Come On And Take A Free Ride

It is the age of free things.
After having woken up this morning feeling a slight heaviness in my heart, but having had that feeling lift off of me after I did some push-ups and focused upon the present moment and became thankful for the things I had, I started my day in the late afternoon.

I now have unlimited access to the Internet, and while allowing me to use his network might have been, to my neighbor Wayne, akin to giving me a cup of flour, the effect upon me had been huge.

I can now start to think differently. As in, having the capacity to run a business, publish things, buy and sell, connect to people, find a job, etc. all from my living room.

After waking up in the middle of the afternoon, a couple of hours after my usual time, I went to my laptop to discover that Youtube had auto-played videos while I slept and that the logic behind their algorithm which selects the "next" video based upon all of the previously viewed ones (perhaps taking into account which ones were watched all the way through as opposed to being ejected, as far as catering to taste is concerned) had brought me from whatever I had originally searched for, then watched, to a live performance by Jethro Tull.

Google must think that I like entertainers who are a parody of entertainers.

The guy (Ian Anderson) reminded me of the guy they arrested for the theater shooting in Colorado of people who were, I believe, there to see the latest (circa 2015) Batman movie.

The way the suspect was (over)acting like he had no idea what was going on, nor why he was being led in front of a judge in an orange jumpsuit, or that might have been his: "What did I do wrong? I was just making a statement; those kind of people need to die" look.
In any case, there was Ian Anderson, as Jethro Tull, acting like he was trying to act crazy, as part of some act, like he becomes Jethro Tull, who is crazy, when he is on stage.
"I love the crazy look in his eyes," I saw in a comment posted below the video, as I frantically looked for the "eject" icon.
Jethro Tull is just proof to me that, while "there are just so many talented people out there," there is at least one too many.
"Bungle In The Jungle" notwithstanding.
At that point, I intervened, and wound up watching a half dozen videos by
this guy named Rick Beato.
These are really interesting videos and they inspire me to work with my recording studio.
I finally shut the thing off when it was almost 10 PM, to go out and busk on a Wednesday night.
I had only three dollars and change in cash, and perhaps about 30 bucks on my Serve card.
As I approached a juncture which I refer to as "piss pass" and which is basically where the interstate passes over Canal Street and where a couple dozen tents under the bridge are evidence of about that many homeless people who keep a perpetual sign a-flying on all four corners of the intersection; this for people who have their vision; and for the blind, there is the strong stench of the urine of about a couple dozen homeless people.

Please tell me I never look like this, and not just because

it's a guitar, and not a flute that I play...

I spotted what looked like a crumbled up bill on the ground in front of the bench of the street car stop right before the pass, and pocketed it.

Then, right before the intersection of Bourbon and Canal, there was a half pack of American Spirit cigarettes laying in between the trolley tracks, which I added to the plunder that I was accumulating before even playing one note of music.
I played for what amounted to one hour and eight minutes, as metered by the recording that I made on my phone.
I made $25 on the strength of one twenty from a couple who had stopped to peer through the gate of the house next to Lilly's which is over my left shoulder, like so many tourists do -they seem fascinated with the house which is really just a big square one but it has a big front porch and a smaller balcony on the second floor offering a birds-eye view of the block.
I get the sense that the people who have done so are both getting a closer look at the house and checking out my music in a non-intrusive way. In both of the most recent cases, I was able to get a twenty dollar bill out of the couples who had stopped, by playing my absolute best at that particular moment. This could translate into the insertion of a humorous verse in whatever particular song I am doing.

So, I made the $25, then headed for the Unique Grocery Store, which has apparently been renamed "The Unique General Store," as per a new sign which runs along the wall under the cooler doors. But not before giving the dollar that I had found to one of the living statues, in the form of a light brown skinned guy who was standing "absolutely motionless" at the corner of Dumaine and Bourbon.

I then got a Bang energy drink, which I placed upon the back of the neck of the guy in front of me in line, which caused him to flinch, as if quite startled, and turn around. It was like he had been a tightly wound coil.

It was the guy whom I have seen just about every night for the past six years, who walks back and forth, back and forth, along Bourbon Street, apparently just walking back and forth.

He has a day job at a hospital as a nurse or something, and walks back and forth in the evenings, always knocking off at about the same time, and always going to the Unique Store to buy always the same bag of chips and the same drink, before getting on the street car to go home and regroup for another day of working at the hospital then walking back and forth along Bourbon street.

He is an extremely effeminate black guy who has just a touch of grey in his hair and walks like a woman. He is probably trying to sell his body.

He had started to acknowledge me a little bit with a nod of the head about a year ago, but that has cooled off.

One night I started to make up a song something like "He's the man who walks back and forth, and back and forth and..." which seemed to provoke him to shoot me a derisive look. It definitely stopped him in his tracks for a second, and I decided not to start making fun of him each night as part of my shtick, even though it would be easy to break into "his" song each of the dozen times that he does so on a given night.

But, I put the cold can on the back of his neck and he took it rather pleasantly, which made me think that he is probably just a shy person.

Then, I found, strewn out along Canal Street, right before Broad Avenue, about a dozen bottles of water. They hugged the curb here and there for about 75 feet. I stopped and bagged them up, wondering if they were suddenly going to become the property of one of the skeezers who had been standing about a hundred feet away and ignoring them as I arrived. It would be in line with behavior that I have seen before in skeezers; they don't show an interest in something until someone else does.

There was once a pair of brand new sneakers laying in the middle of Royal Street not far from The Unique Grocery or General Store, and I stopped and picked them up, finding them to be my exact size.

There had been the usual contingency of skeezers in front of the store, but they seemed to be treating them like they thought they must be nasty and smelly to have been thrown in the road like that. Or none of them wanted to break formation and stray from the pack in order to grab them; that would require thinking autonomously, not a skeezer strong suit.

No sooner had I discovered the sneakers to be brand new (and to even smell new) there was a skeezer in front of me, telling me how desperately he needed them and pointing out the falling apart sandals that were on his grimy feet.
He was going to snag them, but...

But what? They were my exact size, sorry skeeze-bo.
But apparently no skeezer thought he could close the gap between him and me before I had the bottles in my pack, and had shouldered it along with my guitar and was in motion.
"I can get one of those; I'm thirsty!" would have been just a transparent ruse in order to get within three feet of me so he could skeeze face to face, where he probably thinks he does his best "work."

Then, to cap it off, there was a can of vegetarian beans and another one of corn sitting on the floor outside my apartment. They had been used by a lady on floor 1F to prop the door open to allow smoke to escape. Her floor had been smoked up by Freddie from across the hall from her who had apparently put something on the stove then decided to take a nap while it "cooked."
The cans are still there. They are the type of food that is given freely by most of the organizations that donate boxes of food to the needy, as in those in need of door stops.
I'm going to eat them, then maybe smoke a free cigarette.
Tomorrow is Thursday, which is one of the days that Jacob is usually in the area.
I now go to listen to the recording of tonight's busking session. I am getting in the habit of labeling them with as many details as I can while renaming them from the series of numbers that they are named by default.