Thursday afternoon, the 14th of September.
"Snap the picture real quick, and then let me get back to what I was saying..."
I didn't busk last night, as I was at the Uxi Duxi until almost 11 PM. I had moved outside to one of their tables after they closed at 8 PM, and wrote for just shy of 3 hours.
Travis asked me where I had been when I returned, in a manner not inconsistent with a nagging wife.
New Orleans On 500 Dollars A Month
He met with Dorise yesterday (Wednesday) and he is set up to move in to one of her places, maybe as soon as the 28th. He had arrived like 10 minutes early for their meeting, and had phoned her at that time to notify her that he was there, so she could be impressed by his early arrival.
He is going to have a room in a house which will have its own electronic keypad lock on its door, and there will be two bathrooms, one male and one female, and a cleaning lady will come once a week. I think he said it would be 500 bucks a month.
I don't know what he plans to do in the interim. I am pretty sure that the security people here haven't been counting the number of days that he has stayed with me.
And last night, Bobby, who used to be my weed connection, signed him in the building, while I was still en route from the plasma place. This meant that he was officially using one of Bobby's "10 days per month" that he is allowed any single guest, and it wouldn't accrue against the ten days that he is allowed at my place.
This is certainly a usable loophole, and Travis was just about getting to the end of his 10 days at my place, but it was the manner that he came back and informed me, full of joy and excitement, that "the people up front don't really know what they're doing," and had even forgotten to sign him in or out on a few occasions."
I'm sure Bobby filled his head with information about how easy it would be to skirt the rules.
Travis stopped short of saying: "I can stay at your place as long as I want, and they'll be none the wiser," but he almost implied it.
I am non committal, as far as him staying or leaving, at this point. But...
More Compensation Sought
I suppose that the 75 dollars worth of food that he bought me almost 10 days ago, now, has been divided down to a "rent" of around 8 bucks per day, and, if he manages to stay at my place until he's ready to move into Dorise's on the 28th, that amount would be 3 dollars a day.
He is a cheap person. In exchange for me keeping a bunch of his stuff at my place, for which he initially offered me 100 dollars, which I couldn't, in good conscious, accept, and which I kind of amended to 20 bucks, he has given me all of the cleaning supplies that he isn't going to need when he gets to his place, because there will be a cleaning lady.
But, I'm alright with the deal, because it is stuff that I would have spent probably around 20 bucks on; and it doesn't diminish the value of it, knowing that it is stuff that suddenly became surplus to him.
Neither did it matter that the 75 bucks worth of food that he bought me came off his food stamp card.
I just don't want him to catch frugal fever, and try to shoot the moon by staying as long as he can at my place without giving me any more, to compensate for the inconvenience.
The inconvenience manifested itself this (Friday, the 15th) morning in full force.
He came out of the shower and heard that I was listening to David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" album. It was on the 3rd or 4th song.
"Oh, David Bowie, cool, I love David Bowie," he started.
And he basically stood there saying "This is great music right here, great music...I really love this music that's playing right now."
And proceeded to talk over the entire length of the album, never once apparently thinking about stopping his banter so I could actually listen to the album that I was listening to.
"I would say; if I had to make a list of my top 20 artists of all time, David Bowie would definitely be on the list; and that's saying something, because when I lived in New York, I got to hear a lot of music, definitely a lot of late 70's stuff because I was living with my aunt for a while and she dated this guy, let me tell you about this guy, you gotta hear this; then I'll tie it in to David Bowie in a minute...."
[10 minutes later]
"And this album is definitely one of his classics, and one that would be better known to hardcore Bowie fans...another album is "Low," that one came out before he really became big, but the arrangements on that album and the people he had in the studio with him, it all came together...Do you know who the guitarist is on this song?"
"Yeah, it's Adrian Belew..."
"Yeah, (holding up a hand to stop me from going further) and I've got an Adrian Belew story that will blow your mind..."
He talked about how he had first heard David Bowie, and the people who were in his life at that time, who introduced him to Bowie's music and what significance that had in forming him into the musician he is (who has picked up my guitar a couple times and played recognizable chord changes from songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana, but not much more) and how he almost saw David Bowie live once, but didn't because of things detailed in the ensuing 20 minute story about the time he almost saw David Bowie, etc. etc.
He punctuates each sentence with some kind of conjunction, where he raises his voice with: "AND NOT ONLY THAT..." or something, as kind of a preemptive strike against me interjecting anything; a way of saying: "I'm not finished yet."
I decided to just sit there and see if he would indeed talk over the whole album, out of morbid curiosity and due to the fact that this was still only around 10:30 in the morning. I really wanted to see if he would notice that he was doing it at some point and say: "I'll let you get back to listening; but that's a great album." I only managed to make it to somewhere in the middle of the second side of the thing before the temptation to say something became too much.
"Dude, I can't listen to you talk about David Bowie and listen to David Bowie at the same time;" I considered saying, but it would have been hard to keep the irritation out of my voice. I'm making every attempt to get along with the guy.
I finally just said: "Oh, I need to listen to the lyrics of this song, I'm trying to learn them," once another song started.
"I Don't Know..."
He then went instantly into the other room as if he had been slapped in the face and sat on the couch, in a silence so pronounced that it sucked the ambiance out of the room, with an "excuse me for breathing" look on his face. He even overtly walked on tip toe into the kitchen for something. I think that is the definition of "passive aggressive" behavior.
And, I don't believe I ever have to worry about him reading this; as he seems to have no interest in anything I have to say, when in "conversation" with him, and that probably extends to the written word. I typically begin a sentence, and when I get to the first noun which isn't "I", such as in: "I just ate an apple," He will interject "Yeah," to cut me off and then as in this example will continue with something like: "I used to eat a lot of apples, of course when I lived at such and such, there was a fruit stand like right on the corner, and...."
And, so, I actually left my Snowball microphone on and recording as he began to speak the other night, and I captured 2 hours of audio, with him speaking 99% of the time. This was covert, and I felt bad later, because he had actually been talking about some things of more substance than he usually talks about.
But, last night I let the thing record again and he went for over an hour without stopping. If I interjected anything, he seemed to not be listening, but rather trying to retain his train of thought so he could continue as soon as I was done speaking.
Enough Piling On Travis. Except...
If I grab my guitar and start to play, he evinces a lot of distress, as if I am giving him something that he isn't an expert on, has no control over, and he generally will frantically ask me what the music is that I'm playing, like he needs to know before I go on any further. If it is an artist he knows, he will lecture about that artist, and if I tell him it is one of my own songs, he will squirm as if in great discomfort and will act as if he is torturing himself trying to relate my original song to something that he knows and can monopolize a conversation about, like he feels he needs to defend himself against whatever music I might produce.
I definitely can't see him reading this blog. Unless he knew that he was the subject of a post, then he might. So that he can give a rebuttal. A long rebuttal which would keep returning to the theme of "I don't know..."
"Is Your Water Running; Is The Electricity On?"
His cat, which he never lets outside, has just about destroyed all of my house plants, but that is kind of a blessing in disguise as we are having an inspection from the Louisiana Housing Commission, or something, on the 25th. They are the ones who are basically paying my rent (and I have Michelle Obama, who came and spoke to us "homeless veterans" in 2013 and shook all of our hands, to thank, along with the mayor of New Orleans).
But, I need to get rid of the scraggy pot plants that I have been keeping, amidst a few of other varieties, just to be on the safe side.
They are pretty weak as far as THC content, and when they were healthy, and I was smoking weed about every day, I could clip about a joint a week off of them, on those rare occasions when I didn't come across any anywhere else.
I haven't had any reason to do much to them besides watering them and keeping them back a bit from the windows, so that none of the contractors who come here to, say, work on the roof in the hot sun, might vent their jealousy towards a veteran who gets free rent, by trying to turn me in to the authorities and get me kicked out of the place.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a guy who is lugging a 40 pound load of shingles up a ladder and looks through a window to see a guy dancing to Grateful Dead music in an air conditioned place. With his pot plants right in the window?
If he's an undocumented worker, then I guess it'll be a mute point after the "Great Cleansing of 2019."
Berta (one of Howard Westra's housemates) is going to give me an avocado tree out of the ones that she has succeeded in getting to grow.
It never crossed my mind to start a half dozen of them. Maybe that's why Berta is a "green thumb," and I'm a green thumb with white spots on it and some dry brown, crinkly areas around its edges.
She also had started something like a dozen mango seeds to produce one tree ("It was one that we just shoved in the ground," she said.
This gives me hope of having a mango tree under grow lights in my place some day, side by side with kratom plants.
Further away from home...
I'm thinking that President Donald is going to have his buddy, Putin, amass a huge military presence in Belarus, under the guise of "military games," and that those troops are going to remain there, posing a "threat" to U.N. Nations (in the Baltic?) and that threat will be the catalyst for an accelerated building up of the military.
"I help you with Operation Windy!"
Then, the guy in North Korea, pursuant to another "behind closed doors" arrangement will provide some excuse for the U.S. to use South Korea as a staging area, where 3,5 million or more troops will be assembled and then trained to return to invade their own country; rounding up illegal aliens, loading up the aircraft-carrier-turned-deportation-vessels, and seizing weapons from those who shouldn't have them. They might start with a "blitzkrieg" of Chicago, perhaps after fixing the NBA finals to allow the Chicago Bulls to win the championship, and then basically just picking them off left and right, during the ensuing rioting and looting spree.
The U.S. troops won't have to use care to not damage inner city property, as it needs to be torn down and rebuilt, anyways.
It will be a glorious time and will cement a second term for the political genius in the White House.
He said that the church may even have other properties that they would allow me to use for the purpose. "That way you don't have to worry about the police showing up," he said.
But, if they tell me that they couldn't allow me to use any such place, and then the police do show up, it will be twice as bad for me, as I would have been told explicitly that I couldn't go inside the place.
I am about to drill 4 holes in a rectangle big enough for me to squeeze through in one of the wooden doors, then I will cut from hole to hole with a hacksaw, removing the rectangle of wood. This, I can later duct tape back in place and spray paint over in the color of the door, after having found some other way in and out, perhaps through the crawl space, if I can free a trap door open from the inside.
Vocals are the major concern, as I get closer to recording a CD.
You've just read: 1,850 words
I didn't busk last night, as I was at the Uxi Duxi until almost 11 PM. I had moved outside to one of their tables after they closed at 8 PM, and wrote for just shy of 3 hours.
Travis asked me where I had been when I returned, in a manner not inconsistent with a nagging wife.
New Orleans On 500 Dollars A Month
He met with Dorise yesterday (Wednesday) and he is set up to move in to one of her places, maybe as soon as the 28th. He had arrived like 10 minutes early for their meeting, and had phoned her at that time to notify her that he was there, so she could be impressed by his early arrival.
He is going to have a room in a house which will have its own electronic keypad lock on its door, and there will be two bathrooms, one male and one female, and a cleaning lady will come once a week. I think he said it would be 500 bucks a month.
I don't know what he plans to do in the interim. I am pretty sure that the security people here haven't been counting the number of days that he has stayed with me.
And last night, Bobby, who used to be my weed connection, signed him in the building, while I was still en route from the plasma place. This meant that he was officially using one of Bobby's "10 days per month" that he is allowed any single guest, and it wouldn't accrue against the ten days that he is allowed at my place.
This is certainly a usable loophole, and Travis was just about getting to the end of his 10 days at my place, but it was the manner that he came back and informed me, full of joy and excitement, that "the people up front don't really know what they're doing," and had even forgotten to sign him in or out on a few occasions."
I'm sure Bobby filled his head with information about how easy it would be to skirt the rules.
Travis stopped short of saying: "I can stay at your place as long as I want, and they'll be none the wiser," but he almost implied it.
I am non committal, as far as him staying or leaving, at this point. But...
More Compensation Sought
I suppose that the 75 dollars worth of food that he bought me almost 10 days ago, now, has been divided down to a "rent" of around 8 bucks per day, and, if he manages to stay at my place until he's ready to move into Dorise's on the 28th, that amount would be 3 dollars a day.
He is a cheap person. In exchange for me keeping a bunch of his stuff at my place, for which he initially offered me 100 dollars, which I couldn't, in good conscious, accept, and which I kind of amended to 20 bucks, he has given me all of the cleaning supplies that he isn't going to need when he gets to his place, because there will be a cleaning lady.
But, I'm alright with the deal, because it is stuff that I would have spent probably around 20 bucks on; and it doesn't diminish the value of it, knowing that it is stuff that suddenly became surplus to him.
Neither did it matter that the 75 bucks worth of food that he bought me came off his food stamp card.
I just don't want him to catch frugal fever, and try to shoot the moon by staying as long as he can at my place without giving me any more, to compensate for the inconvenience.
The inconvenience manifested itself this (Friday, the 15th) morning in full force.
He came out of the shower and heard that I was listening to David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" album. It was on the 3rd or 4th song.
"Oh, David Bowie, cool, I love David Bowie," he started.
And he basically stood there saying "This is great music right here, great music...I really love this music that's playing right now."
And proceeded to talk over the entire length of the album, never once apparently thinking about stopping his banter so I could actually listen to the album that I was listening to.
"I would say; if I had to make a list of my top 20 artists of all time, David Bowie would definitely be on the list; and that's saying something, because when I lived in New York, I got to hear a lot of music, definitely a lot of late 70's stuff because I was living with my aunt for a while and she dated this guy, let me tell you about this guy, you gotta hear this; then I'll tie it in to David Bowie in a minute...."
[10 minutes later]
"And this album is definitely one of his classics, and one that would be better known to hardcore Bowie fans...another album is "Low," that one came out before he really became big, but the arrangements on that album and the people he had in the studio with him, it all came together...Do you know who the guitarist is on this song?"
"Yeah, it's Adrian Belew..."
"Yeah, (holding up a hand to stop me from going further) and I've got an Adrian Belew story that will blow your mind..."
He talked about how he had first heard David Bowie, and the people who were in his life at that time, who introduced him to Bowie's music and what significance that had in forming him into the musician he is (who has picked up my guitar a couple times and played recognizable chord changes from songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana, but not much more) and how he almost saw David Bowie live once, but didn't because of things detailed in the ensuing 20 minute story about the time he almost saw David Bowie, etc. etc.
He punctuates each sentence with some kind of conjunction, where he raises his voice with: "AND NOT ONLY THAT..." or something, as kind of a preemptive strike against me interjecting anything; a way of saying: "I'm not finished yet."
I decided to just sit there and see if he would indeed talk over the whole album, out of morbid curiosity and due to the fact that this was still only around 10:30 in the morning. I really wanted to see if he would notice that he was doing it at some point and say: "I'll let you get back to listening; but that's a great album." I only managed to make it to somewhere in the middle of the second side of the thing before the temptation to say something became too much.
"Dude, I can't listen to you talk about David Bowie and listen to David Bowie at the same time;" I considered saying, but it would have been hard to keep the irritation out of my voice. I'm making every attempt to get along with the guy.
I finally just said: "Oh, I need to listen to the lyrics of this song, I'm trying to learn them," once another song started.
"I Don't Know..."
He then went instantly into the other room as if he had been slapped in the face and sat on the couch, in a silence so pronounced that it sucked the ambiance out of the room, with an "excuse me for breathing" look on his face. He even overtly walked on tip toe into the kitchen for something. I think that is the definition of "passive aggressive" behavior.
And, I don't believe I ever have to worry about him reading this; as he seems to have no interest in anything I have to say, when in "conversation" with him, and that probably extends to the written word. I typically begin a sentence, and when I get to the first noun which isn't "I", such as in: "I just ate an apple," He will interject "Yeah," to cut me off and then as in this example will continue with something like: "I used to eat a lot of apples, of course when I lived at such and such, there was a fruit stand like right on the corner, and...."
And, so, I actually left my Snowball microphone on and recording as he began to speak the other night, and I captured 2 hours of audio, with him speaking 99% of the time. This was covert, and I felt bad later, because he had actually been talking about some things of more substance than he usually talks about.
But, last night I let the thing record again and he went for over an hour without stopping. If I interjected anything, he seemed to not be listening, but rather trying to retain his train of thought so he could continue as soon as I was done speaking.
Enough Piling On Travis. Except...
If I grab my guitar and start to play, he evinces a lot of distress, as if I am giving him something that he isn't an expert on, has no control over, and he generally will frantically ask me what the music is that I'm playing, like he needs to know before I go on any further. If it is an artist he knows, he will lecture about that artist, and if I tell him it is one of my own songs, he will squirm as if in great discomfort and will act as if he is torturing himself trying to relate my original song to something that he knows and can monopolize a conversation about, like he feels he needs to defend himself against whatever music I might produce.
I definitely can't see him reading this blog. Unless he knew that he was the subject of a post, then he might. So that he can give a rebuttal. A long rebuttal which would keep returning to the theme of "I don't know..."
"Is Your Water Running; Is The Electricity On?"
His cat, which he never lets outside, has just about destroyed all of my house plants, but that is kind of a blessing in disguise as we are having an inspection from the Louisiana Housing Commission, or something, on the 25th. They are the ones who are basically paying my rent (and I have Michelle Obama, who came and spoke to us "homeless veterans" in 2013 and shook all of our hands, to thank, along with the mayor of New Orleans).
But, I need to get rid of the scraggy pot plants that I have been keeping, amidst a few of other varieties, just to be on the safe side.
They are pretty weak as far as THC content, and when they were healthy, and I was smoking weed about every day, I could clip about a joint a week off of them, on those rare occasions when I didn't come across any anywhere else.
I haven't had any reason to do much to them besides watering them and keeping them back a bit from the windows, so that none of the contractors who come here to, say, work on the roof in the hot sun, might vent their jealousy towards a veteran who gets free rent, by trying to turn me in to the authorities and get me kicked out of the place.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a guy who is lugging a 40 pound load of shingles up a ladder and looks through a window to see a guy dancing to Grateful Dead music in an air conditioned place. With his pot plants right in the window?
If he's an undocumented worker, then I guess it'll be a mute point after the "Great Cleansing of 2019."
Berta (one of Howard Westra's housemates) is going to give me an avocado tree out of the ones that she has succeeded in getting to grow.
[Howard is on the cruise that he's been dreaming about going on for at least the past 5 years. He was going to take a Greyhound to Chicago, and then a train to British Columbia, and then a cruise boat to wherever the whales are in Alaska. He is going to see Mount McKinley. I told him that, 3 hours into his bus ride, when he is only in Chattanooga, Tennessee and already his butt cheeks are falling asleep, he would regret having chosen that particular mode of traveling.]I have tried to grow avocados before, with no luck. Berta said that she started 6 of them and only 2 of them grew, so now I understand how my measly 2 attempts might have failed to produce a tree.
It never crossed my mind to start a half dozen of them. Maybe that's why Berta is a "green thumb," and I'm a green thumb with white spots on it and some dry brown, crinkly areas around its edges.
She also had started something like a dozen mango seeds to produce one tree ("It was one that we just shoved in the ground," she said.
This gives me hope of having a mango tree under grow lights in my place some day, side by side with kratom plants.
Further away from home...
I'm thinking that President Donald is going to have his buddy, Putin, amass a huge military presence in Belarus, under the guise of "military games," and that those troops are going to remain there, posing a "threat" to U.N. Nations (in the Baltic?) and that threat will be the catalyst for an accelerated building up of the military.
"I help you with Operation Windy!"The U.S. troops won't have to use care to not damage inner city property, as it needs to be torn down and rebuilt, anyways.
It will be a glorious time and will cement a second term for the political genius in the White House.
The Rectory Studio
One thing that Travis has suggested to me is that I try to find some person, perhaps an Arch Bishop, to ask if I can use the abandoned rectory as a music recording studio.He said that the church may even have other properties that they would allow me to use for the purpose. "That way you don't have to worry about the police showing up," he said.
But, if they tell me that they couldn't allow me to use any such place, and then the police do show up, it will be twice as bad for me, as I would have been told explicitly that I couldn't go inside the place.
I am about to drill 4 holes in a rectangle big enough for me to squeeze through in one of the wooden doors, then I will cut from hole to hole with a hacksaw, removing the rectangle of wood. This, I can later duct tape back in place and spray paint over in the color of the door, after having found some other way in and out, perhaps through the crawl space, if I can free a trap door open from the inside.
Vocals are the major concern, as I get closer to recording a CD.
You've just read: 1,850 words
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