A few small faces

 Up at 4. I didn't practice last night of course, although in the area of "doing something" I did draw a few small faces and doodles. 

I also packed things, not to take them to the post office today, but to have them officially packed, then the plan was to go to Lowe's today and get a couple of smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher. I had a lot of trouble getting motivated, and finally took off at almost 7. 

Although it was rapidly getting dark I didn't have any zombie problems so I got lucky there. The extinguisher and detectors cost me $97 but are well worth it I think.  Lowe's was all out of Windex except for one small bottle that got bought as I looked, and completely out of paper towels. They did have big packages of white shop rags, for people who want to go to using cloth rags I guess. 

I had a chat with Arnold the security guard at Telemundo on the way back, and picked up a red bell pepper. Then once back here cooked up some "Spanish eggs" which is just scrambled eggs with diced poblano chile, hot sauce, and sour cream on top. 

I just feel very un-motivated and it's for the reason that I think I have a problem that precludes my getting any further in trumpet and in fact, means I should probably quit and call it a good run. It's the same sort of situation Marvin Naylor's in, with his deafness/tinnitus and arthritis, I think. My rate of improvement has been glacial, anyway, but I'm also up against the curve of old age, and then there's this problem. Marvin Naylor continues to play and teach because he can get by 1:1 with a student or as a busker, and he really doesn't have a fallback. 

Well, I do. From before I can remember it was the rule that I would be an artist. Everyone being so sure is kind of neat, in that art materials rained from the sky whenever I wanted them, but it also introduces a thing called pressure. This is a very well-known thing in sports, where a kid can become very good at a sport, but really not like it because it becomes a job. Enjoying the sport, an internal goal, gets covered up by the need to do well, which is an external goal. 

So I was put under pressure especially when we were very poor and my paintings and drawings were a lifeline at times. But I think it disgusted me as I think the whole family would have lived off of me if they could. And I was discovering new stuff, electronics and science-y stuff like books by Carl Sagan. And poverty had me afraid to go into anything but the things thought most likely to provide a good living. In my case and my era, electronics. Yeah take a big bite of that mock apple pie, them's apples not dry crackers, you bet. 

It turns out that you can go into just about anything whether you like it and assume it pays little, or hate it and assume it pays much, and you're going to get about the same crappy pay no matter what you do. I've even told Ken I'd have done far better in life if I'd gone to college for art instead of electronics - I'd have gotten a job in an art supply store, and had side commissions, and possibly gotten credentialed as an art teacher, and have made 10X the money electronics ever got me. 

But back to those internal and external goals. I've told myself I "should" learn caricature drawing because it (supposedly) makes so much money, and put that way, it sounds like a damn job. But in reality I really *would* like to be able to draw all different kinds of noses and eyes and so on. And as my caricature drawing buddies (Fat, and Skinny, of Christmas In The Park fame) "you just have to draw a lot of bad ones before the good ones start coming out". 

All I ever wanted was something I could be good at that I could use to make my way in the world. Hawaii was awash in artists, and all of them seemed to be poor. So I thought electronics would do it, and got in just as the electronics technician jobs were all going away. Then a minor sport, which was OK but *very* political with backstabbing and skullduggery at an almost Kremlin level. Plus the USSR fell so the modern Olympics mostly lost its reason for being. 

Then Ebay started up and I got in early. That's been "very OK". It's probably on a par with being a skilled line cook or warehouseman or tire installer. You'll survive and that's about it. Losing my own Ebay business in mid-07 was a relief. I never wanted to make a living where I had to have that much stuff again. (At least here it's all Ken's stuff.) 

My criteria are that whatever I do, can't take a lot of "stuff" to do, and if I were dumped in a strange town with the clothes on my back and not much more, I could make my way. Say I get quite good at portraits, I can always beg some paper or cardboard or something and a pencil or crayon and draw a few people, and then I've shown myself to be someone with a special ability who's worth something. 

That's how it was when I was a kid/teen. There was little food and I didn't have shoes (not as big a deal in Hawaii) but I was taken a bit more seriously because I was an "artist". Not that good of one, but head and shoulders above any other kid I knew of on the then sparsely-populated windward side of Oahu. 

Imagine my come-down when, after running away to join my father in Hawaii Kai, I met kids who'd had some actual art training and were better than me. When you've got a skill that's about all you've got, and you think you've got a solid living on it, then get crushed by the people who are *really* good at it... it's no wonder I fled to electronics. I was given the decades-old impression that in electronics, they needed legions of techs. 

This happens in Japanese schools a lot. Some kid is the hotshot in his little area, then because he *is* smart and hard-working, he tests into one of the elite high schools and finds out that there, he's 3rd rate. That's what happened to me, and it was only a painting of some kid climbing on some rocks, and copied out of a magazine illustration at that. I felt like not even mentioning to the girl who painted it that I did art at all, tho' I was not immune to the occasional doodle. This last meant that in the last year at good old Henry J. Kaiser High, when kids got their yearbooks like I could not afford, to graduate which I could also not afford, I was suddenly very popular - they wanted my signature but more importantly, they were hoping for a doodle. 

I'm not sure if it was my cartoon about Mr. Bill and Mr. Hand that somehow involved solar energy, my drawing of "Captain Larval" in English class, the stuff I did in actual art class (where popularity actually hinged on knowing Rapper's Delight) or my profusely-illustrated notebook for Marine Science, which someone stole, but I had a reputation. And those kids weren't just drinking "Moonrise, The Coffee That's Mellowed With Plutonium", a product I came up with in some weird class, call it Economics, it was more about living day-to-day. 

If it weren't for art, I think I might have had a good run for Most Unpopular Kid, because I was so miserable, and so underfed, and so worried about how I was going to survive, would I become homeless, etc. I almost never had anything good to say, because I really didn't know how. Conversation, as I'd been taught, meant finding something to gripe about. Observations about someone else meant snarking at them. I was equal parts MAD Magazine and my mom's mental illness, I think. So I was most unpleasant. But they came around to have me sign their yearbooks... 

So there's a lot of sugar and a lot of shit, and the task is to separate the sugar from the shit. That's what the lotus does; growing out of the mud. The significance of the lotus in Buddhism can only be compared to Mother Mary in Catholicism probably, only more so. Something in the midst of mud and filth, that grows pure and beautiful. The sugar should not be thrown away. My parents were both frustrated artists and on that basic level really wanted me to be an artist. That they were both rather awful people who'd have taken advantage of any success I had is also certain, but I've outlasted them now. 

I can separate the sugar from the shit. I'm 4 years out from not having to work any more, as long as I can live on about $800 a month, Medicare, and "working the system". 

So I can spend the 4 years learning Hebrew (it hasn't been going well) and converting, then moving to Israel which may or may not be possible and may or may not go well. 

Or I can spend the 4 years working on art when I'm not working on stupid Ebay stuff, and at the very least be able to sketch, joke, and entertain well enough to get me the happy hour special in restaurants in Waikiki. 

The advantage of retiring back in Hawaii is I already know the local dialect, and if I can learn to draw or paint "atmosphere" it won't matter where I do it. I'll still be in the US if a remote corner of it, so if I want to publish books it won't be any harder than in any other US state. I know where everything is. I just have to make myself someone  who adds to the place.