All of my high school writing instincts are shouting at me to begin this journey with \u201cWebster\u2019s defines altruism as …\u201d, but I\u2019m 41 now and that means I\u2019m old enough to know that all my instincts are wrong. I\u2019ve always considered myself an altruistic person. For instance, the other day at the grocery store, as the elderly woman in front of me struggled to find her wallet, I didn\u2019t hesitate to pay for her meal. Perhaps because I wanted to speed the line along and I was afraid she\u2019d pay with an out of state post-dated check. Perhaps because she had a small soup and not the macadamia encrusted sea bass. Perhaps my altruism has limits. A few weeks ago, I got a call about some records. A friend of mine hunts for vintage clothes, so in the course of his digging, he\u2019ll hit me with an occasional lead and vice versa. I stay in my lane and have no room in my garage to start a new habit. He told me about some records at a thrift store in America somewhere. Gone are the days where thrift stores were bountiful with treasures; those late \u201990s come-ups are beyond the reach of my rearview. I hopped in my car and drove an undisclosable distance to a thrift store somewhere in the American west. And did they have records. There were so many records that when I ran out of records on the floor to thumb through, I asked if they had more in the back and a man wheeled out a bin taller than Bol Bol filled from toe to crown with records.<\/p>\n
And it was just me. Alone. For hours. Combing through stacks and stacks of lps. See? This is unusual and as I type this I remember that this isn\u2019t how everyone lives their lives. At the swap meets of Southern California when someone puts out a box of records, eight piranhas swarm and claw at them, pulling the flesh of the psychedelic gems and leaving the Barry Manilow like cleaned bones to gather dust for eternity. Having the luxury of time is so unfamiliar. I\u2019d see phantom collectors approaching from my right, causing me to flip through in a frenzied rush, only to realize that I was alone in a thrift store somewhere in America. I began to wonder about bears. I\u2019m not exactly sure of the etymology behind the term honey-hole, but when I think of it, I think of a lone and morbidly obese bear being stung in the face thousands of times as it crammed as much honey into his system as humanly possible. I started to contemplate the bear\u2019s thoughts. Did the bear want to share the location of all this honey with one of his bear friends? Or did that never enter the equation? Was there a price of greed and secrets? As I thought this last thought, I tossed a stack of rejects back into the bin. When the records hit the bin, I noticed a cloud of red and green smoke emanate from where contact was made. For a moment, the colors swirled like a tinsel cloud and gave me warm tender memories of Christmas and then I accidentally breathed it in. I began to cough like a first-time smoker, or for that matter a last time smoker. I looked around and noticed most of the employees were wearing medical masks; I looked at my hands and they were black. Not black in the way that I\u2019m black, but in the soot black mold and dust of two straight hours of digging through antique bins. My questions were answered with a respiratory infection that would sideline me for two weeks. The price of greed is exactly two weeks. But it was totally worth it to get an original Velvet Underground Andy Warhol with the banana sticker intact for 10 cents.<\/p>\n
And now, when asked to describe myself I\u2019ll say \u201cI\u2019m selectively altruistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the cost of greed and secrets<\/em> Looking through the antique ruins<\/em> And I know what it wants<\/em> There\u2019s a time for keeping quiet<\/em> And I am gonna hold on to my secret<\/em> All of my high school writing instincts are shouting at me to begin this journey with \u201cWebster\u2019s defines altruism as …\u201d, but I\u2019m 41 now and that means I\u2019m old enough to know that all my instincts are wrong. I\u2019ve always considered myself an altruistic person. For instance, the other day at the grocery store, as the elderly woman in front of me struggled to find her wallet, I didn\u2019t hesitate to pay for her meal. Perhaps because I wanted to speed the line along and I was afraid she\u2019d pay with an out of state post-dated check. Perhaps because she had a small soup and not the macadamia encrusted sea bass. Perhaps my altruism has limits. A few weeks ago, I got a call about some records. A friend of mine hunts for vintage clothes, so in the course of his digging, he\u2019ll hit me with an occasional lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-out-of-my-head"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15200,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199\/revisions\/15200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSometimes silence is my weakness<\/em>
\nSometimes there\u2019s a virtue hidden <\/em>
\nIn the dust and ash<\/em>
\nSomewhere in the great southwest <\/em>
\nI\u2019ll be tryin\u2019 to hold my breath<\/em>
\nDigging through what memory\u2019s left<\/em>
\nFrom our distant past<\/em><\/p>\n
\nTry to travel without movin\u2019<\/em>
\nTry to gamble without losing <\/em>
\nEverything at once<\/em>
\nSo I\u2019ll stay within my lane<\/em>
\nThrift stores and an autumn rain<\/em>
\nWinter\u2019s on the line again<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAnd I am gonna hold on to my secret<\/em>
\nI\u2019ll share everything but this I\u2019m keeping<\/em>
\nI\u2019ll try to be my best, but within reason<\/em>
\nI found my reason<\/em>
\nAnd it is you<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve heard as much and now I\u2019ll try it<\/em>
\nIf you break it then you buy it<\/em>
\nNothing\u2019s ever free<\/em>
\nIt\u2019s a lonesome desert drive<\/em>
\nSomewhere off the 805<\/em>
\nMaybe left and maybe right<\/em>
\nBut you won\u2019t hear it from me<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ll share everything but this I\u2019m keeping<\/em>
\nI\u2019ll try to be my best, but within reason<\/em>
\nI found my reason<\/em>
\nAnd it is you<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"