Grey Day Shopping Trip

 Up around noon which makes sense as I was up until 4AM. It already looks really grey out there. 

I did at least 10 puffs on the Voldyne last night, getting it up past 1750 a time or two. That thing is really neat! I am so glad Sean Renzo Head on YouTube recommended it to me. I found one video with a trombone player recommending it, and the guy was using a 5000cc one, and could take it past the top. Trombone players, man. A few years ago there was something in St. James Park with some instruments and a small band on a stage and a young guy, a trombonist, letting people try the instruments and spraying disinfectant on them between users. He was going into young child education or something and seemed to have the right personality, very nice. I couldn't get a peep out of his trombone. I guess it just takes a lot of air. I did pick up the trumpet and did some licks and heads turned. I'd given up trumpet for the umpteenth time then and that turned me around. I hope that guy is doing OK and will have a great career in young child education. 

I got out of here around 3. Rode up to Dai Thanh but they were closed for Tet. Came back around to the Amazon hub and picked up 15 bubble mailers. There are times I wonder if I should just have Ken buy some, but the Amazon ones are thicker/tougher than the ones we can buy, and come with enough extra material that I trim them down and use the trimmed off part for padding. 

Next stop was Nijiya where I locked up the bike, and went over to Kogura's thinking they might have silk handkerchiefs. They don't. They advised I go to Nikkei Traditions but they don't have them either. I want to make a pull-through swab for the shakuhachi but I might just use a piece of chamois I have here. 

Then I went into Nijiya and did my shopping. The blonde guy was cashier and I said, "So, they acquitted him" but he didn't want to talk. Along with my odds and ends and sake I got a nice sashimi on rice thing, and a beer. 

All day it was dark, as dark in the afternoon as it would be a 6 in the evening. Even though there was a breeze, things had that feeling like the air was actually a very, very clear liquid. I've always liked days like that, even back in Hawaii. 

I got back and had my sushi and beer, and got into watching a new Adam Curtis documentary that turned out to be a 3-parter and each part over an hour. Pretty interesting. 

If, as Buddha says, we've all been through countless lives and been in every relationship to each other, then it doesn't seem so bad that my youngest sister didn't go into show business or my oldest didn't get to write the Great American Novel, or I didn't become an artist or a scientist of some note. Because it's all one big dance, where if someone is out there inventing great things that's part of me also, and if I am only playing a bit part in things it's still important. 

This is I attempt to reconcile that fact that I've done all these really low-level jobs to survive and it seems like someone who's smart ought to live for a greater purpose than cleaning dog kennels. Someone has to clean those kennels, I guess. 

Also, I was only cleaning dog kennels because I wanted a job that would let me fit things around my college classes, because I wanted to study electronics which would provide a good living - all those lies. If I'd just fucked around and did whatever I wanted, things would probably have turned out much better. 

My advice is to do whatever you're interested in and assume you'll get paid shit. Because it's better than doing what everyone advises to study with the illusion that you'll get paid well, and then find out it pays shit. And avoid "fast-moving" fields. Find something to do that's changing as little as possible. 

The "all is vanity" stance may be a useful one. In 100 years is anyone going to give a shit that Edison invented the light bulb? He was running neck and neck with a few other guys, any of whom could be credited for it. And as it is, we're using fluorescent lights, a Tesla invention, and LED lights, which I think are American/Japanese (apparently Americans didn't think you could go higher than green in LEDs and a Japanese scientist shows you can go up to blue and even UV). 

Edison just invented because he loved the shit out of inventing things. Ken, who I work for, messes around designing medical devices because he's messed around with physics and chemistry and electronics since he was in grade school. It's just what he does. I told him once he's like a kid who was given a saxophone, played it for something like 12 hours a day and got so good that he's in demand.