But as a writer, your true mission has something to do with figuring out the true nature of reality.  I mean, that sounds funny, or pompous, or lots of things, but you have to throw that out there.  This is why I occasionally study something like D.T. Suzuki in the Lankavatara Sutra, his commentary on how words are as a reflection of the moon on water, something being in the water that holds the reflection, the words being the reflection, but not the moon itself.

Somewhere in the night, as I watched a bit of The Deer Hunter, thinking of the constant sad efforts of writing, I had a kind of a thought, which is thus:  if the pace of nature is accelerated, as if we were arrogant enough to think that its natural course could be sped up, manipulated, disaster comes.  Hitler, speeding up the rate at which anything man-made should be powerful more than it is...   an imbalance against the natural democracy, the equality of human endeavor...   The inherent risks of nuclear reactions...   The human era manipulation of natural species...    And this is why I, if anything, have tried to slow things down in life, even as life has gotten ahead of me.

One cannot speed up the process of writing.  One cannot hide in substances that manipulate the mood.  One has to take it slow, and easy, or risk becoming another unrealistic venture.

Slowing things down, you dodge some bullets that way...

But, you get tired of listening to yourself, your own head.  And recording down every thing that happened takes enormous energy...

So I  went down to the laundry room after taking out a small plastic grocery bag of recycling under a full moon behind whispy sheep clouds,  and just sort of sadly taking out the load of dark laundry from the washer, placing each item into the dryer after giving them a light shake before tossing them into the side loading drum.  My mother had called, after a number of earlier calls on my day off.  It's nighttime, about almost 9, and she tells me, I just read a very good book, a very well written one, by a younger person.

I had brought up a copy for her shelves, and maybe one for the local bookstore, when last I visited, so I could guess what she was talking about.  I was sort of waking from up from a nap, looking at my iPhone again, at Facebook as if something were about to happen on it.

She sounded good.  More lucid and directly present than before earlier in the day, and she sounded happy with the discovery.  "You are a writer.  You're a very good writer.  Just, I don't know, the little touches... We'll talk about it."

Yeah, we'll have some time when we drive down...  You're book is excellent too, mom, the writing...

Oh, not as good as yours...

And I felt happy, in, as Hemingway says, a simple way.

Its a really good book, she says.  Too bad work got in the way.

Yeah.


Later, I dreamed we were up on the old road.  The old road sloping down to the neighbors, then sloping further than that.  I was walking down with my mom, only to find that the neighbors were have a fancy party sort of visit going on.  And then later my father is walking up the road, in his style.  He is old in the dream.  He takes a nap, almost there in the road, such is aging.  I want to take a picture of him.


Inconvenient, my father says, in his quiet way, about the book not ever getting any attention.  Later in life, he could be stern.

"It's your art form," people began to tell me, mid December, as I worked my way through busy nights, left to my own devices on suddenly busy Tuesday night wine tasting, on Jazz Nights too busy, with big parties back in the wine room, the barman left to cover the bar and the front tables, one busboy between floors, running food, taking the stacks of dirty plates from the milk crates under the bar rail down through the main dining room and back through the two way swinging kitchen door, too busy just doing that to do more or be more attentive to little needs like lack of spoons...  By Wednesday, pretty fried, and a warning from the doctor concerning the liver...

Then the day off, in the monk's solitary quiet, tiredly awake, drinking green tea, and the attempt to get back toward some useful enabled form of writing out my thoughts, such that they could be gently kept, a wild baby from nature brought into society and civilization...  with quiet Buddhist thoughts about the shortage of language to arrive at anything accurate, easily truthful, the inability of dualistic conceptions to describe anything if one were to try to do so.

The animal wants to stay away from words, particularly the random, the words and messages of other human interests, reference points, speech, just in order to find his own thoughts, hiding, flirting, dashing away into the woods frighted by the possibility of discovery...  And the physical burden of four nights, two long, two exceptionally long, just to put the bar back in clean order after scrambling to provide all that might be asked for... from sparkling wines to specific cocktails...

And people telling me, seeing me uncharacteristically without much humor all of a sudden as I fret to bring them what they want, pulling in their orders out of the chaos, remembering to put them in through the computer screen's ordering system, two onion soup, positions one and three, after the charcuterie, and the wine order, and taking payment with credit card swipe from another table with the other hand, then turning to entertain the folk at the bar...  telling me that I work hard...

And the nice woman at the end of the night, whose husband is home sick, and she used to run a jazz program for the Smithsonian...   "This is your art form, you make the place happen..."

And I'm too tired to be embarrassed by the praise, as I am still even at my age, figuring out what it is that I am doing, what I should be doing, where to go, by understanding where I am now.

Accept yourself as an artist as a psychologically healthy thing to do, thou art that which is.

It was only because of the judgment of whether or not a thing is good or bad, rather than just accepting things as they are in their own nature, that makes one feel down.  A therapist will emphasize the negative feelings, when actually you have within a brilliant way of coping with such things.

And actually, you begin to see the positive, revealed over time, the extremism of other people, the Princess crying "racism" where none exists.  Who would want to live with that?  I wouldn't.  (Her reaction to the Peloton ad, decrying that a Northern European looking male should be present with a 'non-white' woman?)

I had found a way, natural enough, of surrounding myself with the decency inherent in people, when I needed them.  The artist had created a little shell to protect himself.

Give me the simple and decent people, the kind Jesus had a fondness for, for the people who represent the great genetic variety of humanity, each one different once viewed from personal perspective, having gotten to know them a little bit.

Ask yourself any question...  am I effective, or not effective?  am I helpful, or not?  It only matters the perspective from which one choses, really...


The day off, I venture out for a walk around the block.  The great river, laid bare, at dusk, the little market for a sub.  Chon Pam, or Jom Pam, or Jhon Bam, or add heseyo at the end to make the wish Good Evening more formal, as if addressing a respected elder.  Joh-eun Bam.

The traffic outside on the street and the planes above flying beneath a low cloud cover sound like a strange wind, broken, sped up, slowed down, gaseous.   The body is sore.  I will rest some more before getting up and making tea.  We are through two nights so far, Sunday and Monday night jazz.  It will rain this evening, starting when I go in, and the report for the rain turning to snow after midnight.  The light is subdued today.

I got home about 1:30, after catching the D6, riding up at the side seats in the front of the bus, the lone passenger until I tell the woman driving the long bus that the next stop will be good for me.

I get in, work my way toward bed time, a glass of wine.

In a world of attachment, where do you begin?  The inadequacy of words...

I am already too distracted today, from listening to the news on NPR, to write today.  One external thought leads to another, and soon you have forgotten yourself.  You return to waking thought experience, the light coming in early...

Attachment.  Happens easily.  You get carried away, and then comes the harder task of reducing the attachment and its hopes.  Back to the Zen, back to the quiet, the so-called monastery, back to reality. There's not much money to be playing around with anyway keeping up with social lives, with people who do things, who find happiness in little adventures.

The stoic keeps on working.  It is not unlike the Buddhist monk going round a village with his bowl, giving lessons on the deeper nature of reality in exchange for a bit of rice.

Work is very busy.  It distracts me from sorrows.

Attachment.  You watch it happen.  The mind begins to jog toward the unreal, the imagined.  And then, for one reason or another, the fantasy is interrupted, ended, that's how it goes, there you are walking alone the river bluff under the trees, worrying about your old mom and about your job, and about the career that never happened and now "too late," but those things too have attachment to them and what the world needs now is the proper perspective, the reality that Buddhist thought ultimately offers the being.

It is that my life is completely hollow, that of a total loser?   My life is just as much an experiment as anyone else's...  I have been a cretin, I have been a slob, I have committed deadly sins.

But to remember, each time one's life is driven out from the sort of illusion that they might have fallen into and under, there is the waking up, the coming out the other side.

Did ye not know, I was amongst the worst...

The minutes drag on, before work.  Leftover Chinese, on top of the Dragonwell tea with a dash of ashwagandha and schisandra powders.  I vacuum the apartment, the little fur the bathroom collects, the carpet rug beneath the coffee table where one eats, writes, has tea.  A little chore helps the clear the mind to remember that from which it was distracted.  That has always been so for me.

Nerves before work.  Nerves not being able to get hold of mom on the phone.  I'll be too tired to do much when I get home from work after midnight.  I get through to mom finally, telling her it's quiet alright if she has a glass of wine now.

You cannot be healed without understanding the disease within, without understanding how it works all through everything.



i get to work.  I set up, having left myself in good shape from the night before.  And then, it gets busy.  Very busy.  And then it gets crazy on top of that.

Haven't had much time nor energy to be "creative," by which I mean, writing the crap I write here.

But it soothes somehow.  Even when you got nothing.  Even when regret is the first impulse of the day.  Work past that.

The soles of my feet are stiff and sore when I wake.  I walk to Georgetown, having been summoned by my brother without much notice to come down early to my nephew's birthday party, to drive my niece in the Range Rover back to the house;  she has the flu, contagious.  Inwardly, I grown.  I don't enjoy driving the truck through the narrow streets of Georgetown particularly with church-going traffic.  Then later, after an hour and a half or so, I will drive my niece back, and miss the party I was to go to earlier anyway.  Thanks for the help.  Sure.  I'm tired, from sleeping too much in the depressions of my own quiet solitary weekend in which I miss the visit of an old friend in town.  I walk up to work, knowing what a lovely time it was being with my niece, as she went about her school business.  Something grounding about being with young people, the peace they keep, the steadfast focus.


The trees over the river on both banks are bare now, the taller buildings of Arlington, VA, exposed now, naked their structures of right angle and clean-cut economic value.  A solitary Friday afternoon walk, as the sun nears setting over the ridge to the south, the parkway exposed, and I'm still sort of hungover from the date I fell for and the fool wine consumption to get through the foreign feeling and being questioned, sized up by my politically-involved acquaintance.  Just another dumb thing I've done.  The falseness of attachment.


And going to work, too, Sunday evening, my Monday morning, I feel stupid too, and lacking in energy, preparing for the tediousness of setting up, and I'm there now and already putting the bar into place and getting ready for the annual visit of the lady who brings in a dozen or so art curators and museum directors, notes of a vague hostility toward me as the sort of outsider left alone upstairs, being in such a weary mood before the door opens, wondering what I have to deal with, never predictable.  Down to the basement, to get a fresh supply of olives.  Restock the maraschino cherries. Finding cocktail shakers left out over night, still wet and sticky.  An update on the rodent wars from the boss, as he brings up a reserve coat rack for the fancy people of art.  L(M) will do the party, the boss tells me, much to my relief.  "Yeah, that's how I should have turned out, being an art critic, or something.

It all passes, my energy, relieved, improves, and after closing the place down and the lights all off, I set the alarm code, and out to get some groceries with a little list in my pocket, up a block and a half at the Safeway monster.  Then with many bags, giving my simpatico Uber driver a V8 can from my haul, I lug my stuff in, tea, cheese, cold cuts, hummus, lentil soup, bone broth, black-eyed peas, magnesium and B12 tablets, groaning as I mount the stairs of the apartment building.

I plop down, after doing the dishes in the rubber made tub finally, and my mind turns to Shane MacGowan's upcoming performance on RTE Irish television, Fairytale of New York, and the story of the creativity behind it.  They watched Once Upon A Time In America, taking in its Morricone soundtrack, back then on the tourbus, their first trip to America...  There is something that transcends or bypasses conventional language story-telling meaning to the lyrics...  I too could not do it without something like wine.


To write, as such, is a barren craft, as if it were fishing in waters devoid of anything worth catching.   You get the bones up first, then embellish with sinew and organs.  No wonder the first animal beings of nature are so strange and ugly in shape, in need of evolving.  Nature traces its path even for the poor wandering writer.

Writing too, whatever story might yield from any of it in any way, must be done with the same circumspection toward language as the Buddha noted.   In that the human mind has a great tendency to place all sorts of judgments, often dualistic in nature, this is good, that is bad, when in reality no one thing has any more significance than its own chaos, its own unpredictability, its own refusal to abide by exterior terms and values.

This is what the poor devil the honest writer is born unto.   And any writer that would attempt to nail down any concrete notion, such as happy or sad, will have missed the mark of what reality is comprised of.

This is what the work, the role of the writer is ultimately that of a Buddhist, and strangely, the things of his own life begin to fit into that tradition...

It's a scary realization, that in his best efforts what he was at all along was to embrace the crucial tenets of Buddha thought, all of which themselves are scary to the mindset, as a divorce from the meaning in terms like good and bad.

We had made a connection, Tinder, the kind of pseudo-connection one gets here, okay, when I was up at my mom's in the storm, and she seemed nice enough, my other friend had stopped responding to me as she had before, and after my therapy session my Tinder friend messages me that she would be at an event at the performing arts school near my place of employment, that maybe she could drop by, so I went in early, set-up as best I could, so that if she dropped in I might have a moment to talk.

I was busy setting up anyway, and the first customer came in right at the door opening at 5:30, and then I get a text, her letting me know she ran out of time and had to get downtown to meet clients for a dinner in Chinatown.   There I was behind the bar and when she texts if I'm free the next day, I made the mistake of telling her I had it open, and there I am in Mr. Please People mode, with those early regular customers who like conversation, you have to pay attention to them, and she, via text, invites me out to Capitol Hill for a drink and then a live Moth Radio Hour at the old theater there.   The old bait and switch...  I'm distracted enough.  I text back, okay.   And immediately, I feel guilty, stupid about it.

Jazz Night, quite busy, hectic, doesn't stop, keeps coming, a final table of the boss's Frenchie friends at the last table, a late joiner, a birthday to celebrate with a chocolate tart at the end...  and the whole night seemed pretty short staffed for a full house and jazz night with the additional five customers of the band of gypsy swing musicians...


I wake up rather tired, conscious at noon, but beat, and to get across town for 5:30, which will take an hour, well, that doesn't leave me much of a day, and I don't have the energy for it anyway, this date, except I've foolishly agreed to it.

So I get there finally after the heroic Uber ride with a man from Ghana who tells me the story of "ritual money," a sort of voodoo practice, as I sit there agreeably in the front seat of his Camry, beholding the glories of DC rush hour through the windshield, the back and forth, changing directions, over Memorial Bridge just to turn around and go back over it to finally get to a clean road up to the Hill...

I get to the place, a new restaurant.  I sit down, order a glass of wine from the genial waitress, and we talk for a bit.  She sizes me up.  I shrug inwardly and go with it.  Small plates, I have a third glass of wine over our expensive little appetizers, and we have to get to the theater.  There at the theater, a ticket for $15, I get more wine, served in little plastic cups to sit through it.  I get animated.  I know the guy telling his story.  I know a few other people in the crowd, even out here on The Hill, far away from my old barkeep gigs.  I get friendly when I drink, and then I drink more.  That's entertainment.

And then we are standing outside finally and she is very disgusted with me, telling me off, and I am feeling tired, unsteady, confused as to where to find my Uber ride.  Sad but true.  I do not know these streets.


And today, another day is wasted, and it's Lankavatara Sutra all over again.

And something too seems to have happened with my friendship with Becky, who is busy anyway with all her training and working-out routines, energized by her detoxing, texts back, "what would you know" about the things she is doing, her response to my little effort to be cheery and applauding her most recent efforts, in the midst of a very busy night via text.  Okay, she's right.  What would I know, these days.  What would I know about workouts, bike rides, yes, shame on me, I've not been out doing my yoga under the pine trees after it turned cold.


The therapist tells me that, like before in the days just after college, in the attempt to help my mother out I am limiting my ability to help her out effectively, a negative feedback loop, Jesus Christ, and here we all are.    And this too is unreal, as the cookie cutter standard by which I am compared with doesn't apply so well to the actual life situation, another irrelevance.

I was merging from I-270 onto 495 South when the text came through, and when I got over to the far right lane finally to get onto River Road to get into Washington, the traffic was slow enough so I could pull it up, after all the driving, back from Mom's,  "You don't need to come tonight, we will see you tomorrow, Thanks."  The Waze app was telling me I'd be due in at the old Gaul around 5:22, up on the center screen of the small rental SUV.   I'd been staring at it since 9:30, that and the road itself. My anxiety levels had been high the whole time, both from what I was leaving, and for what I was going into.  Wine Tasting Night without proper set-up.  Nothing without a proper set-up.

And me being the whole let-down,  the disappointment, the squanderer of people's faith and opportunity.  And now why had it all happened...


But you're almost shaking by the time you pull the car over in front of the apartment, after double checking, I'm here, are you sure you don't need me tonight.  The app had told me I'd get in at 4:30, but with each pit stop the estimated time of arrival went up.  There had been a big storm down from New York State into Pennsylvania along the whole route, and I had to call in on Sunday night, telling the assistant to the manager, I wasn't going to be able to make it.  Every tree branch along the route, covered to the tip with a layer of snow and in some higher places along the ridges glassy with ice, pine trees sagging with snow, the Northeaster Winter Storm Ezekiel, touching upon those returning from the Thanksgiving Holiday.

I took my suitcase and two duffle bags in, went out for a walk around the block, stopping at the store, returned, had a few spoonfuls of some chilled quinoa and black-eyed peas from a bowl in the fridge that I'd had six mornings ago and took a nap on the old black leather couch in the quiet, waiting for the traffic to die down before taking the rental car back to Calvert Street near the Omni Shoreham.  Tired.  Too tired to write.  Thoughts too weighty and deep to wrestle with.



Depression is a contagious thing.  It comes from the beloved, family members, people uniquely like you.  It comes along with anxiety, it comes along with your own bad habits, the ones that come from an ill chosen peer group, the other depressed self-medicating high school friends fallen in with.


The trip had been rough.  The approach of the holidays.  Travel.  Looking for a car key in the haystack of Mom's Bermuda Triangle of stuff, old family objects, memorabilia.  Books.  Piles of books.  On the bed.  Academic piles, clothes piles, old vinyl camera cases, plug in chargers.   The old cat.  Not finding the car key.

I put a load of laundry in, socks, the Levis and the green chamois shirt I've worn for the last week straight.  A cooked chicken breast, with some broccoli, covered with Kirkland tomato sauce and the Korean market's house-made fresh mozzarella, into the toaster oven at low temperature, Ken Burns Civil War, "Universe of Battle," pulled up on the screen before the couch and the low Ikea coffee table.

I wake up the next day.

Thoughts.  Just thoughts.  Not having worked the last four nights, I have some energy.  Awake at a reasonable hour, but without much inspiration.  I've not written in weeks.

Write, I tell my mom.  Keep a notebook.  It will help with all the thoughts.

Weird energy, waiting for the therapy session over the iPhone screen.  Then I will shower and get read for work.