Albatrossian Weights & Measures

. . . which is not to say dreams or ideals or goals or possessions or passions themselves are inherently an albatross around one's neck. Not necessarily.

But . . .

"So much depends. . . " to quote Dr. William Carlos Williams.

Witness the Vietnam-Iraq-Antiterror-So-Called Democracy-Consumerist-Syndrome Albatross.

How much does that one weigh?

Eh?

Anatomy of 'Albatross'

Of course, the title of this blog borrows from a metaphor popularized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his mysterious Rime of the Ancient Mariner poem (1798). Several authors have played with the notion of the albatross's power, its curse, its burden.

The origin of the word is diver.

We dive for diverse riches, for the pearl of our dreams.

It can weigh us down, but oftentimes not like an anchor. More like a millstone.

In writing about the acquisitiveness of others, I do not imply that I am exempt from this attachment and reaching. I am not exempt. At all.

Coleridge wrote:

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink

to describe the sailors adrift at sea, starving and parched amid a sea of water.

I suppose our society could readily substitute the word money for water in the passage above.

Or a myriad of other words symbolizing the shiny bauble of Glamour or Greed.

Paper Chase

"There's so much

money going places

only money knows."

Bob Hicok

in

This Clumsy Living

I usually keep my money crumpled up or folded, with notes to myself, unlike Walt Whitman's songs to himself. I can't remember when I last put money in my wallet. Too bulky. The weight of wealth. The color of money: faded.


No doubt about it. Money goes to money, sticks with it, rubs elbows, holds pinkies out, makes conscience-salving donations, runs from poverty. Just watch the suits and the minks at the latest symphony fund raiser for the downtrodden.

Top of the Heap

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Fisher Island, off Miami Beach and once owned by the Vanderbilts, has the highest per capital income in the U.S., at:


$236,238


For places with a population of 50,000 or more, the ranking goes to:

Greenwich, Connecticut, at $74,346 per capita income (that means per person, right?).

I grew up in nearby Stamford. Let's put it this way: I caddied for these people (in Darien).

However, not everyone in Greenwich was fabulously wealthy in those days. My uncle lived near the railroad tracks in a flat above a liquor store.

The Well of Wealth

"Wealth has never been a sufficient source of honor in itself. It must be advertised, and the normal medium is obtrusively expensive goods."

John Kenneth Galbraith



Top 10 money drains

Abundance

"Those who have enough

have

abundance;

those who have abundance

never have enough."

-- Raymond Davidson, Santa Cruz, California

Anxiety's Seeking

In his Christian Discourses, Etc., the Danish philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard has a chapter entitled "The Anxieties of Self-Torment." It's a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. He leads off the chapter with the verse from Matthew: "Be not therefore anxious for the morrow-- after all such things do the heathen seek." The kicker is this: In essence, Kierkegaard says you're greedy if you worry beyond the day. (Okay, okay, covetous is a shade different.) He declares that one who trusts in the care of a Higher Power [no, no, you're absolutely correct; he says "the Christian"] does not have this anxiety.

Kierkegaard writes:

"Every day shall have its worry, that is to say, take care to be free from the next day's worry, accept tranquilly and gratefully the worry of today....for every day has enough of its worries. In this respect also God provides: He measures out the amount of worry which is enough for every day, so take no more than what is measured out, which is exactly enough; to be anxious for the next day is covetousness." [Walter Lowrie translation]

This profoundly touched me when I first read it, around 1979 or 1980. It struck me how radically useless it is not to live in the day, "this very day," as Kierkegaard terms it. For me, personally [forgive the tautology], I used to go with "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!" But it was a cry of desperation and despair. Today I say the same words out of gratitude and celebration, somehow infinitely different--which I am explaining very poorly.

Consequently, I have an "I Leap for Kierkegaard" sticker on my car, albeit a faded one.

Mansione d'Albatrosso

As noted in The New York Times:

"Umberto Milletti has fantasized about downsizing his life to ease the pressures he feels despite a net worth around $5 million. In 2000, when his stake in DigitalThink, the online learning company he co-founded in 1996, was worth around $50 million, he bought his family of four a five-bedroom house in Hillsborough, an upscale suburb south of San Francisco. After his net worth fell 90 percent, though, he found the house more of an albatross than a dream. 'We could move,' Mr. Milletti said. 'But if you do that, then you're admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.' So he works 60 to 70 hours a week at InsideView, an online sales intelligence company he co-founded in 2005, in part to prove that his first success was not a fluke -- but also to meet his monthly nut, which includes payments on a seven-figure mortgage."

The federal minimum wage is $5.85 per hour. Let's see. If you put in 70 hours, that gives you a gross (not take-home) total of $409.50. For 70 hours. Not enough for that seven-figure mortgage.

As Bob Dylan said, "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothing to lose."


Mansion photo courtesy of Gordon Gekko, Esq.

Excess Baggage

According to an article by Judy Bachrach in Vanity Fair, Judith "Don't Call Me Judi" Giuliani, wife of Rudy of the same name:

• demands an entire plane seat for "Baby Louis," her Louis Vuitton handbag
• has been known to spend $40,000 in one week
• gets to fly away on a private Gulfstream IV jet
• shares a $4 million house in the Hamptons with the ex-mayor of New York
  
• shares a $5 million Upper East Side nine-room apartment with the presidential candidate

Power to the People!

(or at least to two of the people)

Killer Time Swallows

Gary Kremen, 43, founder of Match.com, reportedly puts in 60- to 80-hour work-weeks "because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up."

Some people I know (they shall remain anonymous so the Proletariat Politburo Police don't pounce on them and because their initials may, just may, resemble your humble narrator's) barely clock 40 hours per workweek; maybe 45 hours max.

Mr. K (Kremen, not Kokonuts) is "worth" an estimated 10 million smackers.

Go figure.

(Photo is from eyemage at flickr.com.)

Golden Treadmill Parachutes

It used to be called the rat race. Now, for these millionaires, the term is the golden treadmill.

The Golden Calf Treadmill.

The Golden Calf Treadmill of Leaden Albatrosses on Mount Suburbia.

The Golden Calf Treadmill Rat Race of Leaden Albatross Anxious Dreams on Mount Suburbia.


Parachutes for Sale.

For Richer, For Poorer. . .

The genesis of this newly minted blog is a recent article in The New York Times entitled "The Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich."


Right there, on the upper-left corner of the Sunday NY Times of August 5, 2007, is a photo of one Hal Steger, 51, a marketing executive with an estimated net worth of $3.5 million.


His words form part of The Times's Quotation of the Day:


"But a few million doesn't go as far as it used to."


He is part of a new class, dubbed "working-class millionaires" by the piece's author, Gary Rivlin.


I grew up in a working-class housing project.


I am not a millionaire.


And if I were, would it be enough?


What constitutes "enough"?