busking and markets, Los Angeles, December 18, 2011

There have been a bewildering array of things happening for us in the last 8 days. among these:

I visited a date farm. I love dates. The harvest time was done but me and Bryce being perceptive hungry young men noted to the farmer that there were still dates on the palms. He said yep, they're no good, too low to the ground, or not quite ripe, or etc. Go ahead and pick em. Me and Bryce nodded knowingly and proceeded to glean like two small cyclones through the orchard, if that's the word for 10 acres of date palms. First we filled our stomachs to max capacity, brought ourselves to tears by the sheer variety and tastiness of fresh dates, and then filled four boxes. A major theme in the last 8 days has been "pass me another date.. no... three. Well, if the bag's open maybe I'll have another few."

But apparently the prophet Mohammed used to subsist on nothing but dates and sometimes milk, so we're fine. A diet of repute.

The desert is dry and a strange place for people to live. Of course many people do live in the desert, but they're strange people. So I'll rephrase: the desert is no place for normal people to live.

We have also been travelling with two extra folks: Amelie and Anabel, two lovely Quebecoise girls with ukeleles. They have brought joy to us and we have brought them to many various cities, and they have inspired me and Bryce to do a lot of busking.

For those of you who don't know, this is where you play music on the street, and usually goes along with putting out a hat for tips. You can make a lot of money from very drunk people, and indeed me and Bryce were walking down the pub-crawl street in Santa Barbara playing a Britney Spears song and a completely mashed young man stuffed a fifty dollar bill in a bowl I had just been eating salad out of. I told him "do you know this is a fifty dollar bill?" and he slurred "buy some good weed man" and wandered into a dubstep club.

Lucrative indeed, but I am finding I much prefer to play music for people who will fully listen to it. If I had to make a few hundred bucks fast, I would go down to the strip wherever I was and pump out the top 40s from my accordion - happily, even, because I really do enjoy entertaining people - but what's been super good is farmer's markets.

Farmer's markets to begin with are supreme. If you don't pay attention, you can end up eating a lot of anonymous food in this life. Yes, it's a chicken, but which chicken is it? The package says "ingredients: carrot", but where did it grow, and did anybody care? If you ask the grocery stocker, they'll be all "what?" But at a farmer's market, you can talk with the person who grew the food, and get excited about it. Being excited about the food you're eating is more important than I could have imagined.

Anyways, it's also a fantastic place to busk. Markets should be a bustling place, with good smells and sounds. It's nice to be the sounds. We have been visiting farmer's markets all over Southern California with great happiness in our hearts.

Here are some pictures of the original four of us.