It's Friday.
I woke up around noon and I wasn't that tired. Then I thought of how I had been up until the sun had come up. I had snapped off the lamp next to me and opened the Venetian blinds to let the sun hit the last paragraph that I was reading out of Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth."
That accounted for only about 4 hours of sleep.
There was 8 of the 10 dollars I had made the night before on my coffee table, and no cigarettes.
I knew that 4 hours of sleep wasn't enough, and so I laid back down.
When I woke up again at 5:30 PM, I had about 9 hours of sleep in me.
I had to think a bit to reconstruct the night before.
The theme of it had been sugar.
I finished busking and spent a couple of the 11 dollars I had made on coffee and cat food. The coffee is kind of a ritual for me at The Quartermaster. They have a change of shift at midnight and the night person has usually made fresh coffee by the time I knock off at the Lilly Pad at an average time of 12:30.
I had ridden to The Unique Grocery, where I balked at spending any more money.
I was just short of a packet of 32.5 grams of "gold" maeng da kratom that they have recently gotten in there (it has been disappearing as fast as they have been stocking it, probably due to its being one third the price of the stuff that had sat there in its blue, red and green packets).
The notion crossed my mind of getting one of those packets and then staying up all night and into the next day, working on a "creation" of some kind.
But then I remembered to guard myself against ever expecting some foreign substance to fuel a project of any kind.
Sure, The Beatles dropped acid and then recorded "I Am The Walrus," but they already had impetus to go into the studio and record something, it had become their lives at that point, and it wasn't just the acid that produced the walrus song.
Trying to use kratom to stay up and work on something became a mute point after I counted my money in the safety of the Unique Grocery.
I always stand in front of the wall of liquor bottles as I organize and count the money that I had haphazardly shoved into a pocket just to get it out of my tip basket.
This would look, to a skeezer, like I wanted to buy a bottle of liquor but wasn't sure if I had enough; there certainly wouldn't be a whole lot left over to skeeze if I just barely had enough to cover the bottle.
He would understand someone emptying his pockets for a bottle of liquor. "Get drunk first and everything else will take care of itself," is a skeezer motto.
"Hey, man, I barely have enough to get a bottle of whiskey," I would reply to a skeeze for a dollar.
Then, I would be ready to say: "I'm not going to open the bottle until I get where I'm going because more than one person went in on it." if he should then try to skeeze whiskey.
"Can't you just open it and let me get a sip?"
"No, skeezer. I'm not going to show up at a party looking like I'm such an alcoholic that I couldn't even wait to get there before tapping into the whiskey!"
"Well, then f*** you!!"
"Now that I see how you are, I'm glad I didn't give you crap..." type of thing...
Then, I sat on my bike across from the Walgreen's, roaming the aisles in my mind. I debated upon getting cheese and then attempting to make my own pizza, with spaghetti sauce as the sauce, then I thought of all the pasta I had at home and considered a packet of Velveta "cheese sauce," which was only $1.29 and had "whey" listed as the first ingredient.
Then I considered getting a dozen eggs (on sale at 99 cents) with which I could make any number of things, such as fried eggs, eggs over easy, poached eggs...all kinds of things.
The 9 dollars in my pocket would supply me with a Bang energy drink and a double shot of kratom almost to the penny the next day, if I were to just ride home without buying anything.
I wound up grabbing a box of brown sugar, on sale for 99 cents, and a can of diced tomatoes.
The cashier hit some kind of button on the register and my total for the two items became $1.19.
I think she is the same young black girl who had done the same thing for me at the other Walgreen's location. I couldn't help thinking about how Eckhart Tolle had written that things will start to "go the way" of the person who is only concerned with the present moment.
A theory is that, a person puts out a certain vibration or releases positive energy into the universe or maybe gets in step with the positive vibrations already out there, and then "everything you do is going to come back to you," type of thing.
It's fascinating to wonder...has she heard me at the Lilly Pad, has she seen me talking to Lilly and her daughters, has she seen me talking to Bilal the art gallery, did she see me talking to the crazy guy in hospital scrubs?
I wound up having too much sugar after first making a healthy cake out of flour and pulp from out of my juicer that I had bagged up in the freezer, adding an egg and some coconut oil, a dash of salt...etc.
But then the craving for sugar hit and about 4 AM, I made another cake, this one with a liberal amount of brown sugar mixed in, which caused the bottom to brown in a different way than with flour alone..
I had some negative feelings when I woke up.
I wasn't ready to die just then, feeling that I had much work to accomplish here on earth and wanting to leave behind something for future generations.
I also thought about how devastated I imagined my mom and other people becoming upon learning of my demise.
Everything in the physical world is temporary, so why worry worry about it, why try to leave behind a piece of art that will communicate to other humans thousands of years from now?
Those were the seeds of a kind of depressed feeling that I had; but, once again it coincided with my having heaped tablespoons of brown sugar into the cake I had eaten.
I then brought my bike outside, preparing to hop on it and go to the Uxi Duxi, where I would only have about an hour to gulp kratom and use their wireless.
It was chilly enough to make me go back inside for a jacket to throw in my backpack. After the Uxi closes and I move to one of the tables outside to continue using their wireless, it can become uncomfortably cold, since the sun has just gone down by then.
A Letter From Mom
Reemerging with the jacket now in my pack, I was greeted by a meowing Harold the cat. The urgency of his meows, coupled with the fact that I had let him outside more than 12 hours earlier, made me do yet another about face to let him in and give him the last of the wet food, before locking him in and leaving again.
Then I thought about the possibility of the smartphone which is on its way, supposedly, being already in my mailbox.
It wasn't, but there was a letter from my mom.
She still doesn't write "apt A110" on the envelope which had been added to the envelope by someone, using a thin marker. This creates the one extra step of someone having to read the name and match it to an apartment.
This was probably the undoing of the delivery of the one letter that I never got. It had probably gone to the wrong apartment. "Wrong" in the sense of: If someone gets someone else's mail in their box, they will usually just slip it into the right one, but if it goes to the wrong apartment, you're screwed...
Having woken up with no cigarettes, I was happy to discover that I could make the craving, which is almost a reflex upon waking up to the smoker, with the thought process being: huh, what? I'm awake? Yeah, I am..I'm awake! Where are my cigarettes? go away by focusing upon the present moment. I did this as I sat on the toilet, letting my gaze wander out the window and to the branches of trees that were not moving due to the wind ...I can wear my hat as I ride, instead of stuffing it in my pack to be put on my head once inside somewhere...
I got to the corner where the Holy Grounds bar or whatever it is, is. The bartender who sometimes comes out of there wielding a baseball bat, ready to beat anyone away from the ashtrays, emerged from the place right as I got to the corner, changing my plans of offering to buy a cigarette off someone for 50 cents.
"No, they don't have a cigarette to sell you for 50 cents, bye!," he would most likely have butted in to any such conversation.
I then stopped and fished the letter from my mom out of my pocket.
I was hoping that she didn't feel like she had to wait until she had money to slip in the envelope before corresponding or sending an Easter card, which was what this one was. It had 20 bucks in it, plus the news that my neices; my 10 years younger brother's kids, were growing up "smart and beautiful" (still yet to meet their eccentric uncle from New Orleans).
So, I am in the familiar situation now, of sitting here outside the Uxi Duxi and watching the clock with some anxiety, knowing that I could be at the Lilly Pad and set up at a decently early hour if I leave now. Or I could sit here and blog about the anxiety over arriving there later and later it seems every night, and my wish to start playing by a certain time.
Right now, a 10:15 PM start is feasible. It is Friday night. After a typical 11 dollar Thursday, it seems that the odds tilt in favor of my having a good ($35 or more) Friday.
And, isn't it Good Friday today?
The 20 dollars from my mom means that I can go and apply that amount to my gree American Express card, so that I can then use at least get a $2.49 set of guitar strings on the way.
These are the cheapest ones (anywhere) and I sure did notice the difference between them and the set of Cleartone brand ones that Bobby once gave me. He had been going through a phase of experimenting with different guages and had settled upon a different guage as being what he was going to use, and had given me the set which had been a bit too heavy for him.
I could hear how the notes sounded and remained in pitch, rather than initially being sharp after the string is plucked before "falling" back into pitch. This happens at the millisecond level but was noticeable when using the Cleartones. They are 5 times more than the MusiciansFriend brand, and I am tempted to get a set. They would make my home recordings sound better, and would probably pay for themselves with one tip from a person who thinks that I sound 10 dollars good, rather than just one dollar good...
That accounted for only about 4 hours of sleep.
There was 8 of the 10 dollars I had made the night before on my coffee table, and no cigarettes.
I knew that 4 hours of sleep wasn't enough, and so I laid back down.
When I woke up again at 5:30 PM, I had about 9 hours of sleep in me.
I had to think a bit to reconstruct the night before.
The theme of it had been sugar.
I finished busking and spent a couple of the 11 dollars I had made on coffee and cat food. The coffee is kind of a ritual for me at The Quartermaster. They have a change of shift at midnight and the night person has usually made fresh coffee by the time I knock off at the Lilly Pad at an average time of 12:30.
I had ridden to The Unique Grocery, where I balked at spending any more money.
I was just short of a packet of 32.5 grams of "gold" maeng da kratom that they have recently gotten in there (it has been disappearing as fast as they have been stocking it, probably due to its being one third the price of the stuff that had sat there in its blue, red and green packets).
The notion crossed my mind of getting one of those packets and then staying up all night and into the next day, working on a "creation" of some kind.
But then I remembered to guard myself against ever expecting some foreign substance to fuel a project of any kind.
Sure, The Beatles dropped acid and then recorded "I Am The Walrus," but they already had impetus to go into the studio and record something, it had become their lives at that point, and it wasn't just the acid that produced the walrus song.
Trying to use kratom to stay up and work on something became a mute point after I counted my money in the safety of the Unique Grocery.
I always stand in front of the wall of liquor bottles as I organize and count the money that I had haphazardly shoved into a pocket just to get it out of my tip basket.
This would look, to a skeezer, like I wanted to buy a bottle of liquor but wasn't sure if I had enough; there certainly wouldn't be a whole lot left over to skeeze if I just barely had enough to cover the bottle.
He would understand someone emptying his pockets for a bottle of liquor. "Get drunk first and everything else will take care of itself," is a skeezer motto.
"Hey, man, I barely have enough to get a bottle of whiskey," I would reply to a skeeze for a dollar.
Then, I would be ready to say: "I'm not going to open the bottle until I get where I'm going because more than one person went in on it." if he should then try to skeeze whiskey.
"Can't you just open it and let me get a sip?"
"No, skeezer. I'm not going to show up at a party looking like I'm such an alcoholic that I couldn't even wait to get there before tapping into the whiskey!"
"Well, then f*** you!!"
"Now that I see how you are, I'm glad I didn't give you crap..." type of thing...
Then, I sat on my bike across from the Walgreen's, roaming the aisles in my mind. I debated upon getting cheese and then attempting to make my own pizza, with spaghetti sauce as the sauce, then I thought of all the pasta I had at home and considered a packet of Velveta "cheese sauce," which was only $1.29 and had "whey" listed as the first ingredient.
Then I considered getting a dozen eggs (on sale at 99 cents) with which I could make any number of things, such as fried eggs, eggs over easy, poached eggs...all kinds of things.
The 9 dollars in my pocket would supply me with a Bang energy drink and a double shot of kratom almost to the penny the next day, if I were to just ride home without buying anything.
I wound up grabbing a box of brown sugar, on sale for 99 cents, and a can of diced tomatoes.
The cashier hit some kind of button on the register and my total for the two items became $1.19.
I think she is the same young black girl who had done the same thing for me at the other Walgreen's location. I couldn't help thinking about how Eckhart Tolle had written that things will start to "go the way" of the person who is only concerned with the present moment.
A theory is that, a person puts out a certain vibration or releases positive energy into the universe or maybe gets in step with the positive vibrations already out there, and then "everything you do is going to come back to you," type of thing.
It's fascinating to wonder...has she heard me at the Lilly Pad, has she seen me talking to Lilly and her daughters, has she seen me talking to Bilal the art gallery, did she see me talking to the crazy guy in hospital scrubs?
I wound up having too much sugar after first making a healthy cake out of flour and pulp from out of my juicer that I had bagged up in the freezer, adding an egg and some coconut oil, a dash of salt...etc.
But then the craving for sugar hit and about 4 AM, I made another cake, this one with a liberal amount of brown sugar mixed in, which caused the bottom to brown in a different way than with flour alone..
I had some negative feelings when I woke up.
I wasn't ready to die just then, feeling that I had much work to accomplish here on earth and wanting to leave behind something for future generations.
I also thought about how devastated I imagined my mom and other people becoming upon learning of my demise.
Everything in the physical world is temporary, so why worry worry about it, why try to leave behind a piece of art that will communicate to other humans thousands of years from now?
Those were the seeds of a kind of depressed feeling that I had; but, once again it coincided with my having heaped tablespoons of brown sugar into the cake I had eaten.
I then brought my bike outside, preparing to hop on it and go to the Uxi Duxi, where I would only have about an hour to gulp kratom and use their wireless.
It was chilly enough to make me go back inside for a jacket to throw in my backpack. After the Uxi closes and I move to one of the tables outside to continue using their wireless, it can become uncomfortably cold, since the sun has just gone down by then.
A Letter From Mom
Reemerging with the jacket now in my pack, I was greeted by a meowing Harold the cat. The urgency of his meows, coupled with the fact that I had let him outside more than 12 hours earlier, made me do yet another about face to let him in and give him the last of the wet food, before locking him in and leaving again.
Then I thought about the possibility of the smartphone which is on its way, supposedly, being already in my mailbox.
It wasn't, but there was a letter from my mom.
She still doesn't write "apt A110" on the envelope which had been added to the envelope by someone, using a thin marker. This creates the one extra step of someone having to read the name and match it to an apartment.
This was probably the undoing of the delivery of the one letter that I never got. It had probably gone to the wrong apartment. "Wrong" in the sense of: If someone gets someone else's mail in their box, they will usually just slip it into the right one, but if it goes to the wrong apartment, you're screwed...
Having woken up with no cigarettes, I was happy to discover that I could make the craving, which is almost a reflex upon waking up to the smoker, with the thought process being: huh, what? I'm awake? Yeah, I am..I'm awake! Where are my cigarettes? go away by focusing upon the present moment. I did this as I sat on the toilet, letting my gaze wander out the window and to the branches of trees that were not moving due to the wind ...I can wear my hat as I ride, instead of stuffing it in my pack to be put on my head once inside somewhere...
I got to the corner where the Holy Grounds bar or whatever it is, is. The bartender who sometimes comes out of there wielding a baseball bat, ready to beat anyone away from the ashtrays, emerged from the place right as I got to the corner, changing my plans of offering to buy a cigarette off someone for 50 cents.
"No, they don't have a cigarette to sell you for 50 cents, bye!," he would most likely have butted in to any such conversation.
I then stopped and fished the letter from my mom out of my pocket.
I was hoping that she didn't feel like she had to wait until she had money to slip in the envelope before corresponding or sending an Easter card, which was what this one was. It had 20 bucks in it, plus the news that my neices; my 10 years younger brother's kids, were growing up "smart and beautiful" (still yet to meet their eccentric uncle from New Orleans).
So, I am in the familiar situation now, of sitting here outside the Uxi Duxi and watching the clock with some anxiety, knowing that I could be at the Lilly Pad and set up at a decently early hour if I leave now. Or I could sit here and blog about the anxiety over arriving there later and later it seems every night, and my wish to start playing by a certain time.
Right now, a 10:15 PM start is feasible. It is Friday night. After a typical 11 dollar Thursday, it seems that the odds tilt in favor of my having a good ($35 or more) Friday.
And, isn't it Good Friday today?
The 20 dollars from my mom means that I can go and apply that amount to my gree American Express card, so that I can then use at least get a $2.49 set of guitar strings on the way.
These are the cheapest ones (anywhere) and I sure did notice the difference between them and the set of Cleartone brand ones that Bobby once gave me. He had been going through a phase of experimenting with different guages and had settled upon a different guage as being what he was going to use, and had given me the set which had been a bit too heavy for him.
I could hear how the notes sounded and remained in pitch, rather than initially being sharp after the string is plucked before "falling" back into pitch. This happens at the millisecond level but was noticeable when using the Cleartones. They are 5 times more than the MusiciansFriend brand, and I am tempted to get a set. They would make my home recordings sound better, and would probably pay for themselves with one tip from a person who thinks that I sound 10 dollars good, rather than just one dollar good...
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