"if you lose your mind, come back."

i was just looking at pictures from my last "american vacation," when jocelyn and i went to DC to visit brad and ngav.

it was the middle of august. oppressive heat. we were in the adams morgan area of DC at dan's cafe, my favorite completely irresponsible place to drink in our nation's capital. if you aren't familiar (which is a shame), it's situated in a dirty basement. it's tiny and always crowded. it smells like a zoo. the bartenders are grumpy. best of all, the drinks: if you unsuspectingly ask for a "rum and coke," for $11 the pile-of-sunshine barkeep hands you a glass (probably somewhere in the ballpark of 8oz) of rum, a can of coke, and a bucket of ice. basically... a shitshow ensues.

you and your party end up completely wasted, but it's also a place that's pretty conducive to meeting new people. somewhere between my "gin and tonic" and falling asleep on the metro, brad, jocelyn and i befriended some guys and one girl who were standing near our table. i believe the events unfolded thusly:

jocelyn got up to go to the bathroom. i couldn't hear what they were saying, but a group of three guys started talking to her. she came back to our table and told us about it, saying they were being kinda creepy. i suppose i thought it wise to give them a piece of my mind. the one guy came over and this is the conversation we had:

me: "you're a creep!"
guy: "what? why?"
me: "you touched my friend!"
guy: "i just wanted to dance!"

(note: there is no dance floor at dan's)

i guess instead of haranguing (i think i spelled that wrong but unfortunately my dictionary is being held hostage :P ) them, we were at that point of drunkenness where you suddenly become best friends with strangers instead of trying to fight them (lucky for brad). so these guys just sat right down at our table, and we talked about who knows what... (i think they made fun of brad's magazine and pointed at jocelyn's boobs a lot).

anyway the whole point of this story is that i never managed to catch their names, but i remember the words on the back of the one guy's shirt, and they were: "if you lose your mind, come back." i don't remember what was on the front of his shirt, but i assumed it was some band, probably dave matthews or something.

i did some intense research (googled it) and found out it's a buddhist saying.

i didn't find much interpretation, and on the first read it didn't really make sense to me. but i suppose it means if you find yourself feeling lost, all you have to do is simply come back. and because the solution is so simple, maybe it means that you weren't really lost in the first place. you're looking for answers and getting lost, but maybe you knew the answers all along.

maybe i'm looking at it the wrong way, but it doesn't really matter, does it? it's what you make of it. strange what you remember when you've had an entire glass of liquor.