The Carnival Continues

Is it just Mme. Wren, or does anyone else get that surge of anger-nausea when those commercials come on. You know. The ones where the guy is talking in that "I've got it all and life is so easy" voice while preparing to swing his golf club.

The image is graphic cartoon, but you know it is real video painted over by a graphic design artist. It moves too excellently to be mere paint.

And you know he's one of them. That is what makes it so horrible to watch.

One of those who got us in this place: does anyone else ponder it all quite so minutely - wondering exactly when, how, who did it; wondering how it could have been so easy.

I don't really know much about economics. As noted in a previous post, I am the grasshopper anyway and the very notion (which I did not note) of retirement funds & stocks & creating future securities - of working for money or wealth in any degree - leaves me in a place where I cannot get out of bed.

One must get out of bed. Every day.

For the most of it, it's been a matter of clear separation: you live your life; I'll live mine. That's not the way it is now, however, and watching the commercials that still make up the reality of our lives - the greed of our lives - is difficult. As though life will ever be the same again! They can say it will all they want but nationalized banks are not going to return to "not-nationalized" after everything is over.

Entire countries teetering on the verge of bankruptcy - okay, so mayhap it was only the one but when it was a country of wealth & now it is in ruin...

Something larger going on here than merely...what is going on.

I've often wondered - being of that more curious 'Christian persuasion' that actually reads & honours the Scripture that is some of its earliest writing - how we would get from life as most of us know it, give or take a bank account or two - to the life of the end of the age as recorded in that Scripture. Because it is a small jump in anyone's mind from nationalized banks - that is, banks owned by a country's government - to a computer chip (or other mark) in/on the forehead or hand in order to do business.

After all, said government(s) already require that system we know as Social Security numbers to tally all.

And the eerie sound of 'buy & sell' [the stock market] after the 'buy or sell' of a particular vision recorded in said Scripture becomes acute.

The pursuit of money as an occupation - as a way of life - dreaming when we aren't really paying attention...that place of Ferrari & glass of champagne the good newscaster noted (whatever version of said dream we imagine)...

Which is to say. I work - and would like indeed to work more at a Particular Task (the one for which I am best suited) - but I do not work for money. I punch a time clock for money & give my employer the honour of my best effort: I take that effort seriously.

But I work for other things & the reality that money is the Necessary to Manage in Present Reality is merely that - a necessity - something, perhaps, listed on the sidebar of life.

But not the meat of it.

I do not work for money. Maybe, to be sure, life would work better if I did. Maybe the degree of lightness to which I (in a past long gone, I am afraid) exchanged money for Other Things of Better Meaning might reveal I would do better to Tend Money-&-Things-for-Which-It-Might-Be-Exchanged less lightly.

I will concede such! You see how tenderly - how exquisitely - at the least how playfully I agree!

Lady Poverty is not the best of bedfellows, no matter how artfully I might pat the seat beside me for her sitting...I really prefer that she sleep somewhere else, inclined as she is to punch people in the middle of the night & insist that they waken - and she is not inclined to allow her bedmates to return to sleep; she is prone to liking late night chatter of the worst sort.

But the point toward which I labour is that, as the current economic downturn might threaten those who did - err, labour, set upon the distant horizon of that ease of 'a life after retirement' - as they watch now those Boys at the Carnival throw all said labourers' hard-earned future to the wind, which may indeed place a great many in the same - err, locale where I sit, fiddling with broken strings...

It's snowing now, as those who know the fable well remember. And the house the ant built (where the good ant is preparing stew for her little family beside that warm fire) just saw the windows shatter in an unplanned burst of coldest winter wind & ice & the snow is beginning to create hills & valleys inside the ant-house and the fire in her little hearth sputters and...

Couple days back, I spent a very long time at a particular site, reading Main Street.

[The article contained some Very Intriguing Data, some of which Mme. Wren jotted down & tucked into her purse for future reference; the Really Telling Information, however, came from the myriad of comments spewed up from Main Street (both sides of said street & quite a bit from - err, under said street).]

Both ants & grasshoppers in the reading, to be sure - though perhaps grasshoppers who do not fiddle so much as wait in the sun - one can only stretch an image so far & it does not fit anymore: the original was borrowed for the creatives vs. the - err, accountants of the world?

And referred primarily to the reality that to be a creative in some sense creates a place of Intentional Psychosis wherein one Thinks Very Hard - and to be wrenched from one reality into the other...just does not work.

It can be done, to be sure.

But it does not work. It is painful. It is debilitating. To create is life being hit with a bolt of lightening, and living there, in that being-bolted, and how do you think you can hold down a job when you are caught there in the middle of that being-hit-by-a-bolt-of-lightening - how do you think you can pull back from it and go on about your daily requisites, punching that time clock, eying figures or projects or the espresso machine...really, you can't: people who live in the world of Much Thinking either live there - or don't.

Those that do just aren't there, most of the time. When you punch a time clock, dears, you are expected to...be there.

But enough about me. Mais oui, the good Aesop did not intend his grasshopper to be borrowed by a wee bird who likely would eat grasshoppers for breakfast were she not eying the letters on the computer screen for breakfast, lunch & supper - he literally meant some there are who make good use of their necessities & some there are who do not (because they, err, play too much) and the life lived becomes the record for it.

Except it is not working that way now, is it. Yes, the thousand yeses, any of us could say we have had too much: to watch commercials for even the merest hour against the reality of the rug being snatched from under all of us: seems somehow to watch the commercials knowing where they lead...that din & clamour of acquire, acquire, acquire...

Is that the entirety of the American way? You see, hearing what the good boys at AIG did after they were bailed out...reminds me, really, of too many times in my own life - just let me get past this scrape - ahhhh. I can return to my own small version of American greed...

Everything is okay now.

Disaster averted. You can't help but see that in what is happening, for all the acute disbelief: did they dare return so gleefully...

Well. Yes. They dared. Nauseating as it is to watch, it is only what we have all done; what we would all do; what we will all do first chance we get: if their doing seems greed stretched out to its worst dimensions for those watching - please. It was only the lifestyle to which they are accustomed and this was only the bump in the road...

That is the reality of the ride we've all been on.

Well, took a very great long time for that one to sink into the hidden places of this small bird & could I indeed not return to the lifestyle I knew--. Has it sunk in deeply enough to hold. Who can say. Back when I was a young bird, I used to wonder about where & how the lines should be drawn...never enough money to live the way I thought a young woman with a husband & family should live...

But I used to wonder, really, what was 'appropriate,' if I may, when money was fast becoming the measuring stick of who & how & what & where you were - without enough to be who we were, where was the line to be drawn.

Some there are - to put it more succinctly - who will beg (err, ask those who give - churches, for example) for more to continue in the lifestyle to which they are accustomed - but it is private schools, perhaps, for the children ('but it's all they've known') - clothes from the better shops - the piano lessons, soccer for the kids - dinners on the town - and did I mention the meals eaten out every day for lunch in the city - the cars - the homes even Goliath would find roomy...

Money to continue lives of extreme excess that abruptly cannot be continued if at the same time necessities (like paying bills) must be met...

Against those who are lining up for food stamps.

Where is the line drawn. It is a line between excess (but we are accustomed to--), legitimacy & need. And do distinguish those last two items. Separate categories there, too.

But how to define them. Where should the line be drawn. That was all I asked, then, but I ask it now, watching a world that perhaps does not know the question, much less its answers. Who are we, when the defining points become how much money we have.

Become how much privilege we can insist on having. Most of it precariously balanced: one good breeze and the whole world is blown away!

Watch the commercials here in America, then look at the current situation again. Yes, many out there are wagging fingers at those who fall to the greed that is the highest point on the chart of American Identity...

In the end I suppose the difference in how we got here isn't going to matter. The laughter is a bit strained now - even the newscasters seem worried; it's not the latest Hollywood blockbuster now. More potent words are beginning to be borrowed. Something is toppling that nice row of dominoes they lined up around the globe and the only thing I can see for it is we still have people saying, it'll be okay; we just have to wait for it to take...

But less of them.

But as noted, I don't know economics. And I see Other Things Happening Here but - difficult to discuss them these days.

Just a wee bird here, anyway, playing I'm a grasshopper...

But fiddling with broken strings...

Oh for a bit of carnival. Please.