Another Day In The Land Of Milk And Honey

• 5 Hours Spent Writing
• 5 Dollars Made Playing
• Still East Of Mississippi

Yesterday (Tuesday), I spent about 5 hours here at the library, working on a Flashback Friday feature, which will post automatically at 12 a.m. Friday morning, regardless of where I am i.e. floating past New Orleans, face down in the Mississippi River, with Howard swimming behind me, asking: "Are you going out into the gulf?," or sitting in the cab of a semi, talking to the driver about us cutting a demo in this home recording studio, right outside of Austin, as soon as we get there...

I am "so" sure that Howard will never see this blog, that I take a bit of liberty in poking fun at him; though; this morning, he DID ask me how one gets on a computer at this library...

After I left the library, I stopped behind the building in the adjacent lot, which is where we have been sleeping.
It is a boarded up two story affair, which is used on the weekends by a jovial and rotund black man, who wears a cross on a necklace, who washes cars in front, using water from the building (which he showed Howard and I how to turn on and off with a screwdriver) and the electricity from an outside outlet (which he offered to let us use, though, between the two of us, we have nothing to plug in). I have used the water to wash clothing in a five gallon bucket, which the man lent to us, and then have hung them on one of those wooden fold-out racks, which he also offered for our use.
We have been picking up after ourselves, leaving behind only aluminum cans, as the man is a recycler, as well as a car washer.
The place is a half mile walk from the Jack-In-The-Box, which is one of two places where I assumed Howard was, after I didn't find him sitting by the boarded up building, reading.
I went to the convenience store which allows me to play in front.

The two young black guys, and the daughter of one of thiers who turned 7 years old yesterday were there, selling movies and CDs (two for five dollars), as they had been yesterday.
I sat and played for an hour and a half, as they weren't advertising the CDs by playing them, rather, the movies by displaying them...(they've got the new "Hunger Games" movie...I've heard its pretty good.)
People were tipping me, despite the fact that, half of the time I was giving Janiya, as that is the 7 year olds name, a guitar lesson. The store owner had started me off with a couple of bucks. He also rounds my purchases down to the nearest dollar. A $3.48 pack of Pall Malls turns into "You got three bucks? That's good."
I was keeping an eye out for the migration of Howard from the fast food restaurant (I get sick of typing the name, with all those hyphens) back to the boarded up building, but he must have slipped past my notice. I felt kind of bad about having essentially squandered an opportunity to hitch hike out of here, by allowing my writing session to extend to the point of sundown, but I was inspired, still sober (at sundown, even!!), and I had recently read that Anne Tyler works 9 hours per day writing...no wonder she has (whatever her Grand total) more novels published than myself...
Another Day In Paradise
This morning, I woke up behind the building at sunup, and took the sign which reads "Over The Bridge" out of my guitar case to prop it up where Howard (who was on his morning trek to the "Jack") would see it upon his return. I was hoping that it would curtail his saying "I thought we were going to try to hitch yesterday."
Instead, he said: "What if we don't get a ride?"
To which I answered "Another day in paradise, I guess..."
With the water and the electricity and the fast food and the convenience store and the library next door, there is a small danger of getting comfortable and lingering here, past our welcome. I am relatively certain that the grass is greener on the other side (of the river).
Yesterday mornings sighting of a white man who was delivering baked goods to the convenience store, brought the total that I have seen here in Scotlandville, to five (not counting Howard). We each looked at each other as if we were seeing ghosts, for an instant.
I now go to call the Wal-Mart on the other side of the river to ask them if they carry guitar strings. I found that store after I Googled "Music Store near West Baton Rouge, LA" and they may have it listed as such, by merit of them selling a cheap acoustic guitar "startup set" which may come with the guitar, an instruction book, a tuning fork and strings, but that doesn't necessarily mean that strings are sold seperately.
I don't want to get all the way there and then have to have Howard stand guard while I tear the packaging open and pirate the strings out of the box...
Is it me, or have my "Baton Rouge" posts been about as slow and boring as the place itself? We haven't even been stung by a bee, or anything*
*There was a huge clump of hornets, I think they were, clustered around a hole outside the second story of the boarded up house. I think the guy who washes cars may have sprayed them with something, because the cluster was gone and there were a few dead ones on the ground below where it had been.
Then, the other morning, we saw what we thought was a bees nest, the size and shape of a cornucopia, hanging in the crux between two tree branches, about 20 feet off the ground. There was a veritable cloud of hornets swirling around it, like 15 thousand of them caught in a tornado.

Then, we realised that it hadn't been a nest at all, but rather a cornucopia shaped cluster of solid hornets, when the whole thing moved to a different spot higher up in the same tree, taking the tornado of hornets along with it.
My theory is that the car wash guy did indeed spray a poison at the side of the boarded up building where they originally were (he had mentioned that the guy who cuts the grass had been stung) and that the Queen Bee decided to leave that particular location at that point, and the hornets were following her every move en masse, with the cornucopia shaped cluster being the hornets responsible for surrounding the Queen to protect her, and the tornado-like swarm being the fighter hornets ready to react if Howard so much as stood up...
Well, I guess the point that I'm getting around to, addressing the issue of these latest posts being boring; and it's more of a question: Wouldn't you be just SO tempted to like throw a brick right at the heart of the cornucopia shaped mass of solid hornets and then run like hell, full of adrenaline and cackling like a villiage idiot?
I was.
I almost did, but then realised that Howard probably can't run that fast, and, well....
This Just In...
A young man who just sat down next to me at the neighboring computer asked me about my guitar, and then said that he had seen me playing at the convenience store, and he is on his way to the music store to get me some strings, in exchange for me teaching him whatever I can, and at least the chords to "Forever And Ever, Amen," by Randy Travis