I found that during the workweek, the new one, five shifts, closing every night, I didn't have time to write much.
I spent a lot of time alone. Which might be okay, in some ways, given the steady stream. But that was hard. To go from lots of people, to none. To go from seeing so many people having conversations, talking amongst each other, than when you feel you might be ready for your own, what? nothing, isolation, odd hours...
The neighbors didn't seem too thrilled with me, when I moved in. It was a shitty snowy weekend in early March, and I'd been through too much to want more than just to sleep. And when I brought out my natural defenses, such as trying out new songs on the guitar with a bit of singing attempt, they really didn't like me. The place was new, completely different, and no local friends, beyond the friends I made at the little Korean market. That too was a study in humanity, to walk in there, the little hub. DC Lottery Tickets, a religious homage to the basin of holy water just as you walked in.
Thursday afternoon, first day off, naps, I set an alarm just to make sure I get there for basics before it closes at 8PM. The News Hour wakes me up. From outside, I see through the glass door, a tall giant of an African American woman in spandex with midriff, she's talking into her cell phone on speaker talking about Drake, or someone named Drake, as she waits at the counter, no acknowledgment, ignoring the lady behind the counter, and I order some Boars Head Roast Beef, no nitrates, not too high in sodium--though I wonder about the swollen lymph gland now below my right armpit--get my bottle of decent Sideways South of France Pays D'Oc Pinot Noir, and the big tall woman is out in the street talking loudly into the phone on speaker. "I'm going to behave the way I want to behave." Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with that attitude. Just a contrast from the nice tea room polite Korean women who work from 7AM to 8PM at their little market, six days a week. Coffee, breakfast sandwiches, tuna salad, curried chicken salad, Boars Head deli, sandwiches, specials, produce on offer if you ask, such as celery, broccoli, little packets of handy frozen parsley... Old school, but very good, and a deluxe cold cut sub I have fallen for, sub roll with olive paste, hot and sweet peppers...
The other morning, two guys come in from across the street, after I've sheepishly ordered my cold cut sub, still feeling furtive about it, but rather sick of the flavors of The old Dying Gaul, even the veal cheeks osso bucco, and one of them is talking in a friendly way with the nice ring leader lady about how his haircut and look must surprise her. "I'm auditioning for a role that takes place in the Forties, so I had to get a haircut." His friend is tall too, quiet, polite, and it turns out he's looking to be cast into something for the 1850s... bearded. My mind is working on a Ken Burns Civil War little friendly quip, but, it's stinking hot out, blah, and I gotta get to work, lot of good it fucking does me, no retirement plan, no plan at all, and they willingly abuse me and my soul and my goodness, and no wonder when I walk up the alley behind the old Yassir Arafat PLO Embassy rear quarters, with the mulberry trees, with the fences, with the back end of the Chinese restaurant, and the odd abandoned yard, no wonder it's my Via Dolorosa, as if wearing a crown a thorns too, that vanishes from view when I enter the garage door at the basement of the old restaurant, to say hello to the kitchen guys napping, enter the hallway, lemons and limes and an orange from the walk-in, knowing no one else is capable of stocking...
Most people have some form of recognition in this humble neighborhood, the Palisades, regardless. In the market, out on the street. But not always. And because of my music, and my hours, persona non grata. That's how it goes.
I don't necessarily hold myself in high regard, you know. I think that comes with the territory. You look back at some episodes and crucial turning points of the kind that were not always as well thought out, and you see more a passive person than an aggressor. And unfortunately, the world needs, if things are going to turn out well, good people to become aggressive. Fighters. That attitude never occurred to me. It's been rather observed in the negative. People don't tend to jump to the side of the peaceful and the kind. They're still too busy trying to plan and overrun, or keep up, however they see it.
Well, I'm in such a state, one I shouldn't really be in, given my background, therefore proving my slacker laziness, my misguidedness, my Elie Weisel stand up for what's right or the bad people will take the selfish day and be horrible and evil... which I never got, being a peaceful person.
I guess war is the story where the peaceful people suddenly find themselves shipped off to this... I mean, Good God, the trenches, the worst you could imagine. Masai African elite athlete warriors sent to face off against the German machine gun... Always the story, the brave men, the Irish brigade, the six hundred, Picket's charge, they keep coming, even unto the bullseye, and then slaughtered, ripped limb from limb by object of physics far far out of scale with anything human and directly available, the tree, the daffodil, the grass, the primula, the lilly, the cattail, the bird, as to be utterly ridiculous. Unlike horse and carriage... like the highway, the beltway... stop for a second, you are dead and a lot of other people nearby you will probably be so too.
It seems so little a payoff, to be able to deliver a small story from the struggles of the workweek and the commutes and the phone calls and the other stuff, decisions not made that will then be made for you, poor mister forest dweller, to then be able to sit down, even hunched over like St. Jerome at the Ikea plexiglass coffee table and write a bit, to deliver a little Jesus Buddha homage, a little parable, but I too am very guilty for hiding my light under the bushel basket, who does that, not smart, hiding away talents, talent that chicks would have definitely enjoyed, except now I have become as the tree, watching the horizon and the clouds and heavenly objects and small creatures aboding, more and more everyday.
But if you can enter the slipstream, whether or not it will ever sell, or ever be recognized, that's a feeling of a lost decency, of a Jude the Obscure regaining status as a freshman with good roommates and lots of learning to have overlooking the quadrangle...
Yes, if you held to the cliff wall all week, careful with pitons, and then got to a place safe and clear and protected, then you could write a little bit. And you didn't care about some form of magnificent prose or a well-told story, no, you wanted to talk about the loaves and the fishes you had created out of nothing, out of jack,
All one needs is a bit of stimulation, a little entertainment. This is the basic point of education. Get a good grade or not, as long as in, through, the deepest riches of education, at the very point where science falls, disappears into poetry and the art of God, when the political realm and the entire history of diplomacy (along with its subsets of earthly wars, colosseums, open air amphitheaters, shady dealings, imprisonments, exiles, bloodshed, economic tortures, losers and winners) can be reduced to the basic language of the equality of spiritual beings acknowledging their spiritual nature, as plants do every day, the golden rule, the Good Samaritan, Job not blaming anyone but himself, nor Jonah blaming anyone either, do unto others, fear God and divine retribution and justice...
And so did the barman do his job, providing that little spark of entertainment, as underestimated, as little compensating as it was, he did his job, entertaining, broadening, allowing for openness...
Friday, August 9, 2019
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Draft:
I find myself in the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave. after work.
When you get older, you'll find things, come across things. A parent is dying. I'm too far away to get there. I'm coming from a work meeting. Blinded, I go to the Safeway...
Saturday, Sunday, Monday in, and each one drawing me into the night sea. I don't know what to do but have some wine after a shower, do the dishes. 5 AM now, pushed further into the night, further into the solitary.
I might have the touch, the common touch, the goodness to great a thousand people easy, and to get to know individuals quick enough, well, that's because I know myself, I've seen my habits, yes I have... And it's always been, I've thought, a noble experiment in being a kind of person, a particular sort of people, who, either are from some ancient place, or maybe even from space, or hyper space, as far as I could gather... I mean, from people who know the soul...
I mean, to know the soul, your own soul, the hyper soul, however you might put it, I mean, these days, that would be odd enough... So distracted, we are by... by the vehicles of expression, this app, that app, the perceived need to respond to some bit of news, take up the offerings of entertainment... I mean, just to speak basically and in full presence...
Such a conversation, even in a barroom, will fall to the thousand different priorities of professional life.
And the week continues.
Tuesday night wine tasting, one of those Air Unhealthy days in DC, and I feel it, walking down to the Korean market for a sandwich before the bus. It's slow, it's quiet. Two moms with kids across the street playing soccer come in for half a glass of wine, so, of course, pour them a taste. They then order half glasses, but by the time I get over there to the table, they have to go, that's cool, no worries at all, come back some other time. I'm walking past them as they get up from the low table, now on their mission, and two glasses roll off the table, crash, breaking. "Oh, Jesus..." I mutter to myself softly... No, no worries, shit happens, we'll catch you next time, one mom tries to give me a ten, no, really, take it easy...
We're tasting a Bordeaux, a Cotes de Bourg, Chateau Bujan, 2015. I go around giving my little spiel about the wine.
And then, Khaos of the Double Ks arrive. I've gotten everyone else calmed down and dined and deserted, it's just not busy at all, some wine conversations at the bar between a Jamaican woman and an older gentleman, Southern, in a linen jacket, who's written a book about Napa, he inscribes it to her... The Khaos guys are already a little bit into it, having come from one bar eatery, and they get sentimental soon enough, but I am, I suppose, too much a gentleman to notice it, and just keeping on top of them, organized, ready with silverware when they want to eat, and then more people come, there's the panic of getting the orders in before the kitchen closes, early, the announcement coming up from downstairs via the trusty old busboy, M., 9, and then ordering blind, not for just the two Italian women who are coming, but for another, and then, yes, for the chef guy, and Khaos One tells me at 9:08 that they need a salmon tartar... and the kitchen is not pleased when I put the order in, no, even the busboy lecturing me. But I'm busy just trying to keep it all straight, and I wonder later, is it in their personalities to demand such attention that takes a large amount of stoic hospitality and the patience of a saint, a saint, who, naturally, likes people, and his friends from down all the years...
Later, after it all, the troubled cleaning up, I find "rare footage" of Kerouac on YouTube, but he is drunk and sweaty and in people's faces, no hero of mine here, and I feel ashamed. Jesus, maybe it is all blowhard crap, even when one appears to write that well as Kerouac did. What kind of a personality would claim such a talent, and now we would look upon such men, Ginsburg, also disheveled, Kerouac, a sweaty drunk in a striped short sleeved shirt, as bums indeed, and maybe I'm one too, for falling for it all. Where does much of narrative fiction come from but stimulants, caffeine, the hungover lifestyle... The work of the man child, the mama's boy, refusing to man up and act with action.
The skies open just as I get on the bus to work, roast beef sub, wrapped in paper, and lightning followed four seconds later by thunder. Drenching, but I keep under the trees and jump over little torrents in the sidewalks and driveways and across curbs, up to work, socks damp, shirt soaked through, knapsack wet inside.
I'm wearied out from the night before, but I know that I've left the bar in good shape. I was there until 1:30 in the morning putting it all back together, the clean up from the last round of conversations after the smoke, to do the math of the checkout report, and the chef guy forgot his wallet, yeah, so it goes. I put the bar together again, stocked, ready to go, cold stuff cold, silverware, mineral water, cutting lime wedges, cloth napkins ready, reservation list, a general order of neatness, a clean slate bar top...
It's busy already, but one spot at the bar when Henri comes in, venerable waiter, close friend of Martin, the old maitre d' from Jockey Club, but it's a just a shade too hectic to have a sustained conversation with him, though I try, as coworker A. literally pokes me. Pigs feet, Veal Cheeks... I've come by to see you, but you're never here, Henri says as he gets ready to take his check. (His fellow French waiter down the street, who also worked with us, sometimes texts me on my work Saturday nights: "are you working tonight?" answer: "no." And sometime he slips in anyway, just as I'm getting rid of the last customers and there he is at the bar smiling at me, and for him, one is never enough, and so I have a right to duck him. I know how it's going to end, nice guy that he is.) There's a check presenter book next to him, the couple who has a story about a major soccer trophy visiting the town, and he mentions, having opened it that I gave him the wrong check, though meanwhile his check is right in front of him, which I advance. "I thought you looked confused," he says. "He's a man of leisure, eh..." ha ha. "That's a dangerous profession, young man," he tells me. Yes, my friend, I know. I told him I was working now an honest man's five shifts, and don't tell him about the rest, but... I can't really argue with him. He could manage to work catering to a law firm, breakfast and lunch, and then go do a restaurant night shift, avoiding the craziness. And it was better money back then, anyway.
And meanwhile, even in the slow doldrums of early August with Congress out of session, the bar is full, an older couple waiting for the two who are just having drinks to move along, and all the while the gypsy swing of the trio is ticking away.
And anyway my mind is recovering from the bleakness of spirit, the dissatisfaction that fell down upon me as the last of Khaos men were hanging around...
A favor to do, when I get back to the apartment. First, a nap, hitting the couch after taking my sneakers off. My friend who works for the real estate company who is my landlord, has sent an email, please light the pilot lights of the gas stove in vacant 201, and it's a greasy old stove, particularly after I remove the burner grates to lift the stove top up to find the top pilot lights. The old empty apartment, abandoned, electricity turned off, the same footprint as mine, but reversed. I didn't know the person who lived here. There was a Crucifix on the wall one could see through the window when the blinds were up, and now looking at them, they are old blinds. I run a load of laundry through, to have underwear and socks. Wide awake, I take out the recycling, go for a walk out around the block by the woods, 6:30 AM, now, people arriving off the main road at the Nature Research Center facility, beyond the reservoir banks, mist rising from the river above the trees on the far side of the Potomac.
I call mom, eat some curried chicken salad from the deli, go to bed, scratching at the mild itch on bug bitten knuckles. The window unit AC is on low, so it comes in and out of cooling mode, and the nail gun thumps percussively somewhere outside the window nearby, and the little Bobcat, digging away, back and forth.
I find myself in the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave. after work.
When you get older, you'll find things, come across things. A parent is dying. I'm too far away to get there. I'm coming from a work meeting. Blinded, I go to the Safeway...
Saturday, Sunday, Monday in, and each one drawing me into the night sea. I don't know what to do but have some wine after a shower, do the dishes. 5 AM now, pushed further into the night, further into the solitary.
I might have the touch, the common touch, the goodness to great a thousand people easy, and to get to know individuals quick enough, well, that's because I know myself, I've seen my habits, yes I have... And it's always been, I've thought, a noble experiment in being a kind of person, a particular sort of people, who, either are from some ancient place, or maybe even from space, or hyper space, as far as I could gather... I mean, from people who know the soul...
I mean, to know the soul, your own soul, the hyper soul, however you might put it, I mean, these days, that would be odd enough... So distracted, we are by... by the vehicles of expression, this app, that app, the perceived need to respond to some bit of news, take up the offerings of entertainment... I mean, just to speak basically and in full presence...
Such a conversation, even in a barroom, will fall to the thousand different priorities of professional life.
And the week continues.
Tuesday night wine tasting, one of those Air Unhealthy days in DC, and I feel it, walking down to the Korean market for a sandwich before the bus. It's slow, it's quiet. Two moms with kids across the street playing soccer come in for half a glass of wine, so, of course, pour them a taste. They then order half glasses, but by the time I get over there to the table, they have to go, that's cool, no worries at all, come back some other time. I'm walking past them as they get up from the low table, now on their mission, and two glasses roll off the table, crash, breaking. "Oh, Jesus..." I mutter to myself softly... No, no worries, shit happens, we'll catch you next time, one mom tries to give me a ten, no, really, take it easy...
We're tasting a Bordeaux, a Cotes de Bourg, Chateau Bujan, 2015. I go around giving my little spiel about the wine.
And then, Khaos of the Double Ks arrive. I've gotten everyone else calmed down and dined and deserted, it's just not busy at all, some wine conversations at the bar between a Jamaican woman and an older gentleman, Southern, in a linen jacket, who's written a book about Napa, he inscribes it to her... The Khaos guys are already a little bit into it, having come from one bar eatery, and they get sentimental soon enough, but I am, I suppose, too much a gentleman to notice it, and just keeping on top of them, organized, ready with silverware when they want to eat, and then more people come, there's the panic of getting the orders in before the kitchen closes, early, the announcement coming up from downstairs via the trusty old busboy, M., 9, and then ordering blind, not for just the two Italian women who are coming, but for another, and then, yes, for the chef guy, and Khaos One tells me at 9:08 that they need a salmon tartar... and the kitchen is not pleased when I put the order in, no, even the busboy lecturing me. But I'm busy just trying to keep it all straight, and I wonder later, is it in their personalities to demand such attention that takes a large amount of stoic hospitality and the patience of a saint, a saint, who, naturally, likes people, and his friends from down all the years...
Later, after it all, the troubled cleaning up, I find "rare footage" of Kerouac on YouTube, but he is drunk and sweaty and in people's faces, no hero of mine here, and I feel ashamed. Jesus, maybe it is all blowhard crap, even when one appears to write that well as Kerouac did. What kind of a personality would claim such a talent, and now we would look upon such men, Ginsburg, also disheveled, Kerouac, a sweaty drunk in a striped short sleeved shirt, as bums indeed, and maybe I'm one too, for falling for it all. Where does much of narrative fiction come from but stimulants, caffeine, the hungover lifestyle... The work of the man child, the mama's boy, refusing to man up and act with action.
The skies open just as I get on the bus to work, roast beef sub, wrapped in paper, and lightning followed four seconds later by thunder. Drenching, but I keep under the trees and jump over little torrents in the sidewalks and driveways and across curbs, up to work, socks damp, shirt soaked through, knapsack wet inside.
I'm wearied out from the night before, but I know that I've left the bar in good shape. I was there until 1:30 in the morning putting it all back together, the clean up from the last round of conversations after the smoke, to do the math of the checkout report, and the chef guy forgot his wallet, yeah, so it goes. I put the bar together again, stocked, ready to go, cold stuff cold, silverware, mineral water, cutting lime wedges, cloth napkins ready, reservation list, a general order of neatness, a clean slate bar top...
It's busy already, but one spot at the bar when Henri comes in, venerable waiter, close friend of Martin, the old maitre d' from Jockey Club, but it's a just a shade too hectic to have a sustained conversation with him, though I try, as coworker A. literally pokes me. Pigs feet, Veal Cheeks... I've come by to see you, but you're never here, Henri says as he gets ready to take his check. (His fellow French waiter down the street, who also worked with us, sometimes texts me on my work Saturday nights: "are you working tonight?" answer: "no." And sometime he slips in anyway, just as I'm getting rid of the last customers and there he is at the bar smiling at me, and for him, one is never enough, and so I have a right to duck him. I know how it's going to end, nice guy that he is.) There's a check presenter book next to him, the couple who has a story about a major soccer trophy visiting the town, and he mentions, having opened it that I gave him the wrong check, though meanwhile his check is right in front of him, which I advance. "I thought you looked confused," he says. "He's a man of leisure, eh..." ha ha. "That's a dangerous profession, young man," he tells me. Yes, my friend, I know. I told him I was working now an honest man's five shifts, and don't tell him about the rest, but... I can't really argue with him. He could manage to work catering to a law firm, breakfast and lunch, and then go do a restaurant night shift, avoiding the craziness. And it was better money back then, anyway.
And meanwhile, even in the slow doldrums of early August with Congress out of session, the bar is full, an older couple waiting for the two who are just having drinks to move along, and all the while the gypsy swing of the trio is ticking away.
And anyway my mind is recovering from the bleakness of spirit, the dissatisfaction that fell down upon me as the last of Khaos men were hanging around...
A favor to do, when I get back to the apartment. First, a nap, hitting the couch after taking my sneakers off. My friend who works for the real estate company who is my landlord, has sent an email, please light the pilot lights of the gas stove in vacant 201, and it's a greasy old stove, particularly after I remove the burner grates to lift the stove top up to find the top pilot lights. The old empty apartment, abandoned, electricity turned off, the same footprint as mine, but reversed. I didn't know the person who lived here. There was a Crucifix on the wall one could see through the window when the blinds were up, and now looking at them, they are old blinds. I run a load of laundry through, to have underwear and socks. Wide awake, I take out the recycling, go for a walk out around the block by the woods, 6:30 AM, now, people arriving off the main road at the Nature Research Center facility, beyond the reservoir banks, mist rising from the river above the trees on the far side of the Potomac.
I call mom, eat some curried chicken salad from the deli, go to bed, scratching at the mild itch on bug bitten knuckles. The window unit AC is on low, so it comes in and out of cooling mode, and the nail gun thumps percussively somewhere outside the window nearby, and the little Bobcat, digging away, back and forth.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Having laid out the cut slate flagstones, in squares and rectangles, one of the workmen took the cement mix in the wheelbarrow and troweled it up into a large pastry bag kind of a thing, squeezing out the mixture into the gaps, then smoothing, and below him the younger man, a slender kid, took a large sponge and wiped off the tops of the stones.
It's Friday afternoon. I go and do my yoga, mat angled to the western setting sun through the trees, and then it's good yoga under the pines, and I do my tree in front of a tree trunk and my lotus pose the same.
Later I get bored, taking a nap after eating half a deluxe cold cut sub stuffed with additional roast beef... and I'm not ready to get the bus in to go see Jeremy and A. and Jeremy's friends... I finally get to the 10:30 bus in, and when I get to The Gaul, everybody's gone and the busboy lets me in. I have a glass of wine at the bar, just sitting there by myself, what to do. Go buy laundry detergent at the Safeway, take the bus back home? I check the map application to see when the next bus back will be, but end up walking down past the Catholic church JFK attended near Georgetown University, sit down at the bar down in the Tombs, have a glass of pinot noir, order a burger, walk home finally.
It's Friday afternoon. I go and do my yoga, mat angled to the western setting sun through the trees, and then it's good yoga under the pines, and I do my tree in front of a tree trunk and my lotus pose the same.
Later I get bored, taking a nap after eating half a deluxe cold cut sub stuffed with additional roast beef... and I'm not ready to get the bus in to go see Jeremy and A. and Jeremy's friends... I finally get to the 10:30 bus in, and when I get to The Gaul, everybody's gone and the busboy lets me in. I have a glass of wine at the bar, just sitting there by myself, what to do. Go buy laundry detergent at the Safeway, take the bus back home? I check the map application to see when the next bus back will be, but end up walking down past the Catholic church JFK attended near Georgetown University, sit down at the bar down in the Tombs, have a glass of pinot noir, order a burger, walk home finally.
But how do you explain Buddha's enlightenment thoughts? How do you go about creating a group of like minded friends with something so tenuous, existing only in the imagination? How would you convince your own lonesome self about the karmic wheel...
... to send peaceful vibes out into the world?
... to send peaceful vibes out into the world?
Sunday, August 4, 2019
I get mom on the phone, after my Saturday night shift...
We talk about a lot, end up with Emily Dickinson, and not the usual, "all but death can be adjusted."
The Past is such a curious creature,
to look her in the face
A transport may reward us
Or a disgrace.
Unarmed if any meet her,
I charge him, fly!
Her rusty ammunition
Might yet reply.
I gather that to me that main thing her is the image, of The Past being an actual creature, a physical presence, and, indeed, one that is curious, ever shifting, full of a strange strong personality, ever-shifting, not knowing where you might find it.
"You've got the touch," she says, helps as i face the day...
We talk about a lot, end up with Emily Dickinson, and not the usual, "all but death can be adjusted."
The Past is such a curious creature,
to look her in the face
A transport may reward us
Or a disgrace.
Unarmed if any meet her,
I charge him, fly!
Her rusty ammunition
Might yet reply.
I gather that to me that main thing her is the image, of The Past being an actual creature, a physical presence, and, indeed, one that is curious, ever shifting, full of a strange strong personality, ever-shifting, not knowing where you might find it.
"You've got the touch," she says, helps as i face the day...
Transcribed:
I was (um) actually a very good bartender. I would come in, before or on time, earlier, often, and set up. I would stock as well as I could. I think sometimes all the other guys would just shrug, doesn't need to be done. Showing up I'd be picky. I mean, I was sacrificing a lot for this, way too much. (Except I didn't know any other thing, any other way... That's pretty sad I guess, because when you're too late, you're too late. Well... You get defined, at least so it feels like somehow, and feeling a way is significant as far as you're going to keep feeling... You feel that way, old, life passing you by sort of stuff, not necessarily with any reality attached to it beyond wisdom, some kind of wisdom, at least....
And it's very hard to write now these days. I don't know... Fifty years ago Kerouac would just riff on, great stuff, and then before that you had Hemingway who was like a careful moccasin cobbler stylist. Both of them in a very real way, a very real way of writing, very true, very heartfelt, very much tied in with their own sense of how the "Genius/Creator/God Within," a way of presenting their experience, their reality, and of course they were very much exposed to art, and art which began more and more to offer up deeper pointed questions about personal depths, humanness...
I'd put Vonnegut with that bunch, I'd put Twain, I'd put Carver, and others too, I'm sure, Stephan Crane... Melville, certainly, Sherwood Anderson, Frost, Carl Sandburg, Whitman...
But it got harder to write when it should have become easier to write, like a political attitude, oh, yes, wait a minute, some sort of "woke" political correctness that was wrong enough to give a great backlash... One should have just been able to write, like I have,
and so now anyway, I'm telling you.
There was everything in what I did. There was theatrics, its sub components of physical comedy, voice, eye movement, eyebrow Groucho expression, sounding out in different voices.
Is it at all natural that a person would somehow chose a life that was a job of walking into strangers, and accepting them all the way, and all that. Yes, I think it is. Different flow, but always full of humans...
So I responded to it. Of course I did. Animal husbandry. And I feel that I've grown in stature, now that I'm middle age going on beyond at some point, that I've maintained my peak performance for a long time. I don't think anyone has actually ever given me credit for that. I mean, a job, a person, you take for granted. Right?
Bartenders can be in style or out of style, and many many play up the style, and I don't blame them, marketing themselves...
But those guys will come and go, I mean, even if they too stay put. I'd rather just be a plain enough guy, who's got every customer backed up with good stuff, many possibilities of a classic meal and wine to go with it...
I was (um) actually a very good bartender. I would come in, before or on time, earlier, often, and set up. I would stock as well as I could. I think sometimes all the other guys would just shrug, doesn't need to be done. Showing up I'd be picky. I mean, I was sacrificing a lot for this, way too much. (Except I didn't know any other thing, any other way... That's pretty sad I guess, because when you're too late, you're too late. Well... You get defined, at least so it feels like somehow, and feeling a way is significant as far as you're going to keep feeling... You feel that way, old, life passing you by sort of stuff, not necessarily with any reality attached to it beyond wisdom, some kind of wisdom, at least....
And it's very hard to write now these days. I don't know... Fifty years ago Kerouac would just riff on, great stuff, and then before that you had Hemingway who was like a careful moccasin cobbler stylist. Both of them in a very real way, a very real way of writing, very true, very heartfelt, very much tied in with their own sense of how the "Genius/Creator/God Within," a way of presenting their experience, their reality, and of course they were very much exposed to art, and art which began more and more to offer up deeper pointed questions about personal depths, humanness...
I'd put Vonnegut with that bunch, I'd put Twain, I'd put Carver, and others too, I'm sure, Stephan Crane... Melville, certainly, Sherwood Anderson, Frost, Carl Sandburg, Whitman...
But it got harder to write when it should have become easier to write, like a political attitude, oh, yes, wait a minute, some sort of "woke" political correctness that was wrong enough to give a great backlash... One should have just been able to write, like I have,
and so now anyway, I'm telling you.
There was everything in what I did. There was theatrics, its sub components of physical comedy, voice, eye movement, eyebrow Groucho expression, sounding out in different voices.
Is it at all natural that a person would somehow chose a life that was a job of walking into strangers, and accepting them all the way, and all that. Yes, I think it is. Different flow, but always full of humans...
So I responded to it. Of course I did. Animal husbandry. And I feel that I've grown in stature, now that I'm middle age going on beyond at some point, that I've maintained my peak performance for a long time. I don't think anyone has actually ever given me credit for that. I mean, a job, a person, you take for granted. Right?
Bartenders can be in style or out of style, and many many play up the style, and I don't blame them, marketing themselves...
But those guys will come and go, I mean, even if they too stay put. I'd rather just be a plain enough guy, who's got every customer backed up with good stuff, many possibilities of a classic meal and wine to go with it...
Shush, quiet...
I just wanted to thank you for the nice note. It's taken me a long time to get back to. At the time I seriously appreciated your professional courtesy and your kind suggestion, after my causing trouble playing music and signing at 6 in the morning. If I play, and I still do, I go far away from buildings as I can, and out here this is a great great space for it. I am so pleased with the location out here on George Patton Boulevard. I love being out in the nature, at all times of day. Your very good idea to invest in some good bug repellent has provided me a chuckle for a long time now. In fact, bug repellent is a boon for outdoor activity, and now, I've changed my ways, and quietly practice yoga out among some tall pine trees somewhat near the house, near the little building for the Urban Ecology National Parks..., doing five minute headstands, and fairly intense Lotus... which they say is one of the real reasons for gearing up with the yoga exercise, to sit and meditate. (I have yet to meet one of the local gals, in an intimate way as a healthy young couple might please themselves with, by which to further my practice of yoga, and that of the little man who also has seven chakras. I would imagine her, ideally, wearing some kind of naturally derived outfit, and a gentle wild manner, happy and unrestrained, but yet natural enough to appreciate the great silences of man that let us enjoy nature...)
Anyway, I wanted to thank you again for the great infrastructure out at 4762, and for having me. It's been good for me, and I hope to be here awhile and unpack.
Best,
Ted's sketch of letter
I just wanted to thank you for the nice note. It's taken me a long time to get back to. At the time I seriously appreciated your professional courtesy and your kind suggestion, after my causing trouble playing music and signing at 6 in the morning. If I play, and I still do, I go far away from buildings as I can, and out here this is a great great space for it. I am so pleased with the location out here on George Patton Boulevard. I love being out in the nature, at all times of day. Your very good idea to invest in some good bug repellent has provided me a chuckle for a long time now. In fact, bug repellent is a boon for outdoor activity, and now, I've changed my ways, and quietly practice yoga out among some tall pine trees somewhat near the house, near the little building for the Urban Ecology National Parks..., doing five minute headstands, and fairly intense Lotus... which they say is one of the real reasons for gearing up with the yoga exercise, to sit and meditate. (I have yet to meet one of the local gals, in an intimate way as a healthy young couple might please themselves with, by which to further my practice of yoga, and that of the little man who also has seven chakras. I would imagine her, ideally, wearing some kind of naturally derived outfit, and a gentle wild manner, happy and unrestrained, but yet natural enough to appreciate the great silences of man that let us enjoy nature...)
Anyway, I wanted to thank you again for the great infrastructure out at 4762, and for having me. It's been good for me, and I hope to be here awhile and unpack.
Best,
Ted's sketch of letter
Thursday, August 1, 2019
The workweek draws to an end with a party in back ordering cocktails as the trio playing Brazilian genre jazz, with the singer making her efforts at pitch and Portuguese, at a volume level that throws off my concentration, big time, and the server is ordering drinks complicated to begin with but I can barely hear her. The boss's family is sitting at one of the low tables, and I've been at it since five thirty and don't have much smile left. It all started soon after the door opened, engaging with the two older men who are a couple, particular shapes to their heads, who used to come often but have just driven down from their new home in Ontario, Canada, who both want a nice glass of gin, one with tonic, one with water, no fruit, after their 500 miles of road. Early on, and while my coworker has disappeared somewhere, Marie Reine comes up with a party to sit in the back, and they want cocktails immediately. Okay, so I go back there, still smiling. Yes... She wants gin and tonic with lots of lime, okay, fine, and he wants a gin martini with olives, okay, and then after two young people join them the older guy is up at the bar with such a manner that I must acknowledge him in a minute, yes, I know, they too need cocktails, like, yesterday... Alina, could you please go and get their order, which turns out to be one flute maison and a Manhattan on the rocks, and already I have to concentrate, but that's how the night is going to be on this final day of Mercury Retrograde, communication breakdown, blips and burps, and teamwork difficult.
The day started with mom's helper calling, to tell me mom is "drunk," and she puts her on the phone, around 12:30 just as I'm getting up to figure out the first tele-session with my therapist who's moved away to New York State. After the session I take a nap--mom is sleeping now anyway--shower, have some green mint tea, get to the little Korean deli across the street before the bus comes for a roast beef on rye, and when I get off the bus at the stop closest to work, by the playing fields for the Catholic girl's school near Georgetown University, I realize I've forgotten my new Nalgene water bottle with my homemade electrolyte water, probably on the bus, distracted, I pulled the yellow chord but the little usual bell did not sound nor did the Stop Requested sign light up, wondering if the driver was going to stop, and generally tired from the week and not feeling too happy.
At the end of the night, around 1 AM, too beat to hit the Safeway for groceries and ground hamburger, slipping the rent check through the door just a few doors down, I get my Uber driver, and he drops me off, and sadly I walk back down to the bus stop to see if there's any chance I left my new Nalgene blue water bottle there, but nope. I pour myself a glass of wine, have a piece of feta left over from the Gyro the other night, Saturday night, find some Irish whisky, and go for a walk around the block, to stand for a moment under the trees. It's slow, I open my shirt up, just shaking it all off. When I get back there's something on Facebook, a link to rare photos from the Vietnam War Era, and along with Ann Margaret entertaining, there's a GI with an open Playboy with the caption, away from home, soldiers needed to keep their sanity however they could. Yup, I get it. A bit of self-pleasure to soothe the end of a day in the trenches.
My first day off, I sleep. I get up, call mom, around one, she's fine, go back to bed and sleep a deep muscle-bound afternoon sleep from which I cannot move, above the noises of the construction below, the workmen banging away on the wooden frame on top of the poured concrete foundation, the sound of the nail gun's bullets. "Bah, this job," I say to myself in thoughts, that's what I get for being an idiot, being around booze and wine, for not making choices resembling any sort of plan... " But, at least, I am off today. The cupboard is bare, and I'm needing hydration, and it's hot out, as it has been for many days in a row. "Drinking wine is hiding away in your own little world, and all the while a waste of intellectual and other talents," my mind tells me, echoing the words of my therapist about my tendencies to live in my own little non-reality world. And other such bitter thoughts, but at least my head doesn't headache and I feel rested enough that the mind seems to be working again after the five night shifts.
I hope to get to yoga soon enough, I remind myself, so I brew up hot water, in a cup with lemon, ground ginger and turmeric, a crack of pepper and a light dash of salt. Then a fresh pot of Moroccan Mint, steeped three minutes, as I look at the Hispanic workmen laying fresh flagstone with a string to guide them, mixing a cement mixture by hand, one man on his knees pounding down on the laid slate stones with a rubber mallet.
There's a glitch on my laptop, as far as the tele-session with Dr. Heather goes. It worked in practice, but now the little camera will not respond to my turning it on, and it begins to heat up anyway soon. The important thing is for her to see me, and she tells me I must be tired, having to cope with aging mother stuff from afar. And there seems to be no real answer to it, for her stuff and my stuff and I just went through one move, and that's enough to turn you into a Zen Buddhist with his Lotus pose. I describe my yoga practice, and it's a good one.
In the office, as I change into my work clothes, I reach mom, and actually she is fine, quite fine, and says the whole thing was exaggerated, to make her look bad, tongues wagging as they do. Okay, fair enough, and I am relieved indeed, and no sense going into it any deeper.
On another front I tell my therapist that my old girlfriend, from many years ago here in DC, how she came by the bar, and how I was actually quite relieved to find that she's found a professor boyfriend somewhere, and that she herself has gone back to therapy to get through the childhood issue of her father leaving mom and her sister... "Are you relieved," as in "are you sure about that," Dr. Heather asks, yes I am. And then I mumble about the young woman I know through old Nate, who does yoga, she's cool, in great shape, maybe I'll have the energy to go to Karaoke in Arlington with her one of these Thursdays... Ah, but the whole mom thing doesn't put me much in the mood, nor does five shifts keeping up to make ends meet here at the new apartment after all those years with good old George, a mensch. And this is the first year I haven't watched the Tour de France on television for a long time. The years I spent out in Rock Creek Park on a road bike, going out past the Mormons, out past Grosvenor, out to Garrett Park and turning back around, Beech Drive the whole way, and sometimes out into Potomac via Falls Road, a taste of country side I surely enjoyed, away from the strip malls and the city's avenues full of traffic and other hassles.
And then a breeze comes in through the open window above the three workmen speaking familiar sounding Central American Spanish as they trowel and scrape and cut rock with a little hand-held spinning blade, to fit and pound with the mallet, overseen by the third, sitting down on an unfurled roll of sod, then tossing bits of broken concrete over where there needs to be some fill, "cabron," and light laugher, and more talking as a plane whooshes over head, and I have to think about what I need to get to eat this evening. And somewhere in the city the young and good looking and the gregarious are sitting down for happy hour, striving successfully, staying within the narrow lines of the contemporary tech urban economy, and not necessarily thinking too deeply about it all, but not me. I'm not on their schedule.
I need some exercise anyway.
I remember telling my therapist in our little video chat over my iPhone how I can only take so much of reading all the Buddhist stuff, and all the yoga, good to do, but you get enough of it, it seems sometimes, but it's also self-protective. As if leaving a bit of yourself safe, even when you are feeling isolated, feeling the need to be out amongst company in the city's life.
I put some pants on and cross the avenue to the Korean market for sandwiches, a hero, a roast beef with horseradish, a small container of curry chicken salad, some sliced roast beef for extra, though I try my best to avoid bread, I need my energy anyway. I talk to the two women by the counter, one who makes the sandwiches, and one at the register, with whom I've become friendly with. "Your husband (an older fellow with thick glasses, and more halting English skills) taught me how to say thank you (in Korean) but I've forgotten." I take a little piece of DC Lottery paper to write it down. Kum Sa Ham Ni Da, I spell out as she looks over, and it translates as thanks to god, she tells me, and bows, and I bow too, and back across the street with my bottle of wine and supplies. I feel shy, vaguely ashamed of myself, somehow, is one feeling, on the first day off. I'll go do some yoga, I decide, while it's still light out, under my California Pine friends over by the path above the canal. I need to conquer some of the unhappy thoughts and the sense of isolation and the sense that my life is going nowhere...
How to rejoin the stream of human beings... How to join in with the people who can sit and have their earned conversations with their peers, as I wait on them... Currently impossible, given my job and its schedule...
After the market, sandwiches put safely away in the refrigerator I put my yoga shorts back on, a tee shirt, the remaining Nalgene water bottle, insect repellent, yoga mat, down the place where the ground is level and soft underneath the high pine trees, getting near dusk now, planes with their landing gear down coming in overheard, some coming very fast, and I get my mom on the phone after a couple rounds of messaging with an old girlfriend living in California's Redwood forests, a re-kindled artistic friendship wherever it might go, and now under the trees going through my yoga poses, and getting to a meditative enough place in my mind where some negative thoughts harbor, I begin to feel normal again, almost.
And it dawns on me. Ents. Tolkien had been to the Great War, seen the trenches, brutalities unspeakable. (He wasn't the only writer, either, who came out of the experience, who would later pay homage to nature, one way or another.) And what he eventually brought forth from such dark troubled times is the ecological imagination found in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. A reimagining of human consciousness and the interaction with nature, a reimagining of the human persona. Yes, perhaps it seems a little bit fanciful, tree-like beings with human attributes and mobility, things like that, but what if you could construe the human being as an unselfish character, not out for gain, standing something like a tree in his occupations, asking for not much more than the basics in return, instead of playing the whole ecological disaster game of "me first," but rather, standing as the tree stands, at peace, with harmony with the ground below, the sky above, the creatures of the air, its neighboring fellow trees, its roots solid down below.
There must be something to it, so deep and intuitive, that we can barely grasp, our lives connected to the lives of trees...
I do my yoga, sun salutation, warrior, plough, attempting lotus pose, but then remembering pigeon, after my five minute head stand, and lotus goes much better, and the trees are above me and the sky turns pink glowing out in the west as the planes come in from far away with their lights on. The trees render forth their benefits upon me and I meditate.
And like a tree, I too stand over conversations, occasionally participate in a fortuitous kindly one, but generally just stand and listen with basic response as necessary. I don't get paid much to do it, nor do the trees.
Going through the condensed form of ecological disaster that war is, guns, bombs, shells, the modern way, perhaps the experience allowed the human being to think back, to consider a more ecological way of living. It might seem fanciful, overly imaginative, a waste of time, at first, looked at coldly, this business of talking to and with trees, but hey, what's so wrong about it. Malory took to the mountains, Tolkien took to the imagination of literary possibilities, rife with imagery and symbolism, good versus evil. And in literature, such an awakening, such a breaking free of the industrial age rut, at least in the private imagination, was possible. and right could be distinguished from wrong, as far as how to treat the elephant or the wild land and the oceans themselves.
Buddhism is not the easiest thing to grasp. Large portions of it can seem quite counter-intuitive, or counter to the logic of economic progress. Buddhism I find personally to be quite a pain in the ass, and in some ways I wish I'd never heard about it, never had been bitten by its curiosities. You're born into this world, into a family, and for their sake and your own, deal with it; enter into the battle, fight, drive 80 miles an hour in traffic to get to an economic destination, everyone else is doing it, you don't want to be left behind, because that is no good, my friend. Or, a compromise, perhaps, if such a thing is possible, between Buddhist thought and the world of consumer consumption. You gotta eat something. You gotta live somewhere, somewhere to put your stuff... Best you can do, a separate peace, on your day off, but that gets lonesome quick, unless you are in control of the mind, which, yes, happens to be another thing the Buddhist tends to preach, meditation, in other words...
Buddhism is torture. What's its payoff? Hopefully some form of Tantric enlightenment, for all your troubles and the pains of sitting cross-legged in Lotus pose.
And yoga? It seems to help control the appetites one gets, the cravings.
The day started with mom's helper calling, to tell me mom is "drunk," and she puts her on the phone, around 12:30 just as I'm getting up to figure out the first tele-session with my therapist who's moved away to New York State. After the session I take a nap--mom is sleeping now anyway--shower, have some green mint tea, get to the little Korean deli across the street before the bus comes for a roast beef on rye, and when I get off the bus at the stop closest to work, by the playing fields for the Catholic girl's school near Georgetown University, I realize I've forgotten my new Nalgene water bottle with my homemade electrolyte water, probably on the bus, distracted, I pulled the yellow chord but the little usual bell did not sound nor did the Stop Requested sign light up, wondering if the driver was going to stop, and generally tired from the week and not feeling too happy.
At the end of the night, around 1 AM, too beat to hit the Safeway for groceries and ground hamburger, slipping the rent check through the door just a few doors down, I get my Uber driver, and he drops me off, and sadly I walk back down to the bus stop to see if there's any chance I left my new Nalgene blue water bottle there, but nope. I pour myself a glass of wine, have a piece of feta left over from the Gyro the other night, Saturday night, find some Irish whisky, and go for a walk around the block, to stand for a moment under the trees. It's slow, I open my shirt up, just shaking it all off. When I get back there's something on Facebook, a link to rare photos from the Vietnam War Era, and along with Ann Margaret entertaining, there's a GI with an open Playboy with the caption, away from home, soldiers needed to keep their sanity however they could. Yup, I get it. A bit of self-pleasure to soothe the end of a day in the trenches.
My first day off, I sleep. I get up, call mom, around one, she's fine, go back to bed and sleep a deep muscle-bound afternoon sleep from which I cannot move, above the noises of the construction below, the workmen banging away on the wooden frame on top of the poured concrete foundation, the sound of the nail gun's bullets. "Bah, this job," I say to myself in thoughts, that's what I get for being an idiot, being around booze and wine, for not making choices resembling any sort of plan... " But, at least, I am off today. The cupboard is bare, and I'm needing hydration, and it's hot out, as it has been for many days in a row. "Drinking wine is hiding away in your own little world, and all the while a waste of intellectual and other talents," my mind tells me, echoing the words of my therapist about my tendencies to live in my own little non-reality world. And other such bitter thoughts, but at least my head doesn't headache and I feel rested enough that the mind seems to be working again after the five night shifts.
I hope to get to yoga soon enough, I remind myself, so I brew up hot water, in a cup with lemon, ground ginger and turmeric, a crack of pepper and a light dash of salt. Then a fresh pot of Moroccan Mint, steeped three minutes, as I look at the Hispanic workmen laying fresh flagstone with a string to guide them, mixing a cement mixture by hand, one man on his knees pounding down on the laid slate stones with a rubber mallet.
There's a glitch on my laptop, as far as the tele-session with Dr. Heather goes. It worked in practice, but now the little camera will not respond to my turning it on, and it begins to heat up anyway soon. The important thing is for her to see me, and she tells me I must be tired, having to cope with aging mother stuff from afar. And there seems to be no real answer to it, for her stuff and my stuff and I just went through one move, and that's enough to turn you into a Zen Buddhist with his Lotus pose. I describe my yoga practice, and it's a good one.
In the office, as I change into my work clothes, I reach mom, and actually she is fine, quite fine, and says the whole thing was exaggerated, to make her look bad, tongues wagging as they do. Okay, fair enough, and I am relieved indeed, and no sense going into it any deeper.
On another front I tell my therapist that my old girlfriend, from many years ago here in DC, how she came by the bar, and how I was actually quite relieved to find that she's found a professor boyfriend somewhere, and that she herself has gone back to therapy to get through the childhood issue of her father leaving mom and her sister... "Are you relieved," as in "are you sure about that," Dr. Heather asks, yes I am. And then I mumble about the young woman I know through old Nate, who does yoga, she's cool, in great shape, maybe I'll have the energy to go to Karaoke in Arlington with her one of these Thursdays... Ah, but the whole mom thing doesn't put me much in the mood, nor does five shifts keeping up to make ends meet here at the new apartment after all those years with good old George, a mensch. And this is the first year I haven't watched the Tour de France on television for a long time. The years I spent out in Rock Creek Park on a road bike, going out past the Mormons, out past Grosvenor, out to Garrett Park and turning back around, Beech Drive the whole way, and sometimes out into Potomac via Falls Road, a taste of country side I surely enjoyed, away from the strip malls and the city's avenues full of traffic and other hassles.
And then a breeze comes in through the open window above the three workmen speaking familiar sounding Central American Spanish as they trowel and scrape and cut rock with a little hand-held spinning blade, to fit and pound with the mallet, overseen by the third, sitting down on an unfurled roll of sod, then tossing bits of broken concrete over where there needs to be some fill, "cabron," and light laugher, and more talking as a plane whooshes over head, and I have to think about what I need to get to eat this evening. And somewhere in the city the young and good looking and the gregarious are sitting down for happy hour, striving successfully, staying within the narrow lines of the contemporary tech urban economy, and not necessarily thinking too deeply about it all, but not me. I'm not on their schedule.
I need some exercise anyway.
I remember telling my therapist in our little video chat over my iPhone how I can only take so much of reading all the Buddhist stuff, and all the yoga, good to do, but you get enough of it, it seems sometimes, but it's also self-protective. As if leaving a bit of yourself safe, even when you are feeling isolated, feeling the need to be out amongst company in the city's life.
I put some pants on and cross the avenue to the Korean market for sandwiches, a hero, a roast beef with horseradish, a small container of curry chicken salad, some sliced roast beef for extra, though I try my best to avoid bread, I need my energy anyway. I talk to the two women by the counter, one who makes the sandwiches, and one at the register, with whom I've become friendly with. "Your husband (an older fellow with thick glasses, and more halting English skills) taught me how to say thank you (in Korean) but I've forgotten." I take a little piece of DC Lottery paper to write it down. Kum Sa Ham Ni Da, I spell out as she looks over, and it translates as thanks to god, she tells me, and bows, and I bow too, and back across the street with my bottle of wine and supplies. I feel shy, vaguely ashamed of myself, somehow, is one feeling, on the first day off. I'll go do some yoga, I decide, while it's still light out, under my California Pine friends over by the path above the canal. I need to conquer some of the unhappy thoughts and the sense of isolation and the sense that my life is going nowhere...
How to rejoin the stream of human beings... How to join in with the people who can sit and have their earned conversations with their peers, as I wait on them... Currently impossible, given my job and its schedule...
After the market, sandwiches put safely away in the refrigerator I put my yoga shorts back on, a tee shirt, the remaining Nalgene water bottle, insect repellent, yoga mat, down the place where the ground is level and soft underneath the high pine trees, getting near dusk now, planes with their landing gear down coming in overheard, some coming very fast, and I get my mom on the phone after a couple rounds of messaging with an old girlfriend living in California's Redwood forests, a re-kindled artistic friendship wherever it might go, and now under the trees going through my yoga poses, and getting to a meditative enough place in my mind where some negative thoughts harbor, I begin to feel normal again, almost.
And it dawns on me. Ents. Tolkien had been to the Great War, seen the trenches, brutalities unspeakable. (He wasn't the only writer, either, who came out of the experience, who would later pay homage to nature, one way or another.) And what he eventually brought forth from such dark troubled times is the ecological imagination found in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. A reimagining of human consciousness and the interaction with nature, a reimagining of the human persona. Yes, perhaps it seems a little bit fanciful, tree-like beings with human attributes and mobility, things like that, but what if you could construe the human being as an unselfish character, not out for gain, standing something like a tree in his occupations, asking for not much more than the basics in return, instead of playing the whole ecological disaster game of "me first," but rather, standing as the tree stands, at peace, with harmony with the ground below, the sky above, the creatures of the air, its neighboring fellow trees, its roots solid down below.
There must be something to it, so deep and intuitive, that we can barely grasp, our lives connected to the lives of trees...
I do my yoga, sun salutation, warrior, plough, attempting lotus pose, but then remembering pigeon, after my five minute head stand, and lotus goes much better, and the trees are above me and the sky turns pink glowing out in the west as the planes come in from far away with their lights on. The trees render forth their benefits upon me and I meditate.
And like a tree, I too stand over conversations, occasionally participate in a fortuitous kindly one, but generally just stand and listen with basic response as necessary. I don't get paid much to do it, nor do the trees.
Going through the condensed form of ecological disaster that war is, guns, bombs, shells, the modern way, perhaps the experience allowed the human being to think back, to consider a more ecological way of living. It might seem fanciful, overly imaginative, a waste of time, at first, looked at coldly, this business of talking to and with trees, but hey, what's so wrong about it. Malory took to the mountains, Tolkien took to the imagination of literary possibilities, rife with imagery and symbolism, good versus evil. And in literature, such an awakening, such a breaking free of the industrial age rut, at least in the private imagination, was possible. and right could be distinguished from wrong, as far as how to treat the elephant or the wild land and the oceans themselves.
Buddhism is not the easiest thing to grasp. Large portions of it can seem quite counter-intuitive, or counter to the logic of economic progress. Buddhism I find personally to be quite a pain in the ass, and in some ways I wish I'd never heard about it, never had been bitten by its curiosities. You're born into this world, into a family, and for their sake and your own, deal with it; enter into the battle, fight, drive 80 miles an hour in traffic to get to an economic destination, everyone else is doing it, you don't want to be left behind, because that is no good, my friend. Or, a compromise, perhaps, if such a thing is possible, between Buddhist thought and the world of consumer consumption. You gotta eat something. You gotta live somewhere, somewhere to put your stuff... Best you can do, a separate peace, on your day off, but that gets lonesome quick, unless you are in control of the mind, which, yes, happens to be another thing the Buddhist tends to preach, meditation, in other words...
Buddhism is torture. What's its payoff? Hopefully some form of Tantric enlightenment, for all your troubles and the pains of sitting cross-legged in Lotus pose.
And yoga? It seems to help control the appetites one gets, the cravings.
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