My journey to happy. My journey on my journey. The joy is in the journey. I announced several journey’s earlier this year including my journey with Binda, my best friend. She suggested I stop taking so many journeys.

What about rest stops? She asked over a Coca Cola and a bag of Swedish Fish.

Lots of sugar is required on multiple journeys. Relationship journey. Spiritual journey Exercise and diet journey.Career journey. “What about your nap journey?” she asked.

I laughed. But she didn’t.She blinked. Crickets chirped. The earth continued to rotate silently.  I couldn’t take a nap, then and there–not with that sugar rush.

But when I came down from the sugar rush, you bet I did. If Binda suggests I’ll do.

Ohhhhhhh Binda.

It started and ended in the shower. I did the usual. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

But added another R. Read. I read the bottle of shampoo. It turns our shampoos tell stories now. I was used to stories about food. Oatmeal Cookies called “This Cookie Saves the World.” etc, is something we are now going to see more and more of out our favorite cafes and groceries stores and television.

But this shampoo was created by an old man (old now and dead now–he was born in 1918). I assume someone else is telling his story–oh right: it’s his nephew. The shampoo was built-up over time with discovery of new blends and herbs and spices. Not longer a secret blend, just all out in the open for a naked middle-aged man to read while he wastes water standing there, just reading. This shampoo didn’t just leave hair clean and sparkly. You could use it on your body, on dishes, on pet, windows, cuts, bruises and in some rare cases, divorce. It’s hard to read the whole story when you’re wet in the shower.It turns our there’s a book. A novelization of the shampoo, written by you-guessed-it, the nephew. A series, actually.  A movie might be coming out.

In the meantime, I bought the book on Amazon. Turns out the story is pretty sad. The Old Man who made the story turned out to be racist and the nephew has to expose him. But it a novel–so it’s fiction. But it does have me wondering, whenever I wash my hair of what-all I’m dealing with.

Products I buy have stories and that’s just all there is too it.

People started noticing that as I washed dishes I wasn’t actually looking down at the dishes I was washing. I moonily ran a dishrag over the plates but stared ahead. If I was lucky I stared through a kitchen window. And that did happen, when I was a teenager,when I started washing. I dreamt about things when I started washing. I dreamt of bigger things. I missed greased spots on the dishes. My mother stopped asking me to wash them.

Friends stopped asking. I was known as the spaced out dishwasher. Someone wrote a song about me. My mother. She was a one-hit wonder. But she made a good fortune off of that song and used part of it to fund my college education.

I was hired to dishwash in the dorm cafeteria. I went to a school with 30,000 undergraduates. You can imagine.

I told some people about my mother’s song so they started playing it during my dishwashing scenes. And, yes, they were scenes because I was now being taped. There was an MTV special. John Leguizamo played me. Somehow, I managed to get a degree during all of this.

Now I’m fifty and I eat out of cans. Not to avoid dishes. Not because I’m poor. But because no one notices. I can eat in peace when there are no dishes to wash or people to watch me doing them. My mother has since passed away and so I do mark her birthday by washing dishes and thinking of her.

Best regards,

I used to think it hurt dogs to bark. When I was a kid I would bark, just for fun. In short order, my throat would feel chaffed. Poor dogs, I thought. They are torturing themselves. But when I grew up I met more dogs and put that notion aside. They must bark in a way that doesn’t hurt them, anymore that it hurts us to talk. But there have been times I’ve spoken so much my throat hurts. I talk less now. However, I’m still working on the listening part.

Now I just nod yes when a dog barks. They are onto something.

Dear Binda,

I know you’re going to be shocked so here goes:

Last night I interviewed a prostitute in Central Park. We sat on a bench near Bethesda fountain and I asked her very innocuous questions. I paid her for her time.

I’m telling you this Binda because I have never listened better until that moment. I can see, hear, taste, touch better. I catch things earlier. I listen to prostitutes like their human beings. It makes me feel like a human being.

The idea of the bucket list. We all have them. Buckets and buckets of unfinished business. You can just pull out one and decide to focus on that One. But the other items get jealous and call out. They yell “Stockholm Syndrome!” and “You love her better than me!”

You can’t win. The South of France is so far and you’re not learning the language as well as you might. You prefer zwieback to learning German. You suck at English and that’s your first language.

Oh Binda, where are you? What country are you in? Stop sending me buckets. Just send postcards.

I went back to that coffee shop and there were people there. The three chandeliers were still there. Business as usual.

Dear Binda,

I was passing a coffee shop I hadn’t gone to in a long time.

And let me just preface this by saying that I was in a good mood (I know, right?) . I was swelling with appreciation that morning. I even appreciated those white pebbles filling their planters outside. Then I looked up from the planters, through their storefront window and realized the coffe shopt had not one, not two but THREE chandeliers hanging from its ceilings. What kind of coffee shop was this?

I went in. And there wasn’t anyone there. I mean no one. No one behind the counter. I stood there blinking and just sort of enjoying the whole experience. Me alone with the chandeliers. After a full minute, I left. I felt even more appreciation. For the solitude, the beauty. It made happy to go to work. And it’s not even Friday yet.

No, it’s my Tuesday–the week is still short. I have to start early nevertheless. I gotta get a handle on things. Small things. Places I already am. Good places. Good people. I am blessed on Tuesdays. Little Tuesday; little by little.

You’ve always had it. The germs, the bodily functions, the raised eyebrows, the sense of humor–a mixed bag. But it’s all there. You can shake the bag, dig your hand in the bag, throw a towel into it, ask others about their bags, find the tricks in it, let the cat out of it. Barf into it.

The bag is the bag and it works because you’ve got it. Always will.