If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...

The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing...

"'Ya ready?!! Come on, E to A minor!!"

I had woken up at about 4 in the afternoon, and decided that I wouldn't try to make a dash for the plasma donation center, as that would have involved leaving immediately.

Instead, I decided that I would spend a sober Wednesday evening doing housework.

So, I threw my most often worn clothes in a tub full of soapy water, then lied down to do 6 rounds of the Wim Hof deep breathing exercises.

I was on the final round and right at the stage where total relaxation and being "in this moment" is called for, when the now familiar knock of Jr sounded on my door.

As he had knocked right in the middle of my final breath hold, he was no longer at the door about 30 seconds later when I opened it. I went up to his place, partly out of courtesy, so he wouldn't think that I had shunned him if he found out that I had been home when he knocked, but hadn't answered.

"I was right in the middle of my deep breathing exercises when you knocked; I couldn't go to the door..."

He was drunk and high, having returned from his own trip to the plasma donation place with some of the $125 that he would have gotten there already exchanged for a half gallon of vodka and a sack of weed.

"Your what?!" he asked, just as he has every time I have mentioned to him the Wim Hof exercises that I do.

I have accepted the fact that Jr has some kind of mental tic whereby he seems to have no memory of certain things; while at the same time having vivid recollections of other things, and obsessing on them to prove that. 

For example, he has thanked me at least a dozen times for having gone to the front desk to request that they call an ambulance for him the time I found him splayed out at the bottom of the staircase by the parking lot entrance, with what turned out to be a broken arm. I didn't know him that well then, and initially tried to slip past him without him noticing me. For all I knew him falling down might have been a nightly thing. I was afraid he was going to ask me to prop him on my shoulder and half carry him up to his place; something that I suspected might have been asked of me as a cry for attention, and that he might have been feigning being injured, so that I would do so out of sympathy. Then, I feared that he would want me to help him take his boots off, help him to bed, fetch a drink out of his refrigerator and bring it to him; and that it was possible that he would keep ranting; perhaps heaping gratitude upon me, and that it would go on and on, in such a heartfelt and garbled by alcohol way that I would find it hard to find an appropriate time to break away.
"Listen, before you leave, I just want to tell you that, when I was about 10 years old; and this has a lot to do with what I've been going through lately, and I'm going to get to that..." type of thing.

Though that incident has seemed to have stuck in his memory; he seems to have no recollection of having thanked me for it a dozen or so times. "I'll always owe you a debt of gratitude for calling the ambulance for me that time I fell down the stairs" takes its place amongst countless other phrases that he repeats ad infinitum.

I thought it was a matter of my own personal growth that I recognized the anger that welled up in me and my urge to snap back at him: "I KNOW, you've told me that two dozen times!" and then maybe recap the rest of the story; so he wouldn't have to. I decided to not get mad at him over memory issues that are beyond his control and to just accept him as being kind of a human parrot.

Then I became aware of my tendency to anger over him showing up at my door at random times, very drunk and high, insisting that drop whatever I might be doing, such as maybe sleeping, grab my electric guitar and amp and follow him to his place, where he would play basically the same notes and patterns over the E to A minor chords that he would insist that I play, apparently assuming that I was just as baked as him. "Come on, let's go; E to A minor!!"

As he quaffs more and more vodka he invariably falls into the habit of sitting right next to me on the couch and accompanying every other note he plays with a bump from his shoulder against mine; as if he is trying to make me "feel" the music or something. And, this can be annoying when I am stone cold sober, and he is in intoxicated euphoria and baying the lyrics to whatever song he is doing out of the meager collection that he knows, right into my ear, from just bumping distance away.

I find myself wanting to say: "It must be nice to be as high as you are right now," but the truthfulness of that is something that I have an internal debate over, and that might just make him pass me the half gallon bottle of cheap vodka.

So my anger over that particular has more to do with me projecting my own failings upon him. If I go to his place because I basically want to drink vodka and smoke weed, then I need to take responsibility for that, and not blame him for "getting me" wasted.

And a third aspect of it, which is a realization I came to as I was riding my bike to the Winn Dixie earlier, is the anger I feel over his apparent assumption that I have nothing better to do than to hang out and jam with him, which is more self loathing over my not going out to busk, lately, as much as I used to. I could politely tell him: "Sorry, I can't hang out because I'm going down to the Quarter to play for a few hours," if that were the case. Then I wouldn't have to suppress an urge to lash out at him with something like: "Hey, I'm not your servant; you don't own me, and I don't owe you anything; where do you get off thinking I should be at your beck and call every time you are loaded and feel like making noise with your guitar!!"

So, again, that is a case of self loathing and guilt over my not busking enough. I find that almost everything I get mad at another person for is either something that I do myself; or something that I'm mad at myself for in connection to, but am projecting on the other person.

Right: The milk crate in the upper right, I just added an hour ago. This is progress.

A Tale Of Two Syncronicities

In order to add another milk crate to the bookcase shown, I had to look for my bag of plastic ties. So, I went into a closet that I use as a vocal booth, as I have stuffed as many pillows and winter jackets and clothes I don't wear onto its shelves, and to throw other random items that I might have a use for some day, into.

I couldn't find the bag of plastic ties, but I did notice a really nice black "Adidas" winter jacket that I had forgotten I own. It probably goes back to the heavy drinking days.

It turned out to be a "closet full of synchronicities." There was a neatly packed emergency blanket, the size of a wallet, which could have come in handy last week when I was freezing while waiting an hour for a bus...(see the blog post: "Hey, Stranger!")

On the floor of it was a milk crate that had a red fabric of some sort draped over it, which hid the fact that it contained about 15 music CD's. I have a vague recollection of finding it somewhere and must have stashed it in the closet, planning on going through them, then forgot all about it.

A few months ago, I found a song on one of my data sticks that I liked, but which was unlabelled. It was sung in French.

I didn't understand the lyrics but guessed (pretty incorrectly, as it turned out) that it was an uplifting, encouraging song about an ant moving a rubber tree plant or something. I decided to queue it up on my laptop's desktop folder, where it would be available as a "morning wake up song," so upbeat it sounded.

My friend, Jacob Scardino, was able to use some app to identify the song, which had lyrics that translated into something like: "I don't want to work, I want to lay in bed and smoke cigarettes." Some morning wake up song...

It was by a group called Pink Martini.

The first CD in the box that I only vaguely remember finding somewhere and taking home, was by Pink Martini. It didn't have the morning lay around song on it. That is kind of a synchronicity.

This morning, when I was thinking about busking I decided that I was going to Google "Neil Young's most popular songs," so that I can learn a few and put to rest the uneasiness that I have been living with, spawned by the number of times people see me at the Lilly Pad, see the acoustic guitar and harmonica, and see an opportunity to request: "Any Neil Young?" I would put in a couple hours and have a few of Neil's songs ready to go, I thought to myself.

Next in the stack of CD's in the box I had forgotten about was called "Neil Young's Greatest Hits."

All the rest of them were artists I had recently checked out, for one reason or another. The "Tastes Like Music" website is always ranking the Top 10 albums by one band after another and not long ago they ranked all the Blondie albums, barely able to scratch up ten of them, but one of the three guy's that rank had mentioned a song called "Maria," as being one of his personal favorites. There it was in EP form in the box.

And there was a similar connection with each disc. Even Frank Sinatra, I heard mentioned just yesterday by Dave Rubin on his podcast, as being the kind of music Dave likes, and "The Voice: Frank Sinatra, The Capitol Years" was in this box I wasn't aware I had.

Macy Gray; I have just recently read the Wikipedia page of, after something made me curious about her. There was her disc: "On How Life Is."

And, as if this wasn't enough synchronicity; the disc at the very bottom was: "Synchronicity," by The Police...

The bag of plastic ties had been hidden in plain sight, on the table that the milk crate bookshelf sits on. This is something that Marie Kondo mentions in her "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" book -how things that you don't really need in a cluttered room become "invisible," -you see them every day but never see them...

What's Up, Stranger?

Often exchanged between people who haven't seen each other in a while, the post title. Something I half expect to hear from my friend, Patrick, whom I haven't seen in about 3 weeks, the next time I see him.
I'll have to explain about the flat tire on the bike that had me on foot and out of visiting range. Plus, he is often not home, making the mile walk to his place a gamble.
I also haven't had the urge to smoke any marijuana lately, something that is a staple at his residence, and kind of his way of greeting guests...

"Lord, Almighty!"
Today, which was the coldest day of the year so far, including last January and February, I set off for the plasma donation center.
Try as I always do to get there earlier, out of consideration for the staff, who have to let people in one minute before closing, and then work overtime (for which they aren't compensated) in order to take their donation. 

If they are ever going to make a mistake and accidentally kill a donor, it would probably happen after 6 p.m. when, in a rush to get the person done, they might overlook something like iodine; or set the machine to extract 6,900 milliliters of plasma out of a person weighing 144 pounds, such as myself, instead of 690. By the time they noticed the puddle of overflow on the floor all around the persons donation station, the donor would be in another world, mingling with his great grandparents. And then they would get out of there even later, after having to mop up, toss the body in the dumpster out back, and then go into the computer to delete any record of his visit...
But, despite my best efforts, I have been an habitual late-comer. I imagine they have a nickname for such people; some medical term for "pain in the ass."
That Darned Cat!

This time, as I was aiming to get on the street car before the one I have so far always wound up on; I realized that I hadn't shaved.
Shaving is a good measure for the sake of not appearing to be homeless, something that is a disqualification from donating. I think this is in case the plasma sample they routinely test comes back showing certain infectious diseases, which means they have to notify the person; to advise him to go immediately to his doctor, and not to come there. Almost every homeless person now has a government phone that they could call, but, that's the rule...
 

Stepping out of the building, clean shaven, I encountered a shivering Harold at the back door, which creature I let in and fed. I then missed that street car by about the same amount of time it took to do that.
The wind was so strong, I would estimate the chill factor was "making it feel like" about 20 degrees. When the snots in your nose freeze and you have to start breathing through your mouth, you know it's cold.

In fact, it was actually "ski mask" weather, as frost-bitten faces would have been a likely danger to anyone caught outside for any length of time. But, in typical Louisiana fashion, most people I saw were dressed in hoodies with maybe a sweatshirt underneath; totally unprepared, despite having the hoods pulled over their heads.
The drivers on the roads were likewise handicapped by not having snow tires, and at one traffic light, which had a patch of ice leading up to it, I watched every other car slide and bump into the one in front of it whenever the light turned red. They would typically get out of their vehicles to check for damage, and then decide that getting back into the warmth of the car was more critical at that moment, than fretting over a broken license plate holder, and taking down insurance company information, etc..

My plasma donation was a success, so I felt good about having supplied one of the raw materials from which life giving medications are manufactured. And, oh yeah; good about the $125 that I was paid...
I joked one time to one of the "plasmapheresis" technicians: "You guy's are making plasma screen TV's back there, aren't you? It's OK, I won't give away your secret..." This got chuckles out of a few of them, with one young guy saying: "Nobody's ever asked that before," as if he had never thought of it.
After donating, I walked the half mile or so to the WalMart, across the street from which is the bus stop where the only bus back to Canal Street (the #62) stops. My phone's battery had died, probably from being frozen, but I remembered that there was a #62 that stopped there at 8:16 p.m. There was a small group of people at the stop, cringing in their hoodies with the hoods pulled over their heads.
After getting cat food and cash back from WalMart, I waited in the warmth of the lobby until shortly before 8:16 p.m., then half ran to the stop. The same group of people that I had seen were still there. There hadn't been a #62 by there for at least the past hour, I was told by a small black lady of about 50 years old, whom I first thought was a man, based upon the small area of face that I could see, peeking through the diaphragm of a hood that had been pulled as tightly closed as its drawstrings allowed.

I gingerly insinuated myself into the personal space of at least one of them, in order to avail myself to the buffer against what was probably a 35 mph wind, in the form of one of the plexiglass walls of the kiosk. During normal weather, I would half expect any of them to say: "Dude, can you not stand so close to me?" but, in a spirit engendered by what was a legitimate "cold emergency," none of them protested.
"I'm glad to see people here," I said to the small black lady, whom I still thought was a man -a Cajun man, as there seems to be a strain of them that are of diminutive stature and have rather androgynous faces. I figured it was fitting to at least make some small conversation with the person I was standing one foot away from. "That usually means the bus is coming. Some people know the schedules. When there's nobody here I always figure I just missed the thing..."

"Uh-huh, that's right," said that person in a voice that gave away the fact that it was a woman..
It seemed like our mutual sense in that regard bespoke of a wisdom that came from intuition and common sense, and I surmised that this might be a rather intelligent lady, despite whatever level of formal education she might acquired in her 50 or so years.

"It's the wind that'll get you," I added.

"Uh-huh, the wind chill!" responded the petite, probably Cajun lady.
"You have to turn your back to it," I added, in the way of excusing myself for any rudeness that she may have perceived from me having my back to her.
 

I cracked open the 24 ounce can of Heineken that I had gotten in WalMart, which was undoubtedly a lot colder than it was when I bought it, and took a few sips, thinking the carbohydrates in it would have a warming effect on me; or the alcohol a numbing one; or both.
I felt a pang of guilt over the fact that, unlike the few people there wearing only hoodies with maybe a sweatshirt underneath, I had had the foresight to don my winter jacket; one which had been given to me by my old friend, Howard, after he had returned from a sight-seeing trip in Alaska, back around 2013. It is, as would be expected, a Howard-sized jacket, copious enough to wrap around me almost twice, and bears the label "Alaska" on it, as if that is the brand name of it. Howard might have said something like: "I don't think I'll be needing this down here," when he presented it to me.

Think again, Howard. We aren't far enough "down" to preclude the need for such a garment. I wonder if he thought about that jacket wherever he is now, whenever he stepped outside on his way to buy a bag of Cheetoz and a 2-liter Pepsi that morning...
At one point, I felt the petite, probably Creole (I've been referring to her as Cajun, but Creole might be the right designation) lady's body press against my back.

She immediately giggled and said: "Sorry, I'm just trying to use the body heat." I noted that she hadn't said "your" body heat, and thought that maybe she thought that that would have sounded too personal.
With about 18 ounces of Heineken in me (the same lady had accidentally kicked the can over, and apologized, although it had been my fault for setting it down in the dark so close to her feet, so I could put my hands in my pockets in between sips) and hearing some almost prayer-like utterances coming from behind me, in Creole patios; I fell into a kind of a reverie about the concentration camp inmates that Solzhenitsyn wrote about in "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich," and felt sorry for them in hindsight.

But then I steered my thoughts towards feelings of gratitude over having a warm apartment waiting for me, should the #62 ever arrive. I half-incredulously wondered about The Law of Attraction, and what in the world its application to someone in a labor camp, or to myself at that moment, could possibly be.
I focused more strongly on the feelings of gratitude and happiness that I could wring from the situation I was in....I've got a few cans of good food for Harold...I got the money for my plasma...the Heineken seems to be helping... 

Just then, a particularly strong and icy breeze made the kiosk shudder, and a cry issued forth from the lady behind me. "Oh, Lord in Heaven," I paraphrase it as.
And then, I thought about the Howard sized winter coat that I was swimming in, made by "Alaska." I quickly calculated that the dimensions of Howard's girth were equal to just about one of myself; plus one petite Creole lady.

Wasting no more time, I unzipped the front of the jacket, and saying something as inane as "Here," opened it like the mouth of a whale ready to devour a school of squid.
She rushed into it, with another little giggle and I found that it neatly wrapped around her hoodie clad frame and I was able to hold it closed on the side of her opposite me, with one hand, and still have a free Heineken hand. A perfect fit.

"Oh, Lord Almighty, thank you.." she said, as we huddled together like a newlywed couple.
The few other people there, who were all African American, cast at least one glance our way, with expressions on their faces evincing kind of a combination of surprise and admiration.

It made me wonder if the tenor of race relations "down here" are at such a pitch to make them assume that a white man would just as soon watch a lady of color freeze to death than do what I had.
As if to answer a tacit question posed by none of them, the lady said aloud, to no one in particular: "This is an emergency; you gotta do what you gotta do!"
"Amen," the congregation said.

I must say that ol' Howard's jacket never felt so warm inside.
The #62 eventually arrived.
When the lady and I sat in separate seats, the driver kind of smiled, as if she had gleaned what had happened.

Now, I am home, Harold is warm and well fed, and I think I'll turn on my plasma screen TV and see what's on...

The Power Of Melissa Manchester

I'm passing up reading: "Ted Bundy's Only Living Victim Tells Her Story," which has been suggested to me on the front page of my Firefox browser -a good compliment to the holiday Spirit.
These recommendations are most probably generated by an algorithm, and I suppose my browsing habits could be being fed into the module, in order to come up with recommendations; things to look at before even going to whatever you opened the browser to look at, originally, if that was anything specific.
I had just been thinking about how, when we were growing up, 8th graders picked on 7th graders at a more merciless level than that which existed throughout my entire schooling. For example, while being terrorized by a lot of 8th graders, when in 7th grade, it wasn't like I wanted to do the same to the 6th graders below me.
I was wondering if this meant that some proclivity for violence matures in human males around the age at which they are in 8th grade.
Other things took the form of "hazing" such as between high school Seniors, and their Juniors below them, but it wasn't as much based on physical mis-matchings between individuals, but rather groups of Seniors imposing themselves upon outnumbered Juniors, mostly trying to humiliate and embarrass, but not beat up.
Anyways, that is what I was just wondering about; and I decided to put up a post. The present moment is good; it is much colder outside than it is inside, and so that is the simple pleasure sufficient for the evening...
Listening to 70's music which has stirred up memories of those years mentioned above is to blame for those thoughts coming around, I suspect.
I listened to Melissa Manchester's "You Should Hear (how she talks about you)" on the "oldies" station, and that did it.

21 Dollar Saturday

Saturday, I was joined at the Lilly Pad by Jacob, who had arrived at Sacred Heart along with a group of 5 other individuals, all of whom had been delivered by 2 vehicles. These "friends" of Jacob, I had to take at face value, as having been vetted by him, and I loosely followed the axiom of "any friend of Jacob is a friend of mine." The group were very polite and orderly, and shook my hand as I was introduced to them each in turn. I recognized one of them as being Hunter, from having met him before, and the same for Doug, whom I met once about 4 years ago, and remembered because of his having hallucinated on the acid that we had all dropped, that he was laying at the bottom of a large aquarium that the room he was in, had turned into. He had explained this to Jacob and I, after we had gone to check upon him, where he lay on his back, holding his breath and making swimming motions. The group of them, comprised of Hunter, Doug, a guy called "Rizzo," and a couple others, whose names I forget, were coming along with the intention of surfing Bourbon Street, ostensibly to hook up with women of some kind. These were very possibly young men (in their early 20's) who spent most of their lives staring at the screens of their phones. Their attention spans were put on display, after we had gotten to the street car stop and Hunter lamented that he was in danger of dying of boredom if the street car were to take more than a few minutes to arrive. Everything that I said to any of them, after the auspicious introductions, which went according to basic tradition, and made me think they may have been socialized through the channels of perhaps a church group or a bible study, was met with a deer in headlights stare, as if whatever I said had no counterpart in cyberspace and they were at a loss for an appropriate emoji or catch phrase to respond with. The typical "reply" to any light banter that I might have offered was to turn away from me without a word, or any facial expression which might have indicated that they at least had understood what I was trying to say.. One of the last interactions I had with any of them, before a group policy of ignoring me was put into action, was when I had looked down the trolley tracks and seen the headlight of a car that had made the turn onto Canal Street at Carrollton Street, a half mile away, and would be arriving in about 5 minutes. "I can see the light," I remarked, as a way of imparting the good news that our wait would not be much longer. "That's not good," said Hunter, which seemed to be a spiritually based comment. So, I added, for good measure: "The light only thrives in darkness.." and then was reminded of the "Satanic" bible that I once had, written by Anton Levey (sp?) and how that particular text was in large part just the inverse of the "holy" bible, with it's author in many cases having just taken the tradition Christian teachings and flipped them upside-down so that his viewpoint would be something like "Darkness is much more enjoyable against a backdrop of light," or something; I said... Hunter looked at me as if searching for a button that he could click on, in order to close a window and make me dissapear. After a couple seconds of this, he merely turned his back on me and walked a few feet away; a distance that he maintained for the rest of the time that I found myself in his company. 

A souvenir from "The Hunt."

This went on until such a time that Jacob and I had reached the Lilly Pad, where it was agreed that we would all smoke off of a THC vaporizor (similar to the device that landed Brittany Griner, the basketball player in a Russian prison for "9 years") and then the 4 or 5 of them would go off to seek adventure along the length of Bourbon Street, while Jacob and I stayed there and busked. 

Which we did, it was just one of those 21 dollar nights*; a far cry from the $169 bucks that Jacob and I split just a couple months ago.

"The Drunk Guy Who Sings Along, Out of Tune, For a Few Songs And Then Walks Off, Without Leaving A Tip" -that character- showed up and blocked the tip jar for about 20 minutes at one point and, while it was overall a fun night for at least myself; it wasn't very much for profit.

*I owe Jacob a couple bucks after discovering a few loose ones in the jar that I hadn't remembered going in there

Right Now I Am Writing

I think I'm playing a lot better than I have in the past. And I suppose it is from playing with Jr and having to play very accurately or else there will be 2 guitars not quite right, and the effect on the ear of such a situation being something like 4 times worse than that of just one guitarist who sucks (because you have to square the values, for some reason) it becomes incumbent upon me to try to not be the one screwing up.
And so, I hope that bears fruit soon.

And it is time to sleep. 

Right: I still have not had the courage to take an ice bath, as per the directives of Wim Hof (right) in his method, the other half of which consisting of a breathing exercise...

I am perhaps afraid of the cold, perhaps having frozen to death in almost all of my past lives....