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.."