18:57:37 - 2000-11-17
lunch
I stopped in for lunch the other day at some little family-owned restaurant up in Highland Park (on Marmion up in the 50's somewhere) and...I dunno. I haven't been very happy lately. I haven't been depressed exactly, just caught up in a cycle of work and life that doesn't include happiness. And what's fucked is that, when you're caught up in one of these joyless phases, a month can slip by and you don't even notice. It's one of those things that happens more as you get older. I think it's a soul's way of coping with the tragic inevitability of wage-slavery...it's the kind of phase your dad was in when he used to look up at you kind of confused-like and say, "when did you get so tall?"... So yeah compound that with a touch of the flu, a bad show, and some very personal sadness; and I had reached a point where I was spending pretty much every moment of every day with every muscle clenched. Only I didn't realize I was feeling this way till I ate at this little restaurant, and like, they must have put love in the food or something, 'cause when I finished I was overcome with this sense of well-being. I slumped back in my booth smiling and stared out the window for 15 minutes, and the minutes felt long and full and good. Then the beautiful green-eyed Latina waitress gave me a green sucker w/my check. I hadn't tasted green sucker in forever. I stood there on Marmion under beautiful Socal skies, watching a front build in the distance over the San Gabriels, standing in shirtsleeves sucking my green sucker and imagining all that snow and sleet blowing around way up there in the blue clouds on the mountaintops.
They put love in the food man, I'm telling you.
