More Loss

• Chapter 2 Lost
• Harmonica Lost
• Beer Bottle Comes Through Window
• 2 Plastic Sharks Found
• Apartment A 110 Among Turkey Giveaway Winners

I lost about 11 thousand words, or the entire second chapter of the serial novel, in a Focuswriter application window mishap.

That should be enough to make me never want to use that particular application to write with again.
What could be more catastrophic to a writer than losing his writing?

But, I love to set it to make the sound of an old fashioned typewriter whenever I press a letter. It drowns out the voices of dissent in my head, or something.


The "software updater" was involved.

I think these updates are cool, because they actually patch applications up on the fly -like, all of a sudden a slider in Audacity no longer has an annoying glitch, type of thing.


But, Focuswriter will not save crap, when the system is rebooted so that the updates can take effect, and I had forgotten this.

Maybe a future update will fix this problem with Focuswriter.

Maybe my mind will clear in the future, and I will be able to do some nifty programming to link a sound module to another word processor that I like, so that I can hear the typewriter sounds, AND stop worrying about manually saving stuff as I go along.

I just really like the old fashioned typewriter sounds. It kind of tell the world: "tick tick tick I'm busy tick tick I'll get to you when I tick tick tick get to you!" and can be set to be triggered when you press keys.


That is one hefty trade off for such an ornamental feature, I must say -a week's worth of painstakingly written words- and not the first time it has happened, yikes, too many mushrooms, or the early onset of Alzheimer's?
  
How could I forget such an important thing?

Probably the same way I could have left my Special 20 harmonica sitting on a milk crate and then walked away from it, as if everyone would know that it belongs to me and not to touch it, when I took a break from busking Friday night.

As, that is what happened.

Jacob and I had gotten to the Lilly Pad very early, but had eaten some mushrooms.
The plan was that, we would go over to the house where he lives, because his guardian would be out of town, and we would eat some of the mushrooms, but not so many that Jacob wouldn't be able to drive, and then we might even hit the THC vaporizing pen while there, before launching into a recording session that Jacob had probably already created an empty sound file for and named 'Mushroom Jam With Dan," or something.

But, what happened was that, after I ate my share of mushrooms, I began to feel as though that plan was fraught with the danger of us embarking upon an 8 hour jam session, after we became immersed in the trip and lost track of time, which might have produced an "I Am The Walrus," or two, but also would be lacking in any kind of human interaction, which can be the crowning glory of a mushroom trip, and that we needed to consider, as we hurried towards the busking spot.

We decided to take a break at around 9:30, and then return after having had doughnuts, in his case, and a 175ml bottle of white wine, in mine.

We had only made 3 dollars in tips, over the couple hours that we played, and it was easy for me to imagine that we were just a little too trippy for the people, or perhaps too distant (in the case of Jacob having his eyes closed and a grin on his face much of the time).
The idea that doing well in tips is God's way of sending encouragement might have become too imbued in me over the course of the last few years of busking.
Certainly, there were the freaky occurrences, like arriving at the Lilly Pad to find an unopened gallon of spring water during a time when I was on a water fast and had actually run out of it.
And then there was the time that I had quit drinking and was on only the third day (of what would extend to almost 1,400 days) and I was tempted 3 times by offers of alcohol, and had turned down each one -the last of which was a guy who had asked me if I drank, because he had a gift card good for 50 bucks at Pat O' Brien's that he wasn't going to wind up needing because, I guess he had just found out that he needed to fly back home immediately or something.
After I had rebuffed all three temptations, a guy appeared out of nowhere and put a 20 dollar bill in my basket, even though I hadn't been playing.
And, there were even the recent times when Jacob and I had 50 dollar tips thrown our way, when you almost had to conclude that somehow we had found a very odd shaped peg hole for whatever we might have been playing at the time.
But, the tip free nights can make you second guess your entire existence.

Hidden Costs  

It was then that I noticed that I must have put the harmonica down on the milk crate so that I could put my hat back on my head (after the latest repair to the harmonica holder made it a much tighter fit so that I could no longer put it on or take it off over a hat) and then probably placed the backpack on top of the thing when I was stuffing more things in it, and then, after I took the spotlight down from the overhead vine and shut it off, didn't see the harmonica after I picked the pack back up in the dark....
That's most likely pretty close to what happened.
After playing at the same spot for something like 5 years (continuously) I developed a routine way of unpacking and packing.
Having been stung once by arriving at the Lilly Pad without my spotlight, which required me to make the 19 minute bike ride each way to the apartment, and then setting up a full 45 minutes later than planned and making something like 40 bucks, and then having to forever wonder what I might have made during those 45 minutes, pretty much cemented into my "leaving checklist" the item of: "Do I have my spotlight?" and this has the companion inquiry: "Did I charge it?"

I can accept the fact that it is pointless to wonder about "what might have been" in life.
Everybody knows that, if they were to go back and change anything in the past then they might find themselves suddenly dead. Sure, I might have noticed the harp and picked it up; but then when whoever came along and, seeing it sitting there, grabbed it, and then took off before anyone might come along and ask them if they had it, may have still been sitting there on the milk crate after Jacob and i got back from the store, and that could have changed the whole dynamic of the night for the worse. Worse than having to play without a harmonica, I'm not sure, though.

The new wrinkle in the arrangement was the harmonica holder no longer fitting over any of my hats. All I had to do was take the hat off first, then take off the harmonica and put it down somewhere, then replace the hat.
It sounds simple, but in the process, I lost a 44 dollar harmonica, plus a holder that had been repaired so that it might have functioned for another year or two.
I must have put the hat back on my head and then went for the overhead spotlight next, casting the area into a darkness that made the harmonica blend in with the milk crate.

I suppose I am not so much in mockery of Howard's routine, about which I even wrote a song.
I used to feel sorry for him was it? because he stood up every morning at almost exactly 6:05 and then, after putting on his shoes in the same order, followed a path identical to the one of the day before.
But, I guess, in his defense, there is enough that pops up during a typical day which is new and different, such as whatever is in the newspaper that he would grab at around 6:08 AM each morning, from the same store, to keep his life varied and interesting.

Maybe Howard just lost enough of whatever his equivalent of harmonicas would be, to say, enough is enough, I'm better off with a routine..

The harmonica is 75% of my live act, approximately...


And, then, I absentmindedly lost the 11 thousand word story after innocently updating my software...

[I am going to Google "Symptoms of early onset of Alzheimer's" but, first might try getting more regular sleep and cutting way back on the weed and mushrooms] 

Incoming Voodoo Ranger IPA 

And, then, this (Saturday) afternoon a beer bottle came crashing through one of my windows, as I was laying on the bed in that room.

I jumped up within a few seconds, half expecting to see Jacob, along with an embarrassed looking one of his friends, who might have underestimated the strength of his throwing arm.

But, there was nobody in sight, when I looked out.

This seemed to rule out that the bottle had been thrown from a distance, and had missed the intended window which wasn't mine.

Whomever threw it was close enough to the window so that it could be aimed above a picture that I had in the window which was on thick poster board type stock, and would have probably prevented the bottle from going all the way through the window.


The beer was an IPA ale, and not a really cheap brew, certainly nothing that a Sacred Heart resident would probably even like the taste of. Olde English Malt Liquor, now that's more like it!!

About an ounce of liquid was left in the bottle, seemingly to give it enough weight to make it go through the window.
Thoughts:

I am thinking that it might be a blog reader, who had become so disgusted after reading that I have broken a 4+ year period of sobriety, that he came by and yelled: "You were my hero and you let me down!!" before chucking the thing...

But that might be just wishful blogger thinking...

[left: Yes, on Halloween night, I broke a 1,384 day stretch of sobriety by drinking a 24 ounce Tecate lager. Three weeks later a bottle similar to the one shown came crashing through one of the windows that faces Canal Street...mere coincidence, the Halloween thing...yet, why does stuff like this happen when psychedelic mushrooms are involved?]

Or I am thinking it might be someone who read a Facebook comment that I left, but, even though my address is easy to find through my online presence, it would be nearly impossible to look at the Sacred Heart building and be able to tell where my apartment was.

Or, it might have been just that I have hung some of my drawings in the window, to go with the big poster board of the tropical bird about to take flight.

I think a drunk person might just throw a bottle of Voodoo Ranger IPA, which he probably would have bought at the Holy Ground bar at the corner, and would have sipped down to where there was just an ounce left in it by about the time he arrived at my window, and might have thrown it just because, as a patron of that particular bar, he may have come to believe that every person living at Sacred Heart is the type of skeezer that they see almost daily, holding a sign right across the street or on one of the other corners, or, in the case of Brian, who lives here, begging for money "so I can get an ID, so I can get a job" from people using the same story (that one) over and over, until now every patron of that bar knows that Brian ain't getting no ID any time soon, so he can get a job any time soon.
Or, if the patron isn't wise, someone would surely nudge them in the ribs subtly and whisper "He's lying," or something. He's Lyin' Brian, after all. Brian's other story is that he has to feed his "chirren" (children) of which nobody here has ever seen hide nor hair of.
If the patron of the bar, who had spent 3 buck a bottle on that particular Voodoo Ranger ale without having read "9% alcohol" in the fine print, and that person had become "shitty" drunk, then they might look at the artwork in my window and throw the remainder of his ale through the glass, for reasons only understood by drunk. Maybe the person thought the drawings were done by Brian's chirrens.

But, the placement of the hole suggests that the bottle was not aimed directly at any one piece of artwork, but was thrown so as to miss anything that might prevent it from going all the way through the pane.

This introduces the theory that whomever threw it not only knew who lived there, but also where the bed is located, because the bottle came to rest just a couple feet short of the bed, where I indeed had been reclined.
And, would this person know that I typically slept in until about 1:30 PM (when the sun reached its zenith) and that I would indeed be in the bed that they might have been aiming for?

While the theories are running unbridled through my mind.
There is another remote possibility.
This came to mind because of the circumstances surrounding the last time I had a beverage thrown at me.
That was when I was jailed in Culpeper, Virginia.
It was an old building that housed the jail, and it was November and starting to become cold outside, below freezing most days.
I had been relegated to sleeping on the floor, as all of the bunks had been taken by inmates with more seniority.
At one point, though, a bunk opened up and I was told that it was kind of rightfully mine because I had been sleeping on the floor just about under it, ostensibly waiting for it to become available.
But, then I thought about how I had almost become comfortable on the floor, after having gotten an extra blanket, and how light streamed in through the front bars of the cell in such a way that allowed me to read all night if I wanted to, or to rotate my head to be facing the other way, to sleep all night, if I wanted to.
So, initially, I responded to the information "There's a bunk open, you should probably grab it," by saying that I didn't mind the floor, because I liked to read at night sometimes.
This information reached the ears of another inmate, a young skinny half Latino half white looking kid, who apparently had been quite anxious to get off the floor himself.

But, in the meantime, the other guys in my cell encouraged me to take the bunk, because, otherwise, it would become a crap shoot as to who might wind up in there.

And, there was the fact that we were about the only white guys in the block and that, we would be preserving that demographic if I took the bunk. Anyone new guy coming in, who would be relegated to the floor, would not necessarily be staying long, and the area under the bed would be kind of a revolving door for people who get bonded out, type of thing..

And so, I changed my mind and decided to take the bunk.

After fitting it with my blanket and pillow I was sitting on it, alone in the cell when I was suddenly hit on the side of the face and body, with what seemed to be cold coffee which had been thrown at me from out of a cup held by the kid who had been ready to take the bunk, before I had changed my mind.

There might have been a sentiment of "we don't want that kid in here (he bangs on the bars and raps in Spanish into the wee hours of the morning, or something)" as the impetus behind my cellmates talking me into taking the bunk, and the kid might have senses this personal slight against him.

But, my perception was that he was like a spoiled kid whose knee jerk reaction to being denied anything by anybody was to lash out. I thought about the kids his age who mug people and then wind up shooting them just because they only had 8 bucks in their wallet, when the kid had his heart set upon a hundred bucks and was already spending the money in his mind.
The idea being that, um, he was going to send a message to all the people everywhere that they had better do better than 8 bucks when it came their turn to be mugged by him, or suffer the consequences.
But, equally disturbing is the apparent belief that the victim was actually victimizing the robber in that way, carrying just 8 bucks so he could see the look on the face of anyone who might try to rob them, and that they were inwardly laughing at his stupid ass. "What are you going to do now, are you going to let him get away with just having 8 bucks, are you going to let him do that to you, make a joke out of you, or are you going to stand up for yourself and shoot him?" type of thing...
And, so I had cold coffee thrown on me after I changed my mind and took the bunk.
Fast forward 14 years and the beer bottle coming through the window immediately reminded me of that time. 


It's not out of the realm of possibility that someone in the front office had possibly told someone that there very well might be an apartment becoming available soon, because the guy living there, despite having had a few "final" warnings posted on his door informing him that the decision had been made to not renew his lease at the end of the year and yadda yadda...and the guy was hanging by a thread, and, knowing him, he would just procrastinate until such a time that he was physically evicted from the place by the management with the help of a sheriff's deputy.

And then, after being informed that the guy had come through and made a gargantuan effort to procure his own ID, without having relied upon any assistance from the "unfortunately, that fund has been used up" caseworkers from Catholic Social Services, or for a ride to the office of motor vehicles in the van owned by the same group and that, against his nature, had followed through with getting the thing, making two trips to the IRS office to get the required paperwork in the process; whomever it was might have, for lack of a cup of cold coffee, thrown the bottle through the window, thinking that I was in there, actively denying him, like the guy with only 8 bucks on him...

Or, it could have been totally random.

Or, it could have had something to do with Bobby in building C whom I have broken off communications with, since about a couple weeks ago when he had started dabbling with the heroin that the methadone he gets is supposed to keep him off of, after he sold too much of it (the methadone) which had put him in the state of withdrawals.

About a year ago, Bobby bought me a shiny new acoustic guitar.
That guitar turned out be be inferior in every way (except in appearance) to the Takamine that I had been playing every night.

Bobby puts a lot of stock into appearances. He kept referring to the slight damage that the Takamine has on one side of its body, when asking me "Don't you want to upgrade from that piece of junk?"

He said the same thing about my laptop (which is a refurbished one using an older case, but with a newer mother board, etc in it).
"Geez, when are you going to get a decent laptop; look at this dinosaur!?!" type of thing.

Well, about a year ago, Bobby wound up taking that guitar back from me, like an Indian giver...it didn't matter much because I wasn't playing the thing.
But, this year he gave me an Ibanez electric guitar that he supposedly got from a cousin or someone out in the swamp who wanted to trade it for weed.
So, Bobby paid for the guitar and gave it to me "no strings attached" he said (and excuse the pun) and so, when he showed up at my door a couple weeks ago, exhibiting the signs of a guy who was dope sick and at my place to take back anything he might have given me over the course of the year, I basically took diverse actions to elude him.

I hid the Ibanez in a closet, prepared to tell him that it was over Jacob's house because we were going to do recordings with it; and then I have avoided him in general.
I am waiting for the cycle to play out, when, after the season changes he will go back to being the old Bobby again. It has happened the past 3 years; the giving, the taking back. So many people seem to be stuck in patterns and on auto pilot that it might be best to not resist them.
Kind of like knowing that if you knock on someone's door in the morning they might be grumpy, but in the evening they will be in fine fettle.

That just about exhausts my theories about the beer bottle coming through the window at around 2:40 PM, Saturday.

There is a chance that I can go to the office tomorrow morning and have them try to look at the camera footage from that time and place and maybe even spot the culprit. But, that might also mean that I would have to call the police, wait for them to arrive for such a trivial matter, fill out a police report, and even then, would not be allowed to see the video myself -some rule they have, maybe to keep people from taking the law into their own hands, if they are sure from the video who the person is, while it might not give the police enough to make a positive identification; or, maybe you can see the person with the bottle, then see them running away without a bottle, but then have no way to absolutely prove what happened to the bottle in the meantime. The cops aren't allowed to use common sense, because a good lawyer would pick them apart on the stand, type of thing...

The Serial Novel

I now attempt to rewrite the story.

I am not going to worry about making sure that every section ends with some kind of cliff hanger; that's what has been holding up publication of it for weeks now.
I'm just going to write an arbitrary amount of words and the post it up with a "to be continued" after it.



Replacing the harmonica is going to be a bitter pill to swallow; it will require me going back out to play with just the guitar and my voice. I can expect only about 10 bucks an hour doing that, along with a good dose of humiliation.

People at least stopped yelling: "I can't hear you!" once I added the harmonica to the mix...

But, my immediate response to the situation is to want to take the whole day tomorrow to rewrite the chapter of the story.
  
In Other News

My apartment is on the list of those chosen as winners of a "turkey basket" of some sort, to be available for pickup on Wednesday morning, between 9 and 11 AM.

This is another example of them getting over on people by attrition.
If you are not there by 11 AM to pick up the turkey basket that you won, it will be given to "someone else."
So, they lay a trap for the over sleepers, the absent-minded, etc. Making stipulations that people might not adhere to and then waiting to pounce on the turkey baskets for themselves and their friends.
I wonder if I will get another bottle thrown through my window if I manage to make it down there Wednesday morning to get the thing.
There will certainly be people hovering around, already bickering among themselves as to how many of the unpicked up baskets each would be entitled to.

Black Grinners

By the way, after I got back to the Lilly Pad Friday night and discovered that my harmonica was lost, I said something to Jacob out loud like: "I can't find my harmonica!"
I supposed I instinctively glanced around, as if I might ask anyone in the area if they had seen it? I don't know...
But, there was an older black guy sitting on the stoop on the other side of the house, whom I might have seen around the block before.
He was sitting there with a big grin on his face.
It was as if he wanted me to know that he knew what happened to the harmonica and, most importantly, that it gave him great amusement what had happened to it, and he wanted me to know that it gave him great amusement.
I guess I'm happy now that I have never given any one of them a dollar or a cigarette.
Can you imagine it being your business to sit somewhere and wait for someone to come along and discover that he has lost something, so that you can make sure he knows that you think it's funny?
The guy sat there, as if thinking that we were going to have to call it a night and pack up.
He might have even been looking forward to asking: "Where your harmonica?!?" as I walked past.
I will leave it to you the reader to figure out why these certain black people (but not all of them, of course not all of them) always want to be there to see the reaction of a white guy to losing something or having something stolen.

There was another time that I had a guitar stolen that I had leaned against a wall as I was digging for food outside Rouses Market.
It was a guitar that I had broken the neck of which I had tried to fix with glue but was doubtful that the repair would work.
So, after I had dug some food out of the barrels and loaded it in my backpack, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the guitar was no longer leaning where it had been.
But, not 5 feet away there was a young black guy, maybe around 20, who was leaning against the wall looking as if he was about to pee himself from trying not to laugh.
Knowing that I was about to trash the guitar anyways, I walked past him nonchalantly, and never even glanced towards where the guitar had been.

He mumbled something as I passed. The grin was off his face. I had deprived him of some great satisfaction, it seemed.