Saturday, September 17, 2016

Break Makes Me Broke

Constant And Never Ending Improvement
Razor cuts threaten harmonica playing

You know, I think about being 68 years old here, in New Orleans.

Really old guys who get out there and busk must make bank...

But first...

Science

I was thinking about air, the other night.
Jerry the cook from the Quartermaster, was talking to a guy from Colorado, about Colorado, and the air, in particular.

As I thought about the fact that the air is thinner at higher altitudes, I wondered if it was indeed lighter air that was there.

If the atmosphere is like an ocean of air, then New Orleans would sit (at -12 feet sea level) pretty much at the bottom of that ocean, and it would stand to reason that we would eventually accumulate, in our atmosphere, the heaviest air. We are like the bottom feeders when it comes to breathing. We might have air that is no heavier and is of equivalent composition than the air in Colorado, with it just being pressurized more...

We have a whole mile of air hanging above us and pressing down upon us on all sides, that Denver, Colorado does not have.

"It does get to you," said the guy whom it turned out had only visited Colorado and had been gotten to by the thin air there.

Breaking Myself

Not going out to play Friday night, even though the rains that had fallen late afternoon and into the evening had stopped, has cost me an amount of money never to be known, but one that is almost guaranteed to have been higher than what I have at present.

I stayed in and worked on stress reduction and practiced music.

There are things that I can practice at home which wouldn't be suitable for the Lilly Pad, such as playing repetitious patterns, designed to sharpen technique, or playing one bar of a J.S. Bach piece, over and over, until the overview yields a different perspective on the one bar of music, which besides bringing about an improvement in the playing of that Bach piece, may just provide facility in playing any number of popular musical riffs; such is the gift left behind by "the father of us all," as Franz Joseph Hayden, I believe it was, once tagged Johann.


Stress Reduction? Looks Like A Good Place To Be Mugged...
So, it is Saturday evening, and I am telling myself that I am going to play better tonight because of having meditated, soaked in the tub, done yoga; and broken my fast.

The fast breaking has been interesting, as I had started to put molasses in my coffee, Thursday night, and had noticed a blessing of energy and was in high spirits upon waking after 8 hours of sleep.

It was molasses flavored coffee, to be sure, with generous amounts of that non-sulfured, unrefined product, and a sprinkling of white sugar, that seemed to complete the sugar complex.

I then added some oatmeal, before going to sleep.

The next day, I was up and went to the dollar store for cat food, where I saw cans of black olives for a dollar. This gave me an idea and soon I had a jar of peperoncini peppers to go with the olives for another dollar. I then went to the salad bar at Whole Foods and bought only a bit of feta cheese and some lettuce off of it. I then went home and made a killer Greek salad, which was like the yang to the yin of what had been sweets and grains the night before.

8 Dollar Thursday

Thursday night, was the last night that I busked, after 4 days of nothing but water.
I was somewhat physically drained after I had ridden the 2 miles to the Lilly Pad, and dreaded the prospect of pedaling my bike on the return trip. I wound up getting a small can of pineapple juice.

I found adequate energy for busking on it alone, and made 8 bucks in an hour and a half.

My friend Jerry smoked me up and gave me a bud that would become a large part of why I would want to stay in and work on stress reduction the next (Friday) night. It was from somewhere like Colorado, and therefore "medicinal," with the patient hopefully being instructed to take the medicine with a spoonful of sugar to help it go down, and in a laying down and staring at the ceiling attitude.

 

1 comment:

  1. There's less air *pressure* up there, and if you're not used to living a mile+ up, it makes you tired more easily etc but you get used to it. Source: Lived in Colorado Springs, and areas around Prescott, Arizona for a total of about 5 years.

    ReplyDelete

Only rude and disrespectful comments will be replied to rudely and disrespectfully. Personal attacks will be replied to in kind, with the goal of providing satisfaction to the attacker.