Inside, room is scarce, as walls display every sort of mystical instrument known to humankind. Sic, musical instruments, not crystal balls, amethyst pyramids, feathers for every occasion, aphrodisiac incense, books on incantations curses and alternative history. That's absurd.
Guitars for crying out loud, bleeding banjos with muzzles like volatile dogs, chinese made ukuleles in neon, and the floor of the shop is a runner of carpet goose-step wide betwixt glass cases filled with pawned rock-'n'-roll gizmos that grown up teens hawked for meth, or worse, rent.
The outside of the building, officially dilapidated in rotten siding, bars of steel over the windows, is getting a makeover. It's looked the same for the 25 years I've shopped here. Well, slightly worse each year, duh.
I ride up on my classic Schwinn bike. I just took off the front fender, badly rusted somehow, that clattered like tin silverware in a gameshow tumbler looking for a winning number on a plastic tetrahedron. It was bad, even with Portland's glossy smooth roadways.
I hitched my bike to an official don't steal upside down tubular U. It looked safe, even with the swarthy men gathered to plaster over the facade of the instrument menagerie museum of misfit hobbies. Just because Steve whasshisname from the Jerk and cheaper by the dozen and Cyrano de Bergerac bought a banjo there doesn't mean working players frequent the joint, I mean, emporium. The book is judged by the spine, and gratuitous illustrations within, not the cover.
A midsized ladder angled to rooftop of the one story. Tuba aisle, methought, or harmony instruction manuals. I greeted the workers and owner, an old old man: " I just couldn't look at it anymore." Yeah, you're cheap and you show it, flaunt fuck, I again methought.
To enter, I took my violin off my back, 😠which was slung over the shoulder like a carbine with four measly strings. I didn't design it. Otherwise, in turning I'd knock down the as-is wall near the exit, a bull in a plaster shop.
I squeezed past the feckless amplifiers, their tesla tubes tied by proxy and rubber bands around their cords, price tags upside down. I had my blinders on not my blunders on, I'm not shopping PER SE, so don't tempt me, you hookers.
Oh, I was wearing an old paint covered v neck wife beater fruit of the loom, clean, no vin number or mortgage sign. Laundry smelly clean, all mine. Not Eddie van Halen collectable, but my own duds. I don't have a walk in closet these days, or a climate controlled vault with a computer code to access, surrounded by razor wire and cameras. FYI.
I'd tried calling at ten minutes before opening time, no answer. It rang plenty, I guess they were helping plaster, or arranging shaker gourds at the counter. I wanted to know if full sized strings were in stock. Fiddle or violin strings, either one.
I busked again with my old strings, what's another day long hour, I methought superfluous toned. What's another hangnail on the eardrum for the general public.
Just as I thunk, no cabbage. I got three quarters, and a million dollar check from mass transit for "blending," whatever that means. I don't smell that good, reallllly, and bus brakes aren't that unmusical, if timed nicely.
The counter guy greeted me in my six foot walk into the place. " I'm here for violin strings."
" Full sized?" he queried. Yea, dunce. I'm the guy who called a second time to make sure my vacation here was going to bear results. I asked about full size strings, not baby strings.
"Yes." Etude, number one, I dreamed.
Then the big catch to my scheme, challenged: "I'm going to need 21.99."
I hadn't surmised this was a money issue. Just joking, "Sure." I'd been considering applying for layaway, or a staggered payment plan, or work-for- strings by the hour, or selling my musical tooth once we yanked it by the lead paint pick bin.
I fished out a ten, two fives, two ones. Big man, " keep the penny." Yes, dialogue there too. I'll take the receipt, I affirmed, all pro like. And do you have a mute, I asked politically semi correct. Quotation marks aren't for everything, this is poetry.
Now he was fishing around in his Tupperware organizers. I think so, I think so. It's not a top selling item. He was realizing I was a real mystic.
"They should be."
I waltzed out the door, minus the seven ninety nine. Invest the penny, I advised.
_______
I show up at the fancy grocery experience to play electric fiddle, but there's a gang of destruction toughs busy with their jackhammering away the sidewalk in front of the chase bank they're constructing across the street. It's crazy loud and just not the day to play. My amp is about a foot square. I can barely drown out Jamie dimon, much less all of wallow street and the hippo mosh pit.
Besides, there's not much listening public browsing the perishables and wellness kiosks inside. The olive bar has no one. The deli, only four employees, the bakery only six people behind the unseen oven in salesmen shirts, the flower girl is missing altogether, the security guy a no show, the cashier's has a line of four customers each with an energy smoothie or to go cup of soup from the soup island.
The beautiful building has all these islands. I usually glide past them, the salad reef extending 15 feet and six leagues wide, the cheese archipelago butting up to the meat peninsula forms a mini continent. I tread up to the mezzanine over this gorgeous art floor of fake beach glass in cement epoxy. Every step over it is a soiree and near champagne opening opening, minus glitterarti, sic. I'm not an elevator guy in a two story food museum. I need to get close to the enticements so opulently, if out of reach however, way. Plus, exercise.
I had two cheap donuts just before, in my storage palace. A box of twelve glazed, two twenty nine. One could buy 3/5 of a Bismark here, or 7/8 of a fritter. I get a fritter on my sugar card from the government. I try to always buy some lowrent edible when loitering for 90 minutes with my jug of coffee to piss into their impeccable bathroom while the jackhammer drives toward hades nearby.
Home away from home away from home, ah. I eat the third donut between sips and propaganda installments on my consumer rectangle. A new phone it's aptly miscalled. Trump is calling for animal bloodbath and can't pay $453, 000, 000 but wants every felony trial hermitage to clean up and reincarnate as election traction. I giggle with my furlough non dough violin resting it's case. My amp has a built in delay function, too.
It's not news until I read about how bad the most popular tree in NYC is bad for bugs and birds and causes racism. Fuck you, Moses. The London Planewood is shady as central park and just a canopy of disease repellant environs to enable mugging. That's clearly the fare. Doesn't help that the article doesn't even malign my family name. "America's oldest nursery, 1790," purveyor of anti ecosystem splicing to be totally inhospitable to animals and all life while protecting your car from sunlight. And those seed balls, so messy on my condo balcony, plus zero bugs and entomologist treehouses or fellowship. What's next, the chainsaw for central park?
I don't buy it. More sprinkles and frosting, please. I'm only partially incensed as the article is a springboard for poetry, right up to the executive suite where all the grafting is engineered. Pass the time, and salt the manners, I concoct in my weensy vacation here among the condiment hoarding riffraff.
Just enough of everything under my thrift store belt, I ride off. I hike a couple miles past the beer lagoons of division street. Every inch there is beer . The sandwich boards are beer with cider parentheses for bread. It's not salad per SE if it's one leaf of romaine inside a subway tomb of gluten, construction delay or not.
A brief bus ride to the phone store and I get to glare at another phone addict houseless louse whose rectangle is spitting out gun noises as he smiles rotten teeth in the priority seating area. Rat a tat tat. Everyone stares at their get away rectangle to imbibe their daily deconstruction.
I get to the cricket, past all the treeless concrete blossoms. He's fiddling with his own devices, behind a counter, alone and ready to upgrade my plan. O joy. Later I watch Fahrenheit 451 at life's picnic table. First, I'm making my own tabouli and thinking about gaza buffet at storage. My tabouli has the usual bulgar and parsley, lemon onion and olive oil, but also olives and chopped peppers. It's superior by a vast redline.
Leaving storage, I guy beckons Hey Boss from a big flatbed truck half leaking furniture. Can I pay you to help me move some things. Sure I'll help, putting down my huge backpack. It's ugly furniture, an entire set. Two pieces have huge wounds oozing particle board guts, and the tiny woman on the truck bed smokes, amazingly not injured. It almost fell on me.
Oh, we're unloading, not loading. It's brand new crushed furnishings at ten minutes until closing that weighs dearly. The guy thanks profusely and calls me Boss a bankers dozen times. It's not even paid for, just got it. Get a twenty, Hurry honey, he's got somewhere he needs to be. Yeah you got it, I agree.
Dining table, dresser, chairs, two unknown cabinets with cords, most still on the truck. He needs a Phillips to take the last supper apart, be right back. We get it done, easy cake. SHe gives me a twenty. That's a wrap, off to the leash-only dog infested park nearby to be a citizen just minding his world affairs from a backpack. Upgrade those trees already.
I'm not done, as I skipped a few events that transpired in my animal bath yesterday. As I sat at the park, enjoying glorious sunshine ( the hottest day on record no less) Dan and his enormous dog walked up to my table. Is that a bag of weed, he asked, motioning to a baggie in front of me. No, almonds I said holding it up and gentle shaking it, hickory salt.
He started on his perennial proselytizing stick (sic) interspersed with his woes, dead mom burnt house contractor fraud wife hysterectomy just gotta get out of the house awhile, but everything the lord the lord and church and miracles, like the fireman saying he'd killed the flash by spraying water at the source just seconds before the basement smoked them out, and he bought a violin for a child whose dad at church is poor a handmade $99 one, and a child sized electric guitar ( he motions, steelhead sized) but it needs the frets filed etc also $99 and we can play if I bring my violin someday as his colossal wolf dog jumps up on the table get down, he doesn't like that, re : emembers after coaxing his missy to do just that several times last year, a 130 pound dog as another dog is freely wandering they do ass sniffing and Dan jokes about his missy has a boyfriend, they're both females I tell him, he had a midlife crisis he says 25 years ago it's always phishing to get me to teach the poor kid at church or repent even though he was a heroin junkie and he's not too horrible to visit with he just doesn't listen much he has an agenda, wanted to give me a Bible he said about ten times but never dug one up
They're hard to come by at churches I keep thinking, later after dark walking the grounds under a conifer clump a dead squirrel, hidden under the shroud, I tail lifted it to the cement around a last picnic table, and this morning a person sleeps atop that table with his head using a box of ritz crackers for a pillow, listening to the sacrament songs with living birds also helping.
____
First day of spring, one foot in front of the other, my favorite bus driver starts the workday nicely. Only moments after I arrive to play music, setting up my amp and violin, one of the construction workers from across the street is hollering out Do you have cds? Takes a second to figure out he's addressing me, it's a busy corner a little past noon. No, haven't reproduced my music in years. You can record on your phone. I was telling my wife about you, I enjoy hearing it while I'm working. I play my version of Same Old Man Sitting at the Mill. He gives me a twenty and a big smile, back to work, us both.
Then a pretty young mom and her 4 year old boy listen. She digs in her coin purse and instructs him. He hands me a quarter as I'm playing. Give it all to him, put it in the case, she points. Thank you. They disappear into the store briefly, emerge again I play twinkle twinkle, my version. They're happy, he waves. She lingers, good mom.
A few others drop a dollar or two while I perform with my new strings and old bow and violin, a new regular fan Suzanne puts a 5 under my ipe stick in my case. This is my kind of music, she said the first time she passed by, a month ago. Two months nearly, jesus. A black woman bus driver puts a 5 in as she scoots by. Thank you.
I notice a figure over my shoulder as I saw the box. I stop and turn, it's a guy with a guitar case. Play things besides classical? Sure, that was Hard Times Come Again no More, that's not classical I grin. Can I play sometime, I have a resonator and my other guitar's a martin. Sure, maybe some other time. I've been in lots of bands he hands me a business card.
Today makes up for yesterday, money wise. One foot in front of the other. It's spring.
SE Portland
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