Opinion
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The Dishwasher Dialogue, In the Red Darkness I Fainted
The Almost Bearable Lightness of Being
By: - Jan 09th, 2026I exposed the photo-canvas to my image and then instead of developing it in the bath I laid out the canvas on the floor, dipped a fat brush in the developer and painted abstractly on the canvas, thick strokes, thin ones, drips here and there and so on. And as I expected here’s what happened. Only in the areas where I had applied the developer with my brush did the image or part of the image appear. On other canvases I applied the developer on the exposed canvas with my hands and in some cases with my body.
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The Universal Religion
Dismantling the Altar of I-ism
By: - Dec 30th, 2025I-ism is the religion of the self, the worship of the ego. It is a faith where the “I” is the central deity, the mind is the high priest, and our desires and fears are the liturgy we recite daily. Unlike other religions that require a conversion, we are initiated into I-ism the moment we first say the word “mine.”
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Dishwasher Dialogues: Drink Overture of Days
Driving Backwards in Paris
By: - Dec 27th, 2025My grandmother died and left me a thousand dollars; and I bought the second-hand VW. It was a change in my life. A big change. No more carte orange, remember? And parking was no problem in those days in Paris. Nobody ever paid their parking tickets.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Limits of Rational Behaviour
Encounters with Authority
By: - Dec 19th, 2025Life in our Paris may have been uncomfortable with few indoor toilets and fewer phones, but life was more relaxed than today, communication was slower, and the police seemed more tolerant. Maybe that was because the May riots of 1968 were still fresh in the collective memory of Paris.
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The Self: Not a Part of Creation
But Creation Itself
By: - Dec 16th, 2025I didn't come into this world; I came out of it, like a leaf emerges from a tree.
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A Wake for Woke
Trump's Assault on the Arts
By: - Dec 13th, 2025During the next five year cycle when conceiving and funding ambitious exhibitions, administrators, foundations and trustees will keep a watchful eye on potential offenses against the government’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues He Volunteered as a Kamikaze
Dwarfs Visited Chez Leroy
By: - Dec 13th, 2025As a young man, he had volunteered as a kamikaze pilot. It was a great honor for his family, he said. The day he was supposed to fly his suicide mission, the war ended, and he was grounded. It was terrible, Namio told us, so shameful for him and his family.
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Decentering Whiteness
A Museum Makeover
By: - Dec 12th, 2025A recovering art critic once asked after reading the 1619 Project, “Why don’t you hate all white people?” I asked, “What is a white person anyway?” We realized our identities are far more complex than the containers imposed on us. Whiteness is a burden, built on supremacy, nationalism, colonialism, slavery, and global violence.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues Awkward Tangos in Paris
Celebrity and the WC
By: - Dec 03rd, 2025I learned quite a bit about famous people from the way they treated the bartender. The ones who were polite were relaxed, I could sometimes tell just by the way they moved or sat at the bar waiting for the staff to prepare their table––that they were at ease in their skin, as the French expression goes, bien dans leur peau.
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The Effortless Flow of Existence
Surrender and the Cosmic Drive
By: - Dec 02nd, 2025Is the large Norway maple in my garden trying to be alive? What specifically is it doing right this moment to be alive? The answer, if we are honest, is that the tree is doing nothing but allowing. It is not trying to push sap. It is not struggling to expand its canopy or striving to gather light. It is simply allowing the forces of the earth and sun to move through it. It exists in a state of perfect Wu Wei—actionless action.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Pig Alley and Street Theatre
They weren't Wearing Gestapo Uniforms
By: - Nov 27th, 2025One night, I remember hearing loud American voices on the street outside the restaurant. A table of three or four had just left the restaurant and now they were outside the front door, upset about something. Suddenly, one of them swept back in through the red curtains and saloon doors and looked up at me and demanded directions to Pigalle, which she pronounced in a sharp New York accent as ‘Pig Alley’. ‘Where is Pig Alley?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t come all this way to miss Pig Alley.’
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Dishwasher Dialogues; Cobblestones and the Sorbonne
Des Lecons D'amour
By: - Nov 19th, 2025Remember that evening, when you were still making salads, and I asked you to slip a folded note under the lettuce? From the bar I had seen these two couples come in with an unaccompanied, elegantly dressed, young woman. The waitress placed them at table five. I asked the waitress serving them to remember the salad the single woman ordered. I went back to you in the kitchen, and said, ‘Greg, slip this in her salad, it’s a note I wrote to her’.
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Eternity in the Now
The Perfection of This Complete Moment
By: - Nov 18th, 2025There is a moment in the transition between sleep and wakefulness—a liminal space of deep Stillness—where the voice of the soul often cuts through the static of the day to come. When the mind is truly receptive, it delivers truths unburdened by egoic striving.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Brutality of Correctness
No Reservations
By: - Oct 30th, 2025Much of bartending at Chez Haynes was about words, about the conversation, the ‘craic’ as the Irish say. It was also about theatre. The place was dressed like a stage and there were people coming and going, making their entrances and exits all through the night. With just a comment thrown in here and there, suddenly there was a real entertainment.
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The Demon of the Book
By: - Oct 27th, 2025The Demon of the Book does not dissuade us from learning; on the contrary, it thrives on our love for it. It tempts us to believe that by memorizing scriptures and mastering doctrines, we have mastered the Dao itself. This barrier turns knowledge into a gilded cage.
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Dishwasher Dialogues James Baldwin
Baby I Was Never American
By: - Oct 22nd, 2025Once I went to Leroy’s apartment to get some papers, and there in his living room, I saw ten chapters nailed to the wail, not stapled or in folders; no, he had driven a three-inch nail through the pages of each chapter as if to emphasize the brutality of that era
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Dishwasher Dialogues Anon
Happiness Was the Enemy
By: - Oct 15th, 2025We found a place—Le Paradis Mandarin—behind the Odéon metro station. Five francs, including bread and one Tsingtao beer, and the bottles were bigger than the French ones. Sunday Chinese dinner became a ritual where we solved the world’s problems, including those about art, women, love.
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Dishwasher Dialogues the Switch
Utopia and the Universal Smile
By: - Oct 08th, 2025Greg was gregarious while Rafael was reticent. In the Switch Greg got to tend bar and chat up the clients. Rafael was in the kitchen with the solitude of making salads and washing dishes. The scheme worked before reverting back to usual roles. While not talking much Rafael was better at making cocktails.
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When You Are Feeling Monkish
Things To Do
By: - Oct 08th, 2025Before the world awakens with its noise and expectations, there exists a profound stillness. To be an early riser is to claim this sacred time for yourself. In the pre-dawn quiet, you can experience a solitude that is not lonely, but deeply nourishing.
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Dishwashers Jesus and the Worm
Genghis
By: - Oct 01st, 2025I do recall making Sidecars, Whisky Sours, Brandy Alexanders, Manhattans, Tequila Sunrises, Blue Lagoons, classical Martinis, Gin Fizzes, and there was the artichoke liqueur Fernet Branca, vile stuff, but good for hangovers, and the poetically named feuille morte, made of pastis and grenadine, never liked it myself, and the kirs, champagne with crème de cassis was called kir royal, with white wine simply kir, and with red wine un carabinier.
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Dishwasher Dialogues, Genius of Bread and Books
Under the Mountain
By: - Sep 24th, 2025Bread and books. Two more essentials. Shakespeare and Co. will always be dear to my heart. The first real bookstore to sell my book of poetry. And to host a reading I gave there. George Whitman, the founder, was a dedicated and friendly guy. I remember him as being serious about what he was doing. Creating a place for writers and artists to hang out and do what they do.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Paris Highlife in the 1970s
La Carte Orange and Les Toilettes à La Turque
By: - Sep 17th, 2025The carte orange was a subway pass with your picture on it. You renewed it once a month, and it allowed you to travel wherever and as often as you wanted on the metro and buses of Paris. The pass was second class, unless you splurged. In those days the metro had first class carriages too.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues, Fascist Francisco Franco
Chasing Immortality
By: - Sep 10th, 2025Alicia cleaned fancy apartments in the sixteenth arrondissement in Paris. She looked worn out, her face was prematurely lined from years of exhausting work, but when she spoke Spanish, her face lit up. She was always in a good mood. One evening she told me she and her husband were planning a visit to Sevilla to see her relatives, but the real purpose of the trip, she confided, was to buy a plot for herself and her husband in the San Fernando Cemetery.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Cave and Knife
The Godess Astrid
By: - Sep 03rd, 2025Asked about the job opening. She said she was the manageress. She told me her name was Astrid. And yes, she strode. She strode everywhere. That was how she moved through her life. Now she came up to me and said: “Yes, we’re looking for a bartender. Come by the lamp here on the bar, open your mouth.”
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The Three Treasures: The Candle of Life
By: - Sep 01st, 2025Imagine your life as a candle. The wax and the wick of the candle are your Jing, your essence.
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