Maybe I should start a blog

 I got 10 large things listed last night, so that's good. For some reason sales seem to be slow, although our numbers are looking better. 

I did a little practice before bed, not very much. Maybe I'm tired from my busking session still. My sound was decent though. 

I told Tom by email about my busking session and he said maybe I ought to start a blog. That's a pretty good idea and I'll have to seriously consider it. 

I also ordered three shakuhachi bags from Mejiro in Japan and I'm thinking now, I put in my credit card number but not the little 3-digit number on the back. Hopefully they'll get back with me if that's needed. The order means I now have a Mejiro username and password I can log in with. 

I packed all the things that needed to go, and got out of here at 4:30. Got rid of everything and stopped in at H Mart for another bottle of makgeolli, found some useful boxes on my way back, and stopped in at Tom's because I usually hang out with him on Mondays bit I'd skipped it last night. 

Tom and I ended up drinking beer for a few hours, having his Siri play all kinds of music. He tried to convince me Wilco is a good band (with no real success) and I introduced him to pieces of music like d:contamination by Man Or Astro-Man and commented on how, as chaotic as it sounds, the structure and even melody are directly traceable to Bach and Mozart. We had a good ol' time and listened to tons of music. 

Once we'd drunk his beer supply dry it was getting pretty late anyway (8:30 PM which is the same as 11:30 PM in the now times) and I buzzed on back here. 

I'm trying to get Tom into busking, and since he played in "Symphonic band" I keep maintaining that he's had to have been better than I have, and I was kind of tickled to see he had a copy of Herbert L. Clarke's "Elementary Studies". That's not a very easy book to find, and he said he "got it when he was inspired by Miles Davis". I've got to drag the guy out busking with me. 

 

 

My cheeks are sore

 I packed things last night, swabbed the trumpet out, and managed to get in about a 1/2 hour's practice on the shakuhachi. I didn't sound as good but I'm not sure whether it was all the trumpet playing or my just being tired. 

I don't think the trumpet is a big conflict with the shakuhachi the way it would interfere with playing a concert flute. My wonky left shoulder is OK as it would *not* be if I'd spent the same amount of time playing a transverse flute. And, interestingly, my cheeks are sore. This is due to not playing for several months and then playing a decent session. It's really interesting because it shows me what muscles are being used. I was always fascinated by those photos of Miles Davis where you can *see* his cheek muscles being used. 

More doom and gloom on the radio. The rethuglicans are very happy with Trump because he got 3 right-wing supreme court justices installed and somehow accomplished the overthrow of Rove. vs. Wade. That Trump could be defeated by a damp dishtowel like Biden tells me at least a good third of the country is not quite willing to roll over and be genocided yet, and another third not quite ready to just passively watch yet. 

But, "Hitler was put in by the popular vote" or some such noise on Reddit. No, Hitler never won the popular vote in a free election. He got a toehold, then used technicalities and a good amount of intimidation and coercion to become Fuehrer. The exact techniques that are now standard for Republicans. 

Some while back, I found that Herman Wouk's son has a YouTube channel. Like Wouk, a Jew, he must be assumed to be a Jew also. At least what the Nazis would consider a Jew. But Wouk's son was far-right, horray for Trump, all that. I broke off all interest, parting by telling him he's a disgrace to his father, who was a great man. 

And today I realized: The Christians want all Jews to be returned to Israel, to bring on their End Times. Well, what if you kill off the Jews to the extent that there are, say, 5 left. It simplifies things considerably. You only have 5 people to keep track of, and everything's easier when it's only 5 people you have to put in a particular location. This all sounds batshit but I'm sure more than on Nazi has this all planned out along exactly these lines. And Herman Wouk's son hasn't thought these things through. He'll never be able to pass himself off as Aryan, as being the son of a famous Jew, even if the elder Wouk married a Gentile, his son will be at least a "mischling" or half-Jew, and only fit for the oven. If only people would think these things through! 

But enough political apocalyptica for this day... 

If I get back to a busking schedule, it will call for my taking the trumpet with me Thursday when I head to the bank, and after doing my banking, do a session. I was doing a Thursday-Friday-Saturday schedule. I also can't just play at the Whole Food on the Alameda. I have to vary it up, going to other places. 

I got out of here with 7 packages, including two FedEx ones small enough to carry in Whole Foods bags and thus no need for the trailer. I rode up to FedEx first, and bought two bottles of makgeolli in H Mart, then went back out onto Brokaw and rode up to the new Dai Thanh market and the place is amazing. It's huge, well-lit, and clean. It's a rough area and I didn't like the looks of a guy hanging out by the bike rack so I locked my bike to the very end of the cart rack, far from him. Now that I think of it though, he may have been a worker as they're still finishing things there and there were a few rough-looking workers around. The key is: Workers not bums. 

I went in and got a couple packets of coconut powder and a "Chinese donut" and waited forever in line as it was very busy but that's OK, the place was so nice. The cashier was happy to see all the pennies in the change I paid with, and counted those out preferentially. I let her have the 7 or so left, too, "In case someone else is short a few", I said. 

I rode on back and ... right on past the post office and it was only once I was a mile out from the shop that I realized I still had 5 small bubble mailer packages in the bag tied to the handlebar. Oops. I got back and hitched up the trailer and went back out to the medical place, not finding much to sell but finding some shipping stuff that's useful. 

Circling back to here, I checked the dumpster by the karate school and found two large pizza boxes, each containing 2/3rds of a very large pizza. Now, I thought, if I were really hard-up, I'd take these and just re-heat the slices thoroughly, and I'd eat for most of a week. But I'm not that hard-up, so what I did was take the two boxes and set them on top of a discarded mini-fridge that's full of trash and such, that I see bums checking pretty often. So I set the pizza boxes on top of that. It's a well-lit spot and it's obvious they're pizza boxes, so someone should make use of the pizza. It's cold enough that it's like a big refrigerator outside so it should stay fresh-ish.

I got back here, all done for the day, at 7PM which due to the "wartime 3-hour shift" is the equivalent of 10PM in the Before Times so it was really out quite late. 

The logic of the makgeolli is this: It's not great that I'm back to drinking, and I'm at least theoretically keeping it in check by only drinking drinks that are dilute, 5% or 6%. It seems to be drinking or headaches. And the headaches were not fun. But drinking too much is not fun either. And it's expensive. Probably far less expensive than headache medicine under our Dickensian for-profit health "system" which is why I don't just go to a doctor because "just going to a doctor" isn't a thing here. This is not Hawaii. 

So, as I can go through a 12-pack of watery beer in a 24-hour period, and that costs me a bit more than $15, it's not really sustainable unless I start busking regularly, and even then it's not all that healthy and it's money better spend other ways. The makgeolli is $5 a bottle, tastes good, and I should think a bottle a night would be enough. $150 a month I can probably afford. 

I went to the Mejiro site and ordered 3 shakuhachi covers. That would be $75 before the yen dropped so much against the dollar. It might be $60 now. There's shipping too. They use DHL and I'm going to guess the shipping will be on the order of $25. I ordered three because there are three different patterns. Which one of which I like the most, I'll order two more. And maybe a book or something. 

I'd done a return of a shinobue I got from them that I really didn't like. They actually refunded me before I'd even sent the thing back. If I were the typical American, I'd like as not have just "forgotten" about sending it back but ... that would not be honorable. So I spent the money and sent it back and I'm pretty sure I saw it on their used instruments page. 

I like my little plastic shinobue fairly well, and the little shinobue is a lot easier to hold than a Western flute.  But what would be really neat next Obon would be to be decent on the shakuhachi and play that. 

Thank you, Shankar Vedantam

 I got 15 things listed last night, and as I did that, Shankar Vedantam, one of the regulars on NPR, was doing an article on social mobility. He talked about places where there's a lot of mixing of the classes, and places where there's less. He had terms for them, which I forget. 

I would say that in moving from Hawaii to California, I moved from one extreme to the other. In Hawaii I knew people who were doctors and such highly placed things, and people who were struggling like I was. There was a whole spectrum. After living on the mainland for a few years, I remember sitting one day and realizing that I was in a system where if someone made $5000 more a year than you, or less, you'd never meet them. In fact I even got a scolding at work for daring to associate with a guy who was considered to be lower than myself on the social scale. (Although he was probably as well paid or better, electronics being such a poor-paying field.) 

Hawaii was such a fun mixing pot. You could get to know all kinds of people. The old lady we kids knew, "Miss" Wilder, actually had a Steinway grand piano in her living room. Other people in the same neighborhood were scraping by, it was a mix of at least one single mother with a kid who drew on his bedsheets and I think a few old guys with a mix of family hanging on with them, who were probably living off of disability payments from serving in WWII. And there were families who were quite well off, the Silvas, the Hertz's, and of course 'way up at the end of the street, the Kaisers. 

People back in Hawaii have no awareness of this. There's a great feeling of, why would anyone want to come back? Especially if they didn't make a fortune on the mainland? It's not something that I've seen explained very well or even, really, at all. I can say, simply, "I grew up here. My memories are here". But there's a lot more to it. I suppose it's up to me to find a way to explain it, to make visible the largely invisible, in the same way George Orwell showed in "Such, Such Were The Joys" how St. Cyprian's formed his worldview. 

Everyone's seen those scientific representations of a synapse, the basic element in the brain. Two nerves end in sort of bulges and don't quite touch, sending signals to each other. Hawaii, or Oahu at least (and this is why I have no interest in living on one of the other islands) is like a sort of synapse out in the middle of a vast ocean, with Asian culture being one half and Western the other. 

I'm really happy that Hawaii has become "more Japanese" over the time I've been away. There were always Japanese things, such as the network of Jodo Shinshu temples and wonderful Japanese gift stores like Iida's and if you knew where to go, like this tiny place near the tire section of the Ala Moana Sears, you could get a real Japanese bento as opposed to a local plate lunch, but Hawaii was dominated by on one hand the old plantation culture that gave us the plate lunch and saimin and Pidgin and "going holoholo". But these days there's what a local would call "A lotta really Japanese/Kapani stuffs". 

Now, Japan is actually at least as class-stratified as the US mainland is. But Hawaii is not the US mainland nor is it the Japanese home islands, either of the two "home countries" I grew up thinking of, away over the ocean. It's 2500 miles from anywhere and the state's whole population is smaller than that of the California county I live in now.

And when you're out there in the middle of a vast ocean on a relatively little island, people have to let their hair down a bit. 

I got about 45 minutes' practice done last night and when I went to sleep it was raining. I woke up around 2, and looked outside - it was wet. I got up and took a closer look and it was just Chuey next door washing one of his vehicles. Otherwise things were dry, if a bit cloudy. And cold. 

To make the numbers work out the way I want them to this week, I can't take any more money out of the bank by using my card. But I wanted to go buy some of the bags Whole Foods is selling because when they're gone they're gone. 

So I got the trumpet out and made sure I had valve oil and Blistex and that everything was working correctly, and, stopping only to drop off a bag of trash, rode over to Whole Foods. It was about 4:15 when  I got there and set up. It was cold and even more important, it was windy. 

I wanted to get $10, because that would cover buying the bags. Anything more than that would be a bonus. I've not played in something like a year, several months anyway.  There were a lot of people going in and out although it wasn't like yesterday. I got over a dollar in change, then a tattered $5, then through some very slow going, occasional $1's and once I had my $10 I packed up. 

Shortly after setting  gained some company: a beggar who's a regular, who calls out in a dull voice, "Any spare change" like a statement more than a question. He sat by the Whole Food sign to intercept people in cars coming out, and got some "drops". My playing done, I went in and bought a dozen of the brown bags, which came to about $8 (but not without the checker trying to charge me for the green ones and wanting $18 from me, fortunately where the bags are was right near that checkout) and walked out with my prize. 

As I stuffed my new bags into my old green Whole Foods bag, the beggar made his statement to me regarding spare change. I found that laughable. "You saw how hard I had to work to make $10 out here". I then explained that the public pays beggars better than musicians but as a musician "I get to feel a bit less ashamed of myself". The beggar retorted, "I don't have any choice." I went on to say the public pays beggars more because they need someone to feel better than. I was going to explain that musicians make less because the public kind of envies them, that they stuck with learning an instrument, but by this point the beggar had actually walked away.

I rode off, deciding I'll try out playing by the Old Spaghetti Factory. That spot is sheltered from the wind, and might have a pretty good crowd. It did, but there were loud bands and loud canned music everywhere. So I tried my luck on the corner where "The Farmers Union" restaurant is, and while I got a $5 from one of the drunks, mainly I got a lot of boozy cheerfulness but it didn't occur to the tipsy tipplers to tip. 

I also began to notice that a surprising portion of the crowd were zombies. Some were really obvious, as when a person becomes one of the undead, appearance and hygiene slide. But some were less so, and at one point I played softly while a dad went by pushing a baby carriage, then realized the "dad" was in fact a scumbag and the carriage didn't carry a child but instead the usual crap zombies drag around. 

OK, I thought, I'll take the $5 and call it good. The ride home was cold, of course, because it's getting down into the 30s overnight lately. I got my Whole Foods bags to last me the next couple of years, and I have enough also to treat myself to a bottle of my favorite makgeolli. 

I'm glad I've been dragging my feet about selling the trumpet. There's a bit of nostalgia that's been keeping me from selling it, and more recently I thought I'd better keep it as long as possible because it's a thing I can always go out and make money with. 

But there's another factor. The shakuhachi is not very easy to play Western music on. It can be done, and people do it, but that's not really what it's about or what it sounds best doing. The trumpet, being a Western instrument, is great for playing Western music so not only can I make money with the thing but I can get my Western music ya-ya's out and save the shakuhachi for what it's meant to do. 

Meanwhile in shakuhachi-land, there are tons and tons of pieces, not only the honkyoku or standard classics but tons of minyo which are folk or children's songs. Plus whatever shy shite I might just make up on the spot. 

The thing is, I might get $1200 for the trumpet by selling it, but if I get back into the busking habit, I might make 3X that and I can also mix in some shakuhachi busking since that's what I plan to do back in Hawaii. I could even, just before I leave, pack the trumpet up really well and have Ken send it to me when I'm all settled in. Of course I can always pick up a Yamaha student horn and my preferred mouthpiece is a cheap 3C but I kind of like my humble little Wayne Bergeron horn that you, too, can have for a mere 3500 smackers or so. (I'm in to the tune of about 2 grand so basically the thing's paid for itself so far.) 

This will give me a chance to not only ease into being a shakuhachi busker, but get a decent flow of busking money in sooner and also I can take a different approach to being a trumpet player. All the "on paper" learning on the trumpet from here on out, is the chromatic scale which I pretty much already know. Everything else is going to be by ear, for fun. I'm no longer going to care where I am in this or that book, but can I play this or that neat little tune? I'm not going to be in anyone's orchestra, I don't need to do all that music-reading stuff. 

Reading music as a shakuhachi player is different. For one thing the system is dead simple. It's an easy system to sight-read. And the scores look neat.

To go or not to go

 I got 9 things listed last night (11 the night before) and felt pretty tired so I went to bed a bit earlier than I've been. 

I woke up around 11AM maybe 11:30, which is early for me. It's warmed all the way up to the 50's outside so I'm tempted to go somewhere ... but ... the thing is, I've spent all I can allow myself to spend for this week. 

I'd really like to go to TAP Plastics to buy a thing or two for an ongoing project and go to Whole Foods as I now remember the thing I really wanted to get from there: A Whole Foods cloth bag. They're the best bags around because the handles that are sewn on extend all the way to the bottom, making them extra strong. They're only about $2 too. 

And I'd like to walk over to Target to pick up a couple of inexpensive things, some Scotch tape refills and some index cards (the ones they sell there are particularly nice). Again, inexpensive things. And maybe go to Michael's art supplies for, again, some inexpensive craft bits and bobs that might preclude my going to TAP so maybe I'd go to Target first. 

Again, these are all cheapo things. 

In the end, I went. I rounded up books and my DVDs which I've not been watching since I realized it was my computer that was making me see videos on YouTube as a herky-jerky succession of stills with screwed up sound. I counted up the bills and change I had and had $8, and the used book store gave me $13 for the books and DVDs that they took. 

I went into TAP Plastics and didn't find exactly what I wanted but found something good enough and cheap, only a bit more than $2. 

I went to Whole Foods and for some reason it was quite busy. Although there was a cold wind blowing, around the middle of the day it was rather nice and I probably could have done well busking there with the trumpet. I got some pinto beans with little scraps and bits of fat from the carnitas, since the buffet was really wiped out and that was the only thing like a meal I could put together from it. And an Anchor Steam beer. That came to $11. 

I sat and ate and had to remind myself to get a cloth bag. The bag was only something like 79c because they're bringing in some new ones that don't have the straps extending down to the bottom, which makes for a very sturdy, dependable, bag. Instead the new ones have the straps only sewn for an inch or so. So the old ones are on sale and I think I'm going to go back and buy about 10 of them. 

As I left, a couple had set up where I used to busk there. Their act was, he's overweight and looks pretty non-able to make it in the workforce, and sits in a wheelchair that looks like its was "borrowed" from the state hospital. She also looks unable to make it in the workforce. They just sit there. That's their act. They. Just. Sit. There. I asked them if they wanted a bag of books (to save myself the hassle of taking them to the 7th street little free library/pantry) and they didn't want 'em. 

If I were going to busk, I thought, I'd set up a bit up the sidewalk, closer to the entryway to Whole Foods. I'd be well separated from the begging couple. 

I took my books over to the 7th street pantry and put 'em in, then went to the Amazon place for bubble mailers (got a lot of 'em too) and then meandered my way home. There was a bunch of stuff put out by one street and I stopped to "shop". I got a good coat hanger, an AR-15 work mat to clean up and give to Ken, wall anchors (at least the plastic parts) and a bunch of other neat little things. And a gym bag to put everything in. When I'd checked it all and taken what I wanted, I started working on the computer left there. Someone else had already taken the RAM but I helped myself to the wireless card, the video card that looks like a gaming type, and the CPU. 

 

My favorite makgeolli

 I was up around 2, packed 16 things, and got out of here to the post office and FedEx at about 4:30. I made the run, and checked my usual places for boxes and stuff. I lucked out, too - the electrical lighting place had a lot of the boxes recessed light fixtures come in, wonderful little boxes that are great for first-class stuff, with a shiny finish so tape sticks to them well, and sturdy without being too heavy. 

I was already loaded up when I checked the medical place and found some nice boxes there too, so I was pretty loaded up when I got back here to unload everything and put the trailer away, use the loo, and head back out.

I raced back over to H Mart to do some spending. I'd gotten a $100 bill at Whole Foods yesterday to put into savings and when I got home and looked it over, the darned thing was torn and a bit tattered. After checking online that it wasn't super bad to do, I put tape on the tear, and figured I'll have to "pass" it somewhere. That somewhere would be H Mart. 

So I raced back up there (it's cold out and going fast keeps me warm) I got watery beer and veggies and general things, and looked over the makgeolli selection. So far I liked "Slow Village" best, as the other two I'd found were sweetened with aspartame and I didn't like the overbearing artificial sweetness. So I looked 'em over and realized I could get 2X at much for a dollar more, if I tried this one brand. It has aspartame in it but it sounded pretty good - soybean and sesame and cacao for coloring. 

I handed over my hinky $100 and before I knew it there was my change. 

So I got my haul back here and tried it, and now it's my favorite. I don't taste the aspartame, and it's got a really nice flavor. It's Po Cheon Il dong Kong Makgeolli. 6.5% alcohol which is at the upper end for me. The workingmans's refreshing tipple!

I'd actually found eggs at H Mart, and bought a carton of 12 for $7 or so, but of course as with any eggs I don't buy at Nijiya, when I got home one was broken so I had to throw it away and clean up the mess. This always happens and I don't even question it any more. It's some kind of natural law. You have to give up one. Nijiya eggs were always on the expensive end although they're of average price now. But the main thing, I told someone there long ago in the Before Times, was that I didn't have to lose one every time. 

(At least I was smart enough to save the yolk of the broken one in a little baggie. Although arguably not as smart as my little sister was, in the hungry times of the 1970s, to take advantage of the fact that we had ducks nesting under our house and would get up early to take and cook the 1-2 duck eggs they laid for her breakfast.)

 

The good old tax-and-spend Republicans

 I got in maybe 45 minutes' worth of practice last night and I say this because really, it's the only important thing I do. Years from now it's not going to matter how many things I listed on Ebay for Ken or took to the post office for Ken or how clean I kept the office here. 

I sorted out the things Ken had brought and took some stuff apart and all that, but was too tired in the end to list anything. 

I woke up today at 2, turn on the radio, and here's President Biden talking about the Republican plan to put a 30% sales tax on everything. Since they're the friends of the working class that they are. I did some quick mental math and the 3 grand or so I give to the IRS each year is a bit less than 20% of my gross income. The Republicans really want to crush the little guy into dust. 

Taxes on food, all food, not just fast food but your banana and your bag of flour, are a thing I've only see in Red states. In Hawaii, the sales tax, called a general excise tax for some reason, generally isn't charged for food items. And it's only 4% anyway. California doesn't tax things like cold foods and I believe prescriptions and things like that. I've lived in Red states (Arizona and Colorado) and not only was the sales tax higher than in California but it's applied to everything, even your banana or your bag of flour, taxed at 13% or even more. 

Lastly, it's a well-known enough economic trope that even I know it, that high sales taxes enlarge black-market economies. I'm all for a thriving black market myself, but somehow this doesn't seem like the image the Republicans want to project. At least I don't *think* so ... they seem to be about being as mustache-twirling evil as they can, so maybe this is something they want after all. 

The thing is, if I had just one dependent, or if I were 5 years older, assuming the same income as now, I'd not pay any income tax at all. That 2nd $6500 allowance or whatever they call it, would mean I pay essentially nothing. Maybe even get money back, I'm unclear, but at least it would more than cover the amount I pay out. The Republicans want to take that away - nope, 30% tax on everything! 

How many households have maybe 3 people working, earning the $17k I do a year to make a total of $51k, and now they're going to lose 1/3 of that, right off the top? Oh yes, forget about being over 65, blind, having dependents, nope, 30%! Gone! The Republican bastards aren't even being subtle. 

Last night Ken and I talked pretty seriously about when I'd leave. First, the subject of when to collect Social Security. I believe Ken waited until he was his "full retirement age" which might have been 67 for him, or maybe he waited until he's 70, because once you're 70 you "have" to take it and they can't take any of it back if you're still working. But there are a lot of arguments for taking it right away, at age 62. 

I said I've seen all of those take-it-early arguments and I think they're based on two things: First, might as well take it and stop working so damn hard and enjoy life because you don't know what's going to happen. Secondly, I believe another argument is you quit working at 62, live on the bountiful savings you've saved up, and take the Social Security money and invest it, where you theoretically get a better return on it than the Social Security Administration does. 

I said I'm of the take-it-early school, but that there are also other reasons for me to leave in 2024. The 2024 election might be a horror, and I want to stay here just long enough to vote in it, and then get out, at least as far as Hawaii. I mentioned how, in the Nazi Empire, if you were a Jew and in Poland or Lithuania, you were almost certainly screwed. But in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, a surprising amount made it through. 

I said that if I were in my 20s I'd light out for France right away, because if you're young and healthy and strong, you can go there and pick grapes for a few years or whatever, prove you're a good egg and get citizenship. But I'm far too old for that now. But at least I can get myself to a less-dangerous part of the US empire, and one that's cheaper to live in and that I'm familiar with, having gone to the local high schools and speaking the local patois and so on. This is why I don't consider places like Costa Rica, as Ken suggested. 

I need to get my papers in order and get a new passport too, because as I explained, I might not need a passport to go back to Hawaii, but better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. If things get "hot" enough in the US even extending to Hawaii, at least Hawaii puts me closer to a lot of other places. 

So, I explained to Ken, I'm both staying here as long as I can and also leaving here as soon as I can. 

I was up in time to give myself a much-needed haircut and get down to the bank, where I deposited my paycheck (My figuring is off by $3 but I probably just fat-fingered something) and went over to Whole Foods. I got some food, amazingly, and a very light beer that's 4.5% alcohol. I knew there was something I wanted to get there that I could only get there, but I could not for the life of me think of what that thing might be. I decided it was probably vitamins and got some of those. 

I went over to Walmart and got all kinds of stuff, from snack-size Ziplic bags to some "Shout" for laundry, and was amazed it only came to about $35. I got some regular ol' coffee filters like you'd use in a Mr. Coffee, as I'm trying out different filters. I can't get the Hario ones any more because I don't use Amazon any more, so I'm trying out others. I looked at Chemex filters at Whole Foods but decided $8+ for a box of 100 filters is a bit much. 

I stopped at the Amazon place and picked up a lot of bubble mailers which is good, then went to Nijiya for things. Niji's was out of eggs, though. Walmart had eggs as long as you want to buy 18 at a time, which I didn't. H Mart was wiped out the last time I was there. I forgot to look at Whole Foods. The next time I'm scheduled to be downtown is on Saturday, so I guess I'll be looking for eggs like everyone else is. 

Last night when that zombess was yelling and screaming, the wind had been really kicking up and right now it's dry and weird feeling. I think we're in a high pressure weather system. That seems to agitate the zombies, as I saw a few especially nutty ones today. 

I got back here and put things away and went to check the medical place and just found some packing stuff, but that's good to have too. 

 

They took my advice

 I did maybe a half hour or 45 minutes practice last night, packed some Ebay things, then drank probably too much watery beer and went to sleep, woke up around 2:30. 

On the radio I'm hearing that "they" have followed my advice. Go ahead and commit to sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine, thus making the Germans feel OK about sending their tanks. We'll have to make a good show of being dead serious about this, but it's the German tanks that will do the real work. 

I got 14 things packed including one really big one, and ended up with a very loaded-up bike. Possibly a record load. Boxes stacked high on the trailer and Whole Foods bags with smaller things hanging off of each handlebar. I left here at about 5:30, and took my time, no hurrying, not with a load like that. 

The post office was no problem and I saw my #1 fan, a Black guy with a big motorcycle there, but he didn't say Hi or anything. The last time I saw him I said I was changing to flute, so I guess I've fallen pretty far in his mind. Oh, well, can't please 'em all. This is also why I'm going to hang onto my fancy-schmancy Wayne Bergeron model trumpet for at least another year, because I *can* make some money with that thing. 

Next was FedEx, but I had a bright idea. I'd stop first at H Mart, and dash in like I "gotta use the befroom" but instead buy a bottle of Slow Village makgeolli and another little bottle of the "yoghurt flavored vodka" that's only $1.99. I had $7 on me and as the Slow Village stuff is 3.99, I'd have it covered no problem. 

Well, problems... It turns out I'd misread the tag and the vodka stuff was something like 4.99 and I'd not noticed it the other day because I'd bought a bunch of stuff and never kept or checked my receipt. So after I price checked and one of the checkout ladies did, it was finally made clear to me that what I'd seen was a tag for something else. So I just got the makgeolli. 

I dropped off the FedEx stuff and made my way back, not finding much in the way of packing materials, and got back here, put things away, and got the trailer and step-stool and "getter stick" and went and checked the medical place. I didn't find anything to sell but found some nice packing stuff so i it was well worth it. 

Then I went to the chicken truck and got fries, just fries because with chicken on top it's more than I can eat, I told the kid, and that was $5 because I insisted on tipping. 

I got back here and ate my fries with some Parmesan cheese and Kewpie mayo on top, a meal I'd have to get by 5 or 6 hours on. 

Then it was, put things that are listed away, find things that had sold, clean the bathroom and office, neaten up an area of the loft that had gotten messy, and when it was about time for Ken to come by, start wondering about all the yelling and screaming over on Rogers Avenue. Some gal was throwing a real fit. I was just finished getting dressed to go out and check and get the bike out, when Ken came by. I was worried the crazy zombess had jumped in front of his car or something and it'd be up to me to sort things out. 

But just then Ken was there in his wife's super-sneaky Toyota that barely whispers. We took a bunch of things and packing boxes in, played with a couple of high voltage power supplies, he wrote me my check, and we sat and talked about tons of things from Ukraine to how I'm going to time going back to Hawaii. 

Ken took off just before midnight and then I had an hour or so to sort though the stuff he'd brought, take a couple of things apart, etc. It was a bit past 1AM when I took the box of junk out for the bums, and noticed a bum with his car, waiting around for what I don't know. Oops. I set the box down right in front of here and got back in here and buttoned everything up. 

The screaming zombess had run out of energy or something and was quiet now. Who cleans their car and messes around with it a ton of ways at 1AM? Zombies/bums/scumsuckers/druggies, that's who. 

 

The wrath of kan

 I got 10 things listed last night which is good, and dug out a lot of things that need to be packed, then decided to call it an early-ish night, for me at least. 

I got about 45 minutes' practice in and here's where the shakuhachi club is already helping me. In the book, on my own, I was pretty happy just messing around in otsu, the first octave. But in the class we were doing scales going from otsu, to kan, the 2nd octave, and then back down. So already we have to be good at both. So I practice the exercises in both, and I'm gaining strength in kan, getting some pure notes at times. 

I also need to work on the songs, picking them apart, doing one measure over and over and then the next. It's the only way I've been able to learn to play things, on whatever instrument. 

I woke up at 2:30, with my headache fairly strong. I had a couple of aspirin and some diet 7-Up and went back to bed to read the 2nd half of "Such Were The Joys" by Orwell. It's some of his best writing and I'm glad I did, but my headache didn't subside a bit. Now coffee and the rest of the 7-Up. I need to pack a lot of things. 

I felt like shit yesterday and didn't do a post office run, but now I feel like staying in today also. If I'd packed at least some things last night it'd be easy to grab the packages and go, but I don't know here. I don't know if I've got long covid or what the hell's going on. 

 I've changed my mind on sending stuff to Ukraine though. The best thing to send would be money, and to one of the really well vetted organizations linked on r/ukraine and even then, I'm pretty damn poor so there's no requirement on my part to send anything. The "work" I do shooting down America-Firsters on places like YouTube is probably enough. 

Instead, when the ham radio swapmeet gets going again, I figure I can load my bike and trailer up with a good load and I can sell at it once a year without needing a resale number, so I figure I can probably make some pretty good money to put toward my retirement fund. When I leave for home I'll have a bag in each hand, one to check and one - with flutes and important stuff in it - to carry on. That will be it. A lot of stuff will be left "for the shop" but I've got years and years saved up of tools and all kinds of odds and ends I can blow out and come home with at least a few hundred dollars. 

Or I can just package the stuff up into "sets" to sell on Craig's List. That's another way... 

5:30 in the afternoon found me with the bike loaded up with 17 small packages that I didn't need the trailer for, headed to the post office. 

There was a *lot* of traffic out there, and I was amused by being passed by a guy on a bike with more blinking lights and high visibility stuff then I run. He steamed on past, then due to the light I mostly caught up, then I came upon the guy blocking the traffic that was driving in the bike lane. He was in an argument with a couple of guys in an SUV, and I said something about it not being worth it as I made my way past. 

Then I slowed down to think and circled around, riding on the sidewalk back to where the guy was. Maybe my being there could keep the guy from getting his ass beat. I called out another time or two that it's not worth it, circled around again and offered that observation yet again in passing, and rode on up to the post office. 

The drops-offs went OK as I got my packages in before the chute jammed up solid, and I got out of there. I looked for the guy and he'd not moved, and had set himself up in the bike lane, directing the cars around him. Idiot. Yes, it's stupid that drivers drive in the bike lane there, but it's a stupid traffic layout and people who drive cars are at their stupidest when they're behind the wheel. 

I made my way to H Mart and dropped off a box at FedEx, then checked Starbucks for coffee filters. I seemed to remember those places having various coffee gadgets and filters and things for sale, but this Starbucks is pretty stripped down, with only some plastic cups and a sturdy French press for sale. And I could see why: There was an awful looking bum inhabiting one of the tables, and as I went out, a female bum was coming in; she also looked awful. I'm sure they're only stocking what Corporate insists they have out for sale, as anything there is likely to be stolen or shit or pissed on. 

I went to Panda Express and got two orders of crab Rangoon, which came to $4.38 or, well, $5 because apparently they keep the change. That's their tip, then, and the crab Rangoon was pretty good - two servings is 6 of the things, and sometimes you just want something cheap and fried and easy to eat. 

I went into H Mart and got things, and the weird purchase this time was a bottle of "Tiffany Rose" yogurt-flavored "vodka" as it says on the bottle, actually soju, 12% alcohol. It wasn't cloudy or anything, it was clear. Yet, yogurt flavored. At $1.99, I just had to try it. Interestingly, for some reason H Mart had a lot of young, really good-looking people in it this night. That was interesting to see, along with the old grannies, absent-minded old guys (I guess I'm one) and even a white guy, an unusual sight there, ahead of me in the checkout.

I checked for boxes and packing material all over the place and only found two small boxes. I got back here and put things away and got the trailer and step stool out for my raid on the medical place's dumpster and got a few gadgets so the trip was worth it. 

 I got back in here and all buttoned up for the night, and tried the yogurt flavored stuff. It's interesting, a little bit astringent which I guess is the "yogurt" flavoring. 

 

This is why we use paper checks around here.

 Last night I not only listed 10 things but I also did over an hour practice on the shakuhachi and at least took out of the packet I was given at the shakuhachi club, the sheets I want to work out of which are the three or four songs and one of the three fingering charts. I put those in page protectors (the big wad of 'em I'd taken to the shakuhachi club I left with Rinban Sakamoto to use as needed, for whatever they're needed for). 

I worked through the full set of exercises in the Koga book, both otsu and kan, playing each one 5X in otsu and 5X in kan. Doing those exercises used to tire me out, and it was rare for me to make it through the full page and yet here I did it without it feeling like being a big thing. 

In the news some 72-year-old Vietnamese guy shot up a dance club in Southern California and was going to shoot up a 2nd one but a young guy saw what he was about to do and put a stop to that shit. But why in hell is a 72-year-old doing anything like that? That's the age you should be kicking back, enjoying good food with family, maybe working on your golf or your calligraphy, and enjoying life. 

If the guy's 72, well, I'm 60 and born in 1962, so the guy'd have been born in 1950. The Vietnam war started really kicking off in 1965, when the guy would be 15. In 1968, when the war was hot and heavy, the guy would be 18, fighting age. By then the guy's whole life would be one in the midst of war. I guess when you grow up like that, it seems sensible to grab a gun and try to shoot your problems away. More fallout from the huge crime that war was. 

In other news, apparently a lot of people have lost money from having their money in Bank Of America, due to some kind of failure involving Zelle, which is some kind of weird online payment thing. This is why I swear by paper checks. When I was a teen I was even skeptical of bank accounts in general. I thought you'd put your money in, and then a guy in a suit - I was very clear on his wearing a suit - would sneak in and take the money out. It actually turned out (my first account was a joint one with my mom) that it would be my mom taking the money out that I put in. (Later I had a joint account with my dad for a bit that I used to pay household bills and that went OK for a while.)

There's concern among buskers about people going more "cashless". Maybe this is another reason I did so well in front of a Whole Foods, because even people who don't use cash can always get cash back (you can get as little as $1 back at the till) so they'd see me, get a little cash back, and put it in my tip box? But I also had a lot of people tell me they thought my playing was great but didn't have any cash on 'em. 

Japanese tourists are, or at least were, notorious for carrying large amounts of money and at least in theory they'll be a large part of my audience back in Hawaii. I won't even care if they tip me in yen, as I can always convert it to dollars. We buskers tend to be pretty flexible. And while I might lose some potential income by being cash-only, I'm prepared for my busking income to be pretty modest. 

We in Northern California can't let those declasse' Southern Californians show us up, so within mere hours we had a mass shooting of our own. Both guys of Chinese descent, both shooting other Asians, and it's really close. The one guy killed 10, our guy 8. The other guy failed to kill in his second target location, while ours killed 4 in one place and 4 in another, that's style. The other guy was tracked down and shot himself in his van as the SWAT team closed in. Our guy turned himself in. I'm gonna give our guy the win - since he's still alive, he can write tons of manifestos, maybe take up painting in prison, and all the usual mass murderer things. Yay for us I guess? 

 

Year of Bugs Bunny

 Here it is the year of the rabbit. Long ago, I thought about it and decided Bugs Bunny was, by far, my favorite cartoon character. Every other character, it seemed, was always being defeated, but not ol' Bugs. He always overcame. Plus he was witty and handsome, and liked raw carrots just like I did. Could a cat or a dog character be this great? Felix The Cat was pretty cool but is almost forgotten now. They tried later with a cat named Top Cat and I doubt much of anyone remembers him. There was Yogi Bear and the Hair Bear Bunch, but they came and went. Deputy Dawg's side kicks were always more charismatic than him. 

What major Western holiday is rabbit-themed, anyway? No, Santa Claus isn't an animal, reindeer don't count, and neither do monsters and mummies and ghosts and stuff. But Easter's all about the rabbits and even though the Christians have tried to pre-empt the holiday and make it about the day their guy rose from the dead, but for most of us it's just the good old pagan holiday it's always been. 

In any case, I hope this is truly the year of Bugs Bunny. A year of the resilience and ebullience of my favorite rabbit. 

As is standard procedure in San Jose, there's a new year's celebration in Japantown that I only found out about after it was just over. It was 11AM - 3PM and I woke up at about three. I'd gone to bed at 1AM, deciding I'd try to wake up early, and I guess it worked because I *was* up at 10 or 11AM but then wanted more sleep  - it's so nice and warm in bed!  - and then woke up at 3. 

I got going at about 4:30. The idea was to go to the new Dai Thanh market that's opened on Brokaw and Capitol, and it being new year's there ought to be some celebrations going on. It was clear and cold and windy, but also pretty calm and quiet. 

I got up there and there were signs on the door saying they'd be closed today to celebrate the new year. I shrugged and following a shuffling zombie into a liquor store that's in the same strip mall, to check it out. 

It turned out to be like the bodega I go to to get rubbing alcohol when I can't get it anywhere else. There's everything in there from every kind of booze and beer and wine, to bike tire repair kits and can openers and religious candles and so on. All arrayed in long narrow aisles in higgledy-piggledy order. No prices on anything. Years' worth of dust on most things. Where "my" bodega is adorable, this place was just kind of dystopian. 

As I walked out to my bike a zombie, skinny and in rags with filthy bare feet, came staggering along. I rode a wide route around it and was outta there. Sorry guys you're 2 for 2 and not working for me.

I thought, OK, I can get French Market coffee just about anywhere, and the only other thing I really needed Dai Thanh for was fried shallots. I'll see if 99 Ranch has them. 

99 Ranch turned out to have them, and I got a jar along with a couple packages of "White Curry Mee" because it was on sale. 

Then I went to H Mart and got a whole split grilled mackerel because it's utterly delicious, some small cucumbers, beer, and yet another brand of Korean rice wine, this one "Slow Village" brand. I'm pretty sure there's no better name for a couple of the places I live in growing up, Punalu'u and Hau'ula for sure and as for Waikane, it wasn't even all the way up to being a village. Even Hawaii Kai's a pretty sleepy place, however much they try. 

A green comet for New Year

 I was up most of last night, futzing around and also had some 6% Korean rice wine they sell in 750ml bottles for about $4. It was ginseng flavor which was good (the woody flavor of ginseng take some getting used to) but also had some artificial sweetener in it that I was not crazy about. 

I woke up around noon, stayed in bed and read some Orwell essays, then got up around 2:30. I had my chicory coffee and a few peanuts and found and packed 5 things that were big enough to go by FedEx but not so big that I'd need the bike trailer. 

I got out of here at 4. It was *not* warm out. I dropped the things off at FedEx and then went to H Mart for some shopping. It was pretty much a quick in and out. 

Then I went to 5 Guys and got a small order of fries. It was a lot of fries, and I have to say, the best around here. And that's against some pretty stiff competition. 

I checked all my usual packing supplies places and nada. I did pick up a big bag (good thing I had a big bag with me) of this thick honeycomb cardboard stuff that should come in handy. Coming into the complex here with the big bag of cardboard pieces plus 3 long ones sticking off the bike like a long tail, I was just turning in when suddenly there was a bum in front of me with a Mad Max bike and trailer, turning in too. Oops! 

I veered away and took the other way, through the armored car place and around. Mr Bum was in the dumpster I'd taken all the gears and stuff out of last night. I got back in here and put the bike and things away and took a little bucket of basic tools with me to the HVAC place where there was a discarded furnace sitting in front. It was basically just one hex head screw I used a socket driver on and a couple of tabs to bend back and I had the control board. The people there were setting off tons of firecrackers, it being new year and all, so it was kind of loud but I love 'em like any good Hawaii kid does. 

I walked back here with my bucket of tools and the control board and went around the other side to check on what Mr. Bum was up to. He had just finished and was riding away. I waited until he was out of sight and then took a look in the dumpster because who knows what was there. The little goodies were all gone except one that had been overlooked, and all aluminum was gone. There's still a bunch of steel there. I picked up some cardboard and junk lying around there and put it in to neaten things up, as it's the least I can do after all the neat stuff I've found there. 

I just found out today there's a "green" comet in the sky, that's just becoming naked-eye visable. They figure it's not been around here since the last Ice Age, and it's actually ... green. Well, we're starting the year of the rabbit and rabbits like green stuff. 

Eat ze bugs

 Last night I made sure to have all the things packed that had to go out today, so at least I'd get those out. I woke up at around 3, and packed four more small things and took off at 4. 

The drop-offs went fine, and I went to H Mart for some shopping. I got a number of things and loaded the bike up, then went back in thinking I'd get some sort of a snack. Well, first between my first go around and this second one, I had 2 gyoza samples and 3 marinated beef samples, and along with the snack I got a can of Mr. Brown black coffee so I had that out front before leaving so I was pretty well set up. Fed and caffeinated.

I got right back here, unloaded things, and went back out with the bike trailer and step-stool and hit up the medical place again, where I found a couple of things. That was OK though, the trip was worth it. 

Then, before being in for the night, I looked in the one dumpster on the other side of the building that's closest, and found a big Nordstrom's bag full of clothes. I sniffed them - there are two kinds of clothes-donators; one kind donates them rather than both with washing them, and the other kind will wash them and fold them neatly. These were donated by the 2nd kind. So I grabbed that bag and put it back in here to sort out later. 

Then I took a large bag here that held an old, no-name "custom made" wetsuit of Ken's from the 1970s that he wanted me to sell or donate. I decided to donate it - to a trash can. So I took that out and checked the *other* dumpster, and found tons and tons of neat mechanical fixtures and gears and stuff like that, all new. So I laid the wetsuit on top of the dumpster because it's a bunch of motorcycle and race-car guys around there and maybe one of them will use it, and loaded the bag up with gears and fittings and neat mechanical things that can be put on Ebay, and so I think I made a good trade. I'd not have found that stuff if I didn't take the wetsuit there, so to me it's a trade. 

Finally I was ready to be in for the night and sat down to enjoy my snack - these little crabs that are fried whole that they sell at H Mart. They're delicious and pretty much eating ze bugs. Bugs and beer, it's hard to beat. 

On NPR they did an interview with a couple who do music in a 1940s style, like Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer. They really had the sound down pat. At one point the guy talked about busking in the New York City subways. At first there was no cell phone coverage down there, it was this one place where people weren't under the thrall of their cell phones. People would listen to him, and maybe for 2-3 songs, then decide, he thought, "How can I *not* give this guy some money?" The songs he sang connected with people, with the breakup they were going through or the new job they just got, or whatever was going on with their lives. Then cellular service "came in" and that's when he "went out". 

I wonder if this is a good part of why I've done so well busking at Whole Foods? The segment of the population that goes in and buys groceries in person isn't the same one that sleepwalks around, captivated by their phones.  If I could only get up in the morning, I could try busking at farmer's markets as well. I don't think there are a lot of phone-starers at those. 

3 kingdoms

 I woke up around noon, and then again around 2:30 maybe. When I woke up I had to remember what was on the agenda today - the bank. 

I got going around 3:30, and other than dropping off some trash, I went right to the bank. Amazingly, my calculation of my balance was dead-on. 

I went to Whole Foods and got a delicious meal. It was some lovely pulled pork, broccoli, mushrooms, asparagus, and even a little onion got in there. And a near-beer. My meal was actually from three kingdoms, those being animal, plant, and fungus. 

After that I went over to Walmart. It was clear-ish but grey and wintry looking, and real hat and gloves weather as the warmest it got was the low 50s. 

I'd had to go to Walmart because I'd used up my gallon Ziploc bags and I got those and a ton of other stuff to the tune of about $65. But what's really funny is, while I was going around finding things I realized I had to use the bathroom and it was becoming non-negotiable. So I picked out one of those little packages of wet wipes and used the bathroom in there. It was a Walmart bathroom so ... I had to wipe the seat down with the wipes and dump the wad of "ass gaskets" in the holder on the floor to soak up the I-hope-it's-not-pee on the floor around the toilet, but I was able to have my ass explosion and thanks to the wipes, leave with a smile on my face. Whew! It's sure handy having that bathroom there. 

I headed back, stopping at the Amazon place where I got a lot of bubble mailers. What's funny is, while I was digging around pulling them out of the wastebaskets, a lady came in from outside, plopped a wrapped up package that smelled like food, and went right back out. It smelled like food, so I thought, "Well, that's not very polite, leaving their lunch leftovers here but I guess there are trash cans in here and she had to". I finished gathering my mailers and then noticed the package had a tag on it - it *was* someone's meal they'd ordered from a service like Door Dash. I took it the counter and told the gal there about it, and she said there's an apartment building next door and this happens once in a while. She was familiar with the apartment building and would take it over there. 

I stopped at Nijiya next and got more stuff. There was a young guy checking there who I think is the guy who learned some Japanese from anime but I'm not sure. He recognized me from a while back and was very friendly and we had a nice conversation about the crazy weather lately and such things. Also the store was unusually quiet and we remarked on how calm it was and how it was rather nice. 

I was really loaded up with stuff when I got back here, and I unloaded the stuff and hooked up the bike trailer and loaded a big box on and a step stool and went over to check out the medical place. Ken's bugged and I am too at how our sales are going lately. They "should" be up around 7 or 8 grand and instead they're hovering around 5. So I said I'll try to check the medical place more often, as a lot of the stuff I was getting out of there was selling pretty well. 

I found all kinds of things to load up there, all kinds of goodies. Sometimes I go there and there's nothing or next to nothing but this was not one of those times. So now I have more "toys to play with" by which I mean, things to list on Ebay. 

Shakuhachi club meeting

 As usual, Ken being over is ... exhausting ... I rounded up 10 things to list and that was about it. Too tired to even practice shakuhachi much. 

This is why sticking with an instrument for years and years on end is the way to go. If I suddenly need to go out and make money with the trumpet, I can. I can pick the thing up and draw on years and years of muscle memory and make a fast buck, which is why I think I'll sell the trumpet last thing. 

I woke up at 4 after some wild dreams (DaBus in Hawaii goes over a spectacular land bridge!) and at first had to work to remember what important thing I had going on today/tonight. The shakuhachi club meeting! 

I also got a call back from a gal I'd contacted about buying a flute on Craig's List. An Armstrong 104 which is the very same model my older sister had when I was a kid (none of us know what happened to "the flute"). She only wants $85 for it and while her pictures don't show how the pads look, it looks great in the few photos that are there. 

So I have to meet her for the flute first, then go to the shakuhachi meeting, then get all wet in the rain coming back, according to the weather report.

I cleaned up as much as I could and put on fresh clothes, got my stuff all together, and took off at about 5. I had time to get to Japantown, and buy some peanuts, and then some gum, in Nijiya getting $40 cash back each time. 

I went over to Roy's Station and gave the flute lady a call, and waited. I tried playing Hinomaru just to see how the sound carries, and it actually does OK. It will carry more when I'm a more skilled player. 

The lady showed up and I tried out the flute and couldn't get a note. I "dared" her to get a note and she got a few. I'd done that because she said, "Someone needs to practice". I said it was good enough - really the flute looks really good - and gave her the money, counting out the last dollar in quarters (I did not expect her to have change). 

I went back over to Nijiya again and got an eel bento, a real treat. And a can of coffee. I ate out front and sipped a little of the coffee, but didn't want to drink too much because my waking-up cup had filtered its way down and I had to use the loo already. 

I walked around a bit to kill time and in the end, went into the new pizza place on 6th and looking at their huge menu of crazy craft beer names, saw Pabt - a familiar name in the storm - and ordered one of those. That gave me license to use their loo, which I did, and then watched some of the Australian Open tennis while listening to the ghastly 70's hard rock they play in there. That beer cost me $7 with the tip and I only drank maybe 1/4 of it. 

When it was 15 minutes before the meeting I left and walked over to the temple. Tons of people were going into the gym for a Boy Scouts thing, and I sat on the bench in front of the temple itself with my shakuhachi across my knees and just didn't see any shakuhachi people. I finally tried the door and it opened. It's a "you just have to know" kind of club, I guess. 

There were four students and Rinban Sakamoto, the teacher. Two of the students are old ladies and one is very good, and she just plays a simple PVC shakuhachi. I was the only one who wasn't playing a hunk of plastic pipe, actually. There was myself, and then there was the guy I'd sold a trumpet and a cornet, or two cornets, or something, to, years ago. That had enabled me to pay my taxes that year. He's from a saxophone background so, since it will take more years than I plan to have left here on the mainland, he shall be known as Saxophone Guy. 

We did scales, and worked on two songs. Except for the one lady who's really good, the other three of us sounded pretty awful. It was great, though. In the 2nd octave I could not make many of the notes, or could mostly not make them except when they'd show up. So I just played along doing my best and I think that's what everyone did. Rinban Sakamoto had made these really neat music holders  out of foamcore that rest on the pews and hold a single page of music with two paperclips. Really clever. 

Saxophone Guy used to play some sort of a transverse flute with a Japanese music group in Los Angeles. For some reason he moves around the country continuously, and thus the horns he  bought from me are in a storage unit somewhere. "I'm finding trumpet is harder than saxophone," he observed to me. "Yes, it's generally agrees that it is; it takes a lot of pressure". I told him it makes a great sound when you "get it going" and said it's great when you get the ability to "jazz is up" and told my story about driving the annoying Christian guy off in Mountain View by jazzing up "Amazing Grace". 

The guy was in too much of a hurry to talk much, though. It must be like that when you continually move around the country. It seems kind of weird to me, but then it's kind of weird that I get around by bike or insist on using a flip phone. His way of life apparently works for him and mine works for me. 

It wasn't raining when the meeting was over, and the ride home was dry. Not without its thrills, though. I was riding home at about 8:30 which due to the wartime 3-hour shift is equivalent to 11:30 at night. Now, I used to be out busking when it was warm, up to and even past midnight without any problems but that was in the before times. I try not to be out much past dark at all these days. 

So, as I was just at the end of 10th street, approaching Bayshore, there was a zombie on a bike coming my way, no lights, and fast, Since there was no traffic I swung wide to get around the damned thing and it veered over to try to intercept me. I put on a burst of speed though and that threw it's timing off.  I went on under the bridge, going the wrong way of course, and then up Bayshore, on the wrong side, all the way up to where Chik'n Drip had their truck set up. It was not busy.

If the zombie was following me or had decided to, it would probably think I'd turned into the zombie-infested side street that's just before Chikn' Drip. Veering over onto the right side of Bayshore and into this complex would give the zombie the temptation to chase me into here. 

So I ordered some fries, having $5 on me. "Do you want chicken on your fries?" the skinny kid asked. "I can't afford chicken", I said. "I'll hook you up!" he replied. The fries were actually only $4 and I said, "let the other dollar be a tip" and he put it in the tip jar. 

I had to wait a while, since being one of the very few places open after 7 or so, they had a steady number of customers. Two large Black gals came up to order and we had a laugh about zombies; my imitations of zombies staggering around wanting "Braaaaaaaains" cracked them up. 

My food was done and the bag was tied up so I'd need scissors so I just took it and get back here. It turned out to be fries, dressing, chopped-up chicken tender, and lots pickles. A lot more carbs than I should be eating, but I sure didn't finish the thing. Most of the fries are out front for the gulls as I write.

My thoughts on the shakuhachi club meeting are that firstly, Rinban Sakamoto really loves the shakuhachi and teaching it. He's probably not a masterful player, but he *did* get to study with Masayuki Koga, the guy who wrote the books I have. I told him I could play Hinomaru, the first song in the book, fairly well, and he played it while I sang along. (Singing the songs is taught as well as playing them on the shakuhachi in this club). I explained that for me to take a lesson from Koga, I'd have to take a day getting up to Oakland where he is, stay a night in a hotel, take the lesson the next day, then it would take me another day to get back. 

The one lady who's really good, is probably someone who made it a very solid habit to practice every day, and probably has been playing since the club first formed, however many years ago that was. And has been practicing through the dissolution of the club, through covid, etc. That's what it takes - years and years. 

If I were going to stay here on the mainland, I'd do well to stay with the trumpet, because the trumpet is a good instrument for here. It's loud and, well, brassy. I've already got a bunch of years playing it under my belt. Now I'm starting from zero. That lady in the shakuhachi club, without saying a word about it, has shown us all how regular practice and sticking with a thing will always win. 

I experienced this on the trumpet. Put in enough years, and eventually, in spite of yourself, you might just end up with a decent tone. Although I'll say that I'm convinced that my taking some time off and practicing shakuhachi and then coming back to trumpet is what made the difference. That's what really gave me a winning tone. So if I were to stay with trumpet I'd have to play some shakuhachi too because I know what's good for me. But better still to just play the shakuhachi. 

On the flute ... well ... my left shoulder is sure happy I'm not playing it. I ran into something like this with archery. In the early 2000s I started to get into it, but shortly after I finally got "in line" (proper form) and finding I could just zing those shots in there accurately, some muscles or tendons or something went "sproing". I took a month off, went back to the archery range, shot about 3 shots, right zing in the middle, and ... "sproing". My problem was, I wasn't doing archery fairly seriously from when my age was in the single digits, which is what it takes to have the body adapting as it grows, to what's a fairly unnatural movement. 

I think I'm running into the same thing with the flute. Not *all* transverse flutes, but the Western transverse flute is a real beastie. This is not going to be a problem if you've been playing the flute since your age was in the single digits, which serious players have. Even less "serious" players like that guy from Jethro Tull, I strongly suspect, have a lot more flute practice in their childhood than they let on. 

In other news for some reason both my Oahu friend and my Big Island friend have stopped emailing. Now, email, or anything involving any kind of real distance, is no way to make or maintain any kind of friendship. There's this "distance effect" and it's the reason companies and even the government spend millions flying people all over the world so they can be in the same room, smelling each other's farts. That's exactly how it works. If you're not smelling each other's farts, you can't get business done; you can't keep a friendship, you can't make agreements or start or stop a war and so on. 

It's why all these bigwigs spend millions upon millions flying to some resort town in Switzerland, to discuss .... the anti-environmental properties of air travel. The problem is, they have to travel, air travel environmental harm be damned, to have a chance of actually doing anything. 

It's also why I'm not even trying to get in contact with my older sister back in Hawaii. It all comes down to, decades ago now, our talking on the phone, about 3000 miles apart. I was under a lot of stress, said something I should not have and does not even reflect my actual view, and it can't be fixed until I'm back there, in person, and we witness each other's table manners, and observe each other eating, and yes, smell each other's farts if it comes to that. There's no other way. 

Other-other news is, a thread on Reddit in r/sanjose about the difficulties in getting a passport. It turns out to be difficult indeed! That's scary, as one of the signs of a failing nation is it gets very difficult for people in it to leave if they want to. It's taking months on end, and people are even going to other states, and one suggestion was to go to the post office on the island of Maui and apply there. Most people are talking about going to Gilroy or Hollister or tiny, dot-on-the-map towns. I could handle going to Gilroy because there's a bus that goes down there and there's always a cab or two hanging around the bus station. The other places would take days of travel for me, each way. 

This is why I need to get to work getting my papers in order. They've pushed back the deadline to get a "Real ID" to 2025 and I plan to be back in Hawaii by then, but I want to get one and to get a new passport also. I wonder if not having a good proper Nazi Germany passport hindered those people without one, who were able to get out? I'd rather have more "proper papers" than less. 

 

The boistrous seas of capitalism

 My headache was bad all through yesterday. Usually after some time on the bike at least, it faded into the background. So much for the beer cure, I decided. It was not helping and may have been making things worse. I'm sitting on a good $50 worth of beer and will drink one at dinner and leave it at that. Or I might end up just giving the stuff away. 

I got 15 things packed last night, or was it 17? In any case, I packed a couple more including one big thing which is fine because if I'm not buying any more beer, I don't have to go into any stores and taking the bike trailer will be fine. Makes it easier to pick up packing materials too. 

I only practiced a little last night. Worked on Hinomaru some. I need to work on that some more tonight. 

I went to bed *without* drinking a few beers, and slept pretty well. 

I got up around 3 and listening to the daily horrible things on the radio, I thought, "A very good analogy to how the US economic system works is, you've got a pool with some very good swimmers, and a lot of swimmers who can just barely stay afloat. The good swimmers are keeping the water stirred up and very rough, because it's great for them, they like it that way!" 

Sure enough, the term "The boistrous seas of capitalism" came up. I thought of the infamous boat parade for Trump where the bigger boats "waked" the smaller ones badly enough that a few even sunk. It was all OK though, because it was for Dear Leader. 

Not only is it a *good* analogy, but it's a *useful* one. If you know the pool's going to be kept barely swim-able for the average swimmer, and God help you if you're a poor one, and you know the good swimmers, the capitalists, are going to send some heavy waves through occasionally, then you can plan, at least to some extent. 

(The good swimmers, the capitalists, rough up the pool periodically, say, because then the poor swimmers drown and the capitalists can loot their pockets. This is a damned good analogy. I wish I had the money to commission R. Crumb to draw this.)

But enough about splashy pools, as the Republicans, the armed wing of the capitalists, are doing good old textbook terrorism. Shooting up the homes of political enemies, in New Mexico so far but may be coming to a neighborhood near you. 

I took off at about 4:30 with my 19 packages. That's actually a bit late, as it's fully dark by 5:30. Traffic was amazing - backed up lines of cars everywhere. It didn't matter in which direction, everywhere there was the typical long lines of traffic. I guess it must be worth it to own a car, what bliss! Oh, and this is a new 20s thing, everyone uses their horn now. It's like people have realized when they bought the car, they paid for a horn and they'd better get their money's worth. 

After delivering everything, I stopped at the "Hawaiian" place and  tried to get a kid's meal. I figured that's a nice size, considering how huge kids are these days. The guy at the counter could barely wrap his mind around the concept of a money-for-goods transaction, much less than an adult might be ordering a kid's meal, and was doing his best to fuck things up, so I just walked out, and next door, where I got chicken. 

The "Krispy Krunchy" chicken was as good as ever, maybe a bit less "krispy" but I always thought they overdid it a bit. But, the biscuit the guy put in with my two thighs was tiny compared to the ones they originally gave out - this didn't matter since I tossed it into the plants for the birds. And the nice big napkins they used to give out, where one was enough to clean up with and two could be saved for later, have been replaced with some of those tiny ones you get at only the cheapest places. They're still really nice people, though, and two thighs for $6 is a good feed. 

Since it's the one dry day this week, I followed my usual route looking for packing stuff and didn't find much, just some of those air pillows. 

I got back here and offloaded things, then loaded up the step stool and my "getter stick" and went to the medical place where I got a few good things. 

I did some mental math and have calculated that at the rate I've been drinking "watery", 5% beer, I've still been putting away the equivalent of about half a bottle of vodka per 24 hours. It may be watered down, and because of this I never reached the blood alcohol levels to get really drunk, but that's a lot of alcohol. And right on cue, my right ear's all hot and swollen again. 

Ken called and said he's coming by tonight so I had an hour to put things away that I'd listed, clean the bathroom and vacuum the office floor, and in general "neaten up". He came by at the usual time, just the day being different, with some mail for me, a Burger King dinner he gave me the chicken nuggets out of, and a couple of really heavy transformers to list on Ebay. 

He also wrote my check, $1050 whoohoo! I'm not to actually deposit it until Thursday though. Fair enough. We sat around and talked about atom bombs and things like that, always a popular subject with him. He took off at midnight, as is his norm. 

This makes things actually a bit simpler for me. All I have to worry about tomorrow is the shakuhachi club meeting. And some rain. I don't have to deal with all that and then deal with him; I can just come back here, get dried out and warm up, and then work on listing things.

MLK day

 I got in well over an hour's practice last night but I have a far way to go. It turns out the Western flute is different enough from the shakuhachi that I'm pretty far behind on the ol' shak. 

I'm pretty sure if I practice well tonight and tomorrow night I'll be able to play an acceptable "Hinomaru" in class, and know the notes by name reflexively. 

I don't think much is expected, really. Rinban's going to have some of his PVC shakuhachi for anyone to use or take home, and we may have some beginner-beginners. 

I guess the club meets once a month, but who knows, maybe there will be some who want to meet up at Roy's Station or someplace more often. 

I expect to get wet going to/from the meeting, but I'll just get out my good ol' messenger bag and that will keep things dry enough. 

I woke up at around 2, and amazingly it's dry outside. It rained heavily and continuously yesterday and last night. Now we're getting a couple of dry days. 

I guess I'll expect Ken to come by on Wednesday and I'll get a 3X paycheck. At least that's a bit over a thousand bucks and rather satisfying to put into the bank. 

I think I will have to go "keto" again. I got into the habit of eating ramen every day since I'd gotten some of the (admittedly rather delicious) "Penang White Curry" type as a comfort food to eat while I got over my last covid shot, but I'm sure I've been gaining wait and it might even be the reason for "my" headache which was bad when I got up today. 

In all fairness, the last time at H Mart, they'd had a 24-pack of Kirin Ichiban beer for $20, and I'd gotten  that. When I tried it I found out why it was on sale - it was nasty and skunky. I drank it anyway, but wow, what swill. If I'm going to stay on the "beer cure" I'll stick with Asahi Dry. 

Keto plus beer seems counterproductive and it is, but it's still a big improvement over eating ramen, croissants, etc. as  I have been. 

The thing is, if I'm going to be a good shakuhachi player, I need to be a lot more fit. Two of the players I follow on YouTube are Markus Guhe and Jon Kypros and they're if anything, a bit underweight. If you're not overweight you can blow better. (For some reason there seems to be a real tendency for trumpeters to be overweight and with a few notable exceptions they're a real bunch of butterballs.)

I left here at about 3, with the FedEx packages which were all small enough that I didn't need the bike trailer. It was *not* warm out there. Hat and gloves weather. I had to detour around a zombie with their zombie dog near here. (zombie dogs are trained to either attack or be super friendly, in any case it gives the zombie a chance to get close to you and eat your brains.) The parking lot for the complex that has FedEx and H Mart was super busy. People stocking up for Chinese New Year? 

I dropped off the FedEx things and got groceries in H Mart. I only got the odd rain drop on me going out and back, and it was nice looking at the spectacular clouds. I was back here a bit after 4. 

Sunday ... wash cycle?

 Yesterday/last night I packed a lot of things with the idea that if there was any break in the rain today, I could take the FedEx ones to FedEx at least. 

I think there *was* a break in the rain, but it was something like 6-10AM which didn't help me as FedEx is open something like noon to 4 on Sundays. 

I woke up at around 2:30 in the afternoon, and it was raining hard enough to preclude any idea of going out. A mist or a drizzle are one thing, but this is heavy rain. 

Some of the guys next door have a little canopy set up and are gamely trying to do some grilling in this weather. I don't know why they don't just do it inside their shop, but maybe the boss doesn't want cooking smells in there. At least from the sound of it they're having a good time. 

It either rained, or rained hard, all day and into the wee hours of the morning. It's a lot of water. I futzed around with things, packed things, moved some things, and even took some things apart and put the scrap out for the bums. 

I packed things because if there's a pause in the rain tomorrow I can at least, I'm pretty sure, take the FedEx things to FedEx. I can put them in two large plastic bags that I can close with zip ties so the packages won't get wet at all, and it's supposed to let off a bit tomorrow afternoon anyway. 

 

Saturday rinse cycle

 I did a lot of breathing exercises last night but didn't actually practice. When I finally went to bed it was pouring. 

I woke up around 4 or maybe closer to 5, and the rain had paused long enough for me to get dressed and go outside and put out a bag of trash, a bag of beer cans, and take some stuff I had in the trash enclosure also, and put everything in dumpsters on the other side of the building. 

Then it started pouring again.

So this is my winter

 So this is my winter I guess. I'm glad I was able to dash around and get things mailed yesterday, but after getting back in here and having a snack and beer and dinner and beer and a coffee (keeping myself to 2 a day) with a side of beer and beer and beer ... 

I found that I was very tired, really, from all the dashing around I'd done. It really was a hard slog getting downtown against the wind with those heavy and wind-catching bags of books. This is a large shallow valley and going away from the bay is generally up a slight uphill slope and normally the wind is with me so they somewhat cancel out. 

I ended up feeling very tired, did not practice although I did some breathing exercises, and really got into this one movie, "The Story Of G.I. Joe" with a guy playing Ernie Pyle and about a group of soldiers who eventually took Monte Cassino in Italy. Pretty good old film, really. 

I woke up around 1PM and it was dry-ish I think, but decided I needed more sleep and woke up again at 4. It was drizzling and then it started pouring. Heavier rain is on the way for tomorrow (Saturday) and Monday's a holiday which will slow down US Postal Service things but since Sunday's supposed to be a bit less rainy, I can take a load of things to FedEx then. 

Forget about busking in all this cold and dark and rain. It always *has* been a highly seasonal activity in this area. Unlike Hawaii, where there are visitors pretty evenly through the year and no real "off" season. Sure, winters are rainier and a bit cooler there, but it's not the near-complete shutdown it is here. 

It might continue like this until April or so. I remember one winter that was like that in 2005 or so, but at that time I had a car. At least I can ask Ken to take packages for me if I really need to. 

But winter's the time to "woodshed" which is to practice intensely on one's own, metaphorically if not literally hiding oneself away in a woodshed to do so. 

Winter's also a good time for thinking. Andrew Carnegie was famous for saying the first half of one's life ought to be spent making money and the second half giving it away. It's very good plan if you end up making more money than you need like he did. But for most of us, although percentage-wise we're probably far more generous than any of the rich, I think it's more about the 2nd half being spent atoning for the first. 

I've sent my Oahu friend an email asking if he can use a smart phone like the one I've got, since he seems to prefer doing things on one rather than on a desktop or a laptop. If he wants it I'll send it on over. At least it's something I already have and the shipping won't even cost much. 

I followed my plan

 Last night I got a good load of books ready to take to the used book store, futzed around with other things, and got a really good amount of shakuhachi practice in. I worked out a cute little tune from episodes 1-2 of Victory At Sea, which I was watching. That's pretty cool. 

I woke up at noon or so, got up around noon-thirty, made a cup of coffee and cleaned up a bit (washed hair and shaved, yay me!) and got out of here just a bit after 1 with many pounds of books hanging off of each handlebar of the bike. I stopped for a couple of tacos from Tacos Chencho firs thing, easy when they're set up right at the end of the building. Those were good! 

The wind's from the South so it was hard going. I dropped off my pledge money at the temple, got rid of some trash, and eventually got to the used book store. While looking at neat things like "R. Crumb's America" they evaluated my books and offered me $19 cash or over $30 trade credit. "Eh, I've got trade credit I'm already not using, I'll take the cash". 

I went over to TAP Plastics and got a few things for the many projects I have going on around here. 

A rule of the used book store is you have to take the books they don't want back with you so I saved the books I want to put on Ebay and took the others to the little free library/pantry on 7th and then got some day-old croissants from Lee's. This time they were two to a bag and not the really big ones. 

I went to the Amazon place and got a lot of bubble mailers, then over to Nijiya for more shopping. 

I got back here, put things away, sipped some of the cup of coffee I'd made, and packed two small things and loaded all the packages up and offloaded them at the post office and FedEx. Then I went to H Mart and got watery beer, green onions, beef, some spicy peanuts, and some weird potato ramen. After loading the bike up, I went back in for an on-sale 6 pack of "Cass" beer. 

I rode over to Tom's and he had a friend there, Colin, who used to work for the paranoid guy who had a sort of small newspaper/Pennysaver distribution company. Colin lived in back. I offered beers all around and Colin wasn't having it but Tom sure was. The plan was to go to Burger King but eventually Tom said he's watching his figure or something and Colin took off to go on his own and Tom and I drank Cass beer and talked and laughed it up. 

Tom, it turned out, has been really "Jones'ing" for a beer, and I'd thought, What the hell, it's going to rain the next few days, might as well hang out and have a good time. I expected the Cass beer to be awful but Tom said it was good and it tasted OK to me. 

A wet, gushy day

 I fiddled around with Ebay stuff, packed things, and eventually got around to some practice. I played a lot of Ro notes, and in general messed around. I think this is an area where I have been, in the past, just settling in and grinding away through exercises, and while this is good, it makes it more boring than it has to be. 

This is also where I feel much more free to do this on the shakuhachi, because essentially there are no "wrong" fingerings. There are so few holes, that every combination gets used. It's fun to mess around, on this note you can waver it but the same note/fingering an octave up you can't so easily, etc. 

I also made a cleaning pull-through by taking a silk one that's for a flute that I got along with one of my used flutes, and attached a string and a weight to it. The nice thing about a Shakuhachi Yuu is, being made of plastic, it can just be washed in the sink as far as that goes. 

I need to get out busking, but I'm actually closer to being able to do so using the humble Shakuhachi Yuu, and this includes doing some external work on the Yuu to make it look a bit more like bamboo. 

One of the players I used to follow on YouTube was, a couple-few years ago, "kind of" good. He was ... adequate. He gave his "origin story" in a more recent video, how he started out on shinobue because his taiko group lose their shinobue player. How he was in Japan and went out looking for a shinobue maker and ended up meeting a shakuhachi player and "the rest is history" lol. But over the last couple-few years while I've been fucking around, he's apparently been putting in a lot of work because now he's not just adequate, he's really good. 

Rinban Sakamoto emailed me and I still can't print out the Google Drive music sheets he sends me, but will have printouts for those few of us who can't print them out. I replied that I at least have tons of those clear plastic page protectors, enough to share. So I'm going to bring a fat wad of those. 

It's raining heavily so no trip to the post office today. But since I'm caught up on mailing, this doesn't bother me a bit. 

I'm corresponding every day now with my Oahu friend. I offered yesterday to get him a laptop if he's having too much trouble using his smart phone to do email (which sounds hellish to me). But he says he has trouble typing on a keyboard so ... Like old guys do I guess, we're sharing our situations and plans regarding Social Security. In short I mentioned that I don't plan to move until I have Social Security to have a reliable trickle of money, as I put it, "A homeless person without money is a homeless person, while a homeless person with a thousand or so a month coming in, month in and month out, who doesn't smoke, drink, or do drugs, is a housed person". 

I still don't know the full situation with this guy. He's not sure he'll be alive in two years when I come back there. I'm not sure he'll want to or be able to give me a place to "land" when I get back there. But I'm also thinking that through the temple and the shakuhachi club, I'll be able to find someone to "land" with also. 

 When the time for Ken to come over had come and gone, I called him up. He's having to work long hours doing some kind of EMI testing over in Menlo Park and no only could not come over tonight but is not sure if he can come over tomorrow night either. I said, just whenever time is OK, even the weekend or ... whenever. 

I'd already listed 15 things for today, got 'em done early. And packed everything that's outstanding. So, I got out my collection of "to sell" books and threw in my flute books because it's looking like I'll never get through the Wye beginner book 1 much less the rest of 'em, and will sell them to the book store tomorrow. That will give me an excuse to go downtown. 

The first line anyway

 Last night I packed all the orders that had to be sent out, which made 16 things. I wanted to be ready to jet out of here if it was dry today. 

I also messed around a bit on the shakuhachi, and I've got to say, it's really nice to have something that's just pick-up-and-play and since it's not made of metal, I don't even need to freak out over whether my mouth is perfectly clean before playing. I was tired last night but still able to play it. My 2nd octave notes are coming back too. I can play the first line of Kimigayo.

I woke up around 3 or 4 and it was dry-ish out. At least not actively raining. Much. I had to re-pack a thing, and packed a couple more things that had sold overnight, and got out of here. 

I didn't get rained on, and did my best to keep my speed down so the packages would not get water/mud kicked up on them. The drop-offs all went great, and I stopped by the falafel place for a yogurt drink - I'd brought just a bit over $4 in change. But for the 2nd time stopping by, it was closed. 

So I went to 5 Guys figuring I'll get some fries and so I can compare them to the fries at Wingstop. But fries were almost $5, and I had $4.25 or so, so I had to put my change away and tell 'em I'll be back another time. (I still want to try their fries though). 

I went to the places I find packing foam from, but found nothing but a nice steel bucket with the kind of lid that seals with a latch so I took that. 

I stopped by Tom's and offered him the bucket, and he said he's got so much stuff now, that he has to gear back on acquiring stuff. 

I got back here, put things away, fixed up a zucchini salad for myself and had that with some canned mackerel, and sifted and sorted some stuff and put stuff out for the bums. 

Ro

 Last night I got to thinking, "Hm, the shakuhachi club meeting will be next week, and I guess I should get the thing out and practice a bit, in addition to my flute practice of course".  So I went upstairs and dug it out, and got out the first Koga book which I'd been working out of. 

I blew a Ro. It was not much of a Ro. All the notes were weak and short-lived. I tried using my "new" flute knowledge and moved my mouth closer to the edge of the utaguchi and could blow a lot longer, but the tone was terrible. So much for "new" flute knowledge. So much for the flute being good training for the shakuhachi. 

And I have to make a decent showing in class! They don't know I haven't been practicing fanatically all this time. They don't know I spent the summer before last playing trumpet, and then last summer not really playing much of anything, not really sure of what I really want to do. 

That summer playing trumpet was pretty great, though. My tone had become so much better somehow and that's what people liked. And what had improved my tone? I'm convinced it was the time I put in on the shakuhachi before that summer. 

Shakuhachi strengthens the breath like nothing else I've experienced. Of course it had strengthened my trumpet playing, just as it strengthens my voice. It's very beneficial and healthy. 

I thought that playing the flute would help me out on the shakuhachi, and also, I wanted to get out there busking again ASAP. I figured a month or two on the flute and I'd be out there cuttin' it up, wowing 'em with my Danny Boy, Amazing Grace, that thing from the Joe Walsh album that no one's heard of but that I know by heart (on the album it said Pavane For A Dead Princess but when I look that up I get something else) Ave Maria, and other hits. 

Instead I can see I'm years out from this. Just like in 2009 when I got a cornet and by 2012 I was still not really up to snuff for busking. I don't sound good, I don't have endurance, and I sure don't have repertoire. 

And I haven't even felt very motivated to go out there. If I were motivated at all I'd have been out there. I'd have found a way to get around the cold; maybe found warm store fronts to play near or played mid-day when it warmed up a bit.

No, my heart was just not in it. I've even thought about going back to trumpet, with only three buttons to worry about. It's much more of a "grab 'n' go" instrument. "You don't have to worry about pads!! - Red The Flute Player. 

Pads ... I do spent a certain amount of time thinking about pads. I have books on how to replace pads, and do other things on flutes, which do have a lot of pads, as well as levers and rods and springs and screws ... 

A flute, I've felt, is likely to stay cleaner and be less stinky than a trumpet in a tropical environment in Hawaii but I've still begun to think about how well the salt air in Waikiki might treat a flute. When you've got something that's made of tons of fiddly little pieces and things, like pads, that bugs like to eat... 

It's no wonder that, aside from the guitars that no doubt need new strings and tuners twice as often as in a non-salty environment, one of the instruments I've seen a lot of in Waikiki is the pan flute, being made of bamboo, a bit of rattan, and plugs of wax to tune each note. Not a lot of metal parts there. The same goes for that old standby, the ukulele, which in its purest form has no metal parts at all. 

But aside from all of this, really, it was watching a documentary on YouTube called "Yokohama Mary" that started me on this line of thinking. In the sound track, near the end, there appears a shakuhachi. That sound cut right through me and I could not forget thinking about it. I even went back over a few weeks of videos I'd watched to find it again because I hadn't memorized the title. How did I ever forget how expressive the shakuhachi is? 

Then I started thinking about, What is it I intend to do here? I'll be retired. I'm not looking to get into a military band, or to join a professional band, or even make much of a living from music. Music will only have to keep food in my mouth, but a roof over my head will be taken care of by Social Security. And even the food in my mouth part can be taken care of by food stamps and various senior programs as well as my excellent "urban foraging" skills. It's just not a worry. As sure as there are kahelelani on the beach in la'ie, I won't go hungry in Hawaii.

So what do I really want to do here? Do I really want to become at least semi-expert on the flute so I can then and only then switch over to shakuhachi? Do I need to make lots of money by busking? I think I'm coming around to No, and No. 

I realize now that the flute will not give me hidden insights to the shakuhachi or be any kind of a "cross training" for it. And I've been meeting my savings goals without busking at all. So there's not really any pressure of, "I'd better get good at a 'commercially viable instrument' or I'm gonna starve". 

I'm not at peace at all with the playing position used for the Western flute either. Somehow I could play trumpet for hours with no problems, but the position used for flute really bugs my left shoulder. I ran into this problem with the violin, also. The flute's worse though. I figured I'd get around it by gradually lengthening my playing time but the problem is easily inflamed by any sort of heavy lifting or wrenching things around, the kind of work I have to do around here all the time. So that's another thing. 

The upshot of all this is, I have my first meeting with the shakuhachi club in something like 8 days. I want to not completely embarrass myself, and I know I could play Hinomaru OK, so I can work up to that again, plus I want to learn Kimigayo. So I "must" be able to play the first competently, and I want very much to be able to play the second, which is the Japanese national anthem and a beautiful piece of music, and with its mention of pebbles eventually growing to boulders in its lyrics, adorable too. 

So, I put in at least an hour messing around on the shakuhachi last night while watching things on YouTube and drinking "a bit" of beer. 

I went to bed at 8AM and woke up at 4. It was dry outside and looked like it would be so for a while. I had one package I had to ship, a big, bulky item that would create a major clog in my shipping if I didn't get it out. So I got that packed, and since FedEx was "experiencing problems" and because it would save $20, shipped it by UPS. I loaded it on the bike trailer and took it right over there, feeling fortunate that there's that friendly little UPS store even closer than FedEx. 

Mondays typically are bad for finding packing materials, and the place next door to Tom's only had cardboard boxes in their dumpster. I knocked on Tom's door and said I had some peanuts with him to go with beer, and he said he was out of beer, Why not come inside and sit down for a while? We put the bike and trailer inside, and hung out in his office for a bit, talking about Chet Baker, and what's going on with the survivalist place in Gilroy, and all kinds of things. 

Eventually we got in his truck and went to Lowe's where I got a big package of paper towels and he got some caulk and screwdriver bits, then we went to Wing Stop. 

He's never been in, and I said I had ... but then thought a bit and said it'd been at least 4 years. I ordered the small meal of wings and fries and a drink, and then Tom stepped up and said, "I'll have the same exact thing Alex is having". They had a goofy modern drinks machine where you order from a big screen and then the little round screen right over the spigot shows what you're getting and it's actually pretty neat except there's a tendency for most people to overfill their cups, with soda spilling over. There was a soaked rubber mat in front of the machine and it really needed a dedicated drain. 

Tom and I waited for our food and talked about tons of things, an information kiosk I'd had some hand in building that was set up in Waikiki in 1983, hilarity ensued of course it being 1983. The strange juxtaposition of dated-ness and cutting-edge modern to be found in Hawaii. He told me about a guy his father had known who'd crashed his plane not far from his dad's place in Alaska, and how the guy had an illegal deal with the fishermen, "Bring me any octopus, and I'll settle up with you later". The octopus was going straight to sushi bars in Japan and it was highly illegal as it was illegal to keep by-catch. The money was really good! 

Our food was ready, after watching tons of people come in for their to-go orders. The servings were so large of fries, and the chicken wings so big, that at first we thought both our orders were in the bag for me. But no, we both got monster baskets of fries, huge little tubs of Ranch, and the biggest meatiest wings I've had anywhere. If either of us had eaten yet that day, I don't think we'd have been able to finish. Man, what a feed! 

We talked about more crazy shit and laughed it up and eventually it was time to go, so we went back to his place, I got my bike out and loaded it up, and we talked a bit more. It's just great to hang out and talk about movies and laugh it up once in a while. 

I rode back here and stopped partway to put on my sweatshirt and then again to put my gloves on - the sky was clear and it had gotten downright cold.