It's COMMANDO FRIDAY!
That said, I am glad to have this blog to look back upon. I can tell my future self certain things that I may have forgotten; Everybody else can listen in. Here we go:
Hey Bashu. Things are raunchy. You're living in a van with six people.
six?
yes. Not the same six we started with at all. I can make an amusing map graphic later to show how everybody came together, but long story short, it's me, Bryce, Nate (from New York), Annabelle and Amelie (from Quebec), and Mason (from Oyama).
And I'm learning how to be poor. It's good. We're not really poor. But I am throwing off the vestiges of class. I take showers when I can. I unblock the toilet with a stick. I play accordion on the sidewalk, and if somebody should give me a dollar, I thank them kindly and with happiness in my heart.
we may be poor, but when the A-team are playing their ukeleles, and Mason and Bryce their guitars, and I'm stomping a foot shaker and squeezing the accordion, and we are all singing, we got something we don't need to pay for. It'd be the same if we were rich kids from LA, college students from Calgary. Your voice, your craft, they stand alone.
in Santa Barbara I came out of the library, blinking my screen-glared eyes, and a woman leaning in the door of a bookstore called out to me "Come, play, gypsy, play!". so I wandered over and played her One More Cup of Coffee, and she smiled and said, take any book you like. as long as it's not a new book, she said. This is what you earn. This is what I learn. I don't need a new book. I get what I need.
And if you try sometimes,
you might just find,
you get four boxes of dates as well.
Food stamps, putting a hat out, flying a sign that says "Tips not required to listen, but will help a young traveller", admitting to the world that you could use some help, saying "I'm poor", being happy, giving up the judgments you once had, the pride. I'm about ready to start playing blues, but I just play Fleet Foxes songs instead, cause I feel them, and people give us money and say "merry christmas".
When my friends travelled, I would be at home and think "you don't need to travel to learn lessons." Now I'm not so sure. Some big river of thought has hooked me by the waistband of my pants and drawn me up into its flow. Last night a jittery man called AJ was on Oxycontins and acid and showing me his burns and a previous Bashu might have been scared, or shunned AJ, but this Bashu just remembered that everyone's a person and kept a dialogue going with him.
I want to print out some more chords: Mother Nature's Son, Fleetwood Mac songs, etc. I need to go. I've said enough for now, or maybe not, but the Palm Desert library only gives you one hour of internet a day. good bye, dear friends.
Love.
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