Return to sender

 I was awake around noon, lay in bed and half-slept until 2, when the mailman parked right out front and knocked on the door. I jumped out of bed and he handed me the box I'd sent to a Reddit character who calls himself "Huckstah". This "Huckstah" had been interested in brewing his own wine, and I said I just happened to have this stuff and I'd send it to him. About 10 bags of champagne yeast and some air locks. 

And as usual, "Huckstah" being a street bum, albeit a bit more adventurous than the average street bum, having had a school bus and now tootling around on a sailboat he acquired somehow, street bums as a rule are flakey as hell, and most are good at making enemies so the guy whose address he gave me might have been a friend a week ago and a bitter enemy now. I've been reading "Huckstah's" posts long enough to know that like any street bum, he's left a trail of people who feel he's wronged them somehow. Hearing only his side, it sounds like the world is full of mean and ungrateful people but if everyone you meet all day is an asshole, you might just be the asshole. 

The moral is, fuck street bums. Never help them; they'll find someone else to rip off. If you help a street bum there are only a few things that can happen: If assistance is mailed, it never gets there because street bums are unstable with regard to addresses and people who have addresses. Or the street bum will show utterly no thanks because to street bums, there is no sense of the social contract and generosity is only seen as weakness. Or the street bum will demand MORE. In the end, if you engage the street bum for any length of time, the street bum will decide you're their enemy, making their web page unpopular, their milk go sour, their cat piss in their shoes, etc. So again, fuck street bums. 

And I actually hung out with street bums for a bit, those street bums who are buskers, as I felt they had some sort of inside line on busking. They don't. Even the "great" Trumpetman who's been out there for years, knows less about busking than I do, and when I was last playing, was playing far below the level I'd attained. Ron The Recorder Player, when I gave him a cornet, would not even try to play it. That would have been actual work, instead of begging.

I only have time for buskers who are *not* street bums these days. The black guy with an electric guitar and mic and amps etc, a whole stage's worth of equipment, that I watched for him while he went in search of a bathrooom. Gabriel The Violinist. Leroy The Saxophonist. Any of the occasional classically trained violinists I used to see in Mountain View in the Before Times. There was a guy who played classical guitar in front of one of the restaurants in Mt. View too, who sounded quite good. 

I do not include Red The Flute Player here because he's a street bum with a flute, mangling the oldies into unrecognizability. I actually got to know him a bit, how he used to be an electronic technician, knows about bicycles, etc. But he is/was a raging alcoholic who regaled me with stories of himself throwing chairs at people at AA meetings and I think coke/crack were involved too. I believe he eventually got housing due to being a Navy vet, but he's probably dead now. 

All of this was in the Before Times and I don't know if it will come back, ever. I've seen exactly two buskers in this wartime, myself and Leroy. When I last went out, boy did no one care. The only exception being in Japantown where people dug my playing. It wasn't even busking, it was just going out and playing. 

Things may recover after enough years. I've got three before I go back to Hawaii and with the shakuhachi I have the advantage of 1000 years of tradition. Mainland Americans spit on tradition, but among Asians it's hallowed. In Japan it's felt that not enough people play the shakuhachi and good, dedicated playing not just using it to make swoopy sounds, is greatly appreciated. And I only need to make my day-to-day money anyway, $10 or $20. With Social Security paying rent, I'll only have to worry about things like bus fare, food I don't fish for or gather, whatever a flip phone costs, etc. 

So I was motivated to get out of bed by the mailman, had a dose of kava and worked on packing two large things, and by the time I was done packing those two large boxes and I was ready to do it was a quarter to six. 

So I chugged up to the FedEx, even walking the bit under the bridge, and dropped those off. I found packing stuff on the way home including a nice stack of firm foam pieces that just about equaled what I'd just used. I had to hurry, though, as the evil leaf blower guys were advancing on me so it was kind of comical. I even went out of that parking lot by a different exit to avoid them. 

Then I went over to Sam & Curry and got a goat curry which I'd been dreaming of. I got spinach and salsa and yoghurt and even shrimp too, and they just charged me for a basic goat curry. Completely different personnel working there too. 

I was smart this time and carried the bowl, in a bag, in my hand instead of putting it in one of the boxes on the bike trailer, which seems to have the same effect as putting it on a laboratory vibration table for a quarter-hour. My holding the bag in my hand and being careful about bumps resulted in it getting here a lot more intact. 

It was a huge meal. After eating, I looked at the wallet I'd found on the road right on the corner of Brokaw and Rogers Avenue. The guy'd just gotten a Mexican Consulate card in February so the address on it was probably good. So I packed it up with a little note about where I'd found it, and it goes in the mail tomorrow. I hope the guy's not freaking out about losing his debit card, although I'm sure he was more worried about losing the kid pictures and much less about the $3 that was in there. I hated being so snoopy looking at all his cards but I had to figure out whose wallet it was, and if possible, where to mail it to them. It feels like paying the world back for the times I've almost lost mine, once finding it in Fry's' side parking lot and another time a bum telling me, "Hey! You're wallet's falling out!" which he didn't have to do at all - he could have waited for it to drop and grabbed it. 

While out riding, I thought about Reddit. When I was really deep into drinking I used to love those old Roger Ramjet cartoons. I'm sure they were fun to make, and they're pretty funny, but not as hilarious as they seemed to me. Again I realize alcohol is like that "Turbo" button on old computers that would actually cut the clock speed in half. Reddit is fine for checking up what's going on in town, and things going on in Hawaii, but it's just not interesting enough to justify the hours I spent on it. I feel about the same about the Morris Berman blog. It's just the same stuff over and over, albeit the stuff being true. 

2 in the afternoon was just the right time to get out of bed, because after pulling everything out of the warehouse that had sold, which is time-consuming, then listing some stuff, then sitting around reading "Roasting In Hell's Kitchen" by Gordon Ramsey while waiting out a long Windows 10 update, it was around 5AM. I got out the shakuhachi and did my practice, though. So by the time I went to bed it was 6AM.