Wisdom is

"Wisdom is _________," said Linda (her real name), to Gary (his real name.) Then she turned to me and repeated it, "What do you think, Adalbertus?" (not my real name.) I stopped reading the free newpaper I had picked up on the way there, titled Kabbalah Today (Volume 1, Issue 1) , and said "No, wisdom is __________", contradicting Linda. I should have asked her why she thought what she thought, now it was too late. I reached down to my sack searching for my gun, thinking, "I'm only on my second pint, and I'm hearing and spouting nonsense; I might as well shoot myself and end this trip now." But the gun wasn't there. Linda said something else, I wasn't listening. She turned to Gary to continue their Sunday afternoon conversation. I overheard that neither she nor he owned a mobile phone or an iPod. A trio we were.


I had arrived at the pub less than an hour earlier, a few minutes past my usual time of 4:30 in the afternoon. Unlike the previous day at this time, the place wasn't crowded. Linda, another regular, preceeded me through the door and took the corner seat at the bar. Not particularly interested in a conversation, I decided to take a stool away from her, in the middle of the L shaped bar, between an old man on the right, who in the next hour would disappear twice for 20 minutes at a time, a coaster covering the top of his glass to signal he'd be coming back, and on the left the unfriendly punkette waitress there, with a skunklike haircut and hair bleach, at the end of her shift apparently, slowly picking at a hamburger and a bowl of coleslaw, next, to her left, her heavyset punk boyfriend, like she, dressed all in black, always friendly and talkative, a three and a half inch silver needle sticking horizontally through his nose, (does he take it out when he goes down on her, I wondered?), and to his left Doug (his real name) another regular, working on a crossword puzzle or a sudoku.

As I arrived, Paulie (her real name), the punk barmaid, said to me, "Sorry, we're out of IPA, today", my usual ale on warm days, and so I ordered a pint of my cold day brown creamy ale, sat down and started looking at the freebie newspapers I had picked up somewhere. There was the Daily News from Saturday, with nothing interesting in it, and COMPETITOR, formerly CITY SPORTS, with a consumer survey of running shoes, all near or over $100 a pair, twice or thrice of what I, a runner, would be willing to pay. Who buys these expensive shoes, I thought? Not the professional athletes who get them gratis from manufacturers in return for endorsements, or for just being seen wearing them. There was an article by Jeff Galloway, a wise running coach, whose old book I have somewhere, and whose program I once tried to follow. He claims in the article to have coached 200,000 runners. He stresses quality over quantity, and the importance of rest days. He recalls the legendary promoter of running, the late Dr George Sheehan, who, at over sixty years of age, realized his race running times were getting slower, and instead of running medium length runs every day, he settled on three 10 mile runs a week, and soon beat his marathon running record to arrive at 3 hrs, 1 minute.

At 5, his usual time, Gary arrived. Gary and I seldom talk beyond simple greetings and a few casual remarks. On Saturdays he comes with his wife, on Sundays alone. He sat to my left after the punkette waitress packed her uneaten hamburger in aluminum foil and disappeared somewhere. Her boyfriend was still there. To his left now sat Mike (his real name) another regular, now playing cribbage with his usual partner Doug. I kept up my attempts at reading.

Around 5:30 another Mike would normally arrive. My drinking buddy, I call him, master mandolin player (not his profession), unmarried, but wise beyond his years, probably from reading so much Russian literature, I figure. He was the one who advised me recently on my heartbreaks and woes, saying "You've got to protect yourself now." Mike (his real name) would usually talk to me or Gary, an amateur guitar player himself, and it occurred to me today that Gary and I were at times in competition for his attention. But Mike didn't arrive. Instead, about 15 past 5, Linda moved from her perch in the corner to sit between Gary and me (she had to pull up a stool and I had to move mine a few inches to the right), to talk mostly with Gary, while I nodded, exchanged a few pleasantries and went back to my Kabbalah Today reading (Volume 1, Issue 1.)

Linda is an umarried woman over 50, pleasant and friendly, who reminds me of some nun I used to know or perhaps imagined. Years ago I helped to assauge her fears about the Microsoft Access program, there at the same bar. Her job is to write grant proposals.

I finished my second pint, segregated my pile of free newspapers into two, COMPETITOR and Daily News, I'd leave behind on the newspaper pile in the corner, Kabbalah Today, I'd take home with me for further study (isn't Madonna into this stuff?), and I asked Paulie for the tab. I handed her $20 and received $11.50 in change. There was some handwriting on the one dollar bill she gave me back, that I was going to leave as a tip along with another dollar I pulled from my pocket. Linda was the first to notice it. The writing was in Spanish, and she attempted to translate it, but the translation didn't quite come out. I decided to keep it. "I'm superstitious," I told Linda, "and I need an omen". "Yes, omens are good," she replied. I said goodbye to her and Gary and went out on the street. It was now just before six in the evening and the sun was shining brightly.

The writing on the one dollar bill said the following in block letters.

On the bill's face:

ERES LO MAS BONITO
QUE ME PASO. E'PERDIDO
Y NO PIDO
REVANCHA

=LORENZO=
MEXICALI

On the bill's back:

MONICA IE QUIERO

Translated by my co-worker Gabriel (his real name) on Monday morning:

YOU ARE THE PRETTIEST
WHAT HAPPENED TO ME
I LOST AND I'M NOT ASKING FOR REVENGE.

=LORENZO=
MEXICAN

MONICA, I LOVE YOU

"Monica" and "Lorenzo". Not their real names.

Wisdom is.











Monday morning, 04/02/2007.