I had trouble getting to sleep last night and around 3AM drank enough wine and ate enough cheese to get sleepy then I was out light a light as usual.
I woke up around 11:30 which was good. The original idea was to get over to the Campbell Whole Foods, but when I got out on the road I thought I'd be baking in the sun there, so why not instead, go to the Sunnyvale one? I'd have the option of the parking entrance or I could busk on Murphy St. which is also pretty sheltered.
It was by now 2. I went to Whole Foods and had a couple of chicken tenders and a samosa (those things are good!) and got a bottle of coffee. I'd planned to get a can of coffee at Nijiya but it was a mob scene so I'd gone by. I saved the coffee for the bus ride and had a little bottle of Chardonnay with my meal.
I had my chicken and samosa and then walked up to Ace Hardware as I'd remembered I wanted to get a can of Goof-Off, because I was down to a little dribble of it and I may not need it for months on end but then when I need it, I need it.
After stashing things in the bike bag and grabbing my tip box and so on, I walked up to the bus stop that the #522 stops at, and waited the 18 minutes or so for it, and zoomed and rattled my way up to El Camino and Sunnyvale Road. I'd realized on the ride that I'd be right by Baraka Market and they'd be sure to have a spice called za'atar which the mysterious stuff put on hummus to make it taste extra good. I'd already learned last night that I can mix extra tahini into store hummus and extra water, and make it more like homemade hummus. I asked the guy at Baraka Market and they're open until 9 so I said I'll get the stuff I was looking at on the way back. (I'm sure the guy thought, "suuuuure".)
I walked up to the Whole Foods and "my" spot was taken by a little table with a Police For Children or something going on, with a gal who was accosting anyone who even looked in her direction. Darn. So I walked on up to Murphy St. and played a bit and made a whole dollar.
This is fuct, I decided, I should have stayed with my home Whole Foods and/or the Old Spag. So I walked back, got a package of olives, an ice-cold yogurt drink which I assured the guy is "Like heaven!!" and a 17-oz jar of "Authentic Levant" za'atar, product of Jorden which considering how they helped Israel out recently, I'm counting as one for the team. I could not find a smaller package of za'atar. I guess it's like rice, in Hawaii when I was a kid, where if you bought rice, of course you were buying a 25-lb bag. It was weird to buy smaller amounts.
I walked back out to the bus and rattled and zoomed back to the Diridon stop, drinking the coffee a bit at each stop. I went to Whole Foods and stashed things away and set up to play to test the waters. It was earlier than I'm usual there, a quarter to 6, and although a bit windy maybe it would go well.
It did not. I made ... another dollar. That dollar came from the shirtless guy with chin-pubes that for some reason he'd dyed bright red. I went inside and got some cheese and stuff, and although I might as well have stayed, I left for ...
The Old Spag. Loud Band (or Loud Canned Music) was playing but I pointed myself the other way and thought it might go fairly well. I made a few dollars and Blueberry Hill got me a $5, but it was slow going. And a bum came up and got in my face because I'd not give him money or something and literally he made physical contact and I had to push him away and he backed off when he saw I was getting my phone out, started to come back for more, then backed off again as I fumbled around with dialing 911. Another bum, dragging a skateboard on a string, came in for some hassling too and I probably said something about calling the cops and he moved on.
I finally did get in contact with 911, gave the gal descriptions of both of the bums. and pointed out that they're not just hassling me, they're hassling everyone. The first bum came back but passed by, as I was still on the phone with 911. I said I'd be there for another hour, that I'm happy to talk with the cops but the most important thing is, the reason people are not going out and about there is the bums hassling them, even threatening violence. The artists, the musicians, etc. are afraid to go down there any more.
What happened is: Although shaken, I kept playing, not for another hour but at least another half-hour. The bums didn't come back. A guy wearing a safety vest, looking like nothing special, rode up on a bike just past me then parked himself at the curb, still stride the bike, and stayed there all the time I kept playing. The crowd thinned out, but I had some lovely interactions with people, the highlight of the evening being a family with a little kid, who they had put $1 in the box twice. It was wonderful. They had a great time. And another lady with a little kid who was dancing to Saints, and who I advised to get a one-on-one teacher, start him with a cornet which is shorter and easier for a kid, etc. Maybe I inspired the next Chris Botti...
In the end, I had $15 in bills and another $1.11 in change. But there's something else I guess I have to count. In the checkout at Whole Foods, the lady behind me had gotten into some kind of conversation with Kenny, who was the checker. She was saying Kenny must be from Hawaii (he's not) and Kenny was saying I am, so she was saying I'm a "local" and I pointed out that being the hated haole, I could never be "local" no matter how many generations there, and she (half-Japanese I surmise) said something like "Oh, yeah, that's what my haole friends used to say, always being beat up". Outside, she asked if she could tip me, and I said, "Sure, if you like". She said, a bit haughtily, "I'm a middle-aged lady who lives comfortably because I work hard". I said, "A lot of people work hard and still live uncomfortably". The tip was a $20. I said thanks or something and muttered as she turned away, "Thanks for the reparations, lady".
I will never be a local. That's the truth in Hawaii. At most you can be a "local haole" or you can be wealthy enough to be able to insulate yourself from the vast majority of the population. That's how my older sister lives. Being a "local haole" is yet another case of having to have a justification for living there, being there, existing. My older sister is a local haole, I guess, but what far overshadows that is that She Went To Punahou. She lives in an expensive neighborhood (they all are there, but some are even more so) drives everywhere, and has probably become even more insular over the last 20+ years.
So, finally done at the Old Spag, I packed up and circled by the guy who was still stock-still at the curb, mounted on his bike, and said a sotto voce "Thanks" as I circled by, then circled around and left. If the guy was an undercover, I thanked him and he gets it. If not, if just some random guy, then it's just some random thing that's no harm. B'god what a zoo down there though. There was another bum that thankfully I didn't interact with, who seemed to have lots of metal spoons and such things hanging off of him. Build the asylums already, Mr. Biden!
I rode back through Japantown which was still full of wonderful cooking smells, then went to TAK Market. It was that or a trip to Sprouts. I bought 4 bottles of "Barefoot" wine but even going there was not without complications. I got there just as a bum with a huge shopping cart load of bottles and cans (and just clap your hands) and I moved past the bum to take the lights off the bike and lock it to a post there, and as I locked the bike and kept my eye on the bum, the bum said something that could have been "Do you have a $5?" but could have been a number of other things. Zombie brain worms really fuck with intelligible speech. I just stared at the thing for a long time until it wised up and looked away. Then continued to loiter in front of the building until the bum was well up the street because it'd be easy to circle around and rummage my bike so I wanted to wait until it was down the street and looking forward to the next trash can.
I got my wine (I'd gone there because I thought I'd seen those Franzia boxes of wine but what I'd seen was merely boxes that hold bottles, no space bag wine) so fuggit hence 4 bottles of Barefoot.
I suppose I'll call the $20 a tip because I have no other way to categorize it. So it's $36.11 for maybe an hour and a half of playing. I probably should have just gone to the Campbell Whole Foods after all because I got the same amount of sun anyway. But it's nice I was able to visit the Baraka Market. There's a potluck coming up at the temple and Baraka's *does* have halva, the trouble for me is, I'm not sure if it's the "right" kind. Ideally I want to bring those oily little Joyva brand halva bars that at least to some people will bring back strong memories of childhood. Even the large Joyva block isn't the same. It has to be the little bars. That means going to Mollie Stone's again, but the next time I'll take the #522 bus there and probably busk a bit in the park then go to Mollie's for my halvah and maybe some other Jewish things, then I might take the train back.
I rode back here and the guys next door had loud Mexican music playing, having a good relaxing weekend. After putting some things away I got the trumpet out (they'd turned the music off by then because they were getting ready to go home) I played some riffs of not one particular song but what the music sounds like, improvising I guess. It was surprisingly easy and came out surprisingly well and they said, "Beautiful!".
I have not heard from either of my sisters. Since I made that phone call the strong emotions I'd felt have dissipated. I don't care to be come a right-wing Trump voting Jeezuz freakie with the younger one so she seems to be set so that any communication from me that isn't "Lawd jeebus I'se sayved!" is "hate" so the book I wanted to send to her will just go into the next batch to the used book store. And I don't think my older sister can handle the concept of someone being smart and yet not having pots of money and Not Having Gone To Punahou. They say people shift to the Right the older they get, but really they shift to the Right the richer they get. And my older sister married well in that she married into money. That's what matters: money. And money grows more money and so on. She might be a Trump voter by now too. Because older does not mean smarter and richer really does not mean smarter. Money makes one dumber because you can just throw money at any problem and never have to think much.
They are all living their Best American Lives where everyone's apart, no one helps anyone, they'll probably never know - or care - when the others die or if they die. Who cares. Fuck you, I've got mine. This savage way of life actually kind of works when you've got a continent to conquer, natives to kill off, slaves to rule, and tons of resources; animal, vegetable, mineral, for the taking to anyone who gloms onto them first.
It is the very opposite of the proper way to live in a steady-state economy, the one humans have lived in since there have been humans. Even the old empires of the Middle-East were far closer to steady-state than anything we live in now. The really old cultures, Chinese and Jewish, are big on memory, education, mutual aid, family, networks, doing what you can for the group. It's anathema to Americans, AKA Iks Who Drive Cars.
Now, why my busking income has been so bad lately, I can only theorize. It may have been unnaturally high a few weeks ago because the W-2 types have been getting their returns. But there may be enough of us now who are 1099's and have to send money out by April 15th, to make a difference.
Or I suck. I *do* sport the astronaut haircut lately, but sadly, I've not learned Eentsy-Weentsy Spider.
"And each has his plug, and each had his socket" - Stanislaw Lem, "The Steelypips". I am glad I did that phone call to my "lawyer in law" even as I'm sad he had to put up with it. All emotion is gone. And as the original deadline, that of my birthday later this year, to move back to Hawaii approached, I suddenly began thinking realistically about the place. It's the simple truth that someone with brown skin and no links to Hawaii at all, like half-German half-Filipino Andy Bumatai, can step off the plane in Honolulu and 100X more welcome than someone who is 5th generation (they exist!) in Hawaii but are pale skinned. Hawaii is very much part of the US where race is all.
Right now Jewish students at Columbia University (and pretty much all the rest of them except for a few like Brandeis) are being hassled and threatened and stopped from walking across the quad as it were. I remember being stopped by a crazy lady on the University of Hawaii Manoa campus and harangued for being white. And like the students at Columbia, there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it - to raise a peep would have gotten me expelled. In fact in what college career I had, near the end of it I said some slight thing about the unfair treatment I'd gotten for being "haole" and was put on suspension for a while. Dean's List to suspension for being the wrong color.
It goes back further. One day back when we were middle-class and lived on Portlock Road, I was walking back from the beach with my mother. One of the kids who lived next door to us had made a little bow and arrow and marched right up to us and attempted to shoot out my "good", right, eye. From a distance of a foot or two. Just like a cruel kid might shoot out the eye of a stray dog. Luckily I flinched and the arrow, a piece of hau wood, hit my cheek instead and I got a scrape instead of a destroyed eyeball. And there was nothing that could be done. If my mom had said much, she could have ended up fined or in jail.
And yet, bringing things back up to college again, a gal I befriended tried to integrate me into her circle of fellow-haole friends, and I overheard them talking about me - whether I could belong in their group - in the other room. Could I really be a haole? I was kind of dark for a haole ... (skeptically). In the end I did not gain "membership" and I probably dodged a bullet there.
I am literally too white for Hawaii and not quite white enough for actual white people.
Yet I can go to the Jewish temple and I'm accepted as a matter of course. Being not-quite-white is a sweet spot if you're Jewish. I haven't had to explain myself to anybody. I could go to Israel and not have to explain myself to anybody.
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