Dry, and another week

 The deal is that from what they were saying on the radio, it was going to rain today starting around 4 in the afternoon. And I had a bunch of things to ship out, including a big order of a lot of things. 

So the plan was to get everything packed so when I woke up, I could just load up and go, get things sent whether it was 2 or 3 or even 4 in the afternoon when I got up. And I did it, too. Found all the hard-to-find stuff and packed the large order as a sort of "candy box" with the more delicate things in their own boxes inside the larger box. 

Then I just wanted to sleep so I did. I had a bunch of weird dreams haha and at one point, kind of halfway woke up because for some reason, the middle toes on my right foot were painful like I'd kicked something and could barely be moved. 

I woke up around 1:30 this afternoon, and my right foot's fine. That was really weird. 

Now the weather report is that it will be sunny and the only slight chance of rain, in the wee hours of the morning. It's a nice feeling to have everything all packed, though. 

So I'm having coffee and thinking about my plans for the day and I realized that I had my weeks wrong, and Xmas is not this Thursday, it's next Thursday. This Thursday is shakuhachi club and there's a new song we're supposed to learn but mainly I think we're going to emphasize practicing the two songs we're supposed to play at the end of the service on the 21st. 

After that, for me, I dunno. Some things have been weighing on me. Not the least is that Rinban Sakamoto is retiring soon and we've already talked about how the shakuhachi club is going to keep going. I think it will, in some form, because one of the ladies is pretty organized and bosses us but in a useful way, and she'll keep some sort of group going. 

But without him, my interest goes 'way down. He and I have gotten along like old friends from the start. maybe due to our both having lived in Mo'ili'ili but probably just a personality thing. 

Another thing that came up last club meeting was, Rinban Sakamoto mentioned that he's never, even after 40 years, been able to play the traditional music and has settled for playing popular music, as much as it can be done on a shakuhachi. 40 years! And the guy's been able to take lessons from very good teachers, like Masayuki Koga. 

Another thing that's really knocked my interest down is that Chris Broad, who's all over YouTube and who I was a real follower of, turns out to be a Christian Nationalist which means he wants everyone who's not straight, white, and a member of the same cult, to die - preferably painfully. That's what Christianity is about, but the average Christian is lazy and un-motivated and will do un-Christian things like be friends with a Black neighbor or actually help someone who's poor. Nationalists are serious about their plan for national racial/political cleansing and will comes down hard on less-than-ardent Christians also. For more on this see Germany 1933-45. 

I'm pretty sure the reason I'm kicked off of YouTube is that I called Chris out on this. The shakuhachi has such a tiny, niche, following that it's kind of weird that this guy who's probably its greatest ambassador on YouTube is SS-level doctrinaire, but there you have it. 

Assuming his playing is real and not enhanced somehow, he's a hell of a good player and quite likely to become "the shakuhachi guy" in the US at least if not in the entire English-speaking world. He's got a tremendous body of work out there, for instance recording a ton of the minyo, or children's/folk songs, many on a smaller, 1.6, shakuhachi on which they sound even sweeter. Due to him it was my aspiration to someday own not only a good 1.8 but a good 1.6 as well.  

As it is, if the instrument's to be political, I don't really want to be a part of that. 

Markus Guhe, a genuine good guy who lives in the Netherlands or somewhere like that, has also been playing for years and calls himself a professional shakuhachi player, has improved over the years but still does not, in my estimation, play well enough to be a competent busker. That's how hard the instrument can be. 

There are actual *reasons* the instrument almost died out, and it was only the wave of nationalism in Japan in the 1930s and 40s that brought it back to some degree. The work in : reward out ratio is very low compared to modern instruments. 

I guess what I'm arriving at is that while I'll always have my eyes open to finding a good shakuhachi and playing it a bit on the side, I think I should work on clarinet more and on getting my busking skills together on that.