I have been working at the Cheesecake Factory for almost three years now. I’ve gone from cashier, to food runner to server and now to bartender. These days they have me on a semi-regular schedule. I’ve been closing the bar Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It’s been interesting to track my feelings on this, because one of the few things I have liked about working in the service industry is that it has not been predictable. I tend to feel constricted very quickly and having a new schedule every week helps me to avoid that even when working the same job.
Yet there’s also this sense of comfort that can sometimes come with it, especially as the holidays draw closer. Every year as soon as November hits, the city of Beverly Hills starts playing jazz and Christmas music through loudspeakers around the main streets. There is something about walking those streets in the five o’clock sunsets on my way to work, the buzz of a full restaurant, and the general sense that winter is approaching, that makes me happy.
I have been reading Mary Oliver’s Upstream slowly but surely, an essay at a time. The closing line from the poem from which the collection gets its name is this: “Attention is the beginning of devotion” (Oliver 8). When I first read that line it made my heart hurt. I often fear that everything in my life from the creative projects to my loved ones has lost my attention, or that maybe I give everything the bare minimum as I keep marching forward to wherever it is I’m going.
I have tried to slow down and heed her words. As I finished the final draft of my most recent feature film Actors, I did it with her words in mind. I have tried to be more present with my friends. I have considered the idea of sending real letters to some friends who I don’t talk to enough anymore because despite the ease of texts I never send them.
As we move towards filming Actors I have related shorts I would like to film, articles I’d like to write about it. I have other projects with friends that I’d like to get off the ground. Brand new scripts and ideas I never fleshed out call to me. Some friends and I are preparing to formalize months and months worth of conversations around the state of modern film into something we believe to be of real utility for film lovers everywhere (stay tuned for more info on that I can’t wait to share it). This is all to say that I have so many things in my life which I want to devote myself to.
Yet each day, Monday through Wednesday, at three o’clock, I find myself getting ready to leave for work. Each day there remain thoughts unexamined and work far from finished and I’m going back to work to close the bar. I know that this weekend I will serve tables and see my friends and I will enjoy myself and yet these days which seemed so full of potential for good, serious, focused work, are gone. I am walking through Beverly Hills and the sun is setting and I take a moment to notice the sun against beautiful red brick. For amongst the things which I hope to devote myself to is the Earth and all of its beauty.
I love this world. While that brings me joy I also find myself saddened by the fact that I will leave it without having written all that I can write in its honor. I will close the bar and listen. No doubt I could do better to pay closer attention. I only hope that someday soon I will find a moment of quiet long enough to make sense of it all.
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