MDA

            Friday morning was slightly foggy and quite muggy. Time at first seemed to really drag in my brain as I started doing my yoga, but I ended up finishing sooner than usual.

            About halfway through guitar practice Du Juan crossed the street and called up to my window, “You’re a superstar! I watched your video!” He said the part where I was lying on my back reminded him of when he used to take “E” back in the 90s and would just lie in the park tripping for 24 hours. I told him that we used to call it MDA. He lamented that nowadays it’s not the same because it’s all fentanyl. When I looked it up later I saw that it’s not exactly he same drug as MDMA (ecstasy). The drug I took is much more powerfully psychedelic and euphoric than ecstasy. I have very fond memories of taking MDA and liked it better than LSD.

            I worked for a while on synchronizing the audio and video of one of my song practice recordings. It seems easier to grasp time as a concept from a visual perspective than from that of sound. I had forgotten in the audio that there had been three false starts on the song I’d recorded, though I had perceived and eliminated those mistakes almost right away on the video. I stopped editing this time just at the end of the last bad take.

            It had been cloudy all day but the chance of rain had passed by the time I went for a bike ride. On Bloor near Parliament when I passed an elderly woman she rang her bell twice. I assume it was to communicate to me that I should have rung a bell just before going by. I gave her more than a meter and would have called out to her if there’d been less room than that or if there had been some reason that I thought she might suddenly lurch to the left, such as a there being something to go around just ahead of her. Cars aren’t even required to give cyclists more than a meter.

            I went past Woodbine, north on King Edward and then back down Gledhill.
            The clouds had broken apart into some beautiful formations by the time I’d started heading back.

            That night I watched an episode of Maverick in which Bart was robbed of his poker winnings by a young woman with a gun. Instead of looking for the thief the sheriff kicks him out of town for being a card shark. On the stage to the nearest town he meets a lady who leads a women’s group. He lies to her that he is an ex-gambler and she invites him to speak before her group’s next meeting. He agrees because he is broke and hungry. At the meeting he notices the ring on one young lady’s finger is the same as that on the finger of the hand that reached around to take his wallet from behind the night before. He later confronts her and finds that she needed the money to pay off her father’s gambling debt. He gets her to lend him her ring so he can pawn it for $100 and then he uses the money as a poker stake in the game in which her father lost his money. Maverick wins $2000 but the boss and his thugs try to rip him off. Maverick escapes with the money but the crooks are on his tail so he asks the sheriff to arrest him. The sheriff is a by the book lawman and refuses unless Maverick breaks the law, so Maverick breaks a mirror in the bar and gets ten days. After the first day Maverick is very unhappy with the food and the bed in his cell but the ladies all come to his rescue and bring not only sumptuous meals but also a soft bed, an easy chair and fine cigars. Maverick is seen reading Lorna Doone, which would have been published about ten years before the time in which this story is set.

            Bart refers at one point to his brother Bret being the second slowest gun in the west.

            I went back to my video editing after dinner and was able to get the audio and video closer together. Friday night is not a good night for synchronizing files because of the sounds of roaring engines and shouting drunken teenagers coming in through my window. I should be able to finish it on my next free and quiet day.