I did a good hour of octaves practice last night, the idea to make myself able to have the "strong" sound of an experienced player. I went to bed around 6AM, got up at 3PM.
On the radio they're talking endlessly about banning guns and curiously, I've heard nothing about the Uvalde TX shooter's name or background or anything.
They want to ban guns to keep them out of people's hands nationwide, but especially out of the hands of the left like the Socialist Rifle Association and leftists and normal people who just want to survive the coming civil war. This is obvious.
Because Uvalde, TX has a population of 16,000. There are probably 16,000 guns of various types owned by the population also. There was one shooter. Who probably showed tons of signs, cries for help really, before shooting up the school. All they had to do is find one kid, as opposed to trying to root out 16,000 guns which is impossible. I'd really want to know what was so wrong in that kid's life that he felt the only solution was to shoot a bunch of people and die himself. But that would be a sociological, human-to-human solution whereas trying to disarm the entire population is a mechanical solution; one that might be thought of by robots.
An interesting question came up on Reddit today on r/hawaii. Where's the jazz music at? It turns out there are a ton of places. People posted over a dozen. Here, in San Jose California, a city of over a million, there *might* be a jazz concert once in a great while in one of the large hotels. Cafe Stritch is long gone. There's *some* jazz if you spend a lot of money and travel a long distance to San Francisco or Oakland. And there's the San Jose Jazz Fest twice a year where you can hear, for again spending a lot of money on tickets and for most, travel, some mediocre jazz mixed in with mediocre pop.
But there in r/hawaii they mentioned a lot of places, most of which I know the neighborhood of and can actually imagine, and which would be fairly pleasant to go to. Very easy to get to. Probably not even pissy about it if one doesn't drink.
Maybe it's that Hawaii is, at most, half "white" culturally. It really is a sort of meeting place, a synapse, between "Western" and Asian culture. And culture is a serious thing in Asia.
To give an example, for all my years learning and playing trumpet and listening to trumpet players, the best of any, anywhere, of any race or culture I have ever heard, is this guy, Kikuta-San.
Japan just does everything "to 11". Look at how much music they've worked out how to get out of the shakuhachi, which is not only a simple flute, but one of the simplest of the world's many flutes.
I got out of here around 5, to do my rounds. I dropped off trash, picked up a bunch of books from the free libraries while dropping off things at each, then rode down to Wal-Mart.
I got paper towels and two kinds of canned fish; a couple cans of tuna in olive oil and three cans of sardines of a type I like, that have a transparent top and taste just like "Tiny Tots". Those are $5 at Whole Foods while they're a bit less than $2.50 at Wal's. And it only took about 26 tries to get the payment card machine to work. Next time I'm using cash.
On my way back I went by Dai Thanh for garlic and little cucumbers which were really cheap, then the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, then Nijiya for some cold grilled mackerel and Japanese cucumber pickles.
"Blondie" was there and I remembered to ask him the next question in our conversations of a week or two ago; where his mother had been born, exactly. (He'd said she was born "in" a sugar cane field in Hawaii.) He only knew sugar cane, and the Big Island of Hawaii. I said there were lots of sugar cane workers, that she's have been born not in the field but in a plantation hospital, and have grown up in plantation housing. I told him that part of the time growing up I lived in a plantation house that had been moved to a cheap lot in Hau'ula and rented to us. And that at least by my low standards, the plantation houses were nice.
I encouraged him to look for a book called Pau Hana (I might still have my copy to give him). He said his mother was Chinese, but never told him anything or taught him Cantonese etc. "History is a mystery" he joked. I said I'd had to solve some mysteries myself, about my mom's side of the family being Tatar, and how they'd always insisted on being "white" and he said it was the same in his family. I said in my case, when I came to the mainland here, I didn't want to admit to anyone that I was from Hawaii, but wanted everyone to think I was just another mainland person. That's about all we could talk, but I've got to get him that book and also do a bit of gushing about the Chinese in Hawaii, who were so good at overcoming adversity and working together.
The wind was nuts, it being the End Times and all, and I even saw some of the fencing around a construction site blown over. There were the usual zombies around, and two crazy ladies yelling and cussing and ranting away, one by Japantown and one by Wal-Mart. Between the wind and the crazies, who wants to go out? Which is why I stayed in yesterday and only went out reluctantly today.
But I did alright on books, finding 8 of them I think the used book store might be interested in. The ones they don't want, I go through and pick out any that I think might be worth putting on Ebay. After that, what's left goes to the little free library on 7th in front of the Peace & Justice Center which isn't on my usual route. The book store hasn't had very many music books lately, but if they get a bunch of flute books I'll be ready to get 'em. Or I can get one of those Beatles compendia or one of the "Jazz Fake Books".
This book thing is a pretty small-time grift but it's kind of a hobby, like my saving copper pennies. Speaking of which, I've been thinking for a few weeks now about busking, and then taking the money made busking and buying silver quarters and dimes with it. Say I make $150 on a weekend, I could spend $100 of it on a roll of silver dimes. It makes sense if I'm not able to leave here but if I'm leaving for home in two years, I'm not so sure it's something to get antsy about. I'm still trying to figure out how to sneak any money at all with me across the ocean, to a state which has no banks in common with the mainland at all.
I could make up little boxes, Care Packages A, B, C etc., easy to mail and leave them with Ken and Suzy, to mail to me when I give the word and have a safe, stable address. I could possibly hide money or money orders in them. Or I could learn to cast gold, buy gold, and cast up a set of trumpet mouthpieces, that I put across as being gold-plated but are actually solid. Those would not look out of place in a trumpet case I carry with me, and I've been through Customs enough times to know I'd be expected to take the horn out and put a mouthpiece in and blow a tune, but that's not a problem.
Another possibility is to take a cruise to Hawaii and jump ship. I might be able to hide money orders in a suitcase lining or such place, or take a few expensive flutes with me and of course I don't need more than one or two for my own use, but it'd be a way to transport money. Expensive watches or diamonds are another way - come to think of it I could buy some spendy diamonds and hide 'em in pieces of that awful costume jewelry with bunches of rhinestones. Even I know enough about jewelry settings to pull that off.
But the best way to get back home and survive and pull it off is to not need all that much money. I anticipate it being hard, and that I may end up homeless for a bit. I may end up being homeless for longer than a bit, in fact. This is why I haven't dared to try it until I reach age 62, so I can get $800 or $900 or so coming in courtesy of Social Security. That will put me above the general run of non-retiree-age homeless who just stay homeless or if they are very lucky, can find a situation where they pay their landlord their food stamps and then sleep under a roof, even if it's just a garden shed, and go out and beg or scrounge for their own food. This is a common setup in the US.
Simply by being eligible for Social Security, even if at just about the minimum, I should be able to avoid that. So if I can certify that I am me, I can be good for $900 a month or so. And don't I know how to panhandle, scavenge, buy and sell things, etc. But the best thing I can think of as a store of value that's accessible to me, is being skilled at something.
It's been run into the ground that there's no money in programming computers or in electronics, so those are right out. But learning to play the flute well would be a winner, busking standards being so low. And learning to repair flutes would be a real winner too. Learning to play the shakuhachi competently would likewise be a huge win, and then if I could learn to make them, that would be a huge win. So maybe I need to worry about these things more over the next two years then however I'm going to smuggle money across the ocean - that last should take care of itself, somehow.
No comments:
Post a Comment