Can You Make A Dollar?

 What it looks like right now. I guess I had better go and serve them.

I don't know why I am chomping at the bit to get out there now, while I was more inclined to sit on my bed and listen to Moby Dick being read online over the past month, but, I guess I am "back." And ready to call Lilly to run away any other musician who may have unwittingly sat on her stoop and began to play. Lilly is a full on progressive left type who loves Liz Chaney and Hillary Clinton, yet she fights to the end to allow me to play on her stoop. As long as I don't wear a MAGA hat or play the harmonica too loudly....

Writer's Block

I used to read, write, do jigsaw puzzles, draw pictures, tend to plants, and do a lot of music -all while planning to take up yoga and maybe start jogging daily to an outdoor gym about a mile away where all the exercise "machines" are designed to use the body weight of the exerciser as the load (it's pretty ingenious, actually; you can set certain levers, gears, cogs and counterbalances so that if you weigh 150 you can actually bench press up to somewhere around 450 pounds, but you will actually be lifting your own body weight somehow). I have yet to experiment with that particular gym, which is spread out under a large canopy, so that you could work out on rainy days, even. That's because I have yet to start that particular fitness program.

Now other things are falling by the wayside; and I suppose it is because I am spending probably an average of 6 hours a day on Youtube and Rumble and Truth Social. Somehow, I think, a lot of stuff that I'm consuming on those sites is sapping energy from me...

Chaos Reigns

It's been pretty bizarre how fast time has been going by, lately. I used to think that being up at 5 a.m. would put one in position to have a "live-long" day, and become happier, healthier and wiser, but am now starting to wonder.

I am on yet another intermittent fast, using just juice for a couple days, and then maybe spring water. I'm starting to think that I need to get all food out of the house when doing this, as I have sabotaged the past couple attempts.

During my first attempt, last week, one after the completion of which I planned to convert the extra energy that comes with detoxification into totally cleaning and organizing my place, so that it would become a reflection of my mental state; there came a knock at my door.

It was Jr., asking me if I would store a bunch of food that he had emptied out of his fridge, so he could unplug it and let it defrost for a couple days.

I probably should have declined to help him out that way, saying that I was in the middle of a cleansing fast. But then, one of the ideas of the fast is to gain more self control. Like the alcoholic who can take a job as a bartender after he has conquered his addiction and "recovered," I felt like I could stuff my refrigerator with his food and, despite his saying "Help yourself," would be able to succeed in detoxifying myself.

But that didn't work out to well, as I eventually made some excuse for eating one of his hamburger patties (I didn't want to go out and busk totally famished, for some reason?) and then, having had the fast ruined then became the next excuse for pigging out after coming home from busking pretty drunk off all the drinks that people handed me while I was playing.

So, I'm going to end here, since my mind is in as cluttered a state as my whole apartment. I haven't done a drawing I mean to do, to place in my front window (because I'm wondering if I just want to do that so people outside will see it and say "Wow, he's a pretty good artist," which would be the wrong motivation for doing the thing...or would it?

I don't know because my mind is as cluttered as my whole apartment.

I took the first baby step in the material world by emptying and changing Harold's litter box. So I guess the internal equivalent is that I am doing this one thing, in a sea of unattended wishes, by writing this one blog post. Kind of like dumping out my cat poop onto the page, I guess. But I don't know, I need to get all that Jr food out of me and return to a more ordered existence...

Suave Essentials Ocean Breeze Infused With Sea Algae Extract; One Of My Favorites!

 

The Way A Day Should Start

Waking up at 7:44 a.m. with the sun moving in an upward arc, I let the fog of yet another strange dream dissipate.

It had been one where a group of people had invaded my apartment; at first, resembling the various social workers who had facilitated my moving in, back in 2014 -the women in dresses and the men in button up shirts, with one of them being very tall. There was something threatening underlying there presence in my place; I was aware that they had just shown up. This seemed to evoke the sense I have, living here, that certain people can just walk right in the place, such as the pest control guy whom, his knocks on the door with the accompanying "Pest control!" announcement going unheeded, will use some sort of master key to let himself in to ostensibly spray the kitchen and bathroom areas, then leave.

It was during one visit by that worthy, an occasion when I happened to be home, and had let him in, when he had stopped to stare at a picture of Donald Trump that I had cut out of a USA Today article shortly after his election in 2016 -it was the official "presidential" photo released by his staff, I believe- and affixed to a wall with invisible tape. The spirit in which I had done this was partly based in irony and sarcasm, and I wasn't sure if the thing was going to wind up serving as a dart board, or what. But the pest control guy had paused and said "Oh, that's not good!" which he worked into our conversation as if it was a rejoinder to what I had just said.

But, it wasn't in congruity with responding to my attempt at humor, as, what I had said was: "I haven't been plagued by too many pests lately; just the 2-legged kind, carrying tanks full of pesticide..."

Through the rapport that I had developed with the guy during his previous visits, I sensed that this would have gotten a chuckle out of him, but there was no mirth in his tone, as he spoke with his eyes fixed upon the Trump photo.

The very next morning I found that my first ever threat of eviction notice had been slid under my door, stating something to the effect that, during a routine pest control visit, the pest control agent(?) had noticed certain things in violation of my lease agreement, to wit: unsanitary conditions, food left out; food and cat litter on the floor, an overflowing trash can, and something wrong with the condition of the bathroom in general. That was the first warning, and three strikes and I was out, or words to that effect, signed by the management.

There was a bit of that sentiment in the weird dream. The really tall guy most likely represented Tim, the caseworker originally assigned to me, who was a textbook "neo liberal" or whatever the term is. He even prefaced his responses to questions with the word "So" when answering any -something that I have concluded comes from the world of "academia," and which is ubiquitous on PBS broadcasts, out of the mouths of anyone being interviewed. This would typically be someone like the owner of the first all-queer staffed Italian restaurant in St. Louis, or whatever, telling his story. 

"Why did you choose to open here?"

 "So, I grew up in this neighborhood, and..." type of thing.

Tim would go out of his way to inform me that, if it wasn't for Democrats, I wouldn't have gotten my apartment. I owed my whole living arrangement to Democrats, believe him!

So, maybe it isn't a coincidence that Sacred Heart Apartments has gone into a sort of decline, with the tailspin beginning right around 2016. Caseworkers like Tim were laid off. A proposed exercise room replete with treadmills and weight lifting machines was scrapped. The promised new computers along with in-house wi-fi never materialized (and, in fact the old computers started to disappear from the lab) and a general sense of apathy began to pervade the place.

A long time ago I figured out that dreams, mine at least, take their subject matter from whatever is on the mind when when drifting off to asleep. They are usually no more deep nor significant than that.

I had fallen asleep after having watched an interview on Youtube of a guy who had worked as a content moderator (turned whistle-blower) for Facebook. One of the things he said, besides elucidating the not too shocking fact that Facebook moderators look at all messages, both public and private, was that, often in the private pages of users he would find horrendous content such as videos of animals being tortured, and in one case, two minor girls being raped in a basement in Texas and the videos of such being offered for sale; with members being able to request certain acts to be performed, for an additional charge. The guy also mentioned a video of a guy having a gun put in his mouth and the trigger pulled, but the Facebook people saying that it was unclear if what is seen hitting the wall behind his head was indeed brain matter -it could have just been bullet fragments, and thus not technically a violation of terms- the ex-moderator added sarcastically. It was a disturbing interview; especially when he talked about an iguana being tortured to death by some teen aged kids...

The moderator said that he was able to identify several content creators because they had been "stupid enough" to do things like link to their actual bank accounts to receive money; but that Facebook had been more concerned with "political stuff," and the focus was upon shadow banning people who questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, or were posting pro Trump content. The "reasoning," he said, was that activity that went on in private groups was never going to go viral; it was just closed communities of maybe 30 or 40 people raping young girls, or torturing people and animals; and those were never going to leak into the mainstream feeds (and make Facebook look bad).

A pro Trump video, on the other hand, could be shared and re-shared to the general public; and, thus, had the potential to do "real world damage" according to Zuckerberg. 

And isn't that so?

The moderator was getting paid 15 bucks an hour to skip over videos of pedophiles being stoned to death in Islamic countries, and to delete comments made by anti-vaxers and election integrity deniers.

"Do you think so, Einstein?"

And, so that was what was on my mind when I drifted off to sleep and then dreamed about my apartment being full of Democrats who had just barged in, and who could do so any time as long as they were holding a tank full of pesticides or a spare light bulb.

Maybe I should make my first novel about a guy who is stoned to death because he likes to draw the faces of little girls; try to get it to print before the actual thing happens to me, type of thing...

If You Have Trouble Speaking, Call Your Doctor Immediately

My second day sober, and I broke the cleansing juice fast with some potatoes, which were the powdered kind, to which I reconstituted with water, olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper in the middle of the night. It' almost like it would behoove me to rid my place of all foods when embarking upon such a cleansing fast. The potatoes started looking good to me about 44 hours in...

I was asleep not much later, waking up around 9 in the morning out of some pretty weird dreams that were just slightly depressing, like a light fog that had to dissipate over a cup of coffee in the morning.

This made me wonder about whatever it is about the potatoes, probably the levels of starch in them, that caused my blood sugar level to dip to the point that I would have dreams that might have been enlightening, had I written down as much as I could remember of them upon waking, but which had me feeling kind of gloomy. I have noticed the same phenomenon after eating white rice before going to sleep.

So, I resolved to shrug off the diversion into potatoes and get back on the cleansing diet of apple juice and alkaline water. I've acquired a desire to read a lot more out of the library of books I have, and the mental focus that comes with fasting is helpful towards that goal. I used to read for quantity, thinking that if I stuffed my head with as much of the classics as possible, I would gain some kind of timeless wisdom. Now I realize that the quality of the reading is of paramount importance and, reading just a few pages of Shakespeare and then sleeping on them can be of greater value than rushing through a Tolstoy novel, trying just to finish it, so as to have it "under my belt" and maybe put another notch in my book case.

No sooner had I decided to run to the Family Dollar for more juice and alkaline water came a knock at my door. 

It was Jr., already drunk and probably stoned, and raring to jam drunkenly and stonedly on the 2 or 3 chords that he has under his own belt. I told him I was going to finish watching an episode of Game of Thrones and then walk to the store and back. This is the point where he will usually ask me what I intended to get at the store, and often offer me the same out of his own stockpile of foods, mostly unhealthy. "I' got a bottle of apple juice I can give you; come on, let's jam!"

It used to bother me a lot more to hear him repeat the same phrases over and over, like he is a doll that, when you pull its string and let it go; will only say one of about a dozen different things. I've learned the hard way that, should I take him up on his offer to jam, rather than go to the store, he will hold back on the promised bottle of apple juice or whatever, until I have spent an amount of time jamming with him, sufficient in his mind to compensate himself for the loss. I can usually walk all the way to the store to get my own stuff, and then return with it well before I could ever expect to quit his apartment with whatever he might give me on the way out. In the case of apple juice, that could easily be some "apple flavored" concoction of corn syrup and artificial apple flavor or, in the case of tuna fish, that could mean some bargain brand that has added "soy protein" or something else on my forbidden list.

But, pulling his string this time didn't produce one of his pat phrases. I owe this to the fact that I have blown him off over the past couple days; partly because he is a source of a couple of the addictions that I was resolving to kick, namely alcohol and weed, and certainly crack; and I hadn't answered his frantic knocks upon my door over the past 48 hours of my sobriety through fasting.

He wanted to play guitars, but was willing to allow me the freedom to go and get whatever I would at the store, without trying to short circuit the exchange in his habitual way. That's the thing about people who use others; they know enough to let out a little line, like the fisherman who knows that he has a strong fish hooked, that might disentangle itself through a combination of its brute strength combined with him vigorously reeling it in, and so he lets out a little bit of line to allow the fish to tire itself out some in between his attempts to pull it in. These are the type of people who will rip you off for, say, 50 bucks, but then show up later, apologetic and pleading for mercy with maybe 38 bucks and a few gulps of whiskey and a joint, begging for forgiveness and extending an olive branch, type of thing...

So, now I am back at the apartment, after opening the door to see the place full of smoke from a pan of coffee that I had been heating up but forgot about, before leaving for the store. Not a good sign.

I remember when I was a teenager, and one of the guys my dad worked with had a son who had been in a car accident. Because of the amount of drugs and alcohol in his system, according to doctors, his survival of the head trauma incurred in the crash came with the heavy cost of him having sustained some kind of brain damage. "He will go into the next room and then forget what it was he went in there for," lamented my dad. In addition to this being a dire warning to me about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, it also invoked pity in my for the guy. Someone who would go into the next room but forget what it was he wanted from there, was a pathetic individual, I thought. No drugs or alcohol for me, I thought. That probably kept me away from those intoxicants a few years past the time I might otherwise have experimented with them, I must say. I never smoked weed until I was about 18 years old. I made up for lost time, but can still notice a difference in my mental state compared to those who started smoking it at the age of 12 or 8...

Though, now, I leave a pan of coffee heating on the stove, then run to the store, while the water boils out of it; and return an hour later to find the whole pan glowing orange just like the burner, making sounds like cracking ice, and in an apartment full of smoke, redolent of burnt coffee.

I really feel more like messing around with music in my own place, rather than jamming with Jr. It would really be the hits of weed that I would be going there for, should I.

I just might make an appointment with the mental health professionals that I entitled to the services of through my medicaid enrollment. Maybe they can actually give me something like that Prevagen drug for memory improvement, and not something that will treat depression with only a slight risk of "suicidal tendencies" as a possible side effect.

"If you have trouble speaking; call your doctor immediately." (and blather to his secretary incoherently until she just hangs up on you, thinking it is an obscene caller).    

My Spirit Guides

Still On Foot

I walked down to Patrick's house in perfect weather; not a cloud in the sky, about 69 degrees and no wind at all.

I had some time to wonder why I had never asked the guy for his phone number. That way, I might have called and saved myself some walking.

After I got there and saw his electric tricycle in front of the house, meaning he was most likely home, there was no response to me knocking, meaning he was either in the shower, passed out or dead.

I killed some time walking around picking up some tobacco, then returned to knock again, in case it had been the shower scenario.

I wouldn't be returning to Sacred Heart on the bike this day, as there was still no answer, and I was in a hurry to make it back home for the start of the Patriot's game. I stopped at the Ideal Market and bought 2 mangoes and a papaya, along with a gallon of water, all of which came to about 16 bucks.

Then I returned home, hoping to log one full day of not drinking, supposing myself to be using a one day at a time strategy in order to take back control of my life. Stuff had started to pile up on me, and a couple days of juice fasting is in order to boost my mental energy. The videos I've been watching on the subject of literature has got me eying my bookshelves, wanting to read some of the books that I own which are ranked amongst the greatest ever written, at least by Benjamin McEvoy (top photo).

I'm going to want to clean the apartment thoroughly as I cleanse my body and mind, so I will have the patience and concentration required for focusing upon great literature. 

I imagine my appreciation for great music, along with my facility at composing will get a boost likewise. 

As much as jamming with Jr on vodka and weed might count, to some degree, as "practicing," falling asleep with my sneakers still on, and then having to get up at some point to turn off lights, and stop the laptop from auto-playing Youtube videos is not a lifestyle that is up to my standards. 

From those to whom a lot has been given, a lot is expected in return. A creative drive is both a blessing and a curse. Unfinished symphonies are a bummer...

Binge, Purge, Binge, Purge

A catastrophic Saturday began well enough with me being up and walking down towards the bus stop where the bus to Walmart stops.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was about room temperature as I got to the Family Dollar where I wanted only an energy drink, as I was in the purging stage and in recovery from the day before and drinking only juice and the occasional energy drink. So far, so good.

One bus came as soon as I cracked open the drink and so I decided to wait for the next one, rather than try to hide the drink when getting on and then covertly sip it.

I came out of Walmart with bags loaded down with 7 pounds of cat litter, a tin of oysters and sundry other food items, along with a few cans of food for Harold and some "Temptations" treats, which are more like deserts than anything a cat would want to live off of.

I also bought a bottle of apple wine, made by a company called "Farm Fresh" winery or whatever, which I had Googled while in the store to make sure they actually used only fruit to make wine and that it wasn't just cheap grape wine with added fruit flavor. It is apparently fruit only and they make it from apple, blueberry, blackberry, cherry, cranberry and a few more. The cranberry flavor intrigued me, but it was the bottle of apple that I opened while sitting at the bus stop. 

There was a heavyset older black lady to my right who was eating what looked like a peanut butter and jam sandwich on white bread. She had a giant packet of BC Powder aspirin, which she proceeded to wash down some of, after finishing her sandwich. It occurred to me that she might be consuming something regularly in her diet that gave her headaches, and rather than explore any dietary solutions, she fought fire with fire by washing down aspirin a few times a day.

I opened the tin of oysters to wash down with my apple wine. This made her curious and she asked me what I was eating.

"Oysters, oh no, I can't eat oysters; I can't get them down, it's the texture of them..." she said.

I told her that I only ate them once in a great while and that I thought they had some trace minerals or something that something that lives in the mud under water (and probably goes back as far as lobsters and flounders in history) might acquire. "People have been eating oysters for centuries, and so we are probably adapted to them..." (unlike peanut butter and jam sandwiches on white bread, I didn't say).

I felt bad for the lady, who is probably on all kinds of prescribed drugs for all kinds of ailments that probably stem from her diet; and there she was, unable to swallow my diet.

On the bus ride back there was another older black man in the seat in front of me who was reading one of those post doctor visit forms that give a synopsis of the visit, explain the medications subscribed, etc. and it crossed my mind that an entire culture of black people might be being used by Big Pharma and the medical industry as guinea pigs, in cahoots with a food industry that has convinced them that a peanut butter sandwich and a bag of Doritos is a lunch that is going to help them be at their best.

Once back on Canal Street, I thought about walking to Patrick's house, but chose to drop off the 20 pounds of stuff I was toting at the apartment first. The bags kept bumping against my legs as I walked.

Patrick has a bike that he has offered to sell me for 50 bucks; and I had entertained the idea of bringing the 5 Walmart gift cards that I have gotten from doing the blood pressure application study to him, with 10 bucks on each of them to see if he would take them in trade for the bike. I've seen the thing and it's a beach cruiser style one with only one gear -something that really bothered me the last time I had one like that because the one gear is made for lazy "cruising," ostensibly along a beach, and I used to get frustrated trying to make any time. But, it would be better than walking, and Patrick said that he would ask 200 dollars for it from anyone else, but was cutting me a deal.

I still decided not to trade all the Walmart money for it, opting to get toilet paper, toilet bowl cleaner, dish washing liquid, the cat food, people food and, of course, the bottle of apple wine, instead of a bike.

After dropping off the stuff, I soon found myself walking to another store to get a bottle of vodka for Carlos, who lives on my floor and is kind of hobbled. Along the way, I ran into none other than Patrick, who, seeing me walking, told me that I could get the bike from him and just pay him the 50 bucks for it when I could. He could see the connection between me having a bike and winding up busking more.

I got Carlos his bottle, taking a gulp off it as payment for delivering it to him; and then, as I was crossing the parking lot of the Shell station, a black guy who sells weed and other things on that block, pulled up in his car and handed me a fat blunt, which was lit.

I walked home, shooting a few videos on my phone that I thought were rather humorous in my apple wine and blunt haze, and proceeded to start jamming away on my electric guitar, forgetting to walk down to Patrick's to get the bike in the process, and ultimately cooking up and scarfing down a pound of lean ground beef, which I guess contributed to me falling asleep; a blueberry pie insured that I would wake up with a slight heartburn; to begin The Purge, once again..

I have no idea what ever happened to the videos that I shot on my phone; I was trying to send them to Jacob in case there wasn't room in my phone's memory for them.

And so, this will be a Sunday when I do the Wim Hof breathing exercises, watch some of the Saint's game, which started at 9 AM because they are in London; and then I guess I'll walk down to Patrick's to get the bike.

My ego exalts in the vision of me showing up at Sacred Heart with a bike, just about exactly one month after mine was stolen. I imagine that whoever took it had a modicum of the crab mentality (whereby, when one crab has almost succeeded in climbing up and out of the basket that a bunch of them are trapped in, it will be pulled back down by the others that are trying to latch on to it in order to pull themselves out). 

By having a bike, I was able to pull myself out of the abject destitution that is the norm for most of the people at Sacred Heart. They would see me ride off on it with my guitar on my back and then would notice that I always seemed to have my needs met; as evidenced by the plastic bags tied to its handlebars. In their minds I was selfish and greedy, as a beneficiary of White Privilege who doesn't share the wealth; who never returns on the bike with the guitar on his back to break out a pack of cigarettes or a liter of liquor and pass them around among the "less fortunate."

So, to a degree, I believe the bike was stolen as much, if not more, to deprive me of it than to benefit whoever took it. And so, when I show up with another bike, I'm sure there will be dirty looks along with spitting on the ground directed at me by those who would whisk away my guitar and bury it in the dumpster, should I turn my back on it for a few seconds. Then, I would have to while away my days sitting in front of the building alongside them, asking everyone who walks past for a cigarette or a dollar. And I would have to enlist myself as a courier for those who get a check every month; running to the store for them in exchange for a few gulps off a bottle or a couple cigarettes.

But a white man can always get another bike or another guitar, by virtue of his skin color, they believe; not because he has actual friends with whom he has good relations, and isn't trying to use to pull myself up while pulling them down.

So I'm trying to check an ego that is looking forward to showing up on another bike, back in business again, having only lost a step or two. I just wish it could have been sooner; like the next day after the last one got stolen; that would have demonstrated a greater amount of crab proof-ness...