While I was asleep. It's just staying steadily wet now. Lots of leaves all over so it was windy too. I'm pretty good at sleeping through stuff like big trucks passing through and various industrial noises. I was up at a quarter to 4.
I guess being bored is a luxury, but it's both boring and depressing. It's cold and wet and dark, and the virus is raging so I have to take pains to be extra antisocial. For instance, if the covid level was "purple" a few weeks ago, I'd not have gone into Guitar Center to buy that uke. Although I supposed if I needed to buy one now, I'd buy it online and do store pickup and pick it up at the front door.
The thing is, I take this stuff seriously. They say on the radio to get a flu shot and I do it - now I don't have to worry about that because I did it early, just like they advised. They say the virus is raging, OK I'll wear my mask 100% when out because that's what a good citizen does.
As people keep saying, No, this isn't the Black Plague but it is about 10X as lethal as the regular flu, and if medical systems get overwhelmed then it will get much worse - 10%-20% death rate not to mention the other patients with the ongoing toll of heart disease and burst gallbladders etc who will die from lack of care due to the systems being swamped by covid patients. This is why the Italians had to do triage. A Redditor's father was turned away from an overwhelmed ER because he "felt ill" and died three days later from a burst gallbladder. This is what the Republicans want - let the virus rage.
On Reddit they call it the "Leopards Eating Faces Party" - people vote for it because they never think a leopard will eat THEIR face.
This is really prevalent among the lower classes. Trumpers on Welfare. I've talked to any number of homeless/street people who are vehemently against the very things they benefit from like food stamps and free clinics and so on. Of course anyone who's an identifiable "street person" is 99.99% sure to be nuts anyway.
When I first moved to this area in 2012, there was an old Ford Windstar van that was always parked down the street. I watched it come and go, and eventually learned it was lived in by an old lady. After a few years I got to talk to her and the first time it was just about living situations and the various "tribes" who live in the back parking lots of some of the industrial buildings here. The second time was more ... interesting. I'd talked with her, short little conversations, about where we were moving (3/4 mile down the same street) "Oh, by the croissant place?" "Yeah, a bit further down, across from the cement plant.." and it'd gone fairly well, but one night I wanted to see if she really needed anything so I got into a long conversation.
It turned out that she was all right, except for the Germans and the Haitians. The Germans and the Haitians, it turned out, are in a plot against here. A really bad one too, but so bad it can't be discussed in depth, or something. It got really rambly from there, but of course that's all down to the Germans and the Haitians. I bid a warm adieu and rode off and haven't found a reason to talk since.
Or Recorder Ron. He's convinced that Trumpetman's a pedo, and I always tried to get him to take it easy saying things like that because it can get someone in some real trouble. Ron's life is one of constant drama, during which he was going to inherit a lot of money, then not ... then maybe ... who knows. He said he'd give me a car once and I said the last thing I want is a car. He's probably gone back home to Florida or wherever it was, because I've not seen him for something like a year.
Trumpetman used to have a bio on his web page and mainly all he's done to screw up in life is, like I have, consistently take the wrong path when he came to a branch point. He's not really crazy, just takes a really dismal view of things. So he'll have signs out saying "IF THE PEOPLE OF SAN JOSE DON'T GIVE MORE I'LL HAVE TO EAT THE RABBIT" (he always has a pet rabbit with him). In a way, while he's not crazy, he has a bad mindset for someone in his situation.
Gretch, who I used to think of as "Dirty Hands Girl" can do fairly decent artwork of flowers but mainly her thing is begging with a small dog or three. I got in an in-depth conversation with her once and well ... it seems that at least in her mind she's got about 15 children out there and at least five or six houses she can move into any time, out in the Midwest. She just prefers to live on the street, for now, here. She's nice enough but things just don't add up.
Wendell the flute player is an exception but is he really "street"? He's got a house in New Orleans, and travels back and forth because it's better than just staying in NOLA all the time. And he's got significant roots in the Bay Area here from working and living here during various periods of his life. He'd dealing the hand Life his given him quite well I think.
There are a lot of randoms I've talked to and they're typically at least as crazy as Windstar Van Lady. You can't really help them because say you give them money for food and it'll go for cigarettes. The pile of art materials I gave to Good Artist Guy on the Paseo de San Antonio probably got sold for crack rocks or meth. Let's say he was a METHodical artist...
Rinban Sakamoto at the temple knows the Jodo Shinshu teachings inside and out, and can talk all about the higher and lower levels of existence like the realm of the hungry ghosts and so on, but he always emphasizes "This is all here; this is right now". Someone who can only spit hate at those who help them out from the Welfare office to the kindly person who drops them a few bucks, and is probably addicted to cigarettes if not booze and other things, and who lives from cig to cig, 6-pack to 6-pack, aren't they living in something close to the realm of the hungry ghosts?
What about the really gone crack addicts, meth addicts, heroin addicts? Life as an endless cycle of stealing or doing whatever they have to do, then getting their substance, experiencing a brief respite from the pain (and probably having put off eating to get their hit) then on the cycle, around and around, isn't that an Earthly version of the realm of the hungry ghosts?
Of course it doesn't take drugs to be unhappy but they sure do help .... It's more of a mind set. I never contemplated taking drugs because the long and short of it is, it would bring great shame to my family. That's the kind of Asian thinking I didn't realize I have due to having grown up in Hawaii. But someone with no feeling of shame, only personal guilt and who cares about anyone else, and after all they're feeling bad so why not try some drugs? It's their body yadda yadda.
Maybe this comes down to two cultures. There are several videos on YouTube about how homelessness is "done" in Japan. Because they are capitalist of course they have homelessness, but because they realize their impact on society at large, homeless people there are neat, clean, orderly, and try their best to be out of the way. It's like, "I am in this unfortunate situation but I will try to make it the easiest I can on society". There are very, very, few homeless people in the US who think this way - they're probably not out on the street for long, frankly, because someone who is neat and clean and reliable even under straitened circumstances is a standout here and will get taken in by someone to be a night watchman or some sort of light work.
But US street people are kind of caught in this "Fuck you world, you owe me!" loop. So they can get a free apartment, free food, free yadda yadda, and still be angry and miserable. It's why US beggars will pander to you with a line that goes like, "Do you have a dollar? I could really use a $5, maybe a $20..." and will follow you asking for more. For the few, educational, months I was a panhandler I took a professional pride in being cheerful and thankful whether it was a lot of money I was given or 11c. Or if none, to still be thankful because they'd heard my spiel. That's how a beggar in Japan would do it....
And in Japan, once they can possibly do something other than begging, even if it makes less, they do that thing. Which is what I did - handicrafts then busking. Busking being best because the payment is entirely voluntary while the music is given to all who hear it. And Japan has its share of buskers.
But to wind this all up, I've concluded that to interact with US street people pretty much amounts to interacting with the distilled nastiness of American culture. I've pretty much lost interest.
Maybe less than simply lost interest because it occurs to me that Windstar Van Lady was probably helped at one time by a German and a Haitian, thus earning her eternal hatred. Recorder Ron was probably given advice or help by Trumpetman, with the result now that Ron goes around trying to convince anyone who will listen that he's a pedo (he's not). That's how strange the mindset is - help one of the scumsuckers and you run a risk of being fodder for their paranoid conspiracy theories.
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