The Tender Bar: Proof you can be a functioning alcoholic

A dear friend of mine recently passed along, J.R. Moehringer’s recent memoir The Tender Bar, and since all three of her children work in bars, and usually are pretty good at getting into trouble without going too far, reading it was a no-brainer.

Last weekend after a perfect bluebird day here in Colorado, six inches of snow kept me indoors and restless. Wrapped up, sitting on the floor, I opened The Tender Bar and started to read. Four hours later I set the book down, went out and bought a 12 pack of beer, then promptly preceded reading. Ten beers later, I was done.

The following are two passages that stuck out:

J.R. talking about his cousin’s baseball career

I understood that my cousin was a budding major leaguer. He was a dedicated craftsman, and the rewards he’d gained from hard work went far beyond mastering a slider and a change. He’d mastered himself. He knew that hard work was the right path for a man, the only path. He wasn’t paralyzed, as I was, by the fear of making a mistake. When he bounced a pitch in front of me, or threw it over the head, he didn’t care. He was experimenting, exploring, finding himself, and finding his way by trial and error to a kind of truth. No matter how foolish he looked on a pitch, no matter how badly he missed the target, with the next pitch he was focused, confident, relaxed. He never once that afternoon lost the look on his face that he’d worn when we were boys. He was working hard, but he’d never stopped playing.

J.R. remembering a conversation he had over scotch with a priest on his way home from Yale

“Can I tell you something?” the priest asked. “Do you know why God invented writers? Because He loves a good story. And He doesn’t give a damn about words. Words are the curtain we’ve hung between Him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don’t strain for the perfect sentence. There’s no such thing. Writing is guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the reader’s as much as yours. Think about that the next time you curl a piece of paper into your typewriter.”

Said advice for when you die

“Sad fate for a man to die known to everyone else, but unknown to himself.” ~ Amazing Grace

Intern Zen

Read this last night and quickly made the metaphor to my current situation. Enjoy.

“The secret of this kind of climbing is like Zen. Don’t think. Just dance along. It’s the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen.”

 

~ Jack Kerouac