Moments of Weakness
Right now, it is about 4:30 AM, the Friday after Thanksgiving. I am cooking the Turkey that I got the day before the holiday.
The Thanksgiving basket that I got had, of course, the frozen bird, maybe a 8 pounder, along with other stuff that I was better off getting rid of to remove the temptation of eating in moments of weakness.
There was a loaf of white bread, two dozen eggs, and a gallon of 2% milk, along with a package of margarine.
The recipe for French toast, which I really love, especially with whipped butter and real maple syrup) is also a recipe for eczema, a skin disease that I was plagued with throughout my teens and into my twenties.
It wasn't until I did my first "Three day cleanse and fast and mucous-less diet" at the age of 24 that I felt comfortable in my own skin, for the first time. "No wonder other people my age sing and dance and play all day, and are so happy," I thought. They aren't taking in allergens daily. And, none of them would see the point in suffering through 5 days of a fast, behind some theory too nebulous to sustain them.
Especially when there are enough nay sayers in the world ready to tell you that fasting is unhealthy.
Yet, the less you eat, the longer you live.
It has been theorized that it is a buildup of toxins to some critical level which eventually does people in.
I had no idea that it took some things up to two weeks to clear the system; that is something that I just discovered after I ate a bunch of stuff that the lady that lives in the house with Howard, Berta (bless her heart) gave me a couple Sunday's ago, as I was leaving after watching football with Howard.
She had been trying to stuff my face while I was there, but I told her I was in the middle of a juice fast. I was feeling energetic and thinking clearly and in an upbeat mood that didn't fluctuate, no matter what thoughts occurred to me.
"No, you need to eat; you're too skinny," said Berta.
She gave me a package of stuff to put on my handlebars and bring home.
Once I was home, I just put it in the refrigerator, then kind of forgot about it.
Eventually, on about the sixth or seventh day of the fast, I had a lapse.
"F**k it; let me see what's in that bag," I said to myself.
There was a perfectly cooked rare T-bone steak in a Zip-lock bag, lightly seasoned, and so delicious, that I thought it must have been world-class five star quality right when it came off the grill. I understood why Berta was disappointed that I hadn't wanted to eat it at that time, I was wasting some of her cooking talent.
The flood gates were opened. The fast had had a steak driven through its heart.
I started opening other Tupperware containers and finding other delicious things. There was an extremely fresh salad with no dressing on it.
If I would have quit right there, I wouldn't be writing this.
But, there was bread pudding.
I love bread pudding as much as I do French toast with whipped butter and real maple syrup, and I indulged.
I'm sure that it had eggs combined with soy oil in it, a deadly combination.
That is another one of those combinations where both items trigger a reaction to each other.
I can deal with a little bit of soy oil, with maybe some running of the nose, itching around the eyes, and dandruff over the next few days, and I can eat eggs, up until a point where the back of my head begins to ache, like with a tension headache, and I get dandruff, once again.
But when the two are combined into mayonnaise, this becomes squared, and after eating a lot of that over a three day period, I would probably break out from petting Harold!
[My turkey has another hour to go!] 5:38 AM C.S.T.
These triggers can make you sensitive to other things while they are in you, leading you to believe you are allergic to them, too.
For instance, I once had some cereal in milk, and then I think I ate an orange a little bit after.
Then, I petted a cat.
Then, I put some lotion on my face, which seemed to be a vehicle for transporting the cat oils to beneath the skin, causing it to itch intensely. It was the kind of itching that made me want to rinse it off with water, but that didn't help.
I'm not allergic to cats, I have one. But with those other triggers in the system, I was.
A complex problem rarely has a simple solution.
Losing the Special 20 harmonica and holder put me in a state of paralysis.
I wavered between thinking that this was an opportunity to build character by going out every night and playing just the guitar and singing, like I had done for the first few years of my busking career, until I had enough money for a new harp.
Then, I would start to write an e-mail to my mom, explaining the situation and asking for an early Christmas gift of a harmonica.
But, then I would picture her telling me that, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and, why couldn't I go out and busk with just the guitar like I did for the first few years of my busking career?
Then, I wouldn't send the e-mail.
But, having no money the past week has imposed a cold turkey withdrawal from kratom and weed upon me.
I have been able to feed Harold, barely, by finding minuscule amounts on plastic cards that, for all other intents and purposes, I had used up. ...what am I going to do with 72 cents...?
It had me watching Eckhart Tolle videos and meditating, over the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
I suppose I should look on the bright side.
Those videos turned out to be the salve that would get me through the withdrawal from weed, and from kratom, if there is such a thing, and to help me with the anger.
But, miraculously, I got 10 megabytes of data on my government phone this month, instead of the 2 megabytes that I usually get, as part of the "Lifeline" plan.
And there were the Eckhart videos.
I can only surmise that there was some kind of glitch.
But, it does seem odd that I lost a $40 harmonica and then somehow got $30 worth of data on my phone for free.
There is something else going on with losing the harmonica, I have a feeling.
It is as if the universe was trying to tell me something.
I was able to let Eckhart lecture for hour upon hour on auto-play, and even watched a lot of Rick Beato videos about arranging for orchestras, using the music of John Williams as examples of how to do that well.
I will never listen to the opening theme of Star Wars the same way again.
One of the cool things about it was that Williams knew that the theme was going to start at the very beginning of the movie, right when the famous 20th Century Fox theme was still fresh in the ears of the audience, so he wrote it in the same key of B flat.
The experience of losing the harmonica shed light on a few things.
On the night I lost it, a Friday, Jacob and I had eaten some psilocybin mushrooms that a group (probably fresh from Colorado) had given us when we had been busking on Tuesday night.
One of the guys in the group said that he remembered me from Mobile, Alabama, and that I had helped them hop the train to New Orleans, by telling them where to wait in order to increase their chances of getting in an open boxcar.
"This is the way to go," because you can fully recline to sleep, and can do it far from the opened door so that no amount of rocking and bouncing would rock and bounce you out if you were nearly comatose from the whiskey, which seems to make such a good train hopping companion, along with peanut butter and water.
So, here was the guy, with a memory like an elephant, repaying the favor 6 years later.
But, here it was a Friday night, and we had eaten the mushrooms and we started playing.
To me, it sounded no better than an average session, maybe not even that. Without the encouragement of tip money going in the jar, it felt like the music was kind of flat.
Not, for Jacob.
He kept saying that whatever we had just played was the most incredible music imaginable.
I'm usually not one to judge music by how much goes into the tip jar, because there are so many other factors involved, but, I do know that the best tips come from people who make some kind of connection with it.
A lot of people are in generous moods, but they don't want to just give money away, they want to feel satisfied that you are playing just for them, or even just want to see you break a sweat; to work for the money.
So, after almost 2 hours of playing, that the psychedelics made go by faster, I had to resist becoming angry.
It didn't seem to dawn on him that I have to live for the rest of the week on whatever I make busking Thursday through Sunday.
So far, that was 3 dollars.
To him, the music was an end in itself.
"This is the most wondrous, astounding, amazing and incredible night there could ever be!" he said.
Then, the zen of busking came into play.
Becoming irritated over not making money, and exuding that vibe, was going to further stem the flow of it.
Then, I lost the harmonica.
I haven't played since.
Right now, it is about 4:30 AM, the Friday after Thanksgiving. I am cooking the Turkey that I got the day before the holiday.
There was a loaf of white bread, two dozen eggs, and a gallon of 2% milk, along with a package of margarine.
The recipe for French toast, which I really love, especially with whipped butter and real maple syrup) is also a recipe for eczema, a skin disease that I was plagued with throughout my teens and into my twenties.
It wasn't until I did my first "Three day cleanse and fast and mucous-less diet" at the age of 24 that I felt comfortable in my own skin, for the first time. "No wonder other people my age sing and dance and play all day, and are so happy," I thought. They aren't taking in allergens daily. And, none of them would see the point in suffering through 5 days of a fast, behind some theory too nebulous to sustain them.
Especially when there are enough nay sayers in the world ready to tell you that fasting is unhealthy.
Yet, the less you eat, the longer you live.
It has been theorized that it is a buildup of toxins to some critical level which eventually does people in.
I had no idea that it took some things up to two weeks to clear the system; that is something that I just discovered after I ate a bunch of stuff that the lady that lives in the house with Howard, Berta (bless her heart) gave me a couple Sunday's ago, as I was leaving after watching football with Howard.
She had been trying to stuff my face while I was there, but I told her I was in the middle of a juice fast. I was feeling energetic and thinking clearly and in an upbeat mood that didn't fluctuate, no matter what thoughts occurred to me.
"No, you need to eat; you're too skinny," said Berta.
She gave me a package of stuff to put on my handlebars and bring home.
Once I was home, I just put it in the refrigerator, then kind of forgot about it.
Eventually, on about the sixth or seventh day of the fast, I had a lapse.
"F**k it; let me see what's in that bag," I said to myself.
There was a perfectly cooked rare T-bone steak in a Zip-lock bag, lightly seasoned, and so delicious, that I thought it must have been world-class five star quality right when it came off the grill. I understood why Berta was disappointed that I hadn't wanted to eat it at that time, I was wasting some of her cooking talent.
The flood gates were opened. The fast had had a steak driven through its heart.
I started opening other Tupperware containers and finding other delicious things. There was an extremely fresh salad with no dressing on it.
If I would have quit right there, I wouldn't be writing this.
But, there was bread pudding.
I love bread pudding as much as I do French toast with whipped butter and real maple syrup, and I indulged.
I'm sure that it had eggs combined with soy oil in it, a deadly combination.
That is another one of those combinations where both items trigger a reaction to each other.
I can deal with a little bit of soy oil, with maybe some running of the nose, itching around the eyes, and dandruff over the next few days, and I can eat eggs, up until a point where the back of my head begins to ache, like with a tension headache, and I get dandruff, once again.
But when the two are combined into mayonnaise, this becomes squared, and after eating a lot of that over a three day period, I would probably break out from petting Harold!
[My turkey has another hour to go!] 5:38 AM C.S.T.
These triggers can make you sensitive to other things while they are in you, leading you to believe you are allergic to them, too.
For instance, I once had some cereal in milk, and then I think I ate an orange a little bit after.
Then, I petted a cat.
Then, I put some lotion on my face, which seemed to be a vehicle for transporting the cat oils to beneath the skin, causing it to itch intensely. It was the kind of itching that made me want to rinse it off with water, but that didn't help.
I'm not allergic to cats, I have one. But with those other triggers in the system, I was.
A complex problem rarely has a simple solution.
Losing the Special 20 harmonica and holder put me in a state of paralysis.
I wavered between thinking that this was an opportunity to build character by going out every night and playing just the guitar and singing, like I had done for the first few years of my busking career, until I had enough money for a new harp.
Then, I would start to write an e-mail to my mom, explaining the situation and asking for an early Christmas gift of a harmonica.
But, then I would picture her telling me that, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and, why couldn't I go out and busk with just the guitar like I did for the first few years of my busking career?
Then, I wouldn't send the e-mail.
But, having no money the past week has imposed a cold turkey withdrawal from kratom and weed upon me.
I have been able to feed Harold, barely, by finding minuscule amounts on plastic cards that, for all other intents and purposes, I had used up. ...what am I going to do with 72 cents...?
It had me watching Eckhart Tolle videos and meditating, over the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
I suppose I should look on the bright side.
Those videos turned out to be the salve that would get me through the withdrawal from weed, and from kratom, if there is such a thing, and to help me with the anger.
But, miraculously, I got 10 megabytes of data on my government phone this month, instead of the 2 megabytes that I usually get, as part of the "Lifeline" plan.
And there were the Eckhart videos.
I can only surmise that there was some kind of glitch.
But, it does seem odd that I lost a $40 harmonica and then somehow got $30 worth of data on my phone for free.
There is something else going on with losing the harmonica, I have a feeling.
It is as if the universe was trying to tell me something.
I was able to let Eckhart lecture for hour upon hour on auto-play, and even watched a lot of Rick Beato videos about arranging for orchestras, using the music of John Williams as examples of how to do that well.
I will never listen to the opening theme of Star Wars the same way again.
One of the cool things about it was that Williams knew that the theme was going to start at the very beginning of the movie, right when the famous 20th Century Fox theme was still fresh in the ears of the audience, so he wrote it in the same key of B flat.
The experience of losing the harmonica shed light on a few things.
On the night I lost it, a Friday, Jacob and I had eaten some psilocybin mushrooms that a group (probably fresh from Colorado) had given us when we had been busking on Tuesday night.
One of the guys in the group said that he remembered me from Mobile, Alabama, and that I had helped them hop the train to New Orleans, by telling them where to wait in order to increase their chances of getting in an open boxcar.
"This is the way to go," because you can fully recline to sleep, and can do it far from the opened door so that no amount of rocking and bouncing would rock and bounce you out if you were nearly comatose from the whiskey, which seems to make such a good train hopping companion, along with peanut butter and water.
So, here was the guy, with a memory like an elephant, repaying the favor 6 years later.
But, here it was a Friday night, and we had eaten the mushrooms and we started playing.
To me, it sounded no better than an average session, maybe not even that. Without the encouragement of tip money going in the jar, it felt like the music was kind of flat.
Not, for Jacob.
He kept saying that whatever we had just played was the most incredible music imaginable.
I'm usually not one to judge music by how much goes into the tip jar, because there are so many other factors involved, but, I do know that the best tips come from people who make some kind of connection with it.
A lot of people are in generous moods, but they don't want to just give money away, they want to feel satisfied that you are playing just for them, or even just want to see you break a sweat; to work for the money.
So, after almost 2 hours of playing, that the psychedelics made go by faster, I had to resist becoming angry.
It didn't seem to dawn on him that I have to live for the rest of the week on whatever I make busking Thursday through Sunday.
So far, that was 3 dollars.
To him, the music was an end in itself.
"This is the most wondrous, astounding, amazing and incredible night there could ever be!" he said.
Then, the zen of busking came into play.
Becoming irritated over not making money, and exuding that vibe, was going to further stem the flow of it.
Then, I lost the harmonica.
I haven't played since.
Sounds like a mushroom lesson... how about
ReplyDelete'All paths lead to the same; nowhere. So chose a path with heart. If the path you are on has no heart, drop it.'
I don't know how much you took but in my experience psychedelics can greatly effect/distort the auditory experience and sense of timing in a way that just about any crappy music can sound magical, especially to non-musicians. Hence the chemically enhanced fans ecclesiastical praise of sloppy-ass meandering live shows from bands like the grateful dead lol.
( I've heard my share of the bootleg tapes from the deads hay-day, I had a weed connection that made me listen to hours of that shit every time I went to his house to score)
When I trip I want to be as far away from civilization as possible, surrounded by nature, wandering a forgotten back woods trail, at night near a camp fire or under a bright moon.... And zero booze. Alcohol tends ruin the spiritual nature of the psychedelic experience, IMO.
@Craig: Haha, I had a weed connection who made me listen to hours of dead whenever I went there; and, since it was almost a 3 hour drive to get there (I could have found one closer but was killing two birds with one stone, socializing and scoring) I was in no hurry to jump back in my car right away, and so would listen to a couple 28 minute Dark Star/Eleven/St.Stephen jams while there.
ReplyDeleteHe actually got me into (indoctrinated, recruited, evangelized? me) them by (pretending?) that he wanted to know the chords to all the songs, and so he would give me a cassette, and a bud of "the clone" and say: "see if you can figure out the chords to "Lazy Lightning,'" or something.
Little did I know that he had the Grateful Dead Anthology sheet music book, which he could reference to make sure I had done my homework -yeah, that sure is a Cma9 chord in the intro...
Well, the result of me smoking that bud and then listening for every single note being played was that I was indoctrinated, recruited, etc...
What grabbed me was when I noticed that the same songs that might have also been on other cassettes had the same chords, but they might have been upside-down or inverted in some weird way, but it was still the same song.
I suppose I should be grateful ...(groan)...for the fact that he did that; it cost him maybe a hundred bucks in bud, but now people walking down Bourbon Street 33 years later get to hear "Eyes of the World"
He knew what he was doing, I must say...
@Craig: Yeah, I know what you mean about the alcohol, the talisman in your hand starts to lose its glow more and more with each sip you take...
ReplyDeleteAh-ha, those evangelical dead-heads are absolutely sinister! LOL
ReplyDeleteSeriously,I think there's a lot of fine dead music, though 'heads give me shit if I name one of their radio hits or another among my favorites. Casey Jones! To be completely fair, a stadium full of trippin' folks all groovin' to the cosmos and real-time sculptured sound can be a beautiful thing. I've been there a few times, just with different bands.
It still kills me I missed the 'floyd (Denver '75) I did finally get to see Gilmores floyd in Seattle, 'Delicate Sound of Thunder' tour.
I haven't tripped in ages, I'm totally due... unicycling on 'shrooms is on my mini-bucket list, ha ha.