Wine, Mama
Lunch today at Uno's. Not too bad. An individual serving of deep dish chicken-mushroom-cheese and other stuff pizza that looks good in a color picture printed on a plastic menu. You know, the kind of menu you get in a chain restaurant like Denny's, only it's served out on an open patio under an umbrella with buildings towering all around. People everywhere, shoulder to shoulder, eating Uno's pizza on a summer day here at the end of the rainbow. A wonderful day, the light soft bright through the trees along the sidewalks.
Yes, the streets were crowded, but there was some nice laid back San Francisco electricity in the air, it was Friday, after all, with the weekend coming. I passed a Banana Republic on the way back to the class with MSJ and noticed some pants I rather liked. I haven't been into a Banana Republic in years, nice pretend you're a high roller on safari in Africa stuff. Well, that's probably not a good description of their demographic. I used to buy clothes at Banana Republic and felt vaguely contaminated by the Banana Republic image itself, but I liked the clothes. Ah, well. The old days.
There are three levels of management between the company CEO and me and every one of them has
been replaced in the last two months. We are told our new manager has been hired and will arrive on Wednesday. This makes us all a little nervous. This makes me a little nervous. Not good to be a live alone older than I imagined I could ever become curmudgeon when I'm going into a weekend and I'm nervous, a weekend when I have plenty of time to stare at the ceiling and think idle thoughts or to kick at the pebbles as I walk along the sidewalk down the hill toward the cafe in my new Banana Republic safari pants. With the extra pockets for film and pencils and little notebooks, but not bulky, so I don't look geeky and dumb. The way I normally look.
Perhaps moments like these can be turned to my advantage. I find it soothing to write. Wooly swimming through the mind mush soothing, you understand, not your pedestrian tickled lightly behind the ears soothing, a glass of wine on the end table beside you soothing, but soothing none the less. I have a project underway that involves a lot of writing and maybe I can turn my psychological discomfort to good use by prodding this writing project along. Soothing me on into it, if you will.
I have had times when the writing has just petered out, or, at least, I have petered out, petered out like the monkey with a can of cocoa and a spoon, who spends hour after hour scratching his head examining the spoon and the can knowing in the dim reality of his being there's some connection between the spoon and the lid, some leap of logic that leads to prying off the lid and getting to the cocoa inside. I just need to pry off the damned lid on this can of writer's block, mama, and dig in. Maybe you could scratch me a little just behind the ears while I drink another glass of this here whine, er, wine. Wine, mama. Wine.
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