Never let people make you an outsider.  That's one of the lessons you learn.   People who want to be insiders, because of ego, treat you, make you out to be, like an outsider.  And if you're not careful it can make you depressed.  Then it becomes easier for other people to hop on the bandwagon, making you out to be a deviant.  But being who you are,  your self a creature of yoga, you never were an outsider, but just rather at the center, one of the kind people, non-judgmental, probably one of the quieter types rather than the loud ones.  So, in that state, is one always able to recover, enduring the depressing situations of life, rising again, to a night shift, to a lack of a retirement plan, to your own lack of happiness or sense of career purpose.  And you go about your day as best as you can, a quiet insider, doing what is natural, enduring.

I feel the serotonin kick in when I write.  It's something similar to watching Walter White fixing the guys of Aryan Brotherhood meth lab in Breaking Bad's final episode, or Gary Cooper in High Noon, or in reading the fresh words of a fresh Pope.  Writing is just good for an aching brain that woke up feeling not much reason to get up earlier than one has to.  This might be something more important if you have Type O blood, but I wouldn't doubt if it's fairly universal.

We are a judgmental lot, let's face.  Judgment is a large part of our economic system, after all, socioeconomic reality.  So it is a religious teaching that we 'practice generosity,' 'give alms,' 'embrace the poor,' not simple to give money to poor people, hand outs for people down on their luck, but to correct our learned tendency to so judgmental, and perhaps it works as well to realize that those we might judge to be happy and well-off and living beautiful lives are basically just as unhappy as our own selves.  The additional problem is one of becoming more judgmental out of social standing and perceived identity, as if such came out of discriminating tastes for the finer things and people.  And that might take the brightness out of one's soul, and dampen the natural connection with other beings, transform real relationships with overblown false hyped political ones differing from democratic equality.

I've never needed the tension, the narrative arch taught in 'writing classes' as a mainstream value of story telling quality.  I see the point, sure.  But for me,  I value a story which is a journal, not considering that as dismissive.  Writing can be as a great nature poem, a meditation on reality.  A moment reveals itself, standing alone, does not need hype.  There's enough in the world to be meaningful with a sketch.  To arrange things into story with all the necessities of conflict and psychological 'through lines,' seems almost a violation of the true things a story is supposed to bring forth.

It takes quiet, it takes observation.  Tell the basic truth, and the point will come out.  This is the accuracy of Chekhov, knowing so many real people, so many circumstances, so that all he had to do, almost, was change the names, not to belittle his imagination.  Chekhov can be ambitious, in the right way, with his laid back approach as an observer of reality.  "The Black Monk" is a stretch in some ways, but it works, it is believable, it is cut from real inner landscapes.  "The Lady with the Pet Dog," too, seems constructed from within by someone who has been there.  He has a great memory, a whale's sieve, for the ever-changing moments, the constant flux of conscious thoughts narrating life.  His taste, his choices bring focus.  He didn't bother to tack on endings beyond the logic of nature and reality would render itself.  He was a journalist of the human condition, his works nature journals documenting  variety.  His fiction, timed, never overwrought.


And this, perhaps, speak to the purpose here, as Chekhov started out with bits and pieces, sketches of actors drunk in cemeteries, to write something that doesn't need to be in short story form, the gloom of a Monday morning written about in the same ballpark as Chekhov's story of the waiter who slips, injures himself, goes back to the village to live in poverty.  Goethe, the poet, was also a scientist, and his poetic imagination helped his science.  Lucretius put into poetic form that which can not be divided an smaller, the atom.

"How long can you keep it up?"  The landlord's question from over a glass of wine the night before rings in my head as I get ready for work.

So

Then finally it's me keeping me up, after all the conversations of the week, after that strange realization as I clean the bar up after a Wednesday night jazz, everyone in the restaurant gone, that my work week is over, and the 'then what?' in the mind, but thankful.  I put the cushions up, so the itinerant mice won't chew them, do the paper work, pack up my things in my courier bag, throw in a bottle of wine, get my bicycle, turn the lights off, check the doors, and go, following the titled half moon nestled in a line of clouds.  Then I get home, with the usual aches, turn on the television for company, soak some black eyed peas, go out in the backyard with a camper's headlamp to pluck some basil, make a pesto, take soaked dishes out of the tub and move them to the dishwasher, all the while drinking wine, settling in to a run of past episodes of Breaking Bad.  The wine tastes very good, and indeed it is soothing to the lonely hour, when commercial breaks become infomercials and Sesame Street and yoga shows come on.  I might have thought about strumming the guitar, or doing something else creative, or read, but at this point, reading is hard.  There are a lot of decent books here, or ones I might learn a few things from, of course, but the labors have dragged me down, and the next day I sleep in, very late, a dry feeling in the throat, vaguely hearing trucks in the background, a motorcade's sirens and Harley rumble, the body just wanting sleep.  Breaking Bad, mirroring my own strange secret life of trying to make a living serving up a drug to support an illness, that of writing, beyond the boundaries of normal society.

Do I even write anymore?  Or do I just like the time alone, not knowing what to productively do with it, writing down some lazy half confession of being too much around a weakness for wine.  The duck confit was realized to be salty, but I never seem to drink enough water anyway, and it's not til four in the afternoon that I really manage to get some green tea going.  The week had bright moments, an excellent conversation about artistic matters, just me and one guy, a painter's son, Sunday night.  Monday night, too late, the Viking of 'the brotherhood' arriving at 5:30, even before I finish brushing my teeth, and staying on seven hours.  Tuesday, the dentist, then wine tasting, Peter, the rep, always an education, and then finally, when the other half of 'the brotherhood' comes in, to talk over everything, each song playing on Pandora, the tie of my tie, admittedly off, love lives, girls, a trip to New Orleans we all must come on...  "I think I'm wearing out my welcome here," he says, early in his visit.  And at one point, I even say, "off my back," such that he turns, of course, to his female companion, a sharp cookie, somehow too along for the ride, and of course asks, "did he just say, 'off my back?'"  But it all leaves me talking to myself in my apartment.

Life, I know, is a matter of hard work.  I applaud my friends, some of them real honest Republicans, who are excellent with such values.  And I like working hard myself.  It's satisfying.  It takes the mind off confusing itself.  But I've never known, really, what to do with myself.  I've never known anything of a calling, but to write.  So, at the things of adult life, work, I've faked it, gone along sportingly, I suppose, with the need for a job, gone along with the restaurant work that became, de facto, my career, my resumé, my reason to be.  And the day off, the day of not being engaged with anything is indeed hard, taxing, even if you have no energy to do anything.  From its own perspective it makes work indeed feel like being kidnapped, diverted from a true occupation.  Being middle-aged, funny-looking, awkward, a poor renter, what do you do?  You keep on going, as strange as that is, even as your own contribution is laughable, minuscule, as if it weren't even an attempt to contribute and rather utter selfishness, navel staring, a not getting on with it kind of a life.  "Shame upon you for all you were given, and doing nothing with it," the voice of the day off can also seem to say.

And yet, somehow, out there, ethereally, nebulously, hidden, there is poetry.  It may be largely thwarted, still-born out of your own cowardice, unachieved by your lackings, not being the poet scientist religious person that Da Vinci drew you as, understanding all things, Vitruvian, bold and strong.  A poor beast slouches unknown back and forth to a job, to a niche in society based on rent, but his inner fire is a separate matter.



It's like the world woke up knowing what to do with itself, each a profession, knowing what to compete for, knowing what to sell, and then there's you, stupid, not knowing, confused, hardly enough energy to walk slowly around the block and look at the sunset from in between street lamps from a hill on a day off.  Don't begrudge myself the job, for keeping myself in groceries and green tea, some wine at night, a phone.

I write these things, amateurish, penny for your thoughts type unreadable, not as they can ever be a direct take on the truth, but because they are things that speak of writing and its process, things from an archeological dig, left for later to see what might be of worth or interest, a piece, a shard, an object.  And if I do write, about work, it's only because work is perfect for what it is.

A Mercedes ad comes on.  That's what writing is, will always be, an innovation of form, a new form of vehicle.  There have been, of course, many great forms.  Chekhov's "My Life," Dostoevsky's "I am a sick man.."

And Da Vinci observed, from studying bodies in the winter hospitals, drawing anatomy from the dead, to the effect that if the body is made so finely, how great the soul must be and of how we must protect that finer thing within sinew and bone and the creature of flesh.

The spirit feels weary, and the psyche down, as we face the second night of jazz of the week.  The mind draws images of customers to whom one has been friendly with, who wish stay late and play music and dance after the staff's ordeal of service in the chaos of live music.  The mind traces back to the first expression of the bad habits and decisions that led one here, presiding over the ADD crowd.  It's one's own fault.  An inner being wants to push off, push away the drinking toasty crowd enjoying themselves.

A roast beef sandwich to break the fast, but the body feels hungrier afterward, along with the trepidation.

"Two for drinks," the boss says as he seats an African couple two tables away from the band's set-up in the corner as a crowd of Frenchies who are dining down stairs, a large party split into three long tables, has scattered around the bar as if trying to block us.  Several minutes later, the waiter tells me they, African couple, have strange indecipherable questions about drinks, and when I approach, cutting through the chaos, the gentleman, in a suit, wants to move to a table in the back, away from the band.  This will take some jee-hawing.  Coming back from pulling a four top apart, headed back to the bar, I'm flagged down by one of the old hens of a six top table.  "Uhm, we'd like to order," she tells me, aggressively, looking at me like I'm an idiot.  Okay, lady.  I pull out my little pad, write one through five on it, "what would you like."  In the process, finding out that two aren't ready to order, have to think about it, make a quick decision, "the trout."  The large one stares at me when I nod to her, recognizing her, as we dealt with her ex quite a lot, before he finally disappeared.  As if his behavior was my fault.  At one point the boss had to take him aside and explain to the guy something about the young women who come here to have a glass of wine:  they are not on a job interview.  I get the order, African couple sits, later still causing confusion as to their cocktails, including one mind change after the drink is brought forth.

In addition to the crowd of regulars, asking to save a seat for Kyle, back at the bar a Frenchman, a hair stylist celebrating a birthday, is asking for three to four seats himself.  By the time the Satin Doll Trio has spelled out the first chords of "Don't Get Around  Much Anymore," a three top is sat, needing a Bordeaux recommendation, Kyle has arrived, it's unclear where to put the Frenchies, table or bar, and here we go again.

By the time the night will end, Kyle will take it upon himself to play a Nancy Sinatra song, plugging his iPhone into the power amp there in the closet by the bar mouth, as busboy and waiter and bartender attempt to clean up things neatly, be offended when I unplug him, putting back on the Pandora station the waiter put on, Jill Scott, 'jazzy and funky,' like the boss likes, bemoan that we are listening to Prince cover a slow song...  Kyle wants to play Bonnie and Clyde for his friends over in the corner, order two more glasses of wine, is headed down the stairs when I tell him he has a check for it...

I heard tonight of the cheetah, most domesticable of the big cats, and most like the house cat.  It helps if you raise one with a dog, a retriever, a setter, a calm domesticated dog, less wild than others, easy going.  Even in nature, it is the presence of the human being, who in time will, one moment, suddenly, be accepted, become a friend, even protected, by the big cats, as part of the landscape.

Elvis Costello playing with The Roots--I just don't find him as good as the Shane MacGowan he once engineered into an album.  In the studio he does the same Frankenstein method, cutting a vocal performance into clips, one word, one word.  I don't find the song writing more.

My co-worker downloads the new iPhone operating system during the shift, opening the closet door right at the opening of the bar.  Look at the icons, she tells me, as I open bottles, pour glasses of wine, clear plates, serve plates, maintain conversation at the bar.  Jazz Night with Jeremy the Musicador launching into opera tones as he goes through his set, "One Love," "Roxanne," clinking through my head with keyboard samples.  "I need another glass of Cotes du Rhone of the week," she half yells at me, as if there is no debate about it.  "Vanessa, we've been out of that wine for a month."  It no longer exists.  She is ordering a glass of wine for the table of a server, along with her date, from a Four Seasons restaurant with a good wine program, their sommelier, a mutual friend.  The wine I've poured them already, the last of a Chilean organic cabernet.  I told her at the beginning of the shift just which wines we actually have of 'wines of the week.'  She looks around, her chin up.  Later, at one point, as I'm telling her I can't do what she just asked me to do, deliver the musician his curried chicken, because she's standing right in my way, again at the bar mouth, such that I put the plate of food down along with the bread basket right there where we put clean glasses wiped off from the washer, as she likes to especially at the end of the night when she wants to go home, obstructionist, she says to me, as if it were simple, "take it easy."

The night is saved by interesting conversation and also by being busy.  Moving is a good thing.  Something fun and a good adrenal run being thrown into a blender.  Good conversations with a professor originally from Cornwall.  I tell him my JFK at Amherst 50th business, of what to do with a fine speech that has the line "where power corrupts, poetry cleanses," and as I come back around the bar after pouring a decanted Clos de Savignac, a savage mourvedre blend like a juniper bush with bees around it in sunlight, to go with his cassoulet, he tells me another take, that of Pierre Trudeau, who once deemed it necessary to impose martial law in parts of Canada, tossing four hundred into jail, albeit one with clean sheets.  The Canadian leader's touch, "lack of power corrupts;  absolute lack of power corrupts absolutely."  And we agree, that a little PR about an anniversary might be a good thing.  And, then, to round out the story, brass tacks, I'm told how the Trudeau story played out, two sons, one dying in avalanche, the old man dying, but finally the other son going into politics.

And then the evening is dragged out again, by a late entry, who is puzzled by how his night had ended here Monday with a young woman he found here, took out to one of those scene roof-top places where they serve horrid wine, brought back, but finding her not wanting to have anything to do with him, as the rest of his stared at him, or avoided his account, and even how he had called Uber, at the end of the busy Monday jazz night, the band knowing how to get to me like mosquitos, such that I now hand them the bottle, pour it for your fucking self.  (I write this in jest, as musicians are exempt from selfishness, and I greatly respect and celebrate their small needs for the glass of wine and dinner that is part of their pay and birthright.)  Why does everything accelerate and grow with gravity, I'd like to ask the physicist, who now by the way is old and cathetered, not much wish of life from reports.  He peers at me with bright eyes, perfectly calm, as I make an espresso, having allowed the busboy to go home, and wonders at the chill of his reception, this at, oh, about 10:30, which makes him all the more inquisitive.  A fault of my own ego, even as I try not to react, not to react. "Tell it to me straight," he says.  "I think you talked to much about yourself," I mutter.  "I think she said something like that."  This is the third time he's been in this week.  "Don't throw me under the bus, man."  The corner three top, who's had two bottles of Red Sancerre, has ordered a third or fourth round of tawny port, and I'm looking for glassware for it.  "We smoked a cigar..." I hear him in the background.  The bright person's running commentary one ultimately gets sick of as if it were dirty dishwasher.  And he's even your friend by now, along with you, a voice in your miserable lifeboat ride.



The night before, wine tasting night, the Bourgueil, the whole case of red, from what may be surmised from opening four bottles, is off.  Vegetal, green, no fruit, closed, muddy.  The Chinon rosé is quite good.  Damien, the wine guy, is a good entertainer, leaves at Eight PM.  I like his line about the rosé, 'fruit, but with a savory element, a great food wine.'  And here comes a large man, looking vaguely like Mickey Rourke,  comes up and sits down between two women, one from Argentina who is celebrating a birthday on her own--she likes Chateaux Neuf du Pape, which I am entirely aware of--and one who fits into the category of blond and attractive who has long been coming to wine tasting night, often telling me how she feels she needs a shower after certain (male) customers leave.  She has returned after a long absence, years away.  And here we go again.  I pour the newcomer a taste of three wines, a Mandela gesture of good will, and he takes the Bordeaux.

Big guy likes Bordeaux.  Big guy, while affable, explains his Irish background as birthday girl turns to him, as she eats bread, telling me from time to time that she's a bit drunk, tells of how he was a professional soccer player, has five degrees in black belt martial arts, is some sort of negotiator between insurance companies and, say, teacher's unions.  His mother passed away a year ago, suddenly, so treasure your parents.  And all the while he's getting closer and closer, standing above blondie Becky, focussing on her.  And for me, having had two long late nights anyway, at this point, I'm tired, and helping with the business of service out in the dining room, serving the older couple who come in and sit in the corner many a Tuesday wine tasting night, always getting one of the discounted bottles.  Slowly, the engaging Irish quality of the gentleman descends, and out comes the reptile part of the human brain.   He runs off a list of bands he's seen back in the day, The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, as his attention drifts away from his interlocution with the girls, blondie joined by a truly kind person who happens to be a principal at an at risk school.  He repeats himself.  I saw the Ramones, I saw the Sex Pistols.  A lot of music in New York for a guy who grew up in Ireland.  I should have never changed the music on the sound system, a desperate act that I realize now has backfired.

Earlier on, Becky goes through her list of the old regulars who might drop by.  The boss's wife drops in, wearing a new pair of chic eye glasses.  She greets my coworker, and then I screw up some enthusiasm I'm not feeling.  "I said hello to you and you didn't say anything..." she says when I come to the bar mouth, slipping past the wine rep and an incoming busboy, to say my hello how are you.  French women speak slower when speaking American English, as if now playing a cello, dragging long notes out where before they had violins and a whole symphony.  The faces at the bar do seem moping early on, as if vaguely unsatisfied, but mute, eyes, headpiece filled with straw.  And I for, my part, would like to ask them, what the fuck do you want from me anyway.  No, don't invite your friends.  This night isn't special, it's not magical, it's the same old, in the same old barroom you came in to years ago, except now it's acquired cosmic dust. aging through being lived in, and so it doesn't suddenly respond, like a watered plant cannot suddenly respond. The fewer people to witness my downfall, my Dante journey down into Hell, the better.  Some nights just are like that, the night before the moon will be full, waiting, for Hell to open, then feeling the agonizing slow descent, everyone even getting in the way of the requisite tasks, the uncontrollable quality of people rising above you, looking on down as you grip whatever you can.  Go from the bar, escape by talking to the older regulars about Billy Martin's hamburger.  Earlier, a moment of escape looking for a Chablis for the make-out couple over at one of the tables, both of them handsome and abundant and in love, so why not an austere wine.

Big Irish, who's not really that big, but thick, and topped with a handsome head of dark full slicked back hair, after buying several rounds for the ladies, and after it being explained to him that maybe he isn't the perfect match for Becky, whilst she hides in the back hallway by the bathroom, by our shoot-from-the-hip educator, after paying his check, finally he goes down the stairs smoothly like on an escalator, placing his glass of wine down on a shelf by the door, and disappears off into the night, still with blazer and his neat slacks, and no longer prepared to thrust into the person in the barstool next to him.  Putting on the Leonard Cohen Pandora station seems to have worked, though now my coworker Jay comes and says, 'what, this music is good for slashing your wrists.'  'Jay,' I say, kneeling, trying to sort things out, at least put the juice away amidst the wine and mineral water bottles, 'that's about exactly what I feel like doing right now.'

The two nights before have been busy, and fairly long.  No wonder I was spent, as my coworker observed when I finally plunked down on a barstool to eat a small bowl of risotto with one lousy grilled shrimp on it, should have gotten two, aware of my lackings as far as regulating the flow of wine.  I still have an amount of cleaning up to do.

A night later I'm at home staring at a bottle of Ventoux, listening with Dr. Dre headphones to The Pogues play "Rainy Night in Soho," back in 1988 in Japan on YouTube.  A wise writer has been kind enough to email me that everyone in DC seems "competent and dedicated" but that he needs the vice of New York.  I've lost the aerator of the kitchen faucet, it seems, and so I can't hook up the dishwashing machine to run it through.  I could look again at the Frost poem about being 'acquainted with the night,' but it seems to hurt, as true as it is.  Fortunately another masterpiece, also neglected, is playing with all its sound.   And in Shane MacGowan's voice, is somehow like crossing down into the underworld and hearing again the voice of your father in the midst of your ride down a portent river.