I got quite a lot done yesterday. Naturally I finished washing my towel and orange jacket and hung those up with a fan blowing on them and they dried overnight - kind of surprising in the case of the towel. Here it is April 1 and it's going to be in the mid to high 80s today.
By the time I did all these things and got my practice in, it was almost 6AM and I went to bed. I'd had only a little sake this time, and had sleep that felt light but I guess was OK. I woke up at noon and kind of half-slept until 2 then got up, hearing what sounded like a trashy or working-class guy talking in English outside. I peeked out through the mail slot and it was indeed a trashy white guy with that trashy body language and trashy voice, with a really nice car. He was bitching on his phone with someone, and drove off.
I got out a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt because it being April 1, it's time to change to "summer uniform". I came up with this on my own but in Japan they do this, change types of clothing for the warmer weather around April 1. I took off for downtown at 3:30 as I had a bank appointment for 4. I got there 6 minutes ahead of time so I had time to rinse my face with some water I had with me and mostly dry off.
The deposit went fine, and I told 'em don't be surprised if about $2700 comes out because that'll be the IRS. (And a similar amount coming out soon for my 2020's then whatever penalties they charge me for being late filing my 2019's which will be $300-$400 so that accounts for, well, what's in my account.)
Next I rode over to Da Kao and got a nice little serving of chicken curry on rice for $4 and went over to the college to eat it. I thought I'd found a nice spot in the shade but a couple of (white) skateboarders were doing their tricks in the area and sure enough, the one with the "I live at home with Mom" beard came over and said in that sort of talking-down-to-preschoolers voice, that Wouldn't I leave that area because they're there etc. I said OK fine I see, and found another, nicer actually, place to sit around the corner. I really miss those Asian kids who'd breakdance by the library in the Before Times. I could probably sit right at the edge of their performing area with my bowl of curry and they'd not blink. Or Asian skateboarders, it'd be "OK, they're here too, live and let-live".
Since I was just around the corner from the skateboarders, one of them commenced to going up and down on the (very wide) walkway in front of me, doing those flips and stuff, but it appears they got embarrassed and went to riding on the part behind me which had those grooves and thus is much less fun to ride on. Maybe they were trying to annoy me but it didn't register. I just thought about how, in my day, it was all about the 360 and the nose wheelie, slaloming down hills and in general, things that didn't make you fall down 2 times out of 3. I pondered whether Tony Hawk, who kinds of rescued skateboarding with his safety-first and family-friendliness, brought on a style where you can crash all over the place because you're wearing knee pads and a helmet at the approved skate park, brought on this kind of stupid, devil-may-care style.
Done with my (delicious) curry, I went over to the Amazon place where I picked up yet another shakuhachi book and yet another Swiss army knife, as mine had disappeared a couple of days ago. Before taking off today I'd found it, under some clothes so ... at least I'll have a spare. And I picked up 13 bubble mailers.
The book was one I'd bought when I was first interested in the shakuhachi, "Blowing Zen" by Ray Brooks, and I'd loved reading it but at the time I could barely puff out anything. It was a combination of a bit of pneumonia and, assuming my goal was to stay on the mainland here, deciding to stick with trumpet after all. I'd remembered the enthusiasm in the book but leafing through it now, there are the details I'd re-bought it for. How Brooks, even as a beginner, was spending 45 minutes a day just playing long tones. I'm thinking the guy must have had some wind instrument experience under his belt, maybe in Band in high school or something.
Done at the Amazon place, I got over to Nijiya and as I'd hoped, Blondie was there, out front. I hurried back to the bike and pulled out the 4 oz. bag of kava I'd brought along for him. I think he was pretty happy about that, after all, all he'd done to earn it was to say "I'd be up for that" when I mentioned giving my excess kava away.
After handing the kava off to him, I walked over to The Arsenal because that place is so interesting to look around in. I bought a Pilot B2P ballpoint pen that's all transparent blue and greenish and looks like a day at the beach and writes *really* well. I told the gal there how I'd bought all these Bics because my boss "eats pens" but he's not eaten as many as I thought he would, and those Bics are getting kind of tired, and I'd had to search around for a good pen to do my taxes with. We talked about all sorts of things, like how hard it is to actually get art done when you don't have a dedicated studio to do it in. And how I'd planned to be a sign painter and could make it work if I loved sign painting more than anything else, but in truth I love the shakuhachi more. She'd played sax for 6 years and I mentioned my trumpet time. I'd considered the sax but there are "so many buttons!" and she said she'd tried trumpet and it confused here - there were only three buttons! I told her how you have to hear where you're going in your mind, and it just takes a long time to sound decent - I'd sounded like crap for a long time but eventually got to where I was making $30-$50 an hour by Whole Foods and the first time played just one hour and made $133. Ahh, but all in the Before times, we're not sure if any of it is coming back...
(In truth, it may never come back to any extent but this is why to play a 1000-year-old instrument like the shakuhachi where if I can play at things like weddings and temples, people will probably look out for me.)
Done buying my pen, I went back to Nijiya and got some natto, sashimi, pickled gobo, an avocado, things like that, including one of those alcohol-free beers. Those don't taste that much like beer, but the can was ice-cold and I know it's fizzy and even at $3.25 is cheap because with alcohol, one always wants *more*.
On a whim, I walked across the street to see what was open. There was the poke place, with a bum hanging around out front, a tall skinny Caucasian (of course) guy who lurched in my direction and when I tried to avoid him, changed direction to confront me so I knit my brown and aimed right for him and he gave way. I went into the place and told them there's a disgusting bum out front trying to keep people from going in, and looked outside a couple of times and the bum had staggered off, to annoy someone else. Why do these bums, who don't live in the area (never seen this one before) come where they're not welcome and pester people?
I got a 1/4-lb of "Hawaiian" poke and then hurried home. "Hurried" is an overstatement as the wind had me slowed way down. It was 6 when I got back.
My pondering today is, Why did it take me so long to discover wind instruments? When I was very little, I just liked music. I didn't think about instruments, I just adored music. The Nutcracker, most anything classical, the Herb Alpert stuff my dad loved, etc. We had a piano, and I was taught something called "Chopsticks" and could play that, musically, at age 5 but once we moved to Hawaii we'd get yelled at if we even touched the piano. I was the most annoying because I liked to press one key down and hold it, listening to what sounded to me like the sound spinning around itself. I think I was hearing the three strings that are actually struck when a key is pressed down. It drove Mom nuts.
Then upon moving to Hawaii we all got ukuleles, which none of us learned how to play actually, but it was the thing to do. I saw my mom mesmerized by some Elvis knock-off guy on TV so then I wanted a guitar very much and was finally rewarded by a Sears Silvertone, widely agreed upon as one of the most awful guitars of all time. I never learned to play it.
Through all this, my father decided that as good American kids we should be able to whistle Yankee Doodle. We were really bad, as in little to nonexistent skill, at whistling. My father kept urging us, at one point saying the reward was $10 which was a huge amount of money to us. Still, it never happened. But, this was probably the beginning of my "quiet whistle" that I used to entertain myself. It's made by creating a sibilance between the tongue and roof of the mouth and then tuning that. I got quite good at it and no one ever heard it although if I wasn't careful and did it with someone else in the room they might ask "What's that weird sound?" So in a way I had a very basic wind instrument, something like a vessel flute.
I knew I liked, and wanted to do, music but had no real way to go about it. I bought, and eventually sold, many guitars, same for harmonicas, took some short-lived harmonicas lessons, took a classical guitar class I could have milked out to 6 semesters as a class and a re-take for each of the three levels, but I didn't do that. I just floundered around ....
Eventually I homed in on trumpet, with even a lot of fits and starts there, but the trumpet is a good teacher. I really did sound like crap for the longest time and yet I stuck through. I think now of those all years and all that work as preparation.
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