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 11 Beers Later...

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of going 3 days sober, eating well and sleeping well, and then wrecking it all on the 4th day.

Yesterday (Saturday) on my way out to go to Rouses Market, I was informed by the security lady that I had gotten a package. It was a phone sized box, that I would retrieve, and sign for, after I had gotten back from there, where I bought a 12 pack of New Belgium beer, a "hoppy pack."

I came back and found that the package contained a Unimax 693CL phone, which I immediately charged and activated and switched my "lifeline" service over to.

I haven't really put it through its paces yet, but have taken a few pictures with it.

Everything kind of got put on hold as I watched baseball and football on TV and polished off the 11 beers.

I guess the good thing is that I am taking a night off from drinking tonight.

I feel kind of isolated and lonely and might just go out to the lobby to chat with the security guy for a while.

Friendship Haitus

What about my friend, Jacob?

I guess he has gone the way of my friend, Alex in California.

It's been a couple of weeks since Jacob and I went to the Lilly Pad and tried to make some money playing music.

Because we started too early, and I wound up drinking an unnecessary 9% alcohol IPA that started to effect my playing by the time the "normal" starting time of around 9:45 rolled around, we wound up only making 3 bucks.

There was some rustiness, from not having busked in 3 months on my part, even though I'm sure I have averaged about 3 hours per day of playing at home. I guess playing at home is not at the same level of intensity as it is playing for a live audience; even if that audience is basically ignoring you.

Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern had moved their speakers out onto the sidewalk for the benefit of patrons who were socially distancing themselves in the fresh air outside the place, and that had a drowning out effect on our acoustic instruments.

My fingertips started to sting by about 9:30, when we knocked off.

At one point, Lilly arrived with one of her daughter's. I'm not even sure which one, but I believe it was Angelique, the younger of the two, who would be probably a year younger than Jacob. I really do have some sort of facial recognition problems, since I have known Angelique and Chantilly for something like 8 years now. But, put a mask on them and I recognized Lilly's voice, which I would know anywhere, Long Island accent and all, but I'm not sure which of her daughters it was.

I used to think that life was just heading in a positive direction, and things are just going to get better and better, and would even envision things like fixing Jacob up with one of Lilly's daughters. I would also envision myself playing with Tanya Huang, in place of her long term partner Dorise Blackmon, with whom she would split something like 100 bucks per hour.

That was a carrot in front of my nose, as far as trying to improve as a musician. But I also knew it would entail playing drug and alcohol free because Tanya and Dorise would play 10 to 12 hours, Thursday through Sunday each week.

Twelve hours is long after any joint smoked before starting would have worn off, and Thursday through Sunday, with such regularity, would leave no room for waking up hung over on any of those mornings. Running to the restroom every 45 minutes to piss out beer would be about as bad as the playing of the person doing so would get, well before quitting time arrived.

So, that particular aspiration would go hand in hand with the type of clean living that I dream about. Another carrot in front of the nose.

Playing with Jacob seemed to be a move in the opposite direction. Maybe it is my penance for being a "pot" musician, rather than a "pure" musician. Because after we smoked a tuning up bowl I was immediately reminded that I had forgotten about 10 times as many songs as the ones that I had regularly played.

I can remember when, after learning a new song, I couldn't wait to play it that night. It would infuse the whole evening with a sense of change, and growth and variety and adventure.

I learned "Tears In Heaven," the Eric Clapton song by playing it over and over one night in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

It was during Spring Break and I was sitting along a sidewalk that had an unbroken stream of college kids walking past me; each group only hearing me for maybe 20 seconds, and none of them thinking: Is that the only song he knows?

But, the feeling of stagnation was there that night ...I should have taken some time to write down a list of all the songs that I could think of that I had ever played...type of thing.

Then Jacob started to curse every single person who was out that night who hadn't rewarded our efforts (everyone except the one person who threw the dollar and the other who threw the two dollars) even insisting that we walk back to the trolley whichever way would avoid the most people. "Because I hate every single person on earth right now!"

So, the next morning I texted him something about him having acted like a spoiled child, and he texted back a long list of grievances about me that made me realize that the guy really doesn't like me, and maybe never really did.

How was I to know that almost everything I had done or said in the past he was resenting, yet not mentioning it.

But, this blog is not supposed to be a platform for criticizing other people. Unless they are skeezers; or in the case of Alex in California, if they call me a racist, hypocritical douchbag.

I guess the "hypocrisy" results from the fact that I am so outspoken in detesting skeezers who look to get everything for free at everyone else's expense; and yet I accepted the charity offered to me as the homeless veteran that I was; rather than having rejected it. "I ain't no skeezer, you can keep your apartment!" type of thing. "I'll continue to live under the wharf and sleep on a thick piece of cardboard because that's what I have garnered in life and what I deserve!"

But I am trying to focus upon self criticism in this blog, since that involves what I am responsible for and what I can control. It is like when a teacher gives a test and half of her class flunks. Are half of her kids pretty stupid; or is she a teacher who herself failed to teach half of the kids?

I look at my plants each morning and see the intricacies of the leaves and see how much they grew while I was asleep. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to exert mental energy to try to will them to grow. There is an intelligence at work; something that was already inside the seed, which is coming to fruition.

That's how I look at the fact that I am in my apartment, with the electricity paid for each month. 

The whole situation is just like one of the leaves on one of the plants. 

There was an intelligence behind it all which is beyond the comprehension of Man. Nobody had to do anything or exert any mental energy. I could just simply say that God provided. Consider the lilies of the field, they don't labor nor weave.

So, I guess I'm not going to try to be friends with anyone; just like I'm not going to approach Tanya and ask her if she wants to pair up musically, until such a time that it becomes apparent that that is in the blueprint, and I have grown into the situation. I guess maybe never...

Right now, it is early Monday morning; maybe about 65 degrees outside.

Who knows what today might bring.
 

  

I have become quite the political campaigner these days, having endorsed Bernadette D'Souza (#83) for Family Court judge. Let's see how long before I find an egg splattered on my door...

Thrown by a never D'Souza-er...