Sketches from the so-called week

I had planned on working tonight, having made a switch, an attempt to get Saturday night off, as part of a vague plan to join Betsy in the Big Apple for a quick trip, but the managers wanted and expected the normal guy Cisco, given what the night would bring.  "Not your cup of tea," the boss said, over the phone, politely enough.  Sure.  Quiet tired anyway.   No desire to do the lugging for the twelve top in the back right at 5:30, would prefer to take the silent treatment from LM Saturday night down the road.

The stone mason's saw revs up as it is readied to make its cut.  Can be heard throughout the neighborhood, and it's right outside my windows fifteen feet below.  There was quiet for a couple of days, but the men are at it again, with the nail gun and the half-shouting on ladders as the last of the siding goes up on top of the white Dupont Tyvek house liner sheet now that the window casements and the windows they hold are in place.  The mason is capping the balustrades of the stairs and walkway into the building.  The basement is still a bare shell of concrete, with PVC pipes rising out of gravel to be covered over.

It's cold out and overcast, and after reaching mom on the phone and dealing with the work confusion, with the wind blowing in the tree tops, I snooze on the couch in a form of meditation, taking the mind off its usual thought track.  The working men laugh in the distance, pleased to be working, dressed in heavier sweats and work jackets for the first time.

Lankavatara.

Tuesday night wine tasting, the regulars come in, one by one.  There's the Democratic debate, and a Washington Nationals series baseball game going on.  Monika's late husband's cousin is visiting from London for IMF meetings, arriving before, and though I recognize her there is no reservation for them and it is as if I have to be prompted to recognize her, though I do.

A pretty girl comes in, Jeremy gets her seated, as I roll around and take care of the two by the window, getting her a taste of the Haut Pila Roussillon red.  She is joined by a young man, and I pour him a taste, and then for her the taste of a comparable wine, the Minervois, Paraza, which she prefers.    Will they order food, who knows.  People are being sphinxes tonight.  A younger man comes up and seats himself by the window after the other couple has left.  He looks out the window.  Okay.   I let him sit there.  "He had a glass of wine downstairs.  He's waiting for someone," Jeremy tells me.

The local lady comes in with a tale from the art studio of breaking a glass shelf, and the bar is full with kibitzing.  Jake finally orders a rose.  Fine.  Run out the clock.

9:10, the kitchen closing, Jeremy informs me, when he comes by to stand at the bar's mouth and talk with local lady, helping out with wiping down the clean glassware from the washer.

At 9:03 M the busboy man comes up and tells me, kitchen close at 9.  Okay.   And just a good five minutes later, Cisco shows up with two young women friends.  To drag my night out.  I can barely look up.  "Kitchen's closed," I mutter.  He goes down the stairs and soon comes back up, and then he's behind the bar getting plates, silverware napkin set-ups, three of them, bread and butter.  No, don't do this to me...   Soon a plate of escargot, and two onion tarts arrive.  And then a salmon entree.  And I'm pretty exhausted at this point, having dealt with the holiday weekend... followed by jazz night, some crazy shifts.

I am frustrated by this move, and mom is on the line and I'm trying to explain where her phone charger might be.  No option, but to turn to the bottles and pour myself some red.

I clean the kitchen counters when I get home, I go take a walk down to the woods on a bluff, one deer running away, another invisible in the bushes puffing a warning at my closeness.  In my bedeviled mood I come upon one of those red Uber slightly powered bicycles and figure out how to take it for a spin, unimpressed with its pickup, but taking it off road for a whoop and I flush a young deer out of a field and feel like a bad intruder upon the night's peace.  Back in the apartment, I eat chicken salad from the Korean market and have more wine and damn I'm still frustrated.  Happens every time, every single time.  The last people, and when I go to work next day my shoulders hang down defeatedly, and it's going to be a busy night too.



In a dream between Tuesday and Wednesday I am with my family, brother, mother, father.  Or perhaps just by brother.  We are in Utica, in the midst of a tour of the grand old Italian restaurants there, and in the dream mind they are palaces, with great buffet like feasts laid out with tomato sauce gravy and cheeses and meats and all things, rigatoni, greens, meatballs, sausages...  And one, after seeing all number of magnificent dining rooms well-attended to, the last one is like a great theater, with a magnificent mansion like entrance of steps up to the grand doors, and inside a great well-lit lobby almost with a fountain and people have their pictures taken in grand style.  Not bad for old Utica.

And then the iPhone is rumbling silently and Mom is calling and with a dry voice I answer, and "did I wake you up..."


It turns out the fourteen in the back are familiar, members of the Norwegian military attache, largely, dressed in plain clothes, or maybe they are in a private enterprise now, but anyway, many of them very tall and beards and strong manly faces, Vikings.  Friends, straight forward, easy to deal with.  I get their wine order, running down to the basement to grab the Sancerre Reverdy Ducru with the yellow orange label and also the 2017 Gigondas, La Formoune, stopping to get cold bottles from MR, server of the main dining room floor from the cooler, four of the reds under my arms, running back upstairs and opening them up, then going down the table, who wants white, who wants red...   Mineral water served.

The day off, I finally warm to it later in the afternoon before going out for a walk in the light and then round to the little market for cold cuts and wine after taking in the river.  I wear my puff down light jacket and a winter hat for the first time in a long time.  The noise of the stone mason's saw follows me, and so do the thoughts in my head of a certain kind that make you feel down about yourself and where you are in life as an attempted adult with his fool habits, but also thoughts that are part of a stream, as well, a stream that leads one to try to wrap his head around the Transcendent thoughts of Buddha and what-not.  Things are, in the final analysis, projections from the mind, consciousness, in other words, as I walk slowly down by the woods, considering the Lankavatara Sutra.

My father wrote me, after he'd read my book, his analysis, which was that the main character is a Theosophist, one who is grappling with larger issues such as what comprises the nature of reality.  Of course, the Princess, the Beautiful Girl in the text, with whom one would want the things of a good relationship with, perhaps even she in time turns into less of a reality and more of a figment of the once imagination, know what I mean?  Something by which a Buddhist point is examined by, why make such a big deal...  And the Buddha considers this a very serious and central lesson for us here in the world...

And furthermore, as is more or less outlined in the Sutras, Lankavatara and other, that the whole point is to be the teacher teaching such a fine point, so as to liberate the suffering.  Hmm.

Much ado about nothing...  Nothing is but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare put in to his plays.

"People really like you, you're well respected and trusted by everybody.  Be positive.  Nature is not all directed to making you unhappy," my mom tells me.  Okay.

And this is as I'm trying to get my body through a very busy and difficult long weekend, for normal people, Columbus Day weekend, Saturday a stream of people honing in on the bar right when the door opens, walk-ins on top of reservations, and every other server downstairs leaving me to deal wth this most agonizing part of the night, which is my Monday morning anyway, then Sunday, hey, just me, left to deal with an 8 top, a 6 top, walk ins who are regulars and want to chit chat, catching up (the real purpose of a bar), other walk ins who aren't, who want a strange mix of things--downstairs, all they get is diners, appetizer, entree, desert, coffee, on top of cocktail and wine, but upstairs at the wine bar, you wear many hats, particularly as the barman.  Sunday night the two regulars at the bar see what I go through, catch my self-mutterings, Jesus Christ, perseverance the only way to get through a night, boom boom boom, one thing after another, not looking up so much, and just as I'm about to head back into the wine room to deliver drink round to nice fancy Georgetown lady who has famous Pre-Raphealite paintings hanging in her living room, another couple walks in and want a bite to eat and wine before going downstairs for dinner, while I'm juggling about five other tasks at the moment...

This is Sunday, and it's not always easy how the phone call goes with her, as she might wonder aloud where she is, thinking she's not at home, or that there are other people to feed there besides her, and sometimes very temperamental, but she must be taking her medicine as I hang on the phone wearily getting ready for work...

I go out and wait for the bus, but the bus doesn't come, and I know it's going to be a shit night, and finally when I get the pool Uber cab, in a beat up car, me in the front seat, he has to head into Georgetown, M Street, and that's just going to be a traffic nightmare, and there was the damn bus anyway...  passing by the line of people not knowing what to do with their time but wait in line outside cutesy Georgetown Cupcake to feel a sense of belonging, as I grumble to work in a state of anxiety through the crowded touristy streets of Georgetown and people walking across intersections without regard, and I wanted to get there early, at least on time, but the public bus, the D6, has betrayed me, too.


So I am exhausted as I try to get ready again, after another noontime of fitful rest, depression, anxiety, poverty dread, for work, for the actual Monday Federal Holiday, with no idea what I might be facing, except of the live music with Quiet Life Motel, my friends, great musical artists...  The little market is closed, and this time, screw the bus, I'll just walk, despite the lingering ragweed pollen in this Autumn of drought.  So many signs of something different with the climate...  The last few nights I'd taken to the depressing task of reading from On The Road.  How do you live like that, like Kerouac did, spending the last of his few dollars, the hitchhiking craziness, the sad characters of America, sad in that they all are poor and living on the edge...

Fortunately, the book has its shifts.  Reflections familiar to one who has read later Kerouac.  And there are lines to sift out and hold, like the early line when, if he has any advice to offer Dean Moriarty about writing, it's that you have to pursue it with the mad energy of a benny (benzedrine) addict.  Yes, don't kill yourself, Jack.  Take good care of Jack.  Take a look at all this writing business, and remember to give us the wisdom, the scholarly wisdom you've found, along with the beauty.

I make it to work.  Monday.  Set-up isn't too bad.  There are people at 5:30, but they are mellow, and all the mosquitos, we will have to deal.  The musicians, two of them, David and Tillery the horn player arrive early.  We can make it work, despite the fact that there are only three servers, meaning one downstairs, and one "floating" between the two floors, where I will end up holding the bag for the millionth time in this shit ass business.

And again, I am busy, as because of the different hats, serving to listen to bar people, to get the bossy little waitress what she wants, this and that, this and that, holding down whatever gaps in service I see in the dining room before me...  taking care of things, dodging the galoot busboy man as he gathers these insane piles of dirty plates we stack on milk crates, me on my knees often trying to stack them after scraping the remains into the garbage bin there to my right, stooping, it goes all night, no break for me, and by 8:30 there's a pit in my stomach and I'm starving about to bonk and fall to my feet, and thankfully there's a can of V8 stashed away and a bite from a chocolate bar to keep me going.  The young woman at the end of the bar (the bar was full earlier and she sat down at a little table to get an order in) has come in from Virginia, broke her arm in a bike accident, wearing a cast, shows me the X-ray with the metal plate and pins...  ouch.  My friend Drew comes in late. The hustle of the busboy man gathering the recycling and then the trash and then sweeping with the energy of a mad gorilla behind me, yes, there's no way to get through all of this--unless you could really just turn away from people and bother not even acknowledging them as familiar faces, which of course is impossible and would be offensive, to them--without a little promise of some wine to carry one through the last trenches.  Whether one wants to or not.

I'm heading to the bus stop to get back home to the apartment, but suddenly my guts are riled and I have to make a run for the bushes by the school, uh oh, too late,  no choice.  I manage to catch the bus, get in at last, and take a shower, rid of the holiday weekend which no holiday.

I'd not even had a chance, nor any inclination, to write for a while.  There was jury duty, early on a Monday morning, taking the bus across town...  reading the Wikipedia entry on the Lankavatara Sutra, a good thing to turn to when feeling overwhelmed and no longer in control and feeling poorly.  The judge let me out of it, somehow, when I told him I was a bartender, who works at night, but who in theory will dutifully set his alarm clock to listen to this exhausting civil case before the court, and finally I get sprung and miraculously catch the bus back to the little apartment, but then mom is on the phone wondering in dramatic fashion if she should just end it.  And then a nap for me to absorb all of this, before going to work.  Lankavatara.  It's all in your head, the whole thing.


What is there to eat today?  I've got mom calm with a phone call, and she's on her bed upstairs in front of the television reading Van Wyck Brooks, New England Indian Summer, and still taking her medicine and the cat's still alive.  Her new helper was able to find her stash of checkbooks.  There have been wars started, Kurdish allies abandoned, clearly dirty things going on with the man who took over as President, so much crap, so much bad stuff, incitements to violence and fascism...  I drink my green tea what my stomach can handle, and there are hotdogs to heat up in the toaster over, before I get ready to go to work, Tuesday night wine tasting.  I do the dishes in the sink, and take a breather.   Mom and all her lovely books, great books, books I have not read, having gone my own fool rebellion way, thinking that writing would be better than reading...  reading and then teaching.

In my own mind I will always be the idiot who messed up that scholarly life, to which I was given a grand head start opportunity to perform,

Energy takes a lot of writing, and writing takes a lot of energy.  An amateur, like me, will derive small amounts of satisfaction through the exercise, and maybe even verge on coming up with a few good kernels, but it's too much to come up with more than, say, one attempt at a book, and if that doesn't pay your way, and certainly it won't, you are left with such little steps as the one I write now.  There are other things to worry about anyway, the guts are still working it out, and now it's time to shower and go off to work, wine tasting night, the Haut Pila, a hearty red from the Roussillon.  There's baseball on tonight, plus a debate for the Democrat field.  And yet, slow nights can be as difficult as busy ones.

"Poetry helps us live intelligently in uncertainty," I hear on the radio, Harold Bloom died yesterday at 81.  Hear and Now, Robin Young.

The city is sexually entrepreneurial.  Decisions done at a fast pace.  And this is where the character (of a Hero for Our Time) goes wrong, for missing the invitation placed before him, to look back with regret at all the missed chances for erotic adventure and satisfaction, a voice stuck in his head.  Simple appalling stupidity.  The attempt at sainthood, gone horribly wrong.


The writing serves as an exercise, not far off from taking a walk, an attempt to counter depressive thoughts by giving them some time and work.  The little bit you chip at...  The great mental block.  The little bit you gain.

So I turned to yoga.  That seemed to be the best thing I could do at such a point.


I got up after Betsy texted me.  I wasn't about ready to get up, but I wasn't doing anything but lying there anyway, so I got up, walked on sore feet into the little galley kitchen, found a wine bottle with yesterday's dragonwell tea in the fridge, not much of it, turned the burner on below the orange kettle. The old green tea pot, beat up now, the end of the spout chipped off, put back on with super glue several times but now left separate in the cupboard.

I call mom and got her new helper on the phone, about to go out to lunch, mom calm and happy.

Then out across the street to the little market.  I'd left the two small containers of chicken salad, one regular, one curry in the cooler at work, after I came back from the Safeway around 1 AM, finding the wine bar smelling heavily with gas and a small rat stuck to the glue board underneath the back counter, sorting my groceries as to what would come with me on the cab home.  I heard the rat chewing on something, possibly trying to find a way into the stove for bread crumbs.   The rat squeaks after I turn away from it, standing up from my crouch with my iPhone flashlight.  Help.  I would like to save it somehow, which you can do by putting soap on the creature, putting the glue board outside back in the alley, but I'm too done at this point.  The Uber driver in small Mercury four-door turns out to be a man about to go back to Jordan and start his business with all its risks.  I've got some V8, some shaved beef, grass-fed beef organic hotdogs, an onion and an orange sweet pepper.

Out across the street to the Korean market to start my day.  Roast beef, a small head of romaine, a cup of coffee, chicken curry salad, I take a little walk around the block overlooking the river.  The ragweed pollen is still in the moderate to high range, but I need to taste the air coming in from the distant sea...


And now it feels good, in a simple way, to be writing again.  It feels good for the old paws as I sit on the old leather couch, hunched over like St. Jerome, my fingertips on the keys of the hand-me-down MacBook Pro, having turned off public radio after listening to Kojo Nnamdi with a panel on the DC food scene, something I should take a professional interest in.

What thoughts were deeper, I don't know.  The radio drowned them out.

I get out with my yoga pad under the pines.  A five minute headstand, after warm up poses, dog poses, warrior poses, pigeon...  lotus.  I wear a little mask, like nurses wear, to keep the pollen away.


A healing time...  under which I do not really care to write anymore.


At night, there is Kerouac's verbosity, nice to listen to as one winds down, not having too much wine, picking up the apartment...  Desolation Angels, his turn to brief chapters of prose poems.   You can read them in backwards order or forward.


Jury duty looms next week, Monday 8 AM.  Calling mom, but she's lonely, and says she's been up since 5 waiting for her men to come.  Hurry up and wait, she says, tiring...    RBG at Amherst, an accomplished person whereas I am about the biggest bum you could possibly be, by such standards, having completely abdicated my responsibilities as the student of American history I once was.



So I go out across the street for a coffee, to quell my anxieties by being seen in public and interacting with fellow beings, who also are nervous.

My own silly life...

Am I a more ecological being than my fellow Westerner, not having a car, not having "a real job," not having "made something of myself..."  I take my silly little walks under the trees and and along the path on the bluff above the old river.    The essence of my not fitting in...

I fear going to work.  I honestly do.  There's not the economic incentive, when I'd try to match the rest, paying off mortgages...

I know the lonesomeness of the day off.  I walk out passed the reservoirs, past the firehouse, past the big old movie theater that is now a CVS to go through my to do to get list.  I bring my prescriptions to the pharmacist counter in back, and then down a few blocks, wearing my nurses mask for pollen, past a little row of restaurants and the old dead Safeway to the cool refurbished library to bring back some books.  I am still interested in the books, and would like to keep them, but my head doesn't feel up to the task, nor to picking out more books, and I end up with a yoga book.

Back at the drug store, I get my Metro Card charged up with $35, and the things off my list, and just as I'm paying, I get the text that my things have been filled.  I go back to the counter, and it turns out they're giving flu shots, so...

My interactions are few by the time I get back to the apartment.  I have a bite to eat, roast beef, and take a nap, and then I get up to do some yoga in the fading light, out on the bluff, as it is cool underneath the pine tree grove, and too late for light.

There's the river out below me, and the long shadows now against the far bank, blue, over the green water.  Some neighbors chat with each other on the street.

I sense later, after going to the market, drinking my wine, what it's like to be old, not having anyone to visit with.

I wake up, and the thought is, "no, it is not right to portray fictional work scenes..."


The big fellow who helped us do the Languedoc Wines promotion comes up the stairs.  I've already got the Chablis chilled and ready at a greater volume than I will need.  "I'm here to do a wine tasting," he says.  "Oh."  "Yes, Cyrille asked me to come in for two hours..."  Okay, fine.  I run down to the basement, put my thumbprint on the lock to open the wine cave, "the cav," and grab some St. Eugenie  Corbieres Reserve, and a bottle of Minervois, admonished by downstairs coworker, "don't take that, we're serving that by the glass..."  Okay, yeah, just trying to think on my feet, no biggie.


It's fairly smooth, then a familiar face comes up the stairs with a colleague, a tall Belgian man in a crisp suit, she's a Ph.D., some sort of scientist involved in defense stuff, moved to Boston, and finally, after the tastings, confused by the big fellow, who's pouring hearty reds before I can even get over and pour the white, maybe a touch of sparkling flute maison, champagne method chardonnay from Burgundy, when they are finally ready to order a bottle of wine, a Billecarte Salmon Brut Rosé, the system says we have one left, but when I go look for it, all I can come across, in my stress, because I also have the Dutch climate scientist with his elderly wife at a nearby four top, plus people at the bar, regulars, all I see is the dark label regular Brut...  I look through the wine bar cooler, champagnes on the top shelf, can't find it, okay, they'll take the regular Brut...

I've lost time during all this.  People are looking at me as I hustle.  Glassware has piled up on top of the glassware washer machine, cluttering the space by the water cooler.  Downstairs the busses is placidly setting table 14 by the front window, aligning a butter knife with the plate by the folded napkin.  Jeremy notices I'm in the weeds.  "I'll be back," he says.


The night gets longer, the kitchen about to close, and the couple has ordered escargot, then pig's feet, then chicken liver foie gras mousse, then another order of snails, and then another pig's feet, and finally, a cheese plate, and meanwhile, another bottle of the Chablis on special for the Dutch scientist, along with cocktail for the guy of the regular couple and some wine tastes to keep the gal entertained, while I order dinner for them, yes, that's a good thing to get, just the right size, the grilled seafood salad, for him the veal cheeks, bread, butter, check on champagne table, order dessert.


The night is now too long, and I sit down finally, turning my back to the window couple still with plates to nibble on, I eat my mousse de foie gras, without much gusto, a glass of wine on the rocks, and then I take off my tie, change out of my Brooks Brothers work shirt, and take upon myself the project of straightening out the tie situation in the closet, the ties stashed on top of the power amp, getting the iron out.

Finally they are done, and while I wish they would simply disappear back into the night, they are interesting to talk to.  He has a nice early 2000s light orange red sleekly contoured Carrera across the street, and we end up talking about his father's Karmann Ghia that he took to the Central African Republic in the early 60s, had to abandon when Kinshasa went up in flames, leasing an airplane for the last flight out...  His first language was Afrikans, and meanwhile I let her entertain herself by making a cocktail, and that's what she did to get through grad school in Chicago, and I don't even bother to taste the cocktail she has made, with cream, just have a little more wine.


Finally I get out of there, Uber home, forgetting to drop off the rent check like I meant to earlier.

Life is complicated.

The ragweed numbers go back up from moderate to high, and my head is feeling it again.

To find a metaphor, a parable, a story to match, to compare with the negative, the bad things we feel when waking, our sins, the ways we let other people down, our faults, our bad choices...    Thus, the popularity of the figure of Jesus Christ, and what it is which makes him recognizable.  The sinners he falls in with, the people he falls in with, or who fall in with him...  whom he can only cure, save, through his presence, his patience, his teachings.

But sin is central to him to, central in his message, and it's always been obvious that he too must include himself in all human traits, the capacity for bad decisions and sinful choices.  He would not be real if he, Jesus, would not wake up from time to time with some gut sense, "maybe that wasn't the best use of my time..."  Jesus would not be real, unless he too did dumb things, personal things, mistakes, quirks of personality.  Why go to Jerusalem, why go then?



How much did it cost me to neglect reading and studious pursuits and academic gain to spend time with Willy P., who wanted to smoke weed and listen to the Stones at lunch time, and I humored him too much, and began some bad patterns for myself.  It would cost me forever, really, having to wake up remembering, realizing my faults, of how I let the bully types dictate my life for me, when I was more intent on being a quiet scholar, a distance athlete, a yoga person, perhaps more of a performer, a dancer, a musician...  He had sort of glommed on to me early on...

But oh, my sins...  Years and years, not being on the ball, economically, as you have to be, now what?

And my life as it is set-up in such a way as to continue the bad pattern, the fallen scholar, the wasted erudition, pissed away eloquence and abilities to learn, study, practice...  The night shifts nerve-wracking...  the temptations of pain relief right there in front of you, surrounding you even...



The artist's problem, of being a sensualist, an addictive personality type, who craves inspiration, not so good at postponing pleasure for the sake of the long-term benefit...


So, how to treat the inner light?  The light that must pass through every day...


They share with me their stories, up at the old wine bar.  My friend's father, French, loses the will to live, ashes into the sea...  My friend Drew has given up the friendly little white doggie he took custody from a departing girlfriend...  I have my stories to share, not too much, just a seasoning, yes, I get you.

Not much water flows through these pipes, no more, maybe never did.


Now when I visit her, I leave at four in the afternoon, or so, getting on the road for the drive back.  I get the car back, park by the apartment on MacArthur, unpack my stuff, and then I drive up Foxhall, up to Cathedral Avenue, across Wisconsin, down Massachusetts to get the car back on Calvert, near the Omni Shoreham.  At 12:30 at night, I find the doors of the parking garage are still up, open, so that I don't have to drive around to the top of the parking garage and descend down all six levels around the pillars and such.

I am shaky, not able to do much before getting to work, after the return.  Feeling stressed.  I get across the street to the little Korean market, for a little bit of roast beef and curry chicken salad.  The school kids are there, and I wait mildly at the counter, 'til my friend smiles at me, what would you like, nice to see you, how have you been.  One schoolgirl opens the paper wrapping of her roast beef sandwich on white, lettuce and tomato and dives in with a bit right there at the cash register counter.

The bus is crowded, noisy.