Jesus;  on the rampart, tempted by the Serpent, talking to himself:

No, this was never about anything but me being myself.   "Jesus, the carpenter, the carpenter's son," is what I'm known as, in society, locally, maybe even regionally.  But it's more than that.  And anyway, the carpenter part is metaphorical.  First, because we can dismiss just about anyone by the claim to "know what they do for a living."  Oh, he's a cop.  He's a publican.  He's a Galilean.   He won't amount to much in this world as, say, the high learned priest, nor has been incarnated as a Roman Centurion in all his powers.

But me, he's a...  well, he's... that guy...

And the rest of the metaphor...   as wood comes from trees, we are given words.  Words can be placed together, fashioned just so, so that they fit together.  Words help us figure things out.  Words put well together are as a house built upon a solid foundation rather than shifting sands.


They can revile you, they can beat the shit out of you, they can fire you, but they can never take away your words, your own drawing in the dust.

They can never deny you, nor your access to the wisdom of the Father as one can know it in his own heart.

That is why I say to you, oh cunning serpent who knoweth the weaknesses of man, get thee hence away.  All you say, such things are nothing.  They are not the words we live by.  The words that have life unto themselves, such that they might heal the sick, raise the dead, put a man who casts nets to a higher purpose...  save one from the greatest humiliating fears...  No one has any use for you, but by distraction.  Get thee behind me...

The words, like I, are friend to all.  "No matter what path a man take, I am there to meet him."  Whether I am here or not, they will always come around, sooner or later, for I am the Truth, the Word, the Logos.




And Jesus felt rather guilty, in a way, for the kind of professional work he'd come to and lived with.  There were voices inside his head, should haves and could haves.  "You're a smart guy..."  But he knew his father's work, that work which his father did which was, truly an echo, earthly, of a Father in Heaven, if there was one, a teacher, a kind and graceful man, who didn't say much that wasn't of meaning and deeper meaning.

In the same, as son as father, on the one hand, "who would believe you..."  And on the other, well, of course, "the perceptive, those who have eyes, can see..."

Indeed, behind the scenes, his father's "tenure" had been called into question.  "We'll give a you a yearly contract, but...  It could have been disrespectful, humiliating, but that somehow this is the reaction of people who see themselves with powers to wield treat their fellow being, self-justified in their ways for feeling the power to lower some and to elevate others, to make another's life subtly miserable at work, particularly in contrast with those who "toe the party line."  (We all know the dynamic, the types...)   And a teacher, a true one, as his father was, will always be a distant thing, too much truth, in excess...

The most respectable man in the world, his father, and yet they add a misery to his life and to his family.   ( And all of this world pre-dispose, as if he needed it, Jesus to side with the people, as they were.  People in need of a teacher, and these people, fortunately, or unfortunately, are everywhere...  And if he were ever to get depressed, soon, or eventually, he would come across another human being, and just by a simple exchange, he knew his work again.

Indeed, Jesus had been ready a few times, to say, "screw this," about this job.  (Until he finally, gracefully found a kind of exit...)

There is a statue at the end of the old street close to where I used to live, along the avenue, St. Jerome the Priest in front of a Croatian embassy, commissioned by the Croatian Franciscan Fathers, by Ivan Mestrovic, 1954.

Saturday, very busy, Sunday night slow.  Monday night jazz, the musicians are in the door right at opening, and the boss's family is there at the end of the night, dessert, coffee.  Old Gene keeps me company.  And in the end, gives me a ride home, which oddly delights me and supports me, for I am lonely and tired out.

I wake up with a headache.  Again I had a few sips of wine, but no more.  The Tuesday wine tasting features a white and a red from Corsica.  The white is distinct.  The red is good.


Jesus was into cooking and the culinary arts.  Thus the miracles of loaves and fishes multiplied.  Perhaps he and the Disciples had figured it out.  As he was ahead of his time.  It takes a miracle sometimes, I'll tell you.


The barman's day begins in soreness.  Later on he will put on the antic disposition of a good mood as a server, and this cannot be sustained for the whole day with the shift on top consuming the majority of the energies of eight hours on your feet.  There's only so much to go 'round, no matter what.  And so it is not atypical for the barman to remember some of the things from the previous night with a certain loathing, for those who kept his good manner too long, and by a general sensibility resulting from that, a kind of loathing for humanity in general.  All this will work itself out, with the different stages of preparations and travel, with the humping up the stairs of what will be needed for the night.

Add on top of that morning mood of frustrations, add the duties of the amateur writer who knows not what he's really working on, just that he keeps at it, for reasons a bit beyond himself.  Add on top of that the administrative duties, the self-keeping and feeding, the soothing things.   The phone call to say, "it's okay," to a mother too far away.   The scintillating conversationalist of the evening, with the memory of customers old and new, over many years now, wishes for silence.  A relationship with no questions asked, no strings attached...

All of this meaning that he is, in the sense of Peter, a sinful man.

I guess I felt like it was necessary to go off in an opposite direction.  The talk was economy, technology...  But none of it enthused me.  I held fast to a job of physical labor, service, face to face contact, conversation in a meeting place.

But that path, it turned out, was very very old.  And if largely ignored in the daily struggles of the worker bee life of the city, working hard, playing hard, driving places, going to fitness places, the path was well-worn, omnipresent, just over there, and good tales about it from those who had gone on that path.

Just that it felt awkward.  New.  Contrary to the interests of one's best comfort and survival...


Jesus, the poet, the writer, the man who knoweth labors and the miracles that come out of them...


Eh.  Rough start.  It was slow last night at the old wine bar.  Two high powered regulars sitting in the corner, discussing the legalities of the impeachment trial, having a quiet dinner.  And two ladies at the bar, one a local librarian, one the owner of an art gallery down the street.  They've been to the sister restaurant, the new one, up the street.  They order a cheese plate, adding a fourth cheese, the Societé Roquefort, in addition to the Ardi Gasna from the Pyrenees, Cantal from the Auvergne, a cheese that dates back to Gallic times, and Sandy Creek.   And it turns out that one's ex-husband has passed away, two weeks ago.  Yes, I remember when they used to come in the two of them.  Tanqueray Gin martini, I say, yes.  We nod.    Yes, crying is welcomed at the bar, this being an Irish kind of bar, I tell them.

But anyway, slow...  I get out not long after ten, and end up making the walk home.  I reheat some chicken stew, take my meds, skip the wine entirely, and off to bed.


My poetry, metaphors, parables, pale in comparison, to the Lord's.

The story of the Lord, Jesus Christ, master of poetry, is concise, rather.  Compact.  The writers of the Gospels do a pretty good job, from what one can tell, recording, editing, putting together the anthology of Jesus, his life as a sort of writer, along with his "writings."  Actions are not far away from writing.

In our own lives, this match is not easy to achieve.   Our own actions, unless one were to put a lot of spin on them, aren't so great, nor so earth-shaking, nor memorable, easily fading into insignificance, in this, the great age of The Insignificance of the Human Soul, where nothing happens unless it is referenced by social media and a nifty visual to catch the distracted eye.  And we've made travel difficult anyway, even as we feel we've made it easier.


I suppose there was a time when I believed in my own acts as a bartender.  People would note my Christian kindness, my open table fellowship with all sorts.  I don't know what went wrong.  I was steady.  I listened to people when they had something serious they were going through.


And then, one wonders, you are moved on into a form of professional advancement.  You're to become an expert, a consultant.  All well and good.  Come on, move along, work your way up, you're in the wine world now, salesmanship.

But part of you holds back from that.  Wine is wine.  Even Jesus may have famously made a point distinguishing the good new wine versus the previous offering, but it's deeper than that.

In pursuit of wine knowledge, and an aura of professionalism, my energies were spent just so.

What I liked most about the wine service and the restaurant industry, besides the thousands of people I came across, was the good vibe of hospitality, the joy, the smile that comes out at the simple pleasure, satisfied curiosity over wine.

But I wondered, what was I actually doing;  one should know what they are doing, at your age... right?

And same thing with the writing...  "Where are you going with all this..."

You need the help and guidance from the true professionals in your field, your true work, your true profession...

And where does one go, to get all that?



In the end it was all the political, the willingness of people to take offense, to put to death not the criminal Barbaras, but the worst offender who spoke words...


On the radio, the typical cultural war squabble, God forsaken in identity politics.  I turn it off, to preserve the calm I can manage.  What was reduced by the world of technology to be, out of habit and daily practice in the world of sped-up information and distraction, to complete irrelevance turned out to be the only thing to save me.


There are a few things in the world which facilitate the creative process.  The Beatitudes...  By saying, "happy," as in "happy are the meek..."  Jesus is describing for us the true nature of the human experience, and in particular that of the creative, the artist of thoughts, who will experience such things in their truer forms from which others are more insulated against.  But the author is served better by looking at the truth rather than the escapism of the condition...

Such is the diet the artist lives on.  Poor, mournful, poor in spirit, meek, etc...

There isn't much to cheer you out in the real world, anyway.  One asks himself, do I have the right to be happy anyway, given who and what I am.  According to Jesus, the answer is yes, hopefully.

Put the water on.  The water comes to a boil as I talk to mom on my cell in the bathroom.  I take the tea water off as it whistles, pouring the water into a cup with a dandelion root tea bag.  There is some loose leaf dragonwell still in the bag, not much, powdery, but it will do, and I set the timer.  I've already poured out some chicken stew from the refrigerator into a bowl, the bowl into the toaster oven, broil, 225.

The tea is ready, my cell phone alarm buzzing, so I lift the strainer out, draining the little basket with the tea.  Later, the orange water kettle is empty, so I pour water from the Britta pitcher into it, and then I pour the water from the Pur water filter pitcher into the Britta water filter pitcher, and then I run the tap for a little while before pouring water into the top compartment of the Pur filter.  It takes time for the water filters, which are the replaceable ones, longer for the Pur.  There is a rust colored residue that builds along the slender rims on the top of the water filter pitchers where water might sit and dry.  

With breakfast warming, and mom settled down and prepared to accept that she is in her proper place, I sit down on the couch before the coffee table, putting my iPhone connected with the charger, and I open up my laptop and connect it via the iPhone's Personal Hotspot.  The toaster oven makes a tiny click of groaning expansion as the heating elements come on and off.  I live with the miracles of modern life and technology.

I made a conscious effort not to drink wine last night, even as I came in and plopped my body down on the old couch.  I tasted a few wines I was unfamiliar with, the Corsican wine we will be pouring for the complementary Tuesday wine tasting, and the Chateau Villars, a Fronsac, 2011, as the Italians did not finish it quite.  But just sips, and I even got to the grocery story on a cold night after the long Saturday night shift.  The last copuple, who were slow on leaving, along with the four Spanish women chattering on--I turned the lights up, I put on Irish music, and then  I finally turned even the Irish music off, eating a piece of calves liver, sitting at the bar even--but finally they all too left and I did the tip adjustment, put in the numbers for the tip out report, etc., poured the dishwasher, Jules, from Cameroon, a last glass of sparkling wine, pour la route, before he caught his bus, and I was out of there.

The night hadn't started out all that pleasantly, with an emotional old mother calling with her barbs and mysteries of her own misery, but I had missed the call, walking to work, distracted by running  into a neighbor, and when I called back the phone rang on or there was a busy signal...  Something she said, made me worried.  "A friend of mine died..."  Who?  Not a great way to go into work...  and everyone there in the servers, particularly A. with whom I will be working with, seems in a tight mood.  Hugo, the faithful old busboy, and Jean Baptiste, they are nice to me, and Marie Rein says hi...

I contact Mom's helper, in that time period when I assess the bar and its stock, wines into the buckets and sink to be chilled properly and white wines opened and ready to go to keep up the night's demands...  Yes, she'll be able to go and check in on mom, great.  I gather things, put them into readiness, I change...   As the shift nears lights camera action, 5:30, after we're fed our tilapia and rice and I finally get through to Mom around 5:20 as I'm brushing my teeth, good news, Joan K. hasn't died, and the poor beaten down old abandoned mother seems to be alright and the phone is working, so...  with that pressure off I tell my coworker A. that I "like working with Ivan."  "Well, he had to do everything," she says, meaning Wednesday's hectic jazz night, when we were quite busy.  Whatever.  "I wasn't feeling well," is all I say, after a pause.  I'm not going to take the bait.  I'm taking my antibiotic Amoxicillin-Clav and my Benzonatate cough pills, and when the door opens at 5:30 up the stairs comes the British couple and I've not seen the Mrs. in a while, and it's Chinese New Years.    We will be full up and running by 7.  Just keep moving, get the first customers down and a drink to start.  Get in the dig, and wait for the reaction, is how some people work.  But I know who I am, and that I work hard and do as good a job as possible.  There is my liver to take care of, and in the last few days, I've been doing well by that too.

I drink my tea, with a dash of Ashwagandha powder, and thank god for chicken stew which is tasting better now every day since I made it Thursday.

Every day now, I make a stew.   One has no fear, no worries, making a stew.  Give it time, follow simple steps, add the ingredients in their stages together...  The cut meat tells us when it is ready to be turned by when it no longer sticks to the heated pan.   Vegetables are cut under the eye of what will be a good size to savor in the spoon.  The vegetables sweat, releasing their moisture as their qualities and flavors concentrate.  The nose, simply, tells us when the taste of doneness is at hand.  

And there are tried and true methods, developed over time, handed down from beyond memory, the sear, the aromatics, the spice, the good use of wine as flavor stimulant...

The zucchini, added last to the pot, after the red wine, inexpensive Cabernet from the South of France, after the tomato sauce and the bone broth stock, is cut in larger pieces, as they will tender easily, and then, after the bubbling yields to steam, the pot is set.

The Bible is full of poetry, and poetry of the deepest sort.  How could a person raised in that tradition not want to try the writing hand in their own possession, and how could they long avoid those things which set alight their own creative eyes as they mulled their way through toil, so to get to the deeper things.

I had been ill since the holidays, I think, more or less.  I let the body fend for itself, nursing it when I could, but there was stress, there was Restaurant Week, and upon it came a hacking cough I could not get rid off.  Finally, a day off, to schedule, and then the next day to visit the proverbial doctor, the nurse practitioner, walking home finally, such as it was, with medicine.

And with the medicine, an antibiotic, one should not indulge too much in the fruit of the vine, and really, I needed a break from that too, such that I am now able to be up and not in too deep a state of gloom and worry, pressured by the march of work...

So too did the season allow me, in my illness, to embrace things that are hard, given our modern skeptic artificial intelligence what-is-your-password times...  I read Father Merton, and James Martin, S.J., I took out the DVDs of Father Barron's Catholicism series, for those who don't have the chance to travel to the Holy Land and the world's great churches.  I took quiet time, for myself.  I meditated.  I sort of prayed.  I was not feeling good, about anything, but sometimes, this is how it has to be, cloudy, before a picture clears and makes sense again in all its widespread elements.

I cannot see a single line or passage or sermon or parable Jesus is reported to have said without seeing a myriad of deeper meanings, and quite oddly and powerfully, they speak most directly, to my own mind, my own work.

Jesus, the son of the tekton, a tekton himself...  the son of a college professor of botany, and in this world, holy to some extent, a man of an open table "fellowship," not far away from a barman in this today world of the modern city's employment offerings...  no one in the modern city being that far from a publican, a sinner, a go-go dancer, an escort, a conniver, a lawyer, a person blind and sick, cut off, a prodigal son, a stress-out tippler, an arms merchant...

Hemingway liked the world of Europe, its cafe life, its fiestas and gatherings.  He understood men of hospitality, he understood bullfighters, and how they disliked the city traffic and noise as they went off to work.  He understood work, not in the least in that he understood it as the ground spring of the mental juices that yield their poetry, bright living flowers out of the dirt of manual labor and the work of fisherman.

The story of Jesus gathering his fisherman to do their poetic work is itself a poem of how the good thoughts, the ones we call "creative" ones, the ones that satisfy us, come into being, through the small faithful act of putting away the distractions to find the act of discerning the divine.  This tale alone catches us right there, and we must then follow.



The saintly, or at least good spiritual, in some ways, Catholic minds, are there in the writing world as much as anywhere...  The literary career, aptly viewed, is a spiritual one.


"But you still have to go off to work today, don't you..."

I know full well that I am a Prodigal Son.  And I have been preaching the wrong message, and must aim to correct myself now.

The second day off...  the weather is overcast, about 50.  My sleep schedule is disrupted by the illness.  There's a rotted onion in the trash can.  Early in the morning I take that out, and go for a little walk for fresh air down to the grove of pines.  Afterward I get back and rest some more.  I've made an appointment at the CVS Minute Clinic for the afternoon today, as the hack, the cough, the sinus congestion has continued, along with a lack of energy.  I'm up before noontime then, call Mom, get through, remind her that she is in the right apartment and that she'll be fine there, and that Mary is coming.  I tell her I'll try to come up and see her next week.  And then I start to tick through some things from the to-do list.

I send along the form the Humane Society sent along in PDF form for Mom to adopt a cat, I call around to find if some technician can come by and check the significant hum in her landline...  Soon enough, a shower, and then it's time to walk up the street to the CVS, past the Lab School and the Firehouse, to the old converted movie theater space to sign in at the kiosk for my appointment.  The weather is both warm and cold, and I heat up quickly under two jacket layers as I walk along, with my courier bag over my shoulder, restricting my breath, and soon I am overcome by a gag reflex, being unable to get a good breath in through my nose.  I stop at a tree, taking off my courier bag, opening up my outer coat.  I gag several times, heaving.  I blow my nose to clear it.

I have a book that's due at the library.  Thomas Merton's The Silent Life.  That will be included in my trip.

The doctor, a nurse practitioner, a young woman, takes me in after the wait, closing the office door.  A quick run through.  Sinusitis, it turns out.  I get my medications, the antibiotic, two pills for seven days, and pills for the cough as well.

By the time I leave the doors and make my way westward, past the abandoned Safeway, past the wine shop and Black Salt, the pizza place, Black Coffee, shuffling along now at just past four I don't have much energy after dropping off my books at the library front desk, having stopped at a bench outside to take my two pills.   I leave the library, after a quick peruse of the spirituality section, nothing jumping out at me.   I still have Father James Martin's book to torture myself with anyway.  Now it feels a good deal colder, but I will make the walk, and not bother to stop to eat anywhere, save some money.  I take the precaution of stopping into the wine shop, for a twelve dollar bottle of Loire Valley Pinot Noir, but without any pride and not much interest.  I try calling mom again, and she's left the phone off the hook, and maybe Mary is still there anyway.

And finally, after the walk, I climb the steps and in through the apartment door, to take off my coat and shoes, send a text to my aunt telling her that I made it to the clinic for antibiotics, try mom again, and then fall into a nap, disturbed by the pained cough, but hopefully better soon.  Ready for work tomorrow, for a Saturday night shift, closing, not really sure I'm up to it, I say, and I go off and sleep more deeply after reheating some beef stew I've made in the new Instapot my aunt has sent me for my birthday, a boon to my diet, particularly these days, needing the curative.


I'd mentioned my GGT liver enzyme level number to the young woman, the nurse practitioner.  Her alarm sticks with me.  How much do you drink a day?  Well, a bottle...  A bottle?  Yes, over time...

Antibiotic pills work better with no alcohol in the system, and I'm too tired and depressed to want any wine anyway.  As I've entered that "sick wolf to St. Francis" stage of life, when things are stripped away and the goodness of God comes shining, and when one realizes, yet again, but this time stronger, that life is not about happy things and entertainments and supposedly fun things that leave you with deeply mixed feelings afterward...

This morning, I wake, at a decent hour, and must occupy myself with little things until getting ready for work, later in the afternoon, around three.  I get up, have some green tea, some hot water detox tea, then a bowl of the chicken stew I made, reheated in a bowl in the toaster oven.  I write a little bit, consider my medications, make it down to the basement to put a load of colored laundry in.  It colors the day when you have to go to work later, the intensity of a Saturday night and there will be a large party back in the wine room at that inopportune hour of 7:30, fifteen people, leaving the old bartender  vulnerable between the bar and the main dining room...


Although I'd been talking to my therapist taking my tendency to retreat into my own meditative space, reading good things and grasping again, as younger people do, for the spiritual and spiritually meaningful things in life, I began to see that I was more right than wrong.  Sure, loneliness seems to suck sometimes, but this is what we have to face...


The relationship is with Jesus Christ, first, much more so than the church...  The first gives us so much, so creative...  Don't worry so much about the latter...  You could be your own church, I suppose, following the same...


After the nap, quick, not deep, with coughing's pains, and the shower, I see that time has passed.  I sit on the couch after the shower, sorting black tube socks for work.  Nike, UnderArmour, Adidas logo... They're pretty similar anyway.  The white elastic strands are curling now out of the Adidas, but they still hold up in shape, no holes.

Call mom, again, the phone is off the hook.

It had been all too easy, with all my failures, a strange steady poverty, the travels and cares, too easy to get into the wine and not want to come out.  I'm sure my energy took a toll.

And thus, because each human being is vested with a soul, built to conform and resonate to the image of God the creator of all things, each transaction with another is far richer than might be expected.  And that is why I chose the restaurant business as the form of interaction that would perhaps keep a roof of some sort over my head, along with enough independence to write and take walks in nature.

I quickly, immediately found out, as I was a shy barman nervous if not set up and well stocked, that people were deeper and far more interesting and complex and wonderful in a godly way, each person like a separate species as we might define the difference between the beaver, the woodchuck, the squirrel, the chipmunk, the field mouse, the mole...  Each person, when you stood and listened, was real.  And so you could never reduce any business transaction to simply that, there was too much going on, incredible witnesses to surviving, even if they just drank Budweiser, lived in some poor small studio apartment, let their old hair get too long, didn't even sleep in a proper bed, like old Fred, an accountant for one of the telephone companies whose wife had passed away...

Further more, what followed, was that any restaurant or gathering place was a success to the extent that it could be a sort of missing monastery.  What did the monks cook up today, as far as specials?  Everyone had worked hard, and now it was to come and pray and have a little bit of wine.  Customers, by participation, became the monks themselves, and so they felt that they themselves had come and did it, made the stock, split the wood to make the fire, selected the meat and carved and put together...  just as they had made the wine as if it too had come out of themselves...



I grew up in a monastery, now that I think about it.  It was up an old country road, simple in design, and my father and mother led the monastery, and there was me and my brother.

So I woke in the morning after my run of four intense shifts, from the end of Restaurant Week Sunday night with Ivan, and on through, tense days with coworkers, coughing, aching, with heartburn, but you get through it.  Assess tiredness with a sleep cycle disrupted...  make some green tea, wash the dishes while the tea cools in the tub in the sink.


Ancient wisdom.  I've always been drawn to it.  To unwind from the week I put on Father Barron's Catholicism DVD part one..  And it works on me.  You can't expect to be happy all the time, you learn in life.  And so I wake, feeling this.

Voice in head:  I work hard, throw my body under a train most every night, and what do I get from my co-workers...  At least the boss shook my hand politely before he and his wife departed.

I'm tired, but awake.  I make an attempt to call mom.

To tend bar is to wash away all smugness, along with any desire to write.  The whole thing is a spiritual lesson, a teaching.  It brings to the fore one's own sin, and that of others.  It brings to one all the lies of the the myth of happiness strived for and gained, as that will just dissolve away.  And yet there is always something of the true Christian life.  If one sits around and listens long enough, some good things might come out.

Kathy talks about working for the Shrivers, Special Olympics.  Taking the Shriver kids to McDonalds in the family Cadillac, reaching into her own pocket to pay for burgers and shakes because McDonalds does not take credit cards, spending five dollars.  She is called up to the house later, to the office, up in the elevator, down the hall, Eunice, giving her a twenty.  "But it was only..."  Take and give the rest where you think it might be needed, she is told.  "I remember that," she tells me at the end of a long night, after telling me of how as a nursing student at Maryland she'd be working in Baltimore, going into bars to find diabetics for their treatment...

Such sweat and unhappiness with the job in general proved it to be work, proved it to be tilling in the fields as monks do...

And I even came to see Kerouac as such a worker.

Maybe you better see humanity in libraries or in the classroom, where they are quiet, and open, studious...



St Bernard finds all this symbolized and prefigured in the Marriage Feast of Cana, which typifies the Christian life, and especially the life of monks.  We fill the waterpots with water, for "purification," when we are faithful to the austere observances of the Order--silence, fasting, vigils, psalmody, manual labor and ascetic purity of heart.  Then Christ himself comes, and by the action of His Holy Spirit transforms the water of our observance into the wine of charity.   We share the wine of charity with one another, our hearts burning with compassion and transported with spiritual joy, as we begin to discover Christ in one another.

Thomas Merton, The Silent Life, II The Cenobitic Life, Chapter Three, page 115...