Just put it in the pocket

 I practiced shinobue yesterday, as a separate session from the shakuhachi. I can at least play Twinkle now without referring to the fingering chart. I can also get the lowest note, a tricky one, to sound. What I love about the shinobue is not only its wide range but that it can get really loud. This is why the shinobue is one of the instruments in taiko, because it can be heard above the drums and tunes on the shinobue are used to actually lead the drummers. 

I'm really getting to like the little thing and am even considering getting a 2nd one. The one I have is a no. 8, and I could order a no. 6 which is lower and is also made by Aulos. The things are small enough to easily carry in my baggage when I return to Hawaii, and I love the idea of not only playing shakuhachi but also a "taiko" instrument. 

I practiced shakuhachi before bed, and noticed something. I'm lucky enough to have a nice little horizontal crease in my chin, a pretty deep one in fact. With the trumpet, I'd noticed that at times I got the mouthpiece placed just right on my mouth and high notes were easy. But it was not repeatable. There were no landmarks. I noticed last night with the shakuhachi, if I settled it into that crease just right, the tones were nice and clear and the highest note much easier. I couldn't just put the thing on my face, I had to settle it into that crack just right. Kind of like in the Army how they tell you to settle the rifle butt into the "pocket" of your shoulder. 

I woke up at 4 and realized - after the requisite hour to drink tea, have some aspirin, and get awake - that I have to get going because one package was for UPS and the local UPS closes at 6:30. So I packed everything and left at a quarter to 6, and went there first. A UPS guy out front said, "You're in the wrong place, FedEx is across the street" and I said, "There's actually one UPS box in here" as there was, in my teetering, 3-boxes-high stack on the bike trailer. 

Then I went up to the post office because that had to come next. That went OK, then I went to H Mart where I found the bum, sitting out front. I had a pop-top can of chili and put it next to them, "Here's a can of chili" and I think I got some kind of acknowledgement. Fair enough. I went in and got a can of BOSS coffee, then went up to the FedEx and dropped off my teetering pile of boxes. 

I went around back and found a pear. A nice big one though, perfect for a nice little bowl of pear chunks to go with Tom's breakfast. I went over to the chicken place with $7 in quarters because two chicken thighs are $6.50 or so. Now they're somewhere past $8 but the guy let me pay just the $7. Now I know. I ate the chicken at one of the tables and wrapped the biscuit up. 

I circled around the complex again thinking I'd give the nice buttery biscuit to the bum to go with the chili. But they were gone and the can of chili still sitting there so I took it. 

I stopped at Tom's and gave him the biscuit, the can of chili and a can of tomato sauce, and the pear. I brought the bike and trailer inside his place and we hung out and watch stupid TV shows for a while. Cheers and Wheel Of Fortune. It was kind of nice, though, talking and sipping on my can of coffee. 

I left after an hour or so and came back here, put things away, then loaded the bike trailer up with junky boxes that had accumulated in the trash enclosure, and dumped them over by the railroad tracks, across from the Coke place. Once dried out, they'll make decent fuel and the bums living around the bridge can probably use them for such. 

I came back in, got the motor start capacitor out of an HVAC unit the HVAC place had left out, and along with some nice packing boxes, found a huge box of Frosted Flakes with maybe a half-pound of them still in there so I ran that over to my food-deposit place and saw that the stuff I'd left was gone. I left the 'flakes there. 

I'm sure some bum will come along and be in 7th heaven because they have a 1/2 lb of Frosted Flakes they can eat out of the box with no more preparation than putting a paw in and digging them out. That's the mistake with leaving the can of chili for the bum - it would take actually popping the top off, finding a spoon somewhere, maybe finding a way to heat it up to lukewarm, perhaps by setting the can in the sun during mid-day. That's far too much preparation. And while cold chili is delicious to someone who's actually hungry, the bum is more hungry for cigarettes than anything else.