Daniel's Morning Routine

• 30 Dollar Christmas Eve
• 34 Dollar Christmas Day
• The Day After Christmas

On Christmas Eve, Tuesday, Jacob and I went out to busk, having gotten a milk crate off of "the clappers."

This is a not necessarily derogative term (among the street musicians here) for a family of African Americans that consists of two heavy-set parents and their daughter, who is probably about 11 years old now, but who was little more than an infant when I first saw them, 9 years ago, clapping away and singing simple gospel songs, in the "Jesus Loves Me" vein.

They are not great singers, and they don't play any instruments, except their hands.

"God help them," I thought, the first time I encountered them.
How are they going to survive by warbling "Jesus loves me" type songs, in unison, demonstrating no musical skill, and not even clapping in a steady rhythm, one block down from Tanya Huang playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the violin?

I really felt like it took more courage to do that, than it did for me to sit and play my original songs.

But, day after day, year after year, I would see them, often at the end of my night when I was at Rouses Market, where I would be appalled to see a stack of Little Debbie boxes of cakes and honey buns, along with bags of chips and bottles of soda on the conveyor belt; their "dinner."

But, they are still alive and clapping, and their girl shows no signs of undernourishment.

They are kind of "childish" if you look at them one way, "simple" if another way, and maybe a little bit "mentally challenged" if you are more cynical.

But, they are very kind people, who had directed us to where they had seen a few milk crates on Decatur Street one night, and then gave us one of their own ones, last night.

This was handed to us by the daughter, who has taken up the viola lately, and actually demonstrates some skill on it, as she plays melodies along with the clapping and the singing. She might be the one keeping her parents more in tune these days.

"How is the violin coming?" I asked her, after we had stopped in front of them on Royal Street where they were sitting, surrounded by milk crates.
"The viola!," she quickly corrected me, for a mistake that probably cost me in the form of the broken milk crate which she handed us out of their collection of them; one that I kind of sank into and had trouble getting comfortable on all night. Hell hath no fury like the viola player who is asked how the violin is coming, I guess.
After we were done playing on Tuesday night, I made it a point to drop off the milk crate at The Quartermaster, where we had had the encounter with the delivery cyclist over a couple plastic coke bottle holders, a few days earlier.
The issue hadn't been the plastic things, I suspect -something else had been eating at the guy- but, rather than borrowing crates and returning them, I have been getting them elsewhere and dropping them off there. It would be funny if, at some point they start piling up outside their store because of me to the point where they have to find ways to get rid of them.

It is Thursday, and I was up at what is once again becoming my "regular" time of 1:30 PM (when the sun hits its zenith here) after having fallen asleep some time around 5:30 AM the previous night.

photo of clappers unavailable

It had been a 34 dollar night, which was good, considering Jacob and I went out there with our expectations having been lowered after a glance at the Bourbon Street webcam revealed more mice stirring than any other creatures.

My mom had sent a Christmas card, that I had gotten on the eve of the holiday, miraculously, it seemed (since it takes a week for a letter from here to get to Howard, who is 6 miles away as the crow flies) which had 20 bucks in it, with the message that she hadn't sent more because she wasn't sure if I still even lived here. "What happened to the blog?" she asked.

I suppose I hadn't posted in so long that the older posts where I talked about the danger of my being evicted were the last ones she read; and then 3 weeks of silence.

So, what is happening to the blog is I am going to go back to trying to post something each day, even if it is as mundane as this one.

If I somehow fall back into the routine of sleeping and waking at the same time each day, this should help in that matter.

I had been working on the serial novel for stretches of 12 hours at a time, falling asleep at very odd times, waking 8 hours later at equally odd times, and that resulted in the 3 weeks of not posting here.

I have about 30,000 words written on the serial novel, but have yet to find a logical point at which to put a break in the action, that wouldn't have readers feeling like: "That's it!? It just stops there!?" without having their appetites whetted for the next scene, type of thing...