Last night was a goose egg.
I recently learned that the term "love," which is zero in tennis parlance, has it's origin in the French word for "egg" which sounds like the word love without the L.
Ooof! -egg.
There is no exact English equivalent, but, when you say love, a Frenchman might respond: "What about the egg?"
It dawned upon me, in light of my existing in the present moment, that it was the decision to have worn the brown hat when I busked, rather than the red bandana that I initially set out to wear, which lead to me not making any money.
There were gaps in time when I played an entire song without a tourist having walked by.
This reminded me of how this used to be a hurdle that I placed in my own way, when I became angry at non existent tourists for not tipping me. That is "need to talk to a psychiatrist" territory.
Well, that is unless you believe in a cosmos where tourists will materialize out of the ether, or even less incredulously, be "drawn" to the spot by vibrations in the universe that the street musician is in sympathy with, because he's reading and practicing "The Power Of Now, and they will, in that sense at least, materialize.
So, in this particular universe, of course chickening out and wearing the brown hat can, will and probably in the case of last night, lead to a resounding answer from the universe. You are playing for l'oeuf.
I was playing for love and for practice. Practice upon being in the present moment while I play.
When I first started to be in the present moment, it was kind of scary because I noticed a lack of connection to the meanings of the songs.
By being a silent witness to thoughts that were evoked in me by my own self playing a particular song, I wasn't identifying with them, like The Power Of Now book advises me not to; but it had the side effect of making me feel rather foolish for singing something that has no meaning to "me."
That's when I would switch to the harmonica solo and just try to sound good, non verbally.
The matter can be distilled down to the fact that, I used to be in the present moment when I busked, but am struggling to do so more because I'm trying to "apply" the principles in the book that I'm reading and do so.
Ben Lambie At Low Priced Airbnb
Ben Lambie is off down Bourbon Street.
He has been in New Orleans for 4 days.
Two of those days, he spent at my apartment, before deciding to getting the Airbnb, citing air quality issues.
I learned this morning through experience that, closing the door to the room that he was sleeping in, such as we had been doing, results in that room becoming "stuffy,' as we would say in New England, in short order.
I had been ignorant. I should have flipped the fan in the bathroom on, so that poor Ben could have gotten enough oxygen to keep him conscious, ooops.
So, I can see his wanting to get the hell out of there.
Plus, there had been a small rift in our relationship after I had mentioned to him giving me some money.
The first night he was there, he had given me a 20 dollar bill to pick him up a 12 pack of beer while I was out at 2 AM on a bike ride to Banks Meat Store.
"You go out at 2 in the morning?!?"
He told me to keep the change, and his beer was $12.99, plus tax. Pretty good tip for taking a 7 minute each way ride to the store on a bike...
And that, I thought, kind of set a precedent for the way that finances would be work out while he stayed with me.
He would see the world that I dwell in and, through osmosis, I would either eat off the crumbs of his table, or I would be going out and getting 100 dollar tips and returning to the apartment bearing gifts for him.
But, he was like a fish in an aquarium that's pump wasn't working -OK, that had no pump- and he was slowly becoming poisoned by his own waste as well as suffering from the effects of oxygen deprivation.
I can see that as being reason enough for a guy to want to go and spend what my guess was, about $380 on an Airbnb for the remaining 5 days of his vacation; nothing personal.
Right now, he is off and running down Bourbon Street.
It was as if he hadn't known how to find that famous street.
After I had instructed him on how he could meet me at the Starbucks where we did meet (I was 45 minutes late, him about 50, so it worked out) and we had gotten coffee and smoked a joint, and I had walked him over to The Unique Grocery store, another jewel that he apparently otherwise would have never found, even though it is the seat of some of the depraved desires which he voiced to me as having, such as picking up a black prostitute and then....(edited out).
It seems like he had been hoping that I would show him the city. Probably because, otherwise, he would have only seen a few restaurants around the Sacred Heart neighborhood, and then the inside of his Airbnb (which has wireless and TV and air conditioning he said).
I pointed Bourbon Street out to him.
"That's Bourbon?"
"Yeah, on this side of Canal it's named Carondolet Street and..." I never finished the sentence, Ben had assumed an "Oh, boy, now you're talkin'" attitude and was running off in that direction before I knew it. He would call me or text me or something; I lost his voice in the din of the traffic and because his mouth was pointed away from me, towards Bourbon Street, when he spoke.
Wow. I would have thought that he would have ferreted out that singularly huge attraction, just in his comings and goings, but, he was like: "So, there it is!!"
He will enter at the end where it meets Canal Street.
He will already be standing among prostitutes, drug dealers, skeezers and others.
They are the ones that work the more risky end of the street, encountering people before they have been skeezed yet by others.
The skeezers further down the street have the advantage of having observed the tourists to see what they are generally about, quite importantly, have they bought drinks for 12 to 18 dollars, which would mean that they aren't cops on duty (court testimony would be tainted if the officer had to first testify that, yeah, he had had a few hurricanes, but he remembers it clearly) etc.
Ben will immediately be in the sex end of Bourbon Street -the end that opens upon Canal Street, like a gaping anus.
He may never make it past the Hustler Barely Legal store which will come up on his left.
He said he might make it to my busking spot at 933 Bourbon Street. Sure he will...
His is a small chance of keeping a modicum of moderation. I'm afraid -the self styled A.D.D. sufferer that he is- he will treat the first skeezer he sees as if he was the sum total of everything New Orleans; that would be the ones working the Canal Street end "Whatever you're looking for, I got it. Come take a walk with me. Ben? They call me "Low Down," come on, let's walk this way, Ben..."
This is the reason that I consider Bourbon Street to be like one long muffler in a sense, or a filter of some kind, at least.
The backfiring sound of someone like Ben running out of money at the Barely Legal store will barely be heard at the Lilly Pad, 9 and a third blocks down. People who can no longer walk after 5 blocks are likewise filtered out and run off by cabs.
By showing Ben The Unique Grocery and then pointing him to the block that it sits on, with sex on one side, cheapest beer in the Quarter on the other, I have put him upon the treadmill of his wildest dreams, I hope, and satisfied his request to "show me around..."
Fat chance that he will trickle through to the Lilly Pad.
The guy seems to be an enigma as far as his money is concerned.
He texted me, to tell me to "get some bud," because he was out.
Like, spend the 20 dollars that he left me on a bud, and then bicycle over there to smoke it with him?
He texted that he was broke.
I told him about the 5 dollar sacks of weed from Banks Street, whereupon he asked if he could meet me there.
Sure, I'm a half mile away.
Then he texted me that he was going to get an Uber cab to get over there to meet me.
He ostensibly was so broke that he could only afford 5 bucks worth of weed. And, how much would that 3 mile Uber ride cost?
"Something doesn't add up," said Bobby on the matter.
So, the "destitute"Ben ran, didn't walk, towards Bourbon Street, about 2 hours ago, now...
I recently learned that the term "love," which is zero in tennis parlance, has it's origin in the French word for "egg" which sounds like the word love without the L.
Ooof! -egg.
It dawned upon me, in light of my existing in the present moment, that it was the decision to have worn the brown hat when I busked, rather than the red bandana that I initially set out to wear, which lead to me not making any money.
There were gaps in time when I played an entire song without a tourist having walked by.
This reminded me of how this used to be a hurdle that I placed in my own way, when I became angry at non existent tourists for not tipping me. That is "need to talk to a psychiatrist" territory.
Well, that is unless you believe in a cosmos where tourists will materialize out of the ether, or even less incredulously, be "drawn" to the spot by vibrations in the universe that the street musician is in sympathy with, because he's reading and practicing "The Power Of Now, and they will, in that sense at least, materialize.
So, in this particular universe, of course chickening out and wearing the brown hat can, will and probably in the case of last night, lead to a resounding answer from the universe. You are playing for l'oeuf.
I was playing for love and for practice. Practice upon being in the present moment while I play.
When I first started to be in the present moment, it was kind of scary because I noticed a lack of connection to the meanings of the songs.
By being a silent witness to thoughts that were evoked in me by my own self playing a particular song, I wasn't identifying with them, like The Power Of Now book advises me not to; but it had the side effect of making me feel rather foolish for singing something that has no meaning to "me."
That's when I would switch to the harmonica solo and just try to sound good, non verbally.
The matter can be distilled down to the fact that, I used to be in the present moment when I busked, but am struggling to do so more because I'm trying to "apply" the principles in the book that I'm reading and do so.
Ben Lambie At Low Priced Airbnb
Ben Lambie is off down Bourbon Street.
He has been in New Orleans for 4 days.
Two of those days, he spent at my apartment, before deciding to getting the Airbnb, citing air quality issues.
I learned this morning through experience that, closing the door to the room that he was sleeping in, such as we had been doing, results in that room becoming "stuffy,' as we would say in New England, in short order.
I had been ignorant. I should have flipped the fan in the bathroom on, so that poor Ben could have gotten enough oxygen to keep him conscious, ooops.
So, I can see his wanting to get the hell out of there.
Plus, there had been a small rift in our relationship after I had mentioned to him giving me some money.
The first night he was there, he had given me a 20 dollar bill to pick him up a 12 pack of beer while I was out at 2 AM on a bike ride to Banks Meat Store.
"You go out at 2 in the morning?!?"
He told me to keep the change, and his beer was $12.99, plus tax. Pretty good tip for taking a 7 minute each way ride to the store on a bike...
And that, I thought, kind of set a precedent for the way that finances would be work out while he stayed with me.
He would see the world that I dwell in and, through osmosis, I would either eat off the crumbs of his table, or I would be going out and getting 100 dollar tips and returning to the apartment bearing gifts for him.
But, he was like a fish in an aquarium that's pump wasn't working -OK, that had no pump- and he was slowly becoming poisoned by his own waste as well as suffering from the effects of oxygen deprivation.
I can see that as being reason enough for a guy to want to go and spend what my guess was, about $380 on an Airbnb for the remaining 5 days of his vacation; nothing personal.
Right now, he is off and running down Bourbon Street.
It was as if he hadn't known how to find that famous street.
After I had instructed him on how he could meet me at the Starbucks where we did meet (I was 45 minutes late, him about 50, so it worked out) and we had gotten coffee and smoked a joint, and I had walked him over to The Unique Grocery store, another jewel that he apparently otherwise would have never found, even though it is the seat of some of the depraved desires which he voiced to me as having, such as picking up a black prostitute and then....(edited out).
It seems like he had been hoping that I would show him the city. Probably because, otherwise, he would have only seen a few restaurants around the Sacred Heart neighborhood, and then the inside of his Airbnb (which has wireless and TV and air conditioning he said).
I pointed Bourbon Street out to him.
"That's Bourbon?"
"Yeah, on this side of Canal it's named Carondolet Street and..." I never finished the sentence, Ben had assumed an "Oh, boy, now you're talkin'" attitude and was running off in that direction before I knew it. He would call me or text me or something; I lost his voice in the din of the traffic and because his mouth was pointed away from me, towards Bourbon Street, when he spoke.
Wow. I would have thought that he would have ferreted out that singularly huge attraction, just in his comings and goings, but, he was like: "So, there it is!!"
He will enter at the end where it meets Canal Street.
He will already be standing among prostitutes, drug dealers, skeezers and others.
They are the ones that work the more risky end of the street, encountering people before they have been skeezed yet by others.
The skeezers further down the street have the advantage of having observed the tourists to see what they are generally about, quite importantly, have they bought drinks for 12 to 18 dollars, which would mean that they aren't cops on duty (court testimony would be tainted if the officer had to first testify that, yeah, he had had a few hurricanes, but he remembers it clearly) etc.
Ben will immediately be in the sex end of Bourbon Street -the end that opens upon Canal Street, like a gaping anus.
He may never make it past the Hustler Barely Legal store which will come up on his left.
He said he might make it to my busking spot at 933 Bourbon Street. Sure he will...
His is a small chance of keeping a modicum of moderation. I'm afraid -the self styled A.D.D. sufferer that he is- he will treat the first skeezer he sees as if he was the sum total of everything New Orleans; that would be the ones working the Canal Street end "Whatever you're looking for, I got it. Come take a walk with me. Ben? They call me "Low Down," come on, let's walk this way, Ben..."
This is the reason that I consider Bourbon Street to be like one long muffler in a sense, or a filter of some kind, at least.
The backfiring sound of someone like Ben running out of money at the Barely Legal store will barely be heard at the Lilly Pad, 9 and a third blocks down. People who can no longer walk after 5 blocks are likewise filtered out and run off by cabs.
By showing Ben The Unique Grocery and then pointing him to the block that it sits on, with sex on one side, cheapest beer in the Quarter on the other, I have put him upon the treadmill of his wildest dreams, I hope, and satisfied his request to "show me around..."
Fat chance that he will trickle through to the Lilly Pad.
The guy seems to be an enigma as far as his money is concerned.
He texted me, to tell me to "get some bud," because he was out.
Like, spend the 20 dollars that he left me on a bud, and then bicycle over there to smoke it with him?
He texted that he was broke.
I told him about the 5 dollar sacks of weed from Banks Street, whereupon he asked if he could meet me there.
Sure, I'm a half mile away.
 |
| "Something doesn't add up." |
He ostensibly was so broke that he could only afford 5 bucks worth of weed. And, how much would that 3 mile Uber ride cost?
"Something doesn't add up," said Bobby on the matter.
So, the "destitute"Ben ran, didn't walk, towards Bourbon Street, about 2 hours ago, now...
Where is this Ben Lambie getting all this money that he can throw it away on new iPhones, Ubers, prostitutes, drugs, Air BNB's etc.? Is he dealing pain pills? Slinging crack rocks? Gay for pay?
ReplyDeleteI suggest you find out what this creep does to get all this money, and see if it's a viable business plan for yourself. I doubt *you'd* do gay for pay, but slinging pain pills or crack rocks, yeah, I can see that as a possible career path... quite a few successful buskers busk only as a front, to make 'em easy to find, and there's crack/pills/heroin in that guitar or sax case.
It just does not add up that this guy is anything but homeless and collecting cans.
Ben works full time as a pizza deliveryman and has been saving up apparently for the past year to come on this vacation that he had been waiting to get off parole to take. His parole officer denied him permission to come down last year when he was still under his "care."
ReplyDeleteSo, I think he has been holding back on some lump sum of, say, 500 bucks, thinking that it will buy one good evening of debauchery...a one time fling.
It's just that, like others in the past, it seems like he had checked off "room and board" as being "paid," due to his old buddy that he hasn't seen in 26 years, and what a generous guy he is.
In Massachusetts, it's easier to save up money, I recall. That's because you are hit with larger insurance bills, bigger rent bills, etc., so it's easy come easy go, but I remember I could save up a grand in about 6 months just by working my job every day -usually it was the tax return check that came along in late January that could be anywhere from $1,800 to $2,500 bucks for even a minimum wage worker, because "Taxachusetts" withholds so much...probably as a way of making sure those auto insurance companies get their $1,800 to $2,500 bucks per year more readily from people who would otherwise not have the discipline to save weekly...
Ahh, a hustling pizza deliverer, now things are adding up. I knew a guy living in El Sobrante, a town next to Richmond here in the east bay, he delivered pizzas and only ate food from the pizza restaurant. Now, before you start asking what was the par for his face, the pizza place actually served pretty healthy food. He actually was able to buy a house, a shitty one and well, it's El Sobrante so he's got interesting neighbors like the guy who likes to recline in his living room so he's very visible from the window and whack it, but hey, he owns his damn place.
ReplyDeleteYou could have set your tax withholding lower, but most everyone just leaves it alone and then treats the refund as a year-end bonus.
I figure my going out and playing trumpet 2-3 nights a week is enabling me to save up $5200 a year, of course half of that will go for taxes but right now I'm trying to over-save, so after taxes I'll have enough to buy a new Getzen cornet.
hey Dan..did you forget to let your bloggers know that you invited me down to your place on false pretenses..namely that you were not going to smoke cigarettes during my stay..I told you that was a deal breaker..yet when I got there you proceeded to chain smoke in your unventilated nasty apartment..just saying dude..dont be a hyprocite and sanctimonious piece of shit..Ha ha ha
ReplyDelete