Daniel's Trip

• 40 Dollar Friday
• Rainy Start To Saturday

The subconscious mind is an amazing thing.

Almost everything that I have been going about lately, in hindsight, has been tailored towards preparations for a trip up north.

I am buying 2 cans of cat food at a time; one for Harold's dinner plate, the other one going into storage.

Soon, I will have a month's supply stockpiled. Maybe this will be right around the time my food stamp money comes in -my own little pile.

I got a card from my mother, thanking me for the box of chocolates that I sent to her for her birthday/Mother's day, the 2 days being a week apart.
She wrote that it had been a "total surprise" (being the first one in 55 years).

It hopefully signaled that I have weathered the storm and gotten past the string of calling to wish her a happy birthday and asking for money at the same time, and the subsequent calling to wish her a happy birthday and telling her I would have sent a card but I am pretty broke, but don't need money, and into the scrambling to catch up on chocolates era.

And the chocolates signaled that it is safe for her to send me a card without money in it, without worrying that I might be disappointed after opening the envelope, type of thing


"Hubert's Trip," is one of the songs that I have been adamant about recording a good version of, having decided that I'm going to work on a particular song until it is complete before going on the the next.

It is about a Hubert whom I will most likely see (for the first time in 12 years) when I am up there; and what better calling card would there be than to be able to bring him up to date on my musical progress by letting him hear how that song sounds, 30 years after he last heard me play it at the apartment that we and a couple other college students shared back then?

There are other songs that I am preparing with like intentions, such as the thought of my brother and his wife, along with my 3 little nieces whom I've never met, sitting and listening at a gathering, which probably would have been orchestrated by my mom, with invitations to my family members to use the opportunity to see me while I was there, since it might be another 12 years before the next one arises. I'm kind of like a comet, in that regard.

I might send a Facebook message to my sister-in-law, Melissa, asking what kind of music is on the playlists of my nieces, ages 9, 7, 6 and 5, rather than just blindly learning a Taylor Swift song, thinking that one size fits all.

"Umm, we really can't stand Taylor Swift, unlike most girls aged 9, 7, 6 and 5, but that's OK, it's good to see you, anyways." type of thing...

What I'm grappling with now is whether or not it is a liability to me to have an addiction to the adrenaline that would come from hopping a freight train out of Oliver Yard, risking arrest and at the mercy of which tracks it switches to, as far as where I would be headed. If it's on the left track going into Mobile, then I'll be busking in Montgomery, Alabama tonight, I might think; otherwise, Jacksonville, Florida, type of thing.

Just buying a bus ticket to take me all the way to Boston seems to me a cop-out in a sense, or even worse, a sign that I'm getting old. Hell, Howard Westra was already about 63 years old when he was keeping up with me through rail yards, even if he was dragging his loafers a bit.

The laptop will be in my backpack, along with, I suppose, the Snowball microphone and a couple changes of clothes. My guitar will be on my back.

I won't make any money by taking a Greyhound, unless I whip the guitar out during layovers, and busk in the immediate vicinity of the bus terminal. The downside of this is the fact that, given any city in the U.S.A., it's a chicken and egg type thing: which came first, the Greyhound Station or the worst, most crime ridden, section of that particular city?

As a cab driver in both Jacksonville, Florida and Phoenix, Arizona, I learned this. You never want to get off a bus during a stopover in the middle of the night anywhere, and then stray further than the glow from the Greyhound sign reaches. A lot of bad stuff seems to happen "right around the corner" from a city's main police station, too. I guess the drug dealers and hookers want their customers to feel safe.

Come Again Another Day

So, it is Saturday night. The rain has pretty much stopped. I need to keep my foot on the gas and go out and play, even though I just put 23 bucks on my green American Express card, after having put 22 on it the day before.

The Grover Rotomatic 102 tuning machines have arrived, and are in my backpack, along with a new set of strings, both intended to go on the Takamine guitar, restoring it to its glory.

Then, I suppose I could sell the 100 dollar Epiphone that Bobby gave me as a gift. For traveling money. As if I learned nothing from my experience of selling the bike that was a gift to me from Howard, and that got a flat tire on my way to meet the buyer.

But, I got to chance upon the Rhonda Harris artwork on the side of a building -done by a hand that I once held, 25 years ago, because of selling the bike, and to have met Candy, the trans-sexual who bought it.

Ester, who sold me the bike that I ride now, before Howard gave me the candy red one, surprised me the other night by asking me how Candy was doing, and how he/she had looked to me.

Ester somehow knew a lot of Candy's history, to include him/her having bought the bike from me.

She may have seen Ester when riding the bike and told her that she bought it from "a guy who plays outside Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern," and Ester made the connection that way. But the theme of "it's a small world" (highlighted by my having come upon across the Harris artwork) resonated once more through the candy red bike sale experience.