These Dreams

Instant Lethargy (Just Add Water)

It was 6 pm. and I could see the leaves on the trees outside my window illuminated by the sun. I wanted to start over again, in some way -to sweep up and remove all the trash from the night before, and the day before that.

After getting up and walking around a bit, I had the urge to just lay back down. I felt lethargic and as if my body was heavier than normal. I then remembered having eaten a large amount of "instant" potatoes before going to sleep.

I did a few rounds of Wim Hof's deep breathing exercises, then went outside to sit in the sun for about 20 minutes. While sitting in the sun it was easy to space out and let go of all my thoughts. It felt like the time and place could have been any of the other times in my life when I had been doing the same thing.

I came inside, gave Harold some food, mixed some kratom with "electrolyte" water, then went back out, this time to the front of the building where the sun doesn't get blocked as soon, and absorbed some more.

I decided to confront one of the snakes in my mind by calling Lilly. I had been burdened with guilt over not having gone to play in front of her house Sunday afternoon, after she had called and just about invited me to do so, telling me that the weather was perfect, there were a lot of people in the street out front, and that "You should come down here now and play..."

That seemed like one of those forks in the road, where one way is the true and good and meaningful path, and the other leads to destruction.

After telling Lilly that I probably would go down there and play, I instead rode to the store to get some brandy and never made it out there, but woke up who knows when after that, feeling as though I had stood Lilly up in a sense. I had the feeling that she wanted me to be there for some reason. Perhaps it was as simple as her having a guest in her house, maybe a relative visiting from out of town, whom she wanted to impress by showing that she had her own resident musician. She had said that she finally had her pool serviced so that the filter motor would come on and automatically clean the water every morning, and that it had been cleaned and was ready for the coming season. 

It might seem frivolous of her to want every detail to be just so -her and her guests sitting around a clean pool in the late afternoon sun, sipping on drinks specially concocted by her using agave as a sweetener; and then, the finishing touch of having the strains of live music echoing down the alley from the street out front- to someone who has his own life, with its own details, to consider. But, Lilly has been such a good friend and benefactor that I should have dropped whatever I was doing and gone down there. She might have wanted me to come out back and play a few songs by the pool. I can't estimate how much that might have meant to her versus whatever trouble I would have to go through to make it there.

I called her and apologized for not having showed up, to which she paused a few seconds and said "I don't remember..."

My list of about a half dozen "important things to do: was itself paused since then. I now go to tackle the item of my phone -I need to Google the make and model to see if I can open it up to get at the SIM card, so I can switch it to the phone that I found in the Quarter and tried to return to its owner. Whomever that owner is, he seemed too embarrassed to reclaim it, probably because of the dozen or so nude photos of himself, or perhaps because of the other ones of a black lady who may have wound up on some missing person's list. He apparently never went to the "G Mobile" place to turn the service off on it after he lost it, because it is still active, and doesn't even have its screen locked through a PIN number.

It is a mysterious thing, that phone. And I found it a day or so after I had called about replacing mine and was told that, for around 32 bucks they would send me a new one. I was enjoying a string of incidents of finding whatever I was in need of "just sitting there." This has coincided with the "The Law of Attraction" guided meditation recordings that I've been trying to use for the 30 days straight that is prescribed by its creator.
After being guided through a series of visualizations designed to instill positive energy in me, I drift off to scientifically designed New Age sounding music, underneath which subliminal messages are repeated. Things like: "Whatever your needs are, you will now find that the universe will meet them. You will just find whatever you desire 'just laying there, somewhere,' attracted to you by the thoughts you create," type of stuff.

I can't express how happy and grateful I am now. Especially after having touched base with Lilly and found that I hadn't sullied her Sunday afternoon by chasing after my own ego driven wants.

I've been having some dreams of when I've been in jail in the past, that have had so much verisimilitude to them as to elicit a great sigh of relief from me when I wake up in apartment A 110, and not cell #62. The gratitude over being free lasts the whole day. I suppose if I stop going to sleep after eating a lot of starch, those dreams might become tempered a bit.

I'm re-reading "The Sun Also Rises," by Ernest Hemingway. I read it in 1986 when I was taking a college course on "Nobel Prize Winning Literature." But, like the rest of the subject matter, I hadn't gained enough life experience to really appreciate it. I remember amassing a William Faulkner library and reading almost every one of his works, with a lot of it going over my head. Now that I have lived in the "deep" south, those are like whole new books.

Coincidentally, a couple years ago, when I was reading Michener's "Iberia," I got as far as the chapter on Pamplona, Spain, where I placed a bookmark. 

Today, I pulled that book off the shelf to see if any of the stuff in Hemingway's novel is referenced there. "The Sun Also Rises," is set in Spain, and in Pamplona specifically. And there was the chapter on Pamplona, already marked and ready to go -a great coincidence, and a great companion to Hemingway! Now I can fact-check the guy...

 

And, Then Again, Were There Eggs, And Coenzyme Q-10

On this sunny Tuesday morning; I prepare to drift off to sleep using the guided meditation thing. I've probably used the thing 7 out of the last 10 days; which at least puts me in the running to receive some of the blessings that are promised if you use the video "for 30 days." There is an accumulative effect, I guess. And part of it is that the first few times you are analyzing the video itself, and thinking; basically. ..why does he use a voice with no inflection, right there; real flat sounding like the PA system at the airport..? type thing.

I have arranged my schedule so that I'm practicing a lot on the different instruments; and am starting to compile lists of songs. I did one yesterday based upon the "song of the month" for every month from like 1963 to the present. One thing I noticed was the downturn around the turn of the century when the song of almost each consecutive month wound up being some hip hop thing; with a few novelty fluff songs getting in there.

But I jotted stuff down with a pen; I was surprised at how many songs of the month that Katy Perry had; and how Madonna managed to remain consistent in her relevancy; scoring songs of the month in like, 1982 and also in 2022, type of thing.

That Bruno Mars guy kind of wears out his welcome on the running list...

And "Shakira" has got to be about the most famous artist that I've hardly heard of...

But I'm jotting down the names of songs I haven't played in 10 years, but used to do just about every night. They are all going on a poster board sized piece of white poster board which will get stuffed in the guitar case with the guitar, each night. I'm tired of forgetting I know songs like "Candle In The Wind," by Elton John, Now that I've learned to play each harmonica in at least 3 positions, I now have 6 keys to play in, using the 2 harps I have. And by using the capo on the guitar, I could theoretically play in any key. 

It's about time for the guided meditation thing to take me, in my mind, to a beautiful lush green pasture that is full of possibilities.

I can't figure out where this blessing of energy has come from, lately. I ate a dozen eggs over the course of the past 3 days. I fried them and used Irish Butter. Somehow I feel like I'm absorbing sunlight better.

Alert And Chomping At The Bit A Bit

 

I just couldn't repeat Saturday morning's performance in which I put myself asleep at around sunup and was awake, alert and chomping at the bit to get out to the Lilly Pad. I had butterflies in my stomach over the prospect of encountering the guy with the dog and the resonator guitar.

I had actually tried to deal with the effect of the guy's presence through using the guided meditation videos. I came to the realization that I was already painting the scene black by assuming that myself and the guy are going to square off like rams during mating season and lock horns in front of Lilly's house.

But, I flipped the script and envisioned myself making friends with the guy; somehow. Like, we would go on to become great pals, type of thing.

I have trouble looking ahead and seeing a way to explain to the guy and to the dog that Lilly had authorized the use of a parcel of her property for use by me in order to conduct the business of busking., This had been cleared with the immediate neighbors in the block, with only one mild protestation being directed at my harmonica, which Barnaby Chancellor claimed to be able to hear in the bedroom all the way at the back of his "shotgun" condo, even with a pillow pressed to his head.

I think I was able to avoid the 10 o' clock harmonica curfew, that Lilly had kind of asked of me after having made her rounds to the immediate neighbors to explain that she had, in the name of rescuing a street musician from probable starvation, really wished to give him an opportunity to make money; and since the block is zoned as residential, it behooved her to go around asking if it was alright with all of them to allow her to let a guy play in front of her house.

She then went and talked to perhaps the chief of police down on Royal Street and, imbuing me with the utility of a service dog, in a sense, told the police that my presence was very soothing to her, made her feel safer and gave her the even greater payoff of giving a guy a chance to work; which helped her sleep better while songs like "Golden Slulmbers" purportedly helped one of her daughters sleep better. And she might have even let the chief in on some of the dirt from the dispute between her and the neighbor to our left; telling him that, while I was playing, I was also keeping close tabs on the comings and goings in and out of that property; whose owners, Lilly suspects might be running an "air bnb," which is something I know little about except that maybe it's illegal in certain circumstances to do so; and Lilly might have said that I was doing actual security work, disguiesed as a busker, type of thing. The upshot was that the cops began to just ride by on their horses and even sometimes one of them would say: "Hi, Daniel..."

I remember living in St. Augustine where the cops were biased at a 180 degree angle from the NOLA ones; most evident in the attitude of the St. Augustine cops was to run as many homeless people out of that city of 25,000 residents but anotheer 2,000 homeless (the weather is fine and there is a some group that charitably feeds homeless people for every 17 homeless people, type of thing.

So, the cops there were literally following homeless people on bikes on their cop bikes at a distance, and waiting for the guy to stop his bike to piss in the bushes or to trespass upon some private property. Then, a ticket for like 100 bucks is written up for the pisser, and he has something like 90 days to come up with the 100 dollars, which will need to be skimmed off the top after beer and cigarettes and weed have been purchased. And, if that has to come from the spoils of panhandling, the poor pisser between a shrub and a fence and pretty much out of public view might find himself in a world of trouble once that 90th day rolled around and the 100 dollars hasn't been paid. Everyone on the street somehow knew that if you don't pay by 90 days; a warrant goes out immediately for your arrest; and that the same cops who tiptoe behind you as you disappear into a totally occluded spot; hoping that when they snap their flashlight on it will be right in the middle of you peeing and it will illuminate the stream of it cascading harmlessly onto a patch of dirt or something. That would allow him, in clear conscious to bark: "ID, please! Urinating in public!!" rather than not having illuminated his crime. He would then have to train his flashlight beam where the guy had been standing, and seeing a wet spot on the ground, charge that it was urine, and had come from the guy who had been standing there. Then the homeless guy could ostensibly claim that someone else must have been there before him and urinated.

At that point the bike cop would probably just affirm on a citation that he had cought you urinating out of sight in public. But the point is that the cops would avidly keep track of names and dates and certainly there was a bulletin board at the station with 8 x 10 glossy photos of they that they never intend to see again.

In one regard the 100 dollar ticket might be the catalyst for the homeless guy to pull himself up by the bootstraps by getting a job, using the shelters as the resources for helping the homeless pull themselves up that they were meant to be -a place to get a good night's sleep for a couple of weeks, during which time you would pound the pavement during the days in clean clothing and hopefully land a job. Then a conference with one of the social workers at the shelter, during which the 100 dollar ticket would be explained, could take place with the result that, since you were employed you would be allowed an extra couple weeks to get a couple more checks under your belt.

That's a long row to hoe for 92% of the homeless people in St. Augustine. Cleaning yourself up and becoming gainfully employed would turn the $100 ticket into a blessing in disguies. Kind of like the judicial system saying: "If you aren't the kind of total loser that we don't want in our community, then you should be able to come up with $100 in 90 days..."

Most of those ticketed wind up getting the hell out of there by day 89. The other cities in Florida will see a "do not extradite" note in the file of the guy if they ever run his name and it comes up that he has a warrant out for him in St. Augustine for urinating in public. Please don't bring him back here, justice can wait.

When I lived there, I had something like 12 of those tickets, but would go to the office of the DA and, explaining that I was a street musician ask for an extension of some sort, so that it wound up that I was able to pay "just something" on each ticket. That enervated the bike cops, who must have had the impression that they had ticketed me enough that some of them should be coming due, and I should just disappear any day; yet I lingered for months...Me and my girlfriend, Karrie.

Karrie was the most wanted person in St. Augustine, at one point. We were staying about 2 miles out of town, in a large patch of trees surrounded on all sides by thickets so that there was just one way in and out. In there we had a huge tent and it was our home. Karrie was a talented panhandler, and often would have a good night doing so on the nights when I hardly made anything, and vice-versa.

But, I had no idea that she had so many warrants until we were visited by 3 cops out there, one female and two guys.

"Police; could you step out of the tent," one of them said. Before we could even step out the female became aghast and blurted out; "Oh, my God, you weren't fornicating, were you?!"

We stepped out and there was the source of the comment, a smallish female with kind of a butch haircut. "Only a lesbian would call it 'fornicating,'" I couldn't help muttering as I brushed by her. They then stood around talking on their radios. no doubt reporting in that they had hit the jackpot in discovering the notorious Karrie Porras. In the middle of this the female's eye was caught by a large jug of Arizona iced tea. With eyes wide she ejaculated: "Uuh, tell me that isn't urine in that jar!"

"No, that's Arizona tea in there; we urinate right where you're standing, as a matter of fact," I said.

They led Karrie away, but she was back about 3 hours later. They had somehow let her go. She had another talent for acting childish and she must have convinced them that she was innocent by reason of innocense; as in having some kind of retardation that yield a "mental age" of like 11 years old. It would be cruel to lock up such a person in such a liberal town of 25,000 plus around 2,000 homeless.

But, back the point of the cop saying "How's it going, Daniel," as he rides by on his horse.

The first night that I met Karrie, we were soon on our way to a liquor store where there was a cop coming or going who, upon seeing us together, kind of made it a point to say "Hi Karrie, how are you doing?" But, with those 180 degrees from NOLA cops, cops the meaning was pretty obvius to me. He wanted me to know that he knew the girl I was with by name and that it would be very easy for him to recall later having seen her with that street musician guy who showed up a few months ago and, quite frankly, should have been run out of town by now.

If anything happens to Karrie, we know where to come looking, type of thing.

One of the bonuses from her talent at being childish was that the whole police force, despite having like 67 warrants out for her were very protective of her.

I suppose they knew that if they brought her in she would be facing so much jail time that it would be inhumane, so they just didn't bring her in front of a judge. Even if the judge wanted to have mercy on her she would have to throw out a lot of the charges (or else sentence her to one day on each) and that would negate a lot of work that went into stalking and ticketing the girl. There is probably some stat kept which tracks how many tickets the officers write up that went on to get thrown out of court. It might imply that the officer had poor judgment if 30 of his tickets were found to be without merit; because they were all for Karrie..

Because The World Is Round

After the magical Friday night of busking;

followed by attempts to unwind at home; which failed until just around sunup when I drifted off, then woke up at 4, just an hour and a half from the Lilly suggested starting time. To break the habit, in Lilly's words; of the guy with the dog, of showing up every night and giving Lilly a headache with his resonator guitar. I low-key think that what the dear lady is trying to do is not break anyone's habits, but to reform me and mine, into a habit of showing up every evening, just before sundown. 

But, I was up just before the "5:30" starting time that Lilly had strongly suggested I internalize. 
I managed to make it there at what turned out to be 6:20 p.m. and began to play. Initially this seemed to be to the consternation of a guy who was sitting on Lilly's other stoop, where he was apparently reading, and seemed to be jotting things down on paper with an actual ink pen...
My first goal was to get the guy on the other stoop to stop looking irritated.

I had decided to ride the street car down there; a cost of $2.50 for the round trip; but I was bloated with cash after having had about a 75 dollar Friday night.

On the street car there were hardly any empty seats, but a Latina looking lady in her late 40's perhaps, scooted over and made enough room for me to squeeze in between her and what turned out to be an operations manager in some industry in Colorado Springs, where she moved to at the age of 18 from Wisconsin, some city not far from Racine.

Squeezing into the seat was one thing, but dealing with the backpack and guitar was the more complex thing. I got the baak pack between my feet and then made some comment to the lady in her late 60's from Colorado Springs about the bag having had everything on Bourbon Street spilled on it.

I asked her if there were street musicians in Colarado Springs and she said yes, there were. But they were all in Denver. She must have thought I asked her if there were street performers in Colorado itself; and didn't hear the "Springs" part.

I got off the trolley and immediately found a fat roach on the sidewalk next to an ashtray outside the Paradise diner or whaever it is...
I got out to the Lilly Pad and tuned up and smoked some of that fat roach; then found myself vamping on "Brick House," by The Commodores. I realized in those moments that I had discovered a good way to idle down so you're not playing like a maniac the entire time you are out there. It is pretty easy to kind of get in a rocking (both literally and figuratively) groove and then just "Aww, she's a BRICK; HOUSE! (she's mighty, mighty, just lettin' it all hang out!" -ing your way through all the times that there are people within ear shot but not maney. 

Using that as filler and then just trying to rip away as best I could, with the knowledge that Angelique, the younger of Lilly's 2 daughters (the older one having just earned a master's degree in something, from I think Layola University) has been reporting to Lilly upon detection of music being played out front; who it is that is doing so.

When I called Lilly not long after I woke at 4, to find out if the guy with the dog and the resonator guitar was there playing.

He wasn't "But you better hurry up, Daniel." 

She then informed me that when Angelique had gone to the front corner window, after they heard something coming from out front, she hadn't even bothered to peer through the shutters; she could tell that it was me; and then Lilly passed on the complement of it having sounded "smooth and really nice" to Angelique.

I made less than on Friday, but was given a 20 dollar nicotine vape by a guy who had no cash but wanted to give me something. A nicotine vape was almost certainly where my next 14 bucks was going to go -for the cheapest kind...

And then, it just sounded good and the weather was perfect and I discovered the "idling down" method of pacing oneself and extending working hours thereby. I mean, do I really want to be doing some fancy pickin' when a skeezer is the only sould walking past? Sometimes yeah, actually; but I don't think that's because of the skeezer; you would feel the same regardless...

Typo Spoiler

With the way the browser here is crashing left and right, I am reluctant to even proof-read then correct typos and grammatical errors; not mention the occasional non sequitur...
In a way, everything has been more a blessing than a curse; it seems that the "boring old" guided meditation videos and the sleep hypnosis type things with positive affirmations, on top of music which is tuned to positive brain wave frequencies -those play fine. It's the politically slanted stuff, that I'm probably better off without, which tends to crash the browser; perhaps because of some bug in the software through which the algorithm plants trackers and tries to steer me towards propaganda, to try to polarize my thinking towards one of the extremes; in service to some overarching agenda designed to disintegrate the moral fabric of the nation I live in. All that chicanery might cause some kind of glitch whereby my browser crashes.
The meditation videos seem to be helping me. I have at least made a list of about 6 things that I want to accomplish; and have scratched the surface of a couple of them.

I put in an application to work part time at a pet food store about a mile up the street. I don't think it would be "selling out" as an artist to make a little extra money that is guaranteed, rather than at the mercy of tippers. The alternative would be to busk an extra 20 hours a week; and doing that to the point where I would be just going through the motions and not feeling it; that would be more like selling out in my opinion...

And, I contacted the plasma donation place where I used to go, before I tried the "other one" for a while. I haven't been to that one in about 9 months, so, I can go in as a "new donor," and take advantage of the incentive program in place to attract them, which will give me something like 100 bucks for the first 10 donations. That's a new laptop and a couple good harmonicas. As long as I can do that and continue to be a fixture at the Lilly Pad -so as to stay spiritually healthy...

I have made strides towards becoming that fixture once again at the Lilly Pad, having gone out and busked for something like 5 nights in a row, before messing that up this week by missing Wednesday and Thursday nights. I guess the guided meditations can take you 2 steps forward then one step back....

The punishment for that breach seems to have come fast, as Lilly called me around 9:30 tonight (when I usually would have been starting) to inform me that she had just knocked on her window to run off a guy who had played in front of her house the night before and had been there since about 6 p.m., she said.

She described him as a guy with a dog who played nice music but did so on a "resonator" type guitar, which sounds almost like a banjo and which Lilly complained about being able to hear through her walls and all the way to the back of her house. She said that I sounded "smoother," which she (and her daughters) liked.

I thought that she might have waited until 9:30 to knock on the window so that if I was to arrive shortly thereafter, he would be gone, and there would be no possible confrontation.

But, The Dark...

I wondered how he was able to play after dark, as, the main reason I can play where I do is because of the little spotlight that I hang in the vines above my head that puts me in a circle of light. The one night that I forgot to bring it I only made about 4 bucks, as tourists seemed to cross over to the other side before getting to me; probably having noticed me there, but me not being lit up enough for them to be able to tell if I was holding a guitar or a rifle. Or it might just be that light attracts humans like moths.

So, I did kind of question how he would be able to stay until 9:30 even, and make any money. Lilly said that he was playing right in front of the house, where there would at least be some light from the nearby lamp post, where I originally started out playing before a guy whose bedroom was right on the other side of the wall from me said he didn't mind me playing, but would I stop at 10 p.m. each night. i agreed to do so, but this was in 2012 when I was an alcoholic on the level of about 8 out of 10 stars, or to the point that I would find things the next morning either totally missing without explanation or totally present, like a stuffed animal that was in my backpack one morning that I had no idea of the origins of. The occasional discovery of a good bit of money underneath the guitar when taking it out of the case was scant compensation for all of the negatives inherent in being 8 tenths of a full blown alcoholic.

Such as having wandered up on the Lilly Pad one time at about 1:15 a.m. and sat down and begun to play, with the time having slipped my mind, and then the guy emerging to remind me of the deal that we had made, and me having no choice but to admit that I had lost track of time (and might even find a stuffed animal in my bag the next morning) and that was when I could no longer play right under the lamp post, like right off a picture post card from The French Quarter.

So then I moved down to right in front of Lilly's house where the resonator guy with the dog purportedly was last night. The problem with that was my own sound seemed to resonate throughout Lilly's house and was especially irritating to Lilly's ex-husband, who somehow wound up amicably living in the house, and I thought still did.

Now it is early Friday morning and I guess I should make it my priority to be there before the "6 o' clock" that Lilly said the guy with the dog started playing at the past couple nights that I took off. I still suspect that Lilly like the fact that I was out there 5 nights in a row and knew that the best way to keep me showing up regularly would be to concoct a story about a guy with a dog trying to move in on my territory.

I kind of asked her if she could just talk to him, like she had a Jamaican guy who was showing up in the afternoons and playing a ukulele and tell him she didn't mind him playing there, but if her friend were to show up around 9:30 as I often did, would he kindly give me the spot. That worked well with "Ghost," (as that was what the Jamaican guy went by) and he sometimes reported having made 100 bucks from about 3:30 in the afternoon until I got there 6 hours later. He was happy just to have the permission of a resident to play in that block; and was probably pretty ukulele-ed out after 6 hours at that point. 

Although Lilly reassured me by telling me; "You're my Daniel; he's not my Daniel; I'd rather have you playing there," she told me "Things are different," after I asked her about talking to the guy for me. I'm not sure how to take that but I suspect it might have something to do with the new social justice type b.s. that is polluting minds not lucky enough to have their browsers crash before they see it. It's possible that Lilly can't bring herself to run off a guy with a dog whom she described as "nice" and who  also "plays nice," except for the energy with which he strums the guitar and sends that tinny, half banjo / half guitar sound through the 260 year old timbers of her house.

I'm hoping this is just a ploy by Lilly to scare me into showing up, ostensibly, to preserve my spot. She has called me a few times to ask me to "please come and play," There could be any number of reasons for that; she might be trying to recapture a simpler time before the pandemic and feel as though everything is back to normal. I wasn't until I felt that way myself that I started venturing out there more regularly. But, I guess the punishment is swift for missing a couple nights...

If Jacob wants to busk tomorrow, It would behoove me to meet him at his job at the radio station so we could leave right after the show ends at 5 and hopefully get to Lilly's before any guy with a dog does. If he is just arriving, then I could just tell him that I have been playing there for 12 years and kind of hint that it is only through the grace of the people on the block that anyone can play there. If he tells me that he has already met Lilly and that she gave him her approval, then I could propose that he play there from say, 3 until 8; and then give me the spot if I show up. If he has met Lilly and I tell him that she has told me it was "my" spot and to just call her if anyone else tries to play there, then he shouldn't have any reason to doubt me.

I'll still have the option of calling her, depending upon how "nice" or not the guy turns out to be. But, I do worry about in what way "things are different, now.."

Somehow Going From Busking To Being Abducted As A Child...

I found the wrought-iron chair sitting there at the Lilly Pad at around 4:30 this Sunday afternoon. I sat in it and made, I think, 18 bucks and then, after having put the spotlight up and played into the darkness a bit, but quit when I saw the number of tourists had dwindled a bit from their earlier presence.

I rode the bike down after having laced a Bang energy drink with 2 shots of Amsterdam vodka, and a search of the block where the Unique Grocery sits yielded a pretty decent sized roach from out of one of the boxes that are planters that have no plants growing in them. I just imagined there being roaches in those things, like people would stand near the vacant planters and smoke their herb on their break or whatever, then just toss the roach into the thing, because it's dirt, and won't start any fires, type of thing...

So, there was the fat roach to go with the Bang and vodka drink; and at the Lilly Pad was the wrought iron chair, but with no drug dealer sitting in it...

I think I played pretty well in spots and I think I'm changing the way I approach something -maybe the harmonica- but I did a pretty decent version of "I Feel Fine," the Beatles song that a couple of ladies stopped to listen to; at which point I decided to just do it as well as possible; but that kind of meant taking a trip in my imagination to being a 10 year old listening to the song off a Panasonic "phonograph," I guess they had the specifications to call them; and singing along with John Lennon, myself and Marty Ryan. Moving the phonographic LP records (LP meant "long playing." I know CDs came along and had a good laugh at that boast) into the shade once the sun came up high enough to clear the woods behind our house. We could disappear into the woods behind our house and literally walk for more than a mile in certain directions; a veritable kingdom with trails leading to all kinds of storied spots. Places with nicknames like: The Hollow Tree; The Big Hole, Person's Personal Junkyard, and I believe one clump of bushes that would serve as a hiding place should you be a small kid and hear the approach of teenagers with ill intent; I think that was called "Ragweed."

We had menacing teen aged kids that lived in the vicinity and they would actually caputure us little kinds and hold us against our will. One thime they made me and my best friend, Dave fight each other under the threat that "Whoever loses, we're gonna beet the shit out of!"

So Dave an I went at it and I'm glad that we were too young to have known about the use of fist in fighting; we had our own staged fights in school where us kids would wrestle each other; no broken noses or anything. So, I was trying as best I could to win because I didn't want Mark Person and his friends, who all smelled of cigarettes and so, it wasn't a far stretch to assume that they would beat the shit out of the loser. I think I pinned Dave down, and somehow there was a diversion such as some other of their friends having returned with a six pack of beer, somehow; and we were let go, that time.

We would complain to our parents about the Persons. But, they were the care takers of the Jewish Cemetery, and they lived in a house that had a crude dirt road leading to a field that would someday be a part of the Jewish Cemetery. And they seemed to do all the work while the official Caretaker sat in the house, which was itself removed from the nearest paved road by at least a tenth mile long driveway.

One of the kids lost a finger or something making a pipe bomb in that house; and also one time a gun went off, wounding that same kid. The father had been cleaning it; it was an accident. End of story when it came to The Person's, I guess.

They had an older brother who played the electric guitar, but I only heard that music coming through the woods a few times when I was only about 6 or 7 years old, and he had moved out by the time I was being terrorized by his younger brothers.

The Person's and their gang employed a certain trick, which actually tricked us the first couple times they tried it.

It was simply that most of them would hide, off to the side of the path and let me and whatever friend I was with, pass by them. Then a little further up, Mark Person himself (usually) would jump onto the path a little ways in front of us; at which point, at least the first couple times, we would turn tail and start running in the opposite direction. Then the rest of the cigarette smelling school dropouts would descend upon us, making the capture. We might be made to eat worms or...worse.

We eventually learned to run "sideways" whenever Mark Person materialized right in front of us. We could make good enough time, through the thickets, to escape, since we made it our point to know those woods and its manifold paths.

We were actually safe if we went no further than a row of apple trees, which may have once been planted there as a marker, for thereabouts was where the cemetery property started. As very small kids we never went past that row of trees because, once past them, we couldn't see our house anymore; and that sent eerie sensations down our little spines, I guess.

My point, I suppose is that it was a pretty decent late afternoon of busking. I had called Lilly earlier, but she was in the middle of something and I didn't get around to mentioning the iron chair nor the 2 drug dealers that seemed to want to hang around me, perhaps to deflect suspicion about what they were doing out there.

This One Will Run It's Course

As busking time came along, I went to the street car stop, intending to ride down to the Quarter; and then walk the ten blocks to Lilly's. That would also commit me to making sure I set aside enough to ride back; or that I'm prepared to walk for about 29 minutes to get home.

But, I decided, after about 5 minutes of waiting for a street car that wasn't even yet in sight, to walk back to the apartment and get the bike. That would give me a couple shots of brandy in exchange for the pedaling down there; and it would make it a less consequential decision to, for any reason just do a ride-through of the Quarter, returning home after having just checked out the scene, type of thing. When you have to pay the street car to return home after not having played, it drives home the fact that you kind of wasted money going down there, only to come right back home, after not liking the vibe of it.

But, last night, I was put in the awkward position of not having a phone on me at such a time as when there were two middle aged black men sitting on Lilly's stoop and advertising "good weed and coke' in a voice loud enough that surely someone inside would be able to hear it. Those "historically accurate" houses, having been patched, over time, using the same bricks and mortar as what was used in the period when they were built; seem to all suffer from very poor dampening of outside sounds. You can make out the conversations of people walking past your house, if you are sitting in the front room. I guess walls and windows have become much more sound proof in the last 250 years...

I failed to communicate with the guys who were sitting there; one of whom being in the wrought iron chair that I had found by a trash can about a half block away the night before. I had intended to call Lilly to inform her that there was probably still a pretty nice outdoor chair in front of her house, that she might want to grab and put by her pool or something; but I had forgotten.

The guys seemed to think that we could co-exist and they could yell "good weed and coke" over whatever music I might be playing; and their proximity to me, as would imply that we were a group of 3 like minded souls, could only become a blessing to each of us.

I don't think there was any malice intended, and it is just like someone on coke to just assume that his company could only be of value in any given social situation -so confident in himself would he artificially be...

But, I wound up trying to play with them hawking their wares at the same time, which lasted maybe 15 minutes; after which I said something to the effect of that people were going to think that we were a group of 3, and that I might just be using the guitar as a prop to throw the Law off, type of thing...and not playing for tips, type of thing...

That got them to move, but only to the other side of the stoop. It was still as if we were a group of 3. I could hear one of them making sounds which might have been him trying to rap over what I was playing; but it was as distracting as I let it become, I guess, which wasn't not at all. 

I think the thing that was perplexing me was, if the guy was being critical of what I was playing, then why did he only move a few feet to give me some space? They were probably arguing over having ceded even those few feet, based upon them having been there first. And, with my phone issues not having been solved yet, I paid the price of not having a charged phone so that I could have called Lilly and informed her about the "good weed and coke" brothers and their apparent unwillingness to move, in a case where they could move just as much product without being close enough to me to make it look like I was with them. 

I figured that I would just let this one run its course. 

I had enough to worry about in just trying to sound good; and after I had played what I thought were pretty good versions of a couple songs all the while being aware that people seemed reluctant to stop to listen for some reason, I eventually packed up. When I went over to get my bike, the one remaining guy asked me if I was going to play at another spot. "No, I wasn't thinking of another spot," I said.

I will just have to call Lilly tomorrow, even if it is just as I'm leaving, so she can check her camera to see if it's all clear. I'm not sure if I've ever seen these particular guys, but I'm really bad with faces. if they are kind of "regulars" in the block then surely they are on Lilly's radar.

I suppose I just let the guy know that he was putting me out of business, just because he wanted to sit just 10 feet away from me and beat box and rap or whatever, so that a listener in a certain spot might assume we were a musical combination of some sort...

"Where Were You?" Type Situations

High noon occurs around 1:15 p.m. around these parts...

The sun may be directly overhead at 12 o' clock wherever the time line is drawn, over by Pensacola, Florida, but it takes another 80 minutes or so before it is looking straight down upon Sacred Heart...

It seems that my work is cut out for me; clean the kitchen and do the Wim Hof deep breathing exercises; then it will be incumbent upon me to go out and play at the Lilly Pad; even though the carrot on a string in front of me will probably the prospect of finding alcohol and tobacco and weed on the ground.

There are so many people smoking weed out there -you can smell it just about once every hundred yards you walk- and the preferred smoking method seems to be shifting away from the "blunts" made from emptying the guts out of a cigar then using the outer leaf to roll; towards the "tubes," which were very popular with my Russian friends back in Florida, 20 years ago. Their word for a tube like that was Kazbak with the long "a" vowel sounding like "bake."

But the tubes are easy to spot laying on the ground all over the Quarter, and usually still have the last couple puffs still in them; from people not wanting to smoke them all the way down and taste the paper in their last toke.

Lilly has been calling me and asking me to go down there to play; just to be present in her block; pulling on my heart strings by telling me that her younger daughter, Angelique, can hear me, and it calms her down and helps her sleep, and that it warms her own heart to know that I'm "out there."

This kind of puts a bit of pressure on me as, if I tell her around noon that I'm probably going to be out there by 4 or 5, then I start to feel negligent if for any other reason, I decided not to go down there.

It feels like a job to some degree and I sometimes feel the same reluctance to go to work that I did when I had jobs that required punching clocks and being stuck there until the end of a particular shift.

When I was homeless, it would get boring just sitting under the dock, hearing the bustle from the nearby Quarter, and all I would have to tell myself was: "If I don't go out to play, I won't have anything..."

And, sure enough, after emerging and walking to the CVS for "the morning energy drink," and consuming it; I would usually berate myself for having lain there so long staring out across the river.

Then, there would be the walk down Royal Street, stopping to chat with up to a dozen different street performers, so that the sun would be sinking low at such a time I would play my first few songs at the Lilly Pad, before taking the first 5 bucks I made off to a nearby store for "the evening alcohol drink." Then I would basically play and drink; and it would follow the pattern of playing pretty well and making around 18 bucks per hour, until such a point where I would start to get sloppy in my playing; and then would go off to gather up food, on my way back to the dock, where I would build a small fire and have a feast. There would typically be beef tenderloin fillets or lamb upon the tin foil over the fire, to go with any number of those prepackaged salads that come with greens and some fixings intended to impart a theme to the thing. A Mexican-style one might have cheddar cheese along with a few chips and some salsa, in the package, type of thing. There was always plenty of sushi, as Rouses Market would throw a black plastic bag out nightly, which could be located in the dark by squeezing each bag in their dumpster until hearing the tell tale sound of sushi containers crackling -only one kind of plastic makes that sound... 

Sometimes I would have a half dozen containers to go along with the tenderloin on the grill, and would be done cooking and have extinguished my fire by the time the Natchez steamboat returned, after making its last run, at around 1:15 a.m.

Then, I would eventually drift off to sleep, to be woken by the calliope playing around 10 in the morning, drumming up passengers for its 11 a.m. departure; when both the Natchez's and my day would start. This was pretty much 7 days a week for me, as I would have been bored silly staying under the dock all day any day...

I think I figured that I was living on about $280 a week back then (2011-2013) which means I was adhering to the grueling work schedule of playing around 15 hours a week.

Today, I still feel the gravity imparted by my having told Lilly that I was going to resume playing every night, once again. Now, she can give me a "Where were you last night?" call at any minute. I am dual minded on this. On one hand I benefit from the feeling I get after I  robot-ically go out on nights when I don't really feel like it, after telling myself: "This is my job; it's all I have to do to hold up my end of 'the bargain'" and I wind up having a great night, usually telling myself: "And to think I almost stayed home and missed out on all this..." as I pedal homeward...

Then, on the other hand I kind of started busking so as to be my own boss and not have to deal with any "Where were you?" type situations...

Well, It's A 30 Day Program...

 2 Days in a row I listened to the hypnosis/self-improvement recording. With my eyes closed, I tried to suspend my disbelief and affirm to myself that I am worthy; and, not only that but, just as I am....

The overarching concept and name of the video (which is functionally just an audio track because you're instructed to close your eyes, and why wouldn't you as they are getting heavier, like they are made of marble...

But, I believe it is a well intended Youtube video; and it's a "try this for 30 days and see if you still want to murder someone and then turn the gun on yourself" style videos that seem to really populate the search result box with usually a dozen equally compelling guided meditations...

It's really good stuff (meditation) and alcohol consumption has a deleterious effect upon, I believe, the super small parts of the brain that were the last to be added on after the more important parts pertaining to fighting and fleeing; had matured. Then comes the high frequency tuner portion of the brain that can sense things that can't be seen, heard nor felt....

And I happen to wonder sometimes if those aren't the circuits that get knocked out first by a punch of tequila, dark rum and High-C. (Any flavor except apple -for some odd reason).

So, I only half mock the "guided meditations" that flourish so much that you can find a dozen cool ones; all on the same theme, such as "confidence" or "anxiety" and other abstract things that people battle with...

I choose them based upon their length vs how much ime I have to devote to becoming more confident, as that is the one I picked, and now I'm stuck for the next 30 days, perhaps gaining a whole bunch of confidence, but at the expense of some other trait that I could use some honing up on; a lot more than on my confidence. 

But a 5 and a half minute video that purports to usher you into deep levels of relaxation; so as to make you suggestible to the positive affirmations provided. 

I think the 30 days straight of doing the meditation might be for people like me who must have a good laugh over something before wanting to taking it more seriously. I mean when "the guy" (Jason Stephenson comes to mind -I would change tabs and just Google it but, the current state of my laptop and its mysterious crashings have made me mouse shy when it comes to fancy things that ued to be routine...

At one point the affirmation is "You are beautiful..." and it comes from out of left field a bit; almost makes you blush; but in my case I was like seeing myself as Charles Manson, with his headphones on; and the affirmation comes. Or the Son of Sam guy.. 

So I always interrupt my own journey into the nether regions of relaxation at that point as I want to yell at my screen "What if I'm Donald Trump watching this?!"

"I am Enough Just As I Am..."

So, you're watching a self improvement type program and you learn that you are enough just as you are...Do you press stop and go on to something else, since you don't stand any improving?

These thoughts are like clouds, though, and shouldn't impede you and your imagination in imagining that you are beautiful.

I just imagine myself some retarded person with a swine's sense of judgment seeing myself, as if I was seeing myself in a mirror but through this slob's body and thinking; well, in this case I guess I'm kind of beautiful; let me make her drunk also in my imagination and...oh, what a beautiful man in a black hat!

I am pushing my luck with the inexplicable browser crashes lately. I have had suggestions on the Reddit r/ asking other people why you get the snake chasing its tail thing and then, boom, nothing...

It was suggested by some that I should run a memory test to see if my RAM, which costs money to replace, is corrupted. I guess I'm aftraid it's going to be and want to postpone the horrendous discovery a bit...

I would have to download the Memtest86 onto a bootable USB then run the thing upon the memory in my computer. It is possible that the "It's probably full of dust and cat hair" guy's held some merit.. I flipped the thing over and kind of whacked it a bit while tickling the keys on the keyboard and, there was .