I watched the day change from Monday to Tuesday as soon as I had gotten on the 100 bus over in Gretna, which had shown up at 11:59 PM, and which had a digital sign for all to see, announcing that the bus was indeed the 100, along with the time and date, which boasted the promptness of its arrival this time.
It was the last bus going across the bridge for another 4 hours.
It had, just like one the week before, almost gone by me without stopping. Like that one, it stopped about 50 yards down the road to let me on.
The driver recommended that I hold a lit cellphone up as kind of a beacon the next time. The next time that I am standing at midnight in the murder capital of the USA at a bus stop so dark that the driver can't even see anyone waiting there, that is.
I had left Howard's house, after watching the Patriots lose to the Miami Dolphins.
Howard is doing fine. He had just upgraded his Christmas nativity scene, to include a brightly lit star, hanging over the manger. He had finally gotten a satisfactory Joseph to go with the lily white Mary and the black Jesus. He had decided that "a couple of sheep" were satisfactory for conveying the scene.
I had arrived there a good hour before the game was to kick off, having been in town selling plasma, and then having decided not to try to scoot back to Mid City to get a shot of kratom before returning to go to Howard's.
Should I had done that, then I surely would have been running the mile between where I get off the bus and Howard's house, like I had done all the previous times that I went there to watch football.
But, leaving the plasma place at about 4:30 PM, a full 3 hours before kickoff, I was at my leisure, the 15 dollars from my plasma sale "burning a hole in my pocket," as I roamed the aisles of the Wal-Mart.
I grabbed, for Harold the cat, 3 cans of food, of the latest variety of Friskies brand to hit the market, and for myself, a bag of ground flax seed, a can of pie filling pumpkin, a big jar of instant coffee, a Monster energy drink, and a jar of blackberry preserves, which had sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup as its sweetening ingredient.
I was trying to keep the darkness out of my mind as I shopped in that store that is staffed with 95% black employees. That is a reflection of the demographics of the particular neighborhood. I wondered if that is what allows them to not have to have the diversity of having more than just a couple of white employees.
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| My journey with the GIMP editor has just begun... |
I was trying not to dwell upon the cashier that I had encountered there who couldn't seem to be able to do simple arithmetic, having given me my change a nickel at a time, counting up by 5's as she did, rather than having used quarters and dimes to accomplish the same thing. And to not dwell upon the chubby little black boy who had been running around the store with no shirt on; and the black people who swerved not an inch to avoid me with their carts, forcing me to go around them, etc...
The 100 At Midnight
I had almost an hour to compare prices on flax seed before the next bus was to arrive that would drop me off near Howard's house.
I got to that stop, a few minutes before that time, where sat a middle aged black man, who gave me an icy stare, rather than returning the nod of my head that I gave him.
I decided to do the "deep south" thing of cordoning off the bus stop by moving to the other side of it, effectively partitioning the thing into black and white, such as is seen so often down here. ...geez, I'm just as bad as him, now...
He hadn't even acknowledged me, and so I made that show of apparently not even wanting to sit with "the niggers" to wait.
As I lit a cigarette, I was half expecting him to break his silence to walk over and beg me for one.
Then, it occurred to me that I was being just as bad as he, by keeping up my end of the whole separatist bargain. When the bus showed up and we began to converge upon where it should stop, I met his eyes again, and this time nodded again and smiled.
He then said: "Not a minute too soon!," regarding the bus. It was a chilly 48 degrees.
"At least the mosquitoes aren't out," I rejoined. He turned out to be a pretty friendly guy.
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| The kind of guitar Bobby want's to give me... |
On Prejudice
As I rode across the bridge, I thought about how black people often become what you might have prejudged them to be. If you evince any indications of not trusting them, for example, I have found it to be the case that a lot of them will then steal something, as if to fulfill your prophesy.
"If somebody else steals it, I'm gonna get blamed anyways, so why not take it?," I have heard, in the way of an explanation on that head.
When the bus stopped on Poydras Street, there was a middle aged white guy waiting there with a bike. There were already 2 bikes filling the rack on the front of the vehicle.
No, he couldn't bring the bike onto the bus with him.
Yes, it was the last bus going over the river for the next 4 hours.
The driver suggested that he lock the bike up to a nearby telephone pole, so that he could then get on the bus without it. "Just hope that the wheels are still on it when you come back for it," he added.
There was little chance of that, I thought, sadly. There was probably even a young black kid on the bus -one of the ones who got off at the next stop- who, seeing the situation, was going to go back and steal the wheels; or the whole thing. Knowing that its owner was somewhere between New Orleans and Gretna on a bus, and that anyone else in the area was not him, would allow him to take his time sawing away at the chain.
He would consider himself to have been "game tight," having been sharp enough to recognize an opportunity, and having seized upon it. A young man with a bright future.
It was too bad that there wasn't at least one more bus on the way; or I might have advised the guy to ride the bike to a stop where it would be safer to lock up, like on Canal Street where there are cops stationed nearby all night, and then to board there. He will be in the market for bike wheels tomorrow, I'm afraid.
Russian To Read This Blog...
United States 90
France 33
Poland 18
China 10
Ukraine 9
Canada 3
United Kingdom 2
India 2
Portugal 2
On Prejudice, Continued
Then I thought about how much I like Latino people, and how I am predisposed in that way and will smile and greet them with "Que tal?," or one of the other few phrases that I know, and how they will in turn almost always be friendly back to me. This is a contrast to the "Sorry, I don't give away cigarettes," that is on the tip of my tongue when encountering any black person.
So, to a degree, ones attitude towards a particular race will determine how they reciprocate -a conclusion that might have the reader asking: "It took you this long to figure that out?"
I had already inferred that in the other direction, after having heard other white people complain about certain Latinos, to which I would reply: "I always got along with them great," which was true. But I had always smiled and asked: "Que tal?" (what gives?) when meeting them, and was never shy about remarking: "que bonita" about their girls.
So, perhaps that is something I might work on in the future; calling to mind the black people that I do enjoy the company of, and then greeting the new ones I meet with that predisposition, and seeing if I don't indeed wind up with less black people to complain about. If they still want to act like ignorant uncivilized savages, well, then that's on them...
Tuesday Night
It is 54° and feels like 54 right now.
I could go out and busk on such a night; but would be going out with the expectation of perhaps making only 6 dollars.
And, working and practicing and studying is what I have been doing a lot of lately, only being handicapped by Bobby's weed, and accomplishing things at the resulting reduced rate.
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| "Hey there, Daniel. Ple-e-se tell me you've got some weed!!" |
I would like to record some little piece of music tonight, perhaps something out of the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method books, of which I have the first 3, and then put it up as a video, with maybe only still shots of my artwork being displayed as it plays.
I find that I can jump around from books 1 through 3, with the difficulty level of the pieces remaining pretty much fixed.
Mel introduces each key signature in turn, including the scales and chords and demonstrative pieces, but these pieces are not incrementally harder to play for myself; but would only be so if the keys were new and unfamiliar to me. A song in the key of F sharp only looks harder to play because of all the sharps and double sharps and "natural" signs populating the sheet...
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