78th day sober. Up at 4. I don't know why, but these busking sessions have really been tiring me out. I watched too much inane stuff on YouTube last night but did get 20 Ebay things listed and then went right to bed with no practice. I was that tired. When I woke up I was achy and still felt tired.
I've been thinking more about my fall-out with Bicycle Lady. I don't think I can convince her I'm not a commie after all, because I remember now that I'd crowed about how proud I am of getting my "Fauci ouchie" shots. Although I can mention that as a young Boomer I remember vaccinations every kid in town would get; we'd line up in the school auditorium and all get our jab. It was Civic Duty! And that the Army gave me plenty of vaccinations too. So vaccinations are old hat to me.
It occurs to me that there are now quite a few people who have not had the experiences I have; watching the moon rocket go up (because Mom made us watch it) and rubella shots and everyone watching the same show on TV in the early evening, typically Walter Cronkite talking about Phnom Penh or some such thing. As American life goes it was much more "collective". Everyone rode bikes in the streets and everyone went to Summer Fun and quite a number were in Scouts and so on.
But thinking more about the underclass ... I know, having been struggling and poor myself, that money seems impossible to save. And, once saved, what would one do with it? The instinct - which I've observed - is to spend it on "something to show for it". That might explain the fad for tattoos.
There's this fear. Money is scary. You work and work scared not to have it. You try to save but something always comes up to snatch the savings away. You get lured into little comforts like cigarettes and beers and going to see some concert even though the concert always sounds awful compared to the album. Pretty soon the emergencies that take any money you have lying around are the lack of cigarettes, beers, or a concert that's coming up.
So you perpetually have no savings; the "living paycheck to paycheck" that's talked about, and it's not even confined to the working or underclass. Ken lives that way also.
People who live this way are scared. And scared people subscribe to whatever variety of politics tells them that next crumb is coming in OK, and even better if they're told the next crumb might be a bit larger. So you have people cheering because Trump told them their coal mining jobs will come back. And likewise when he implicitly tells them non-whites are going to be removed as competition.
It takes a lot of bravery to be a Communist. To assume that you'll be OK no matter what, that you trust others. It took my few months as a panhandler to show me how many decent people there really are out there and this is experience no one gets until they're in extremis.
And even then, it seems that almost no one will, upon losing everything and having to hustle for spare change, conclude that "the sea of the people" is fine to swim in. Instead they'll pine for the times before they lost it all, and even better, pine for what the Fascists tell them to pine for, some kind of pre-1965 crime-free exploitation-free white ethno-state that never really existed.
So instead of the old-time hobo-Wobbly of the 1930s, we've got hobo-Fascists who will happily kill off, or try to, whatever minority their Fascist leader aims them at.
I headed out for a shopping trip at H Mart at about 6:30. First I got some potstickers and ate them over by Starbucks, to get my greasy food craving fixed. Then I went in and got all kinds of things, spending all but a dollar of the busking money my wallet was fat with.
I rode back and went to Tom's place - he had a huge pile of wood in front. He was there and I first asked him if he was a beaver or something. We hung out and talked for a while, and he's not been practicing his trumpet although we talked about busking and hustling crafts and all sorts of things. He's been selling wood, and making about 1/3 what I have, for far more hours of hard work. But if it's what he likes to do then it's what he should do. I told him about places I know of where furniture etc. get tossed out. Like all the school stuff left out at the Dept of Education site just up the road.
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