Regressing2?

 I ate a lamb shish kabob plate from "Baba's Falafel" on the other corner from the FedEx place, and figured if I ate well and drank a lot I'd go to sleep early and thus get up early. This worked with mixed results. Yes I was up early, and was apparently up even earlier to pee, missing the toilet but hitting my pants and he head of my bed?? 

So I was awake at 7, went back to mostly sleep until say 9, then am actually out of bed at noon. I have some cleaning up to do. 

The news on the radio continues to be horrible. There are now more troops stationed in the national capitol than in the Middle East which in a way is a good thing because white nationalists are magnitudes more dangerous to Americans than anyone in the M.E. 

But it's a weird feeling; I was saying early on that the insurrectionists were set to stage a Beslan 2.0 and it's only days later that those who should be concerned are concerned. 

Oh - I did wake up early enough to catch most of the Temple service that starts at 10:10 (shades of https://www.ten-ten.org/ lol) and heard a great sermon by a sensei that it was made clear by Rinban Sakamoto had traveled allllll the way from San Leandro "in these times" such a long trip being remarkable. 

Among other things, the dharma talk was about Shinran Shonin's analysis of religions. There are three types, he says. There's the kind where people think if they do this or that, they'll get rewarded in return. Like pulling the handle on a slot machine. These are false religions. Then the second type are those where if you refine yourself, you will be rewarded. These are benign. Examples of these might be religious orders where people are vegetarian, take vows of poverty, etc. The effects are positive but no one can follow those perfectly. This is where Pure Land Buddhism splits with other branches of Buddhism. Because Shinran could never do the things perfectly himself. That's the point where his teacher, Honen, taught him the beautiful simplicity that became Jodo Shinshu Buddhism. 

Every day I think about escape ... For now to quote the airline commercial "you are now free to move about the county" but for how long? Will we adopt a system like China's where cities are ranked 1st, 2nd 3rd etc. and you have permission to live in certain cities but maybe not the top ones unless you've got a lot of social capital? For instance I'd be allowed to live in the city of my birth, and maybe in Hawaii because I grew up there and my Social Security number is from there. China actually does this, like most things the do, for good reason - they don't want people flooding into the cities and creating a situation like the US where the average farmer is in his 60s. 

Poverty alone tends to keep people anchored in one place. I have a bit over 5 grand saved up mainly because I haven't paid my 2019 taxes. Probably 2 grand of that doesn't belong to the IRS. I've been holding off on paying until I'm sure we're still a democracy. I know I'll have to pay some penalties and probably won't get the 2nd stimulus check  because of this but if democracy is saved for another 4 years I feel the extra cost is worth it, and if the Dumpos pull off a coup it's time to make plans to make tracks. Hang paying taxes for now. The time to leave for Hawaii may have been yesterday. 

I took off for for H Mart in the late afternoon. Got two bottles of sake and some TP which was at a really decent price, and $20 back, $15 of which went for some fried chicken from "Thai Recipe". It smelled great but after about 1/2 hour dangling in a bag off the bike handlebar it was OK but nothing exciting. 

It had been sunny and hot outside. I wore no sweatshirt under my jacket and even rode with the jacket unzipped so it spread out in the wind but hey, that only makes me more visible. It was not at all like a day in January at all although I remember a hot January day in Santa Cruz with the girlfriend I had then. 

I was on a bottle of nigori (cloudy) sake from H Mart and I think nigori can spoil easily or something because it was just plain rank. I ended up pouring it down the sink. Really fresh nigori is good in its own way but this had probably been sitting there on the shelf at H Mart for a long time while the shoppers there chose between 256 varieties of soju and 256 varieties of beer.