Every Other Way Besides Monetarily

The Lord helps those who help themselves.

So, I didn't help myself to a Digourno Bacon And Cheese Stuffed Crust pizza (gee, that sure is a mouthful) as I had a week ago, on Friday. Nor did I eat a whole box of Pop Tarts as dessert.

After losing my food card and having to wait a week for a new one I decided that it would be a good time for another "intermittent" fast; which I did mostly on juice, alternated with alkaline water.

When the new card came it had $347 on it. 

Having to rely upon busking cash alone for juice and water all week; the money that had accrued felt like it was excess. I wondered if I had gotten an extra hundred for having had to wait a week; or if there had been some kind of stimulus applied.

A few days of fasting and cleansing had me feeling so well, like I was bullet proof. I felt like I could splurge with impunity on the finest pizza pie that the Family Dollar has to offer -one that sells in that particular "dollar" store for $8.57. 

I was drinking an Andy Gator IPA. Drinking these days seems to just turn into a gateway to other destructive things. Like it rips away a layer of inhibition or maybe common sense. I had a reckless urge to eat a whole pizza. 

I like to reserve the word "incredible" for incredible things; but, after I added my own touches to the thing, a sprinkling of salt and a few drops of hot sauce, here and there, the pizza was incredible. I had also lucked out with the oven; not too hot or cold; too long or short, type of thing.

I deceived myself into thinking that my body would be so grateful for the nutrition that in the pizza that it would give me a pass on some of the other ingredients listed in the two paragraphs of them on the back of the box.

I'm returning to a subject from a couple weeks ago concerning the "addict," which is a distinct classification of personality type, or a disease, I'm not sure.

It seems like if I choose other things like kratom, occasional weed and a little therapeutic LSD every other weekend or so; then I might be able to avoid being a helpless and hopeless alcoholic.

 "You've got to serve somebody; yeah, you gotta' serve somebody. It may be the devil or it might be the Lord; but you're gonna have to serve somebody" -Bob Dylan, (from the "Slow Train Coming" album, that I had on cassette in the late 1970's.)

But, you can serve the Lord with a cigarette in your mouth. Your hands would still be free. My Hindu chiropractor back in the 1980's said that enlightened spirits can dwell in bodies that are not necessarily wholesome, saintly and pure.

Baptist preachers, not so much. I think the Baptists I knew would find fault with any sermon preached by a guy who would step outside for a cigarette when he's done preaching. All this, while knowing at a cerebral level that Jesus walked around in sandals and dressed like a hippie. And the wine at the Last Supper is well documented.

A Baptist friend of mine, who was also the choir director at Bethany Baptist church in Gardner, Ma., a city of 18,000 people at the time, where I went to community college, asked me why I couldn't just become addicted to something positive; like people can choose what to become addicted to. 

That seems to belie the notion that addictions are like thieves in the night that creep up on you, or things that gradually seduce you, type of thing. I think she was trying to get at why I didn't get high the Lord, and leave tobacco and weed and wine alone.

Like I could replace alcohol with an addiction for reading the bible; I could be up until the sun comes up for days on end; and wind up kicking myself over it and being full of self loathing; as if I was a slave to reading the bible. I would be planning to take some time off from it, but, after a couple beers, I'm back at it that same night. Now I've got two bibles open, side by side!

If I can get into jogging while tripping, I can add that addiction to my arsenal.    

When I ate dairy every day, I became sickly. I had a short sighted notion of blaming whatever I had just eaten for any chronic dermatitis that might be plaguing me. I didn't know that one must fast for a good week in order to rid the body of things like fats and oils that can kind of soak into the cells and trigger reactions to benign things. I once was itching like crazy after I had petted a cat that had oily skin and then applied some lotion to my face. The lotion seemed like an agent for transferring the cat oil under the skin making me feel like a thousand mosquitoes were stinging my face. 

But, growing up in middle class New England, I, along with just about every other kid, got a lot of milk in our diets. The 8 oz. carton at lunchtime was most certainly followed by a tall glass to go with supper; and then in the morning there might be a bowl of cereal or two in cow's milk. Even if breakfast was pancakes, milk would have been part of the recipe. It's easy to understand how convenient a source of protein, fat and calories milk was. 

It was one of "the 4 food groups."

I remember watching a video for the Navy; at a recruiter's office. This being after I had discovered my intolerance of milk. Right in the middle of the thing, while hyping the diet provided to Navy guy's the narrator added: "and plenty of milk!" as the screen showed smiling ensigns, or whatever they were, opening the tap on a large stainless steel dispenser and filling tall glasses with the white liquid.

It had been lost upon me when I went into Army Basic Training that a good portion of my fellow recruits were eating better than they ever had, and that the black leather boots they issued to us were the nicest footwear that some kids had ever put on. No wonder they got so many youths to face the cannon balls.

Society, almost in lock-step, believed in cow's milk. Maybe it actually is good for some people. It has enough growth hormone to double the weight of a calf every 2 months, I read once from some critic. But, hell, maybe growth hormone is good. You might hit more home runs in a season.

Even if I wasn't allergic to it, I would still balk at the taste of it (to stay on the baseball analogy). To me, it only had two flavors, tolerable; and sour. The latter being probably the worst thing I've ever tasted, along with what I was subjected to the one time I was given penicillin to swallow down in pill form, but bit into it, out of curiosity.

My mother said that when I was a baby, I would throw the bottle of milk that she gave me, as far as my infant arm could hurl it (pun intended) from the high chair or crib. She thought this a curiosity at the time; one that would gain more significance about 15 years later when, in the high school cafeteria, I would be reaching for the carton of milk on the lunch tray that we all got every day.

On this particular day, even before I had a chance to try to identify the kid on the back of the carton, I felt a wave of nausea hit my stomach so strongly, I jumped up and ran to the boy's room, expecting to puke. But when I got there, I felt fine.

Returning to my tray, I reached for the carton again, and could actually feel nausea traveling up my arm and towards my stomach.

"Maybe you're allergic to milk," said my mother when I told her about the incident. "You did used to scream and throw your bottle of it when you were a baby..."

There had to be some logical explanation for the eczema I was beset with, and the stomach cramps that always accompanied a trip to Kimball's Farm ice cream place, for one of their 3 pound banana splits.

On warm summer evenings, the things melted fast enough to keep you busy, spooning up the liquid from around the edges of the plastic boat shaped containers they came in -the runoff from their 3 humongous scoops of ice cream. The ice cream was heavy and rather solid, not like the soft stuff that Dairy Queen made.

This yielded a blend of molten vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, which was kind of like a metaphor for the good ol' USA, a land where cows roam freely and vanilla people coexist with chocolate people, and strawberry folks live happily on reservations...a wonderful melting pot; where beef is king, and dairy, queen.

If my memory serves me, Kimball's, was in a large building shaped like a barn, with a dozen or so screened windows, where a dozen or so lines of people might stretch all the way to the parking lot on a busy summer evening. 

The above metaphor could be extended to include the whole Family of Man, as represented by, of course, the namesake banana, the fudge, chocolate, pineapple and strawberry syrups, caramel, butterscotch, whipped cream sprinkled with walnut crumbs, all poured over the humongous scoops of ice cream, and topped with a cherry.

This is where the inspiration for my song: "The Man Who Couldn't Decide What Flavor He Wanted" came from.

The Man Who Couldn't Decide What Flavor He Wanted 

Standing there thinking with finger on chin.
His other hand clutching a crumbled up fin.
Exasperated was the look on his face
like the 50 behind him who'd moved not a pace.
The ice cream girl waited behind the screen,
condemned to be part of the whole dreadful scene.
He asked for a minute in which to decide.
She said "no problem," she lied.

(chorus)

He was the man who couldn't decide what flavor he wanted.
Yeah he was the man who couldn't decide what flavor he wanted.
The man who couldn't decide what flavor he wanted;
as the whole world grew just a little bit older.
It was mid summer of '86,
we were happy to have found this place in the sticks.
But we learned that day under mid summer's sun,
that waiting for ice cream is not always fun.
Immediately sensing that something was wrong;
for why would this one line have grown so long?
'Twas then that we all saw him standing there;
at the head of the line with the head of blond hair.
(chorus)
The line was abuzz with a querulous tone
for theirs was to suffer in quest of a cone;
somewhere a small girl was heard to say "Aw, come on!"
(chorus)
Everyone started to raise our voice;
which prompted the fellow to make a choice.
Later we saw him reclined on the grass.
We joked about shoving the cone up the ass of...
(chorus)
(outro)
"...Sir, French Vanilla is like vanilla, only it comes from France...
Rocky Road refers more to the texture than the flavor, sir...
I've never tasted Jerry Garcia, so I wouldn't know, sir....
I need to get to some of these people behind you, sir..
(repeat chorus)  

You could hear mooing coming from somewhere behind the people who manned the humongous scoops, as you waited in one of the lines.

I came to associate the 20 mile drive home with a dull ache in my stomach.

The youthful body is resilient, and for someone "allergic" to milk to eat one of those banana splits, as fast as possible, then only suffer abdominal cramps is a testament to this. But the body deals with such matters through tolerance, and some type of "chronic" ailment eventually rears its head.

Some people are true to the American way, believing certain foods to be good because the advertisements for them say so, and thinking things like cleansing fasts to be the doings of fringe lunatics. Give them their bacon cheeseburger, a large fries, and supersize that Coke. And, why not some ice cream for dessert?

Despite having lived a healthy life on baked fish, greens and red wine and having learned what I have; I occasionally get to where I feel so well, I talk myself into thinking I can get away with eating the very stuff that I thank God I learned to avoid.

I had a dermatologist that I was going to when I was about 17 years old, whom I know I have quoted here before as telling me: "Nonsense, son. You drink all the milk you want!" (the emphasis on the last two words made it sound like I naturally wanted milk; whether I realized it or not).

Now I know that the way of western medicine is to treat symptoms of diseases with chemicals; and having a lot of ill people is actually vital to the economy. Still, there was really no excuse for me to have eaten the pizza and the Pop Tarts. That was an "addict" thing to do.

It kind of sabotaged the busking, at least on my end, that Jacob and I did that Friday night when we made only 16 dollars in one dollar denominations. No wonder people who eat like that regularly have doctors and pharmacists and psychiatrists...

Things have been falling into place, musically; as long as I do my due diligence and keep practicing the Wim Hof breathing exercises, and avoid glutting myself with cheese. I find the combination of kratom and LSD to be like the Soma of The Brave New World

But, here it is the next weekend; and even though Jacob and I only made 36 bucks busking Friday night; it was a great night if measured in every other way besides monetarily.

I'm starting to get the hang of using the microphone in a way that I'm not backing off from it for fear of disturbing Lilly. She has been rather defensive of me lately, being quick to detect the sound of a different voice, the times other people have joined in, and rapping on the window, and even putting her hand through it one time about a month ago; when a young black guy was playing a drum along with us at 2 in the morning.

How Automobiles Are Like Dierrhea

 

It occurred to me, out of the blue to seek guidance in solving the procrastination problem which has beset me, to some degree, my whole life; but which seems to have become habitual the past few years.

My acquaintance, Bobby, had been telling me, beginning about 4 years ago, now, for example, that I should seek the help of a mental health professional, with regards to the long play of getting myself a "disability" check, through Social Security.

I began the process, but never followed through with making an appointment to see a shrink, whom I could have told about my apparent inability to follow through on things.

Baton Rouge Police Sweep The Streets Of Homeless, Ahead Of LSU Homecoming Events

I had a cellmate, in the Baton Rouge jail, back in August of 2011, who had just about convinced me that my homelessness was vivid proof of my own inability to manage my life, and that I was a prime candidate for receiving help from "the system."

"Why don't you have a job, a house and a car?" he asked.

"Well, because my chosen occupation of being a street musician, in faith that it will lead to 'something better,' only affords me a minimalist existence -enough to keep me fed and provide a few beers every night. 

I enjoy the freedom of that, after having been saddled with rent and car payments in the past, when I had to work from 7:30 in the morning until about 1:20 in the afternoon, five days a week, just to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head and a car on the road, to get me to work and back. 

I would get home and smoke pot and drink myself to sleep, maybe after plucking the guitar for a half hour, getting out of that exactly what I was putting into it; watching my dreams slip away; so I could be up, bright and early, spending an hour, for which I wasn't being paid, getting ready for work, so I could be there on time and keep the vicious cycle going. 

If I ever did get ahead financially, it seemed that something would come along, like a toothache or the CV joint going out on my car, and I would wind up sitting on the bare mattress in my trailer, too broke to do anything else, and dreading the sound of the clock, as its hands closed in on 6:30 a.m., yet again.

I just began subtracting things from my life, like the trailer and the car, feeling a sense of liberation and relief with the jettisoning of each, like the passing of diarrhea out of myself and the glow of revitalization.

Soon, I found myself waking up each morning in a tent pitched in the seclusion of a beautiful hardwood forest, feeling like Henry David Thoreau, with the sun rising and the birds chirping; starting a fire to heat up a delicious cup of coffee and looking forward to a day that stretched before me like the skeins of sunlight that cut like glowing shafts through the smoke and spider webs that hung in the air around me. I was burdened only with the onus of having to play a guitar for a few hours each evening in front of a convenience store, as I enjoyed every live-long day."

"You see, you're mentally ill!" exclaimed my cellmate. "Just tell the shrink all of what you just told me, and they'll fast-track a crazy check to you; I guarantee it!! That's the purpose of those checks; for people like you that, for whatever reason, are just too f***ed up to take care of themselves, so they need the government to step in! You live in the woods; you think that's normal?!"

But, after having spent 45 days in that jail (basically for looking homeless, and having admitted to a cop that I had consumed one can of Lime-a-Rita the same morning) I never followed up on my cellmate's advice. 

I was supposed to make an appointment with a psychiatrist who specialized in such things; and a lawyer who specialized also in such things (at a fee of 10% of any future disposition) as per the request of the S.S.I. people, and soon a letter arrived from them stating that, since they hadn't heard back from me, my case had been indefinitely "closed."

Bobby told me that, if it could be proven that I had been afflicted with this mental illness for a long time (verifiable through the record of my last official paycheck as having been received 15 years ago) then I would be "entitled" to a retroactive settlement which, as in the case of some people he knows, might be "something like 90 thousand dollars."

"Yeah, but the shrink would have to diagnose me with some medically recognized disease; and would put me on some drugs that would make me genuinely bat-s**t crazy, and I might then just use the money as toilet paper and flush it all away..." I offered.

"You're painting it black; at least go talk to the doctor!" said Bobby. 4 years ago. "I'm starting to think that maybe you are crazy!!"

I guess I would rather hold out hope that I could achieve something beyond my wildest dreams, if I were to dream big. Bigger than the dream of standing in line in front of some window ready to push some paperwork through to some person who would invariably be looking me over and thinking: What the hell is wrong with you? You've got two arms and two legs. Why can't you work just like the rest of us?!

My grandfather on my mother's side came over to this country on a ship from Poland, at the age of 5. During the 12 week voyage, his mother (my great grandmother) died.

He arrived as an orphan; learned the language; and began to work; walking for miles along the railroad tracks of Vermont, scooping up any coal that might have been pitched astray by the crewmen, intended for the furnace under the boiler of the steam engine. After 30 miles of walking, his burlap sack might have held enough coal so that he could contribute to the heating of the foster home where he lived.

They raised chickens and grew potatoes and all kinds of vegetables in the rocky soil. By the age of 12, he was working 12 hour shifts in the marble quarries around Proctor, Vermont. At the age of 15, he married my grandmother, who was 13 at the time. He was still too young to go off to fight in World War I.

We would make a few trips a year to visit them, where they lived in a modest 2 story house that had marble steps (there was a lot of marble around the place, go figure) and had a coal furnace in the basement (it was 22 below zero during one of our Christmas visits). Behind the house was about a quarter acre garden where everything from cabbage and potatoes, to corn and raspberries grew. Nearby was a chicken coup. 

My grandfather, who had arrived as a Polish speaking child, had mastered English to the point of being able to complete the New York Times crossword puzzle, for amusement. He saved newspapers, and during one visit when I was about 10, I found him rummaging through the large shed that sat behind the garden, and, after I gingerly entering its musky smelling confines, he showed me a couple of the papers from his collection. 

I remember the "Dewey Defeats Truman," and "Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor" ones. Marilyn Monroe found dead? Read All About It!!

His coin collection featured pristine specimens of coins which had all been shiny and new when he had placed them in the collection folders, up to 50 years prior in the case of the oldest ones, where they continued to shine.

Whenever I asked my grandmother about what it had been like, going through The Great Depression, or if she had been scared when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (barring that the newspapers were spreading "fake news") she would always fit into her narrative that they had always put their faith in hard work and God; had never missed a Sunday Mass, and, with a firm conviction would add: "And we never once had to ask anyone for charity; ever!"

And, so, I'm going to go apply for S.S.I. benefits because I haven't been able to get my act together enough to set some goals, make some plans, and follow through with them, due to procrastination? Give me a break.

There is a slight conflict with my inner values involved...

I just had the epiphany to Google: "Guided meditation for procrastination." And this is where I leave you...  

4 Capsules Of Valerian Root

I'm trying to restore balance after having binged on a whole pizza and a whole box of Poptarts® after finding the replacement food stamp card in my mailbox on Friday, after a whole week without it had gone by.

I had taken the opportunity to do kind of a week long fast, and felt amazingly well by the time Friday arrived. The Wim Hof breathing exercises were like out of body experiences once I had achieved the "empty stomach" upon which he recommends doing them. My breath holds (where you lay there motionless with no air in your lungs) were up to 3 minutes and 24 seconds.

But then on Friday, the new card came with $347 on it, and I grabbed an Andy Gator IPA® ale on my way to the Family Dollar, where the combination of feeling so healthy as to be bullet-proof, along with having so much extra money on my card so as to not have to sweat the cost of it, lead me to say "screw it," and I grabbed a DiGiorno Stuffed Crust® pizza from the freezer, along with the box of Poptarts, as if the world might end that night, and so I was going to stuff my face one last time before it did.

But, by the time Saturday night rolled around and it was time to go out and busk, I had a crick in my back as if the muscles around my spine were cramped up -something that vodka used to do to me; so I suspect the grain in the pizza as being the culprit- and after Jacob and I did some psychedelics and went out to play, I found that I was just having a bad night, music-wise, and the one dollar bills that were the only things that found their way into the tip jar seemed to be confirmation of that.

My strings were old, and I felt derelict for not having replaced them when I had the means to, and one of my harmonicas had a note become stuck on it; and I blamed myself for playing it while sipping on a Monster Zero® drink, which doesn't have any sugar in it to gum up the inside of a harmonica, but probably has something else in it.

I just had the impression that I had gone out there very unprepared. It became a struggle to even set up the equipment once the acid kicked in and the tourists walking past began to resemble fish swimming by, and everything we played kind of sounded like cartoon music. Out of tune cartoon music...

I suppose I learned the lesson for about the dozenth time that, even if I feel great, eating the forbidden foods on my list of them always come with consequences.

The sun is about to come up and I was going to go to Rouses and get some prune juice, along with some apple juice and alkaline water; but the 4 capsules of Valerian root that I took, trying to put my sleep cycle back in sync with the sun, are already making me drowsy.

Last night there was a total lunar eclipse; so, what better excuse for starting over, with a fast and cleanse?

The Shadow Knows

•  Shadow Ban Ends
• We Jam With "Best In World" Harp Player
  

The Shadow banning of this blog has apparently been lifted, making me wish that I had been putting more effort into the writing that has gone into it.

At one point, right before the 2020 presidential election, Google had throttled the readership down to less than a dozen "views" on a typical day. After all, I was a vaccine skeptic, a global warming skeptic, and a non death-wisher of Donald Trump.

January of 2015: "Before"

That put me in the position of having to try to write about more timeless topics; as if the blog was to be put in a time capsule, to be dug up at some point in the future. This kind of shed a different light on what I had for breakfast that morning being fodder for a blog post. Instead of writing about watching "the game" the night before, I had to be more specific and mention "the Superbowl between the Rams and the Chiefs" just to jog the memory of anyone reading the post well into the future.

Now, I feel like I have to go back and edit a lot of posts that were done when I was locked down in the apartment, swilling brandy and pissed off at the shadow banning. 

May of 2022: "After"

Rather than "disappearing" the posts (which would draw attention to the censorship that was going on, and flood the Google help forum with "what happened to my post?" inquiries) the algorithm allowed me to write whatever counter-to-the-mainstream-narrative things I wanted, but then just disappeared the whole darned blog to the search engine, so that only the people who already had the link bookmarked or were "subscribed" would ever see them. (Or people who randomly typed "daniels-new-blog.blogspot.com" in the search box of their browser -there were 0 of them, over the course of the past year).

As far as the algorithm was concerned, I would be quarantined into a special room in cyberspace, and kept with other like-minded individuals, where our thoughts would stay amongst ourselves, without there being any risk of us infecting anyone else on the worldwide web.

That way, millions of people could maintain things like: "Everyone thinks we need a new president, just look on Facebook or Youtube or Instagram or Tik Tok; it's everyone!" or would be ready to get right in the face of anyone who hadn't taken the "experimental" vaccine (close enough that they could smell their breaths) and give them hell over their selfish attitudes. And these people would have never even heard of any contrary opinions, nor read about the foibles of Street Musician Daniel...

But, now that I am back to getting about 600 views a day, I feel a bit embarrassed over what any of them might dig up, should they go back into the archives and catch me on one of my bad days.

I guess I have some self censorship to do.

Our Friend Gurvan

Last Saturday night, Jacob and I were visited by one of the members of the best blues band in the world, in the form of Gurvan Leroy, who jammed along with us on harmonica for a couple songs. One of them I will link here as soon as I upload it to Youtube or Soundcloud.

Gurvan is the guy on the far left, whose band "The Whacky Jugs" beat out 3 thousand other bands at some festival which culminated in Nashville, the night after we met him; if our understanding of his broken English was correct. I was glad to find out that he is one of the best harmonica players in the world because he definitely impressed me with his playing  

Daniel McKenna III · I Feel Fine (cover)(w Special Guest Gurvan Leray From The Wacky Jugs)

The Moth

"The Truth Shall Set You Free"

I knew it was Wednesday because the hallway floor had been recently mopped and was slightly redolent of Pine Sol© as I crossed it to get to the parking lot where there would be sunlight for another couple of hours.

I felt like a wreck; but, what had I done to myself? I had only drank one bottle of ale, indulged in one honey bun out of the machine, and had eaten a mostly starchy diet of instant potatoes and green split peas, the day before. I had gotten in 8 hours of sleep after having stayed up a full 24 hours, after Tuesday's plasma donation.

Youtube was still auto-playing, and so I had probably slept through a few hours of Trump speeches and "right wing" slanted editorials.

I had left one of the pairs of jeans that I washed in the bathtub in the oven, but thankfully had only put the temperature at about 200 degrees, so it wasn't a room full of smoke that awakened me.

I am out of coffee. I am probably going to pause here and run down to Family Dollar to at least get a one dollar pack of instant...

Then it will be the question of whether or not to busk tonight.

There was what looked like a huge piece of fabric in a triangular shape in the stairwell to the parking lot, which turned out to be a rather huge moth. It was apparently stuck beating itself against the window right by the door, trying to fly into the parking lot.

Every time I tried to guide it with one hand towards the door that I was holding open with the other it avoided me, then frantically bashed itself against the window, just one foot away from freedom. 

It was one of the biggest moths that I had ever seen, black with specks of brown and kind of looked like a chewy date and coconut confection that I used to get at Whole Foods. When it was fluttering its wings it was as big as a hockey puck. Moths don't bite, I had to tell myself.

After I picked up on a certain rhythm with which it was banging itself against the glass, I was able to time its 4th or 5th rebound in order to get my opened hand on it enough to steer it just a little bit over so that, with its next panicked foray, it found the open skies of Louisiana.

The Truth...

...is that you want to fly just a foot or so over to your left, moth...

The moth became a symbolic thing to me at some deep subconscious level and I immediately felt the urge to text Jacob to see if he was OK.

It was also a weird coincidence that Alex in California blogged about a month ago about having set a moth free, which was kind of out of character for his blog, which usually has an emphasis upon his work-a-day struggle for survival, and his derision of all those who parasitically live off the state; all while extolling the virtues of communism. 

The sun is about to go down and I guess I'll make that coffee and cat food run now.

Now that I think of it, I still have the Starbucks gift card that the Lidgley's sent for Christamas, and I might just ride down there and get a whole bag of some variety of bean and have them grind it for me, and not have to worry about coffee for a while. At least not worry about bad tasting coffee for a while.

Of course, I could do that on my way out to busk, if I were to do so before Starbucks closes at 9...

Consider The Lilly's

• 104 Dollar Friday
• 30 Dollar Saturday

The ever faster lately, it seems, clock is already a half hour into Monday.

The time to decide whether to busk or not, on this Sunday night, has come and gone. I had woken up at around 5 in the evening, which means I must have drifted off to sleep around 9 in the morning after Jacob and I had busked until about 1 am.

I called Lilly about an hour after waking up because I had seen a "missed call' from her which was logged right around the time we heard a light tapping on the window of Angelique's bedroom which was about 2 a.m. Saturday morning.

A group of a few more people had shown up, with I think one of them adding a second harmonica to our mix -my memory is foggy on that, but Lilly was once again concerned with there being a larger (than just Jacob and I) group playing in front of her house. She is wary of any other musicians trying to move in on my hustle and, even though Angelique had informed her that I was indeed part of the group, Lilly rapped a few times on the window, taking care to not put her fist through it like she did a couple weeks ago when there was a black guy banging along with us on a drum.

The phone call started with her pleasantly asking if I was going to play "tonight," which I took to mean that there were no hard feelings and that her knocking on the glass wasn't meant to run me away. But, then it devolved into about an hour and a half of Lilly lecturing me on politics after I had said that I thought a bunch of rich people were basically running the war in Ukraine just as a means of making lots of money selling the Ukrainians the weapons.

After I pointed out how interesting it was that every president, going back to probably Reagan, had gotten us into some kind of war, under the same circumstances of the military industrial complex raking in tons of tax payer's money.

But then I made the mistake of saying "Except for Trump..."

And it was off to the races, with Lilly claiming that Trump started a war "right here in this country," which, in her opinion was worse. 

Then, I had to listen to the entire history of Putin and how there hadn't been a war because Trump was "in bed with him", and wants to be "like Fidel Castro" and "own this country;" and then, she praised Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney and I listened in disbelief as she parroted back all the propaganda that comes over CNN on half of the world's smart phones, almost word for word. 

She then said that Trump supporters were all ignorant rural people and that any person with any kind of education would be able to see through all the lies...and vote for Hillary.

She kept punctuating every other phrase with "OK?" as she prated on. "Putin has stolen billions of dollars from the Russian people, OK?! and they have no idea that it even happened, OK?! and besides her agreeing with me that we shouldn't be fighting the Russians in Ukraine but should rather just obliterate "that beautiful building" -the Kremlin- with the mother of all bombs, and take Putin out, she never seemed to recover from the "Except for Trump," comment until an hour and half had gone by, with me occasionally saying "Yeah," into my phone in between her "OK?!"s

Not Sure This Is OK

And this reminded me of the tarot card reader named Louise, whom I once let stay in my place, who would go off on her own tirades about her hatred for men, punctuating everything the same way, OK?!

Louise determined that it wasn't her fault that the government had been "stupid enough to give a voucher for an apartment to 'an alcoholic veteran,'" and that she had just as much, and probably more, of a right to the apartment; and then informed me that she was going to cook herself a good meal, take a long hot shower and then sit and watch a movie (on my laptop) while finishing a tub of ice cream she had in the freezer (notice I didn't say in my freezer). I listened to a few hours of her non-stop diatribe against, men in general, before I called the security people up front to come and get her away from me; sending her on her way, pulling a little cart behind her, laden with all her tarot card reading paraphernalia, and yelling: "He was probably going to rape me!" and other things, all the way down Canal Street -just another mentally ill person yelling to no one in particular, was what I was hoping anyone would think of her...

But, there was Lilly on the phone, ranting about politics and saying "OK?!" everywhere there would be a period on a printed page. That really threatens to change my opinion of Lilly. I've never heard her "OK" like that before. It sometimes seems like there are spirits in New Orleans that can inhabit bodies like hermit crabs do; and make groups of people think and say the exact same things; and one of them crawled into Lilly when she wasn't on guard...

2 Straight Nights Busking

But, there was the minor miracle of Jacob and I having logged 2 straight nights at the Lilly Pad (especially after having split 104 bucks the night before; which might have given the more fickle of buskers an excuse to take a night off and party it up).

We had gotten off the street car nearby Patrick's house, hoping that he would still be awake and would have some weed to sell us, since we had played the whole night without the aid of that particular euphoric. We did happen to have a tab of acid that I swallowed before I wallowed into the Quarter, to go with some "magic" mushrooms that Jacob ate a handful of.

We were kind of hoping that we would run into Trinity, who is a petite girl with tattoos all over her skinny body, who was playing a miniature guitar and singing with a heavy Arkansas accent when we had encountered her at about 2 a.m. on our way back from Lilly's after the Friday night into Saturday morning event.

We stopped at the corner diagonal to her, where I made the assessment that she was "sexy," noting the fishnet stockings and the red shoes to go with her heart shaped face.

We went over to her and put 3 bucks in her tip receptacle, which was kind of a weird, flat, tambourine shaped circle of cloth, adorned like a wreath with twisted pieces of palm leaves. It didn't look like it would hold much money.

A closer look at her revealed that some of her "tattoos" had perhaps been drawn onto her using a magic marker.

But, she was nowhere in sight as we walked Royal Street back this time. That was a slight relief to me because I had consumed the jello shots that some guy had tipped us, not realizing that Jacob had set one of them aside to give to her.

We had even set up the recording studio at my place, intending to bring her back with us to begin working on her first album. I had to caution Jacob about becoming too optimistic about the prospect of collaborating with such a skinny girl with magic marker tattoos all over her body; sometimes you can read a girl like a book and make an educated guess as to how she might have gotten so skinny. Although I might be reading too much into it, because her skill on the miniature guitar was quite impressive, and bespoke of a lot of practicing, without much time left over for doing crystal meth and not eating for days...

So, The Streak Ends At Two Days

There is generally a drop off in traffic at the Lilly Pad after about 10 p.m. on Sunday nights.

In fact I should do an error correction upon the statement that I wrote a few posts back about how much money I would potentially make, were I able to buckle down and discipline myself to put in 40 hours a week.

I said that I would make around 600 dollars a week; but I wasn't considering the fact that, in order to put in 40 hours per week, some of those hours would have to be during the slower periods of time, such as when many of the tourists are inside some place eating dinner, as per the customs of doing so at specific hours, such as 7:30 p.m.

Not every hour can be like the ones between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. on a crowded Friday night into Saturday morning, and there just aren't 40 of those in any given week.

Tanya Huang is probably a good role model for choosing when to busk; as she starts at 11 a.m., Thursday morning and puts in at least 12 hours, with a short break to eat at, of course, the time when a lot of tourists are inside somewhere, doing the same. If she still has a crowd gathered when 11 p.m. rolls around, she will often keep going for another couple hours, adding another couple hundred bucks to her basket, but making for a 14 hour day of pretty much non stop bowing of her violin.

I think the amount she plays on Sundays are to make up 40 hours for the week, so if she does her three days of twelve hours each, she only "has to" play 4 hours on Sunday, and might do that in the evening from around 8 until midnight.

The hardest part of following that formula for me has been the part about continuing to play, if after your planned amount of time is up, there are still a lot of tourists surrounding you.

I tend to think that, after I run out of gas, the quality of whatever I go on to play will diminish, and thus, negate some of the advantage of having a bunch of people within earshot. And I also perhaps "suffer from" what might be the fallacy of seeing a higher purpose in what I do, as far as letting the incomprehensible workings of the universe involve me in connections to other people in ways that still might not be understood about art in general. This would be best illustrated by examples, such as when I was playing "Tears In Heaven," and looked to my right to see a certain young lady sitting on the stoop next to me with tears running down her cheeks, who then told me that her mother's funeral had been earlier that day and that that song had been part of the ceremony.

Or the time I was doing "Scarlet Begonias," by the Grateful Dead on a sidewalk in St. Augustine and as soon as I sang the line: "Wind in the willows playing tea for two..." another young lady stopped right in front of me and hiked up the leg of her shorts to reveal a tattoo of a willow tree, with two birds alighting in its branches, with the words: "Wind in the willows playing tea for two," done in fancy calligraphy that kind of wrapped around the drawing in a flowing manner that suggested them being blown by the wind.

This is something that Tanya seems to not acknowledge in any way as being part of her busking experience. "I'm just trying to sound good," was her response to me asking her some question along those lines. I think it was something like asking her if she was intentionally playing a lot of "triplet"s in her melody because there was a lady with 3 identical babies in a triple stroller who had stopped to listen.

"I'm just trying to sound good," she told me with a slight frown, as if she "frowned upon" the practice of attaching meaning to the music, beyond it just sounding beautiful. It could be that her Buddhist religion, along with the countless hours of practicing since she was 4 years old, has trained her to shut off a certain part of her brain, so that it won't be allowed to make any mischief, such as having her play triplet figures on the violin to entertain some triplets. It could also be a right-left brain kind of thing, where she has to marshal a lot of her brain power into reproducing melodies (out of her encyclopedic store of them) and that that doesn't leave much room for thinking about such things as triplets.

It was actually her foil, Dorise Blackmon, who was adept at choosing songs (out of their encyclopedic store of them) to go along with something that a tourist might be displaying. No matter which state a tourists shirt was advertising, they would have 50 songs at the ready and Dorise would lead them into one's like "Private Idaho," by the B-52's or of course, "Country Roads" ("West Virginia; mountain mama, take me home) at the sight of a tourist approaching, wearing the tee shirt.

She exhibited a broad musical knowledge to point that, if a tourist was representing even some city on their shirt; they were likely to have, in their repertoire, a song by an artist who was born there. Tori Amos for Baltimore, or a Sam Cooke song, if anyone came along wearing a Coahoma Community College shirt (located in Clarksdale Mississippi) (where Sam was from)...

OK, 4 hours spent blogging will have to do...

The Weather To Surprise Me

The sun is about to rise on this Tuesday morning.

I've been up almost 24 hours at this point.

I still want to do a few more things before going to sleep.

Jacob and I had about a 45 dollar Saturday night (shown) and it seemed like we got there around 10 p.m. and played until, I think it was 12:51.

We were visited by a group of people who turned into a phenomena which takes place about once a year, and can best be described as "the group of people who come along and want to sing "Hotel California." That turned into one of the musical highlights and one of the 20 dollar tips that came our way...

I'm pretty convinced that, were I to be able to work up to busking for 40 hours a week; I would be taking home somewhere close to $600 per week, tax free. I say this because we were also reminded that there are people who will just throw 20 bucks in your jar upon the sight of you there busking, whether you are playing or not. There is a certain amount that you could make just sitting there with an instrument; which is probably something close to whatever the minimum wage is.

When I was homeless and hence always walking around the Quarter somewhere, I would be stopped at least once a night by someone who would see the guitar on my back and offer 10 or 20 bucks if I would take it out of the case and play, usually Neil Young or Bob Dylan.

Time is flying; in about 40 hours from now, my food card will be charged up and I will probably do another "intermittent" fast upon juice and spring water for a few days; and then just spring water.

Wim Hof suggests that people do his breathing exercises on an empty stomach in order to get the full effect from it. When I did them after not eating for 5 or 6 days; the experience was pretty amazing. I think I was manufacturing dopamine in my brain, and maybe even some other drug like ecstasy.

I suppose I will do a few rounds of Wim now, even though I ate about 2 hours ago. It was only chick peas and rice that I ate, though.

Yesterday I went back to the plasma place, and was able to catch Harold up on his food, off of the 40 bucks they gave me for 750 ml. of my plasma, and then I drank a few good beers, counter to my decision to give up drinking and stick to kratom and LSD as my combination of choice; along with getting high on my own supply through the Wim Hof method.

I have yet to fully engage in his program by adding cold showers to my daily routine. I have managed to turn the dial on a hot shower towards the cold end of the spectrum for the last 30 seconds of a it; which is kind of the gateway to eventually being able to take ice cold ones. In the winter, some of the water in the pipes that run under the building in the crawl space can get pretty darned cold. 

Well, the sun is up, but it's behind some pretty thick clouds. I haven't paid much attention to any weather forecasts lately. I guess I just want the weather to surprise me...

A Need To Clean House

I was thinking that I would blog here in a very limited scope, and then move my posts to some place where they won't be shadow banned by "the algorithm."

But that has moved me towards the eschewing of "current events" as much as possible and trying to steer towards more universal things.

I'm hoping a kind of Elon Musk figure will come along and liberate Blogger in the same way; so my thoughts will be allowed into the mainstream again.

All signs point to me going out to play soon; yet a part of me wants to stay here, eat and practice the guitar; and then just try to make it to the plasma place in the morning.
I have given the plasma place a two week or so rest from me; and I guess in the next few minutes, maybe over a cup of coffee, I'll decide upon whether or not I want to ride down there; the webcam shot will be crucial...

A Sinfully Decadent Concoction of Apple Juice, With Honey and Lemon Juice, With Pinches of Cayenne and Himilayan Salt

I basically went out and busked tonight, and, though a success on the level of having had a couple dozen people tip me, they turned out to be all in singles; which to me means that the value of one dollar is deemed now to be insufficient ("give the dude a couple, cause everything's expensive now") and, while I felt I could have played better; and actually did do so, later on in the evening at Patrick's, but more on that later.

At the point when I got a windfall of tips from about 20 people who had hung around, I had the misfortune of having chosen a very difficult song that I hadn't played in years and which is amongst the most complex things that I do on the guitar; and then to throw the harmonica in, it really felt like juggling on a tightrope and then having to do it on one leg, type of thing.

I decided to try to play a cool harmonica part while playing the complex guitar part just barely. I managed to do so for a while, but the difficulty level was further upped when it came to trying to remember the lyrics of all the verses that I haven't sung in years. Finally, I just cut the song short.

I have to set up a metronome and run through that part over and over at home. I wish I had aborted mission, and switched to a much simpler song,
There are just some musical parts that need to be practiced to master, even by their composers; I'm starting to believe.

The highlight of the evening, though came after I was done busking and I went to Patrick's house. I had felt sorry for him and had picked up some bud on Canal Street.

On my way out to play, I had stopped there to see if I could get a small bud off of him; the excuse I was making in my mind was that I was about to give in to temptation to drink; and so, to fortify my resistance to that urge, I figured I could consider the bud to be going in an entirely different direction than booze. Kind of like; never mind the E&J brandy, you've got that bud.

But I found Patrick to be in a glum mood; he said that he had been having mixed fortunes, and to balance off one good one, was the fact that he was out of weed. He wished he had a bud to give me, because that would mean he had a bud; but he didn't.

But, he did have pain pills and offered me a couple of them.

I told him, after I had swallowed one of the things, that I would get some bud when I was down in the Quarter if he was still going to be up at 2 a.m.

"I'll be up all night," he said, making me wonder if pain pill popping can keep you up all night.

After the all one dollar bill night, I arrived about 20 minutes before 2 a.m. to see Patrick's lights on; a brief knock on the door and it opened to reveal the lovely Zeppelin, whom I greeted by name with just a slight pause as I had to think a second which rock band it was she was named after.

I smelled bud and figured that Zeppelin had shown up with some.

"Geez, I didn't have to buy bud," I lamented.

But, we had a pretty good conversation; I was trying to explain to Zeppelin, after she had adamantly asked Patrick to change the channel on the TV because the (preacher, incidentally) guy on the tube looked too much like Donald Trump for her to bear; how it was her phone that did that to her. And about the Big Tech giants and the mainstream media being part of an anti orange man campaign and how she had been brainwashed by a constant barrage of negativity.

She couldn't name any f***ed up things that Trump had done, after giving, as the reason she wanted the channel changed that "...all the f***ed up stuff he did, except for one particular example having ultimately to do with funneling money into his hotels. 

I gave her the example of the cashier at Shell who, on her break was in front of the store, vigorously puffing on a cigarette and huffing out: "I know one thing. We need a new president!" and when I pressed her for her reason, as it was just a month or so before the election, she looked at me kind of as if astounded that I wasn't aware of everywhere and everything, as she put it.

"Everywhere, everything, everything you see, don't you have Facebook or Youtube?!"  

"That girl did nothing but stand there staring at her phone in between customers."

So just be careful that your aversion to the guy hasn't been planted there subliminally by social media and everything else everywhere and everything you see, Zeppelin," was my advice to her.

I wound up being able to play the hell out of some guitar and harmonica, there at Patrick's. I might have been showing off for Zeppelin, maybe without even realizing it...

So, after having amassed over 20 one dollar bills that could have easily been sprinkled with fives or twenties; had I not decided to try a song I hardly knew, I am now home.

No Chickening Out Friday

"Everybody Has To Work"

I looked at the webcam shot of Bourbon Street around 9 p.m. Friday night, and I had to go out there.

I told myself, as I rode, that I would only be 20 minutes away from being back home, should I get there to find the guy with the loud sound system sitting 40 feet away from where I play; or I would be able to move down to the next block and play diagonally across from The Quartermaster -the place that has barred me for borrowing milk crates from them.

I had 46 cents in my pocket, and Harold had just eaten his last can; so my goals were very modest. The first potential dollar would go towards him, and the second one might go towards bus fare, so I wouldn't have to make what has turned into a hell-ride to the dental place each time, to get to my 3 p.m. appointment. I had managed to cut the trip from 10 miles down to 4.8 miles by using Google Maps to enlighten me to the fact that I had originally ridden a huge right angle route. Still, 4.8 miles (instead of 10) of dodging potholes and traffic is no picnic.

I hadn't eaten in 6 days and even forgot to bring a bottle of water with me, so I detoured to CVS to get a Celsius energy drink; and was at the Lilly Pad at about 11:20 p.m.

The fact that I am a better musician when not drunk and stoned was hinted at by the fact that, when I went to tune up the guitar it was already pretty much in perfect pitch, just from me having tuned it by ear at the apartment.

I thought I was playing pretty well, and even started having thoughts creeping in that I wasn't in the right venue to be appreciated as the first few groups of people went by without tipping, with one young guy sarcastically saying "Yeah, you sound good," as his group went by and didn't throw anything in the jar.

Maybe I need to seriously consider going around to the little pubs that pay musicians, like, a hundred bucks to play for 3 hours, using their house sound system, so that the audience can hear the music loud and clear and appreciate whatever is there to be appreciated.

I was playing without the amp, and happy to see that, along with the sound system guy not being there, there was relatively light traffic, made up mostly of people who were saying things like: "We're way to the right of where we're going," as they stared at their phones.

No Picnic

The other end of Bourbon was a huge cluster of people. I always think of ants when it is like that. If you are having a picnic,and there is an ant hill under your blanket, then ants are soon going to be all over you and you will probably move your blanket. Still, though, you will be regularly visited by the more adventurous ants that, sensing the heavy competition for the crumbs on the ground around the hill, strike out for fortune in some direction. What about over by that tree about 20 feet away, where those humans are sitting? they might think; in ant thoughts.

And that would be the Lilly Pad, in terms of the block of Bourbon Street where the strip clubs are being the ant hill, where they are crawling all over themselves, both literally and figuratively.

Most of the people that make it as far as me are armed with the knowledge that "the oldest bar in America" is just 40 feet past me, and from them, I often hear: "There it is; Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern!" at various distances from it as they approach, depending upon their eye-sight. "It's right up there, I can read the sign. My eyes are better than yours!" type of thing.

I might edify them as they walk past me with: "Oldest bar in America; established in 1772 by Jean Lafitt the pirate, and his brother Pierre; although they never shooed a horse there; they used it, as a front, to fence pirated goods out the back door."

Some of them might even pause to hear me add: "Chances are that if you bought a bottle of rum in 1772, it came from right there, by Lilly's pool..."

And so, with The French Quarter Festival in full swing, I had just the right amount of ants, er, tourists going to and fro; half of them historians, the other half, lost.

The 6 days of not having eaten was probably taking some of the physical energy out of my performance, which can be out of step with some of the more rowdy and drunken tourists; but the fact that I was playing well, and was "feeling" the music, and doing so without being "artificially" euphoric usually attracts others, probably the way a bartender is a magnet for bar patron's to air their life stories and grievances: Maybe this is just the whiskey talking; let me ask this sober person if he thinks the bitch is using me, type of thing.

I might have been oblivious to, and thus not factoring in the effect of not having the amp, which had me back to using the same setup that used to net me a steady 18 bucks per hour, night in and night out. 

I certainly felt that the words I chose weren't as important as when I was singing them through a microphone and wasn't as concerned with dropping in little sarcasms or directing things at individuals that I could see, but who were "out of range."

I was just having my first thoughts about quitting, as in quitting busking altogether when a large black woman dropped 6 dollars in the jar; always a large black woman, and always right when I'm thinking of quitting, I thought...

Then a group of about 6 black people stopped and took their phones out and began to improvise lyrics and eventually 4 part vocal harmony, split into bass, tenor, alto and soprano, so that they sounded like a heavenly chorus. It was like they were a Southern Baptist group on vacation, or something. The irony wasn't lost upon me that the song this group of black people were free-styling over was "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

That particular classic by Procol Harem, I read somewhere, is the song most covered by other artists, as far as released recordings go, nudging out songs like "Yesterday," and "Ave Maria." I think it is even on one of the fine discs waxed by William Shatner; and if that doesn't prove a song's validity, then...?

I'm thinking that, since the the lyrics are a nonsensical word salad, it is one of the songs least likely to offend anyone.

The choir singers threw a handful of ones in the jar; and it was at that point that I, myself, felt validated.

After my decision to fast and cleanse had removed the motive of going out there for drinking and drugging money, and had in fact kept me from going out, out of fear that I would succumb to temptation; I had decided that I still needed to go out and work in the spirit of something my dad used to say, which was: "Everybody has to work; Adam and Eve made it that way."

So I went out there primarily just to work. Sure, cleaning my kitchen would have been work; but I was defining work as "service to others," and cleaning my kitchen wouldn't produce a can of food for Harold, unless I discovered one that had rolled to behind the refrigerator, nor the bus fare to keep me from having to pedal another 4.8 miles times 2 during Monday's trip to the dentist (although pedaling home would be a bit easier (no pun intended) minus the weight of one tooth).

I was surprised earlier when David Greenwell, whom I was mistaken in thinking was heaping abuse upon me when I was heading for the emergency room when I had the toothache, knocked on my door and asked me if I had gotten any antibiotics.

He handed me a sheet of paper with the number of a "Nurse Hotline" on it, saying that the person on the other end would be a "nurse for the homeless" and would be able to help me.

I had interpreted his anger as him berating me as being stupid for even going to the emergency room for a toothache; it turns out his anger was directed that them for potentially not even seeing me over it.

He had actually gotten the number off one of the computers in the computer room and written it down, trying to help me, 5 days after I told him I had a toothache. He asked me if I was going to go out and play; and when I told him I was because the French Quarter Festival was going on, he said that I should make some good money; and then added "You're as good as some of those people playing at the festival."

And so the fruits of the cleansing fast seem to be being reaped already. I had read David totally wrong, 5 days ago, when I was still drinking and drugging.

Chickening Out

I'm chickening out, again, instead of going out to play.

"Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try..."

While the White-breasted Nuthatch cries 11 p.m. from my singing bird clock, I sit here, wondering.

Wondering if the palpable feeling of foreboding in my stomach is worse than it would be, were I pedaling towards the Quarter right now, with the guitar that I haven't practiced on enough lately on my back.

I'm trying to convince myself, on this 5th day of juice fasting, that I'm investing in the future by kicking my addictions, and that, whatever money I might have made tonight will be recovered a hundred times over in future savings on booze, weed, caffeine, nicotine and kratom, if I stick to the program of alternately drinking alkaline water and apple juice on the half hour tonight, with a few rounds of Wim Hof breathing exercises done at some point.

On the subject of kratom, though, I might exclude that from my list of banned substances, along with LSD. Neither one is addictive, and in the case of kratom, when I have run out of it, I never craved it. It was only after getting some as almost an afterthought, once I came into some money, and doing a tablespoon of it that I then remembered why I had liked it so much. It's a funny substance that way.

Of course, since I discovered my friend Jacob right around the same time as discovering kratom; I will never know if all the strides I have made the past 5 years were from being friends with him, or from doing kratom...

I remember one of my first experiences with the stuff was sitting and typing out a story for something like 4 hours, and then losing it when I walked away from the laptop and the battery drained out because I hadn't plugged it in after I had gotten it back from the kratom bar. I felt no anxiety over losing the work, and in fact only looked forward to redoing it all even better. I was still focused in on the task.

And, I think the stuff just alters the brain's chemistry because I still have that sense of focus even now, after running out of kratom 3 days ago. Of course, fasting brings the same mental focus about; no surprise that that guy who almost starved in a concentration camp was able to write that book called: "The Meaning of Life" -probably wrote it in his head as he lay there feeling physically weak, but having no distractions from wayward thoughts.

Once the appetite for food goes away, so does that for alcohol or nicotine, etc. And, I guess, even kratom, although as stated above, it was never an addiction.

Neither was LSD. 

"Dave's Been Confused"

And, a college roommate of mine, Dave LeClaire (who was a big Led Zeppelin fan and who's high school yearbook epigram was: "Dave's been confused") was majoring in Biology, and grew some really good pot in a tin foil-lined closet, using special lights attached to a timer, and eye-droppers of various liquids to control the pH of the soil, and to turn male seeds into female ones, etc. and whose belief was that marijuana is a placebo; had a very different opinion of LSD. "That's something that radically f***s up your brain's chemistry," he once told me, over a joint we were smoking at the kitchen table.

And it's true that a lot of the older deadheads that I saw at Grateful Dead shows, weren't there to trip their teeth out, or to be able to sit and watch the shadow of a maple tree in a swirling breeze, dancing on the white-washed side of a building, and have that turn into a detailed cartoon, complete with an actual plot, instead of going inside the arena to see the concert; like I once did in Providence, Rhode Island, from the driver's seat of my car (I learned that night not to eat your hit of acid on the way to the show, but at least wait until you're in the seat written on your ticket).

Those deadheads had had their breakthroughs, gained their enlightenment, and would never again think that the universe is just what can be perceived with the senses; why belabor it? After you smash your way through a wall with a sledgehammer and are in the enchanted kingdom, why carry the hammer around with you everywhere you go? type of thing...

It hasn't been a perfect fast, as, last night, in a spaced out frame of mind, I opened a can of great northern beans, stirred some salt and pepper, to include cayenne, a bit of mustard, and even a teaspoon of honey into them and ate them. 

It was a good opportunity to find out what great northern beans alone can do for the human body.

For one thing, there was no perceivable flatulence involved; leading me to wonder about how the gut bacteria of a fasting person is able to digest beans without a byproduct being flammable gas out the anus.

Organic chemistry is something I wish I had mastered. Alas, though, when I took chemistry in high school the same thing would play out; Mr. McGuirk, the teacher, would start to explain something about moles and specific gravity's and allotropes, and it would lull me into a deep daydream, where I might be looking at the chalkboard, but somewhere else; and when I came to, the whole chalkboard would be covered in symbols, and Mr. McGuirk would be asking the class: "Any questions?" before erasing it all. I passed the class by cheating on tests off a kid who sat one row over and one row up from me. I think Mr. McGuirk knew, but let me slide. I wouldn't be going on to embarrass him by enrolling at M.I.T. as a Chem major and flunking out in the first semester; I would be studying subjects where there are no right answers; like English, where "Spring is a perhaps hand..." and "Mercy is twice blest," and Music, where, well, listen to Stravinsky...

It's only been an hour and a half since the White-breasted Nuthatch sang; perhaps I write more quickly when sober...

I left to get more apple juice and alkaline water, along with a zero sugar Rock Star energy drink.

"You're In The Way!!"

I felt like I was out of sync.

As soon as I got to the front door; there was an ambulance outside, and just as I started down the ramp to leave, they started towards it with the stretcher. "Hurry up, you're in the way!"

Then, all along my ride to the store there were cars trying to back out of places and I was in the way. I got to the store and a lady in front of me ran out of money and had to phone someone in the parking lot to bring her more cash. Then, when I tried to apply my "reward points" toward the purchase of Harold's food, it turned into the fiasco of me not being able to do it at first because one can is less than a dollar. "Well, ring up two, then I'll go get another one before I leave..."

Then, the cashier entered the amount for 2 cans, which was over a dollar, but he didn't calculate what the tax would be. Somehow, it seems like you don't have to pay tax on whatever you buy using reward points; it went through.

Then, there were at least 3 cars trying to back out of parking spaces that had to brake for me; then as I approached the tattoo shop where the sidewalk is always littered with half smoked American Spirit's a young lady was just sweeping them all up; I was a minute too late.

I just wanted a half cigarette to go with the Rock Star drink; but the message to me was clear: I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I should have went out to play at the Lilly Pad, but I didn't; so I was just in the way. No half cigarette for you; you're not where you belong...you chickened out; afraid that you would spend your tip money on alcohol and you would wind up full of self loathing and back at the bottom of the mountain that took you 5 days of fasting to almost reach the peak of...cluck, cluck, cluck!

Here It Is; Exactly 9:12 p.m. Again

I'm still feeling the tug from the playing spot; and happened to glance at the clock to see that it was 9:12 p.m., the time of the trolley that I used to ride down there 6 nights a week.

And, I would feel guilty about taking that Monday night off. Now, look at me; making excuses for not going out: "I'm on the 5th day of a juice and water fast; I need to take it easy; this is a time of restoration and regrouping; cleansing both inside and out, etc..."

I am starting to change my perspective on things, though. That could just be the result of being substance free for 5 days, though.

I've promised myself I won't go back out until I have at least one brand new song to do. I've also gotten some alphabetic indexes that will go in a spiral binder; so I can keep track of the 500 or so songs that I have done in my life; of which I can only seem to think of less than 25 of, on a given night.

This is partly because I'm only thinking in keys that suit the C major harmonica or the D major one. This is kind of limiting. But there is more than one way to skin a cat. By moving the capo around on the neck, I could potentially do any song in a key that fits the harmonicas; given that I now know how to play in 4 positions on each one. That at least gives me 8 out of 12 keys. And C sharp, F sharp, D flat and A flat, I hardly ever played in, anyways...

I'm off to get juice to keep the cleanse going.

I have an appointment for next Monday to have a tooth pulled. The dentist was talking about me "saving" a lot of teeth and only having to wear a partial denture which, I guess would cover the "smiling" teeth that I imagine society is most concerned about. I don't think I ever smile hard enough so that my teeth show; but that's where that stands.

I'm thinking of starting a GofundMe page with a picture of me smiling with my bad teeth; to see if anyone would give me money, so they could look forward to seeing me with my recently purchased smile, and feel like they had a part in it.

I imagine the success of that plan would lie in how well I marketed the thing...

It's almost 10 and I'm thirsting for alkaline water...

How Can I Doubt A Guy Born With Rotten Teeth?

I got home at 9:12 p.m. -the exact time I used to leave on the trolley most nights to go play at the Lilly Pad.

This was after having gotten what should be a pretty good can of tuna for Harold at the Ideal Market, which is painted yellow outside, and run by an apparently all Hispanic crew.

To answer a most pressing inquiry of mine...

The cashier, a young kind of round faced brown eyed and skinned girl with long straight hair, whom I would have to guess could be traced to Central America, was very positive and, after I asked her to take back an energy drink which had rung up as a cash sale and not been funded by the food card "I guess 'cause it's zero calories, it's not considered food," i had said, which made her smile.

Then, when I produced the food card while saying: "I need to save my $2.89 (the energy drink cost) for tomorrow..." she smiled and nodded, as if admiring my fiscal acumen.

For it is true, had I spent cash on the drink, I would absolutely have to ride my bike back to the dental place, which took me approximately 50 minutes to do this morning.

That means that, even using a rough average speed of 11 miles per hour; (which is 2 mph slower than what I have averaged on a bike my whole life) the dental place is about a 9 mile ride from here.

On the way back, I had smartened up a bit. Having seen in retrospect that I had basically taken a right turn shaped route that took 50 minutes; I took off in the direction of where I guessed Sacred Heart to be, as the crow flies. I shaved a lot of time off the trip, so making my 2 o' clock appointment there tomorrow is less of a daunting task.

The 3 day now fast has weakened me a bit, such as when, on the ride back from the dental place, I stopped at the big Rouses Market and bought a carrot based drink, that I sipped as I rode to keep me going.

I still kept having the recurring thought of: "How am I going to bring myself to the Lilly Pad and play music in just a few hours, after doing almost 20 miles on a bike, on the third day of a juice and water only fast*

*There are those who call a juice fast "a juice feast," and they have an argument, because the hardcore key-toe-sis that the body goes into by day 4 of a water only fast will technically never come while "living" on juice. But I suppose that is debatable; will the body start living off its own fat while it has a glass of apple juice every so often to fuel the brain? Doesn't the brain run off fat? I haven't actually searched for info on the biochemistry of juice vs. water.

(side note: This Blogger editor, provided by the search engine that is named after the term for a one with a million zeroes after it; draws a squiggly line under the correctly spelled key-toe-sis word, which means, in my conspiracy aware head, that, along with other terms for things that could take money out of the pockets of drug companies -water and juice fasts being not squiggled under in red when mentioned; but a word such as the "k" word that refers to science that, if the average citizen were to become aware of the implications derived there from, might have multitudes of people curing their diseases through fasting. And so the "k" word is squiggled out and, in the old days would be flagged and reported to ultimately a human being who would shadow ban the blog; so that a throttle would be put upon how available to the general public this blog, that talks about the body burning its own fat during a fast, then turning to cancerous tumors for sustenance when that runs out, would be. 

But, that has already happened to this blog. I can think of it as having a small audience have the secret code to get to this blog; from having had it before the shadow banning happened.

The shadow banning means that anyone in the world can put "blogs about street music played by guy's named Daniel" in a search box and they will be returned results for websites about exactly that, unless that website is disseminating misinformation on any of a whole gamut of topics.

Ironically this means that I can just about write anything I want; I have free speech; because the algorithm has already closed the gate to the internet writ large.

The reason I bother (excuse the pun) if one post a week can be considered bothering, is that I intend to double cross "them" by switching this whole blog in the hopefully near future, to another platform; one which will not be under the control of anyone not nice, like Elon Musk is.

Then this blog will become unfettered, like Forest Gump....

Then all my misinformation, like about having apparently kicked down an infection using Wim Hof breathing exercises, juice fasting, acupressure, hot compresses at the sight of the infection, and imagining myself as a person who does not have any bacteria multiplying under his skin; and even imagining a white light, well more like a lightning shade of white, with a tinge of electric blue-green streaming into my forehead with each breath I take -shining in through an aperture which has opened to the universe at the crown of my head; and having that light shine through me, cleansing and infusing every cell with positive energy; killing bacteria in the process, and then exiting through my toes, after having pushed the negativity out through them; can once again go out to the whole world; as long as everyone starts using a different search engine than Google...unless Elon buys that too, and does away with the shadow banning).

Anatomy of a Shadow Ban

Case in point: I took some kind of circuitous route to a podcast of an interview of Linda Ronstadt. I guess I had fooled the algorithm into thinking I belonged in "the other" echo chamber; perhaps because I had watched enough Linda related stuff to tip some balance somewhere. 

It was done during the Trump administration; and Linda's once angelic speaking voice (and you should have heard her sing!) was a bit cracked and strained; already ravaged by whatever disease she has.

But, at one point she started talking about the horrors that that particular president had inflicted upon immigrants who arrived at the southern U.S. border; in the form of separating parents from children. Linda mentioned how cruel this was and how horrified she would be if separated from even her niece.

Then it occurred to me that I had never gotten that information, or "narrative," if you will. Not at all. 

I had just never heard that, sitting here in Louisiana getting stuff off a Google server in Texas. I had never been fed that by the algorithm. 

Every source that I would scroll through had clips of Trump explaining that, in the cases of these separations, these "parents" had been determined to be human smugglers and not mommy and daddy at all. When the adults and children are told that they are going to be separated, and given a chance to say goodbye; it's probably pretty easy to tell; like when King Solomon, or one of those guy's, was poised to divide a baby in half in order to settle a custody dispute between two women who each claimed to be the mother.

I think professionals are good at determining which are the actual families; by the tears and the hugs; and which are the endangered kids in the hands of cartel members, by the fears and the thugs.

And so, I was never given any different narrative; and had to learn from Linda Ronstadt that there was even anyone out there who believed any differently. That kind of explains why I've heard that internet connectivity is so spotty and slow in certain places; there is probably a lot of data being throttled and a lot of filters that stuff has to go through. This blog needs to be filtered out, for example, which requires that many more nanoseconds of processor time, down at Google Central..

Elon can't act soon enough. There is a faction at work trying to divide the U.S. into two warring tribes. We "Musk" do something (groan, I know). OK, end of soapbox speech.

Back To The Tooth...

So I did all of the do-it-myself home toothache remedies that I told the dental people about, with the meditation being done under the guidance of a young Asian lady on my laptop's screen, sitting in the lotus position, with amazing breasts.

The infection does seem to be receding; but I do still have the appointment in another 15 hours, and I think it wouldn't be honorable to blow it off after I felt that the hearts of the staff at Exceptional Dental melted a bit and they warmed toward me, as I spilled my guts about being a street musician "I think, if God wants me to have the tooth pulled, I'll get a hundred dollar tip tonight; but that being said, I might have just jinxed it; and I can't count on having the 27 bucks for the checkup, even; and, to tell you the truth, if I just made 27 bucks, I would get some cat food, and..."

There was a black lady, who was wearing a mask, but looking very "African" in her manner of dress. It was by her direction that "spiritual health" had been added to the words on the front window of the place, to go with x-rays, root canals and other more temporal areas of "health." I am guessing that, based upon her vibe (Her eyes had lightened up after I told her that I had been doing the Wim Hof breathing exercises) and the colors that she was wearing in a kind of wrap around garment that was earth tones, mixed with the kind of colors that appear on inner city murals that are promoting peace and harmony, type of thing.

There was a slightly older lady sitting down behind a computer, who had initially asked me; as if by reflex; if I wanted an appointment. The black lady seemed to be the one absorbing my whole story, except for the part about the breasts of the meditation guide lady; while the one behind the computer looked at her fingernails.

But, I could really sense that they were trying to bend over backwards a bit to come up with a way that I could basically have a tooth pulled, using only a Healthy Blue medicaid card to affect the action. "I haven't asked my mom for money in...." I was in the middle of saying, when the black lady turned and yelled to an unseen person in the back, inquiring about a Doctor Foster. After getting some kind of reply, she asked me if I could come in at 2 o' clock (14 hours from now) and that I would be able to be seen by this Doctor Foster, whom I was told had some sort of link to the medicaid system and would be able to look at the tooth, tell that it was infected, x-ray it, and then pull it out, all at no cost to me.

I was telling some of this to Patrick, whom I dropped in on, on the way back and subsequently found to be quite the expert on the very subject:

"I was born with rotten baby teeth; I had an abscess every two weeks; they used to give me tea bags to place against them and draw the poisons out; tea bags will do that..."

"Just black tea?"

"No, it's a blend..."

He then told me that what was really going on was that the dental place technically has to honor medicaid and treat you; but they will try their darnedest to get as much cash out of you as possible; with I guess the $29 special for exam and x-rays being the introductory offer.

The reason, Patrick said, was that the dental place will have to wait something like a year or more in order to get paid by medicaid; it's backed up, it's slow; it's no surprise, I thought. How can I doubt someone who was born with rotten teeth?

So, this particular Doctor Foster sounds to me like kind of a speculator; willing to sow seeds that he will reap later on. If he can charge medicaid say, 3 times as much as the $29 special that I was offered, then 3 birds in the bush are still worth more than one in the hand. Even with Biden's projected 5% rise in inflation, or whatever "they" are saying, over the next year; a 300% return on investment in one year (or maybe a little more) is better than a sharp stick in the eye.

And, so I admire Doctor Foster for that display of fiscal acumen. Which is why I was amused by how it came full circle with the Ideal Market cashier smiling in approval after I had told her I didn't want to pay out of my cash for the Monster drink; "because I need the money for tomorrow."