Sunday, October 16, 2022

Rockin' The Stoat

 Yesterday wasn't much to write about, but one thing  I did before bed was practice for over an hour while watching episodes 5-6 of Adam Curtis' latest documentary. 

In the flute book I'm up to The Stoat, and the first version of Jingle Bells, in the key of F because all the B's are flat. I did a fair amount of long tones too. 

The whole thing about practice is, at first each piece sounds rather awful, then one practices it over and over and pretty soon it can be played sounding a bit more like music. The idea is to practice it so much that it can be "swung" a bit. At least  I think so - a real flute teacher might say, "We're learning classical here, not jazz!". 

I'd watched episodes 1-4 of Curtis' docu the night before and while I miss the music and voice commentary he put into his earlier ones, and he said himself, he chose to leave those out because "the material itself is so powerful". And it is. I just miss the music etc. because I could go into a kind of trance watching one of his docu's. 

In the middle of the night last night, maybe 3AM, I heard the sound of a large empty can, like a #10 can, hit the pavement outside and looked at the video feed. Zombie. This zombie had a bike and a cart piled full of the kind of crap they gather. He eventually got his literal shit together and pushed the conglomeration into the alley. 

9/10ths of homeless people don't look homeless. They are in a temporary hard spot, they stay clean, work a job, and get back on their feet because they're not disgusting orcs with negative social skills. They have or make friends, have or obtain job skills, and move on. In fact, in Europe, it's long been rather accepted that young people might spend a year or two being a "Wandervogel" (literally wandering bird) and travel around having a good time and staying in hostels etc. 

In the US you've got hyper-individualism, a relative lack of a social safety net, and drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. And a generation or three of "If it feels good, do it!". 

So we in the US have a certain population of ... zombies. The parts of the brain that recognize the social contract burned out by drugs, traumatic brain injury, or some other cause. 

Japan also has homeless people but not the hyper-individualism or the huge drug culture of the US. The YouTuber "Life Where I'm From" has a good series on how homeless is done there. You might call them down-and-out but you'd not describe them as zombies. Anyone really zombified in Japan gets put in a crazy house where they belong. 

So when I see one of these crazy creatures staggering around, banging on stuff, gibbering, I remind myself there are 9 people who are homeless but who are still people, to this one creature which is not. 

I woke up/got up around 3:15, and needed to get out of here with packages for FedEx by 5 because the place closes at 6. I packed 8 things, all large but none super-large, and had plenty of time to spare. I didn't have tape to spare when I was done, though. So I took the things over there to FedEx and dropped them off and got back over here to drop off the trailer and enact what I'd planned. 

I went to Nijiya first and got some things including a bento, fish and seaweed on rice, one of my favorites. I also got some cash back because I only use cash at Walmart as their POS terminals do not work well at all. 

I ate my bento out front, then made my way over to Wally's and got some things there, and the all-important couple of rolls of packing tape. This could not wait until tomorrow because I wanted to pack more things tonight. 

I got back here and found out I had about 4 inches of tape left on the roll I had, so I really needed that tape. I packed up the smaller things that need to go to the post office so I can take them with me tomorrow as I head out in pursuit of a flu shot.

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