Awake. No milk in the fridge. Sister in law on the couch. Squeezing my hands to pump out the fatigue. Are you supposed to wake up tired? Did this happen to our ancestors? Slight inflammation possibly from bread maybe just from gripping tins and shaking over a hundred drinks while under pressure. A short staffed night which meant the bartender got screwed and has to deal. At some point, there was a moment where everything froze into place and I could feel my mind step away from all of the chaos, the tickets, the servers asking pointless questions, “Do we have something like Woodford Reserve?” A good server is a premium bullshit artist at their core, even if they don’t know the answer to something, and the new crop has yet to master this skill. Yes, bullshitting one dumb question with another is a skill alongside being in the weeds and answering stupid questions or questions people should already know the answer to.

Again, during service last night, I thought to myself, “How much longer can I do this? Will I end up at Musso in Franks in one of those dumb red coats and a bowtie stirring gigantic martinis for the weather beaten elite of old Hollywood?” Where does this bartender thing end and something else begins? Each “career” path I’ve ever taken has lasted around seven years or so give or take a year. First kitchens, then managing kitchens, then being a professional student, then server, then bartender, then bar manager, now building manager…All the while wanting to be a writer, sometimes writing, most times not. And deep within my core always wanting to be a cartoonist but that ship having sailed far away, almost unreachable.

“The beauty of life is in the balance between the pursuit of dreams and the appreciation of the present.” I read this on the toilet this morning before walking out to get coffee for myself and my sister in law.

“Are you going to Larchmont?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I like going north to Hollywood to see the freaks.”

Yes, at 7:50 a.m. I walked through the Pavilions parking lot and saw a gigantic matte black truck nearing the point of monstrosity but not quite. I thought to myself, there’s only one type of person you ever see driving that sort of vehicle. I would be able to pick him out the moment I saw him in the supermarket. As I pondered this wisdom, another car pulled in, a shiny, white, full size BMW. Out climbed a young girl who went right into her backseat to pull out a small, filthy dog bed with which to place her baby doll Yorkshire terrier. She hugged this to her chest and walked in and I made haste to pass her so as not to be behind her in line, dreading her order but also the one I had been burdened with:

Iced Shaken Espresso

Grande

Blonde Espresso Roast

Almond

Extra Salted Caramel Cream Cold Foam

No Classic Syrup

Two Shots

As I waited, I watched as the girl placed dog bed and dog in the child’s section of a shopping cart. She wore baggy pink sweatpants and a red negligee as a top obscured by a black hoodie that said “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” on the back. Her hair was recently dyed black and she wore red sunglasses. Her overinflated lips too were smudged with bright red lipstick and as I turned away after catching myself gawking at this modern day vampire, a disturbing but true and twisted reflection popped into my head that the cute little doggie would suffer an awful, dark fate at the hands of this young woman. Something by all means unintentional but terrible and undeserved nonetheless.

Back through the trash blown streets to the relative safety of Hancock Park. A man scooted by standing on the pedals, pumping away heavily on a bike with dog alongside and a train car like line of other two wheeled carts in tow full of well organized belongings lashed down with bungie cords and twine. And that was really the whole thing about this conception of capitalism wasn’t it? Things that were created and discarded almost as if in mock defiance of our own fleeting lives with the exception that the trash and possessions we generated would eventually overcome and outlive us. No matter how minimalist I’ve been in the past I still own stuff I told myself I needed and now carry from place to place and builds things to hold them and need places to put them and of course, justifications for owning them. Most times it’s because I don’t want to spend the money to buy them again which is the greatest trick of all because I never needed most of it in the first place.

I’m 271 posts in. 94 to go to finish this crazy life experiment. There’s a novel I’ve been dreaming of now for almost a year and hopefully in January, things will have slowed down enough for me to be able to write the goddam thing, get it out of my head, and start to dream of the next one.

We really don’t know what is around the corner do we? I think wisdom comes with knowing that you really don’t know shit and can’t control any of it.