of lamb.
I guess that's why I do it, to talk to people, to ask them where they have been or coming from, if they are relative strangers, alone with no one to talk to. "Ted's the smartest guy here," Jake says, more than once on a Tuesday wine tasting night. We usually have a chuckle over that, as I deny it, as if it were a secret to be kept to not be off-putting, too far out of place, else society would ground, grind to a halt, here in Washington, DC.
A few words help. Empowered when I get home, I pick up my mom's book, about Literacy and Women in the Nineteenth Century and letter writing and book collecting, and awake to how excellent it is, and how beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, (even) with all its academic paper references that are necessary to establish its foundation and progress. And for a time, that intellectual life appears as suddenly quite useful to a society, one dumbed down by constant checking of a ringing, beeping, buzzing, vibrating in the pants pocket. That life of the mind and ideas, a salvation, light, an endeavor to bring out the full power of the human mind and soul, and to celebrate the beauty of books and correspondence and words. And maybe that literary light, that spark, shines down even to where I am and spend my time, 'professionally,' beneath the blabber and the rot, the pleasantries, the postures and stances.
Drop me down a rope, mom. If only as something to hang on to, as the grind of serving plates, clearing dirty ones, getting the glassware washed and put away, the wine served, goes on and on and on and on and on.
(This is part of the secret appeal of Casablanca, that Rick, played by Bogart, is not just a smart guy, but an intellectual. And also the inspiring beauty of Dostoyevsky, the intellectual life of Karamazov brought to school children, of the same in the context of daily life in a Siberian prison camp.)
How brave she was to go off later in life and get her PhD, to bring out what was inside of her. Every intellectual life is a journey, like Dante's, like Lord of the Rings, like Lincoln's...
I don't blame anyone for attempting a moment of serenity in this world. Of course some ways are a lot better and long lasting and fruitful than other ways, like meditation, contemplation of Buddha's thoughts. There is an intellectual quality to that, I should think.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Japanese Culture.
Enough said. Great stuff. Humanity.
But... the greatest horror of the last century... the effect of industrialization, of economic competition in the industrialized age... Japan, must keep up with the West (who has already accepted the fact of war over industrialization, the win and lose battle.)
Japan. A country of subtle aesthetic, Zen, understanding of the fiber of Nature, the pattern in waves, in wood, in meat, in tea, in people, in time, in architecture, in all things... Nature, nature, nature...
And to be modern, the times are taking such people, and all their culture, and telling them, to add the machine, to add the machine to everything.
The machine is now the bee's sting, the bite of the predator, the fire, the warmth of a robe, the metal of a highway bridge... no questions asked, must modernize, jump into the newest century...
And so Japan went crazy. Fought to the death, over industrialization.
And, like the rest of us, now, can only ask why.
Nature disappears. A little bit left, here and there. Pathetic, our stewardship of natural resources.
Enough said. Great stuff. Humanity.
But... the greatest horror of the last century... the effect of industrialization, of economic competition in the industrialized age... Japan, must keep up with the West (who has already accepted the fact of war over industrialization, the win and lose battle.)
Japan. A country of subtle aesthetic, Zen, understanding of the fiber of Nature, the pattern in waves, in wood, in meat, in tea, in people, in time, in architecture, in all things... Nature, nature, nature...
And to be modern, the times are taking such people, and all their culture, and telling them, to add the machine, to add the machine to everything.
The machine is now the bee's sting, the bite of the predator, the fire, the warmth of a robe, the metal of a highway bridge... no questions asked, must modernize, jump into the newest century...
And so Japan went crazy. Fought to the death, over industrialization.
And, like the rest of us, now, can only ask why.
Nature disappears. A little bit left, here and there. Pathetic, our stewardship of natural resources.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Chekhov's long short story, My Life: It's one of those moments in art when human reality steps forth out of a traditional form, much like Giotto's transformation of the flat Byzantine iconic figure into the world of light, gravity and emotion. The form was suddenly reduced in importance, and what came through was a liberation, a new freedom of expression no longer bound to the story. Instead of 'this is holy, therefore it must be flat and distant from every day reality,' there is 'this is real, so let things be round and dimensional, as they really are.'
It is the inner self knowledge, the awareness of psychology, of one's own shortcomings to temptations and laziness, etc., that lets the Buddha face that which is in himself, to withstand, and to gain enlightenment.
An ad hoc quality... The 'old man' (character's father) beating him with fists... facing up to the life of disappointment after pissed away potential... an acceptance of a life without a clear purpose or professional betterment...
It makes one think, or even realize, that Chekhov's life, even Chekhov, the great doctor, who had worked his way up from hard scrabble and mean old man, felt that 'lacking of direction.' Even Chekhov.
And then you think about that for a moment, and the impetus, deeper level stuff, comes clearer...
It is the inner self knowledge, the awareness of psychology, of one's own shortcomings to temptations and laziness, etc., that lets the Buddha face that which is in himself, to withstand, and to gain enlightenment.
An ad hoc quality... The 'old man' (character's father) beating him with fists... facing up to the life of disappointment after pissed away potential... an acceptance of a life without a clear purpose or professional betterment...
It makes one think, or even realize, that Chekhov's life, even Chekhov, the great doctor, who had worked his way up from hard scrabble and mean old man, felt that 'lacking of direction.' Even Chekhov.
And then you think about that for a moment, and the impetus, deeper level stuff, comes clearer...
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