Feathered Fetishes

I guess materialistic dreams aren't the only things that can weigh you down like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's albatross around your neck.

I find even sex can be an albatross.

(Well, instead of "even sex," make that "odd sex." Hahahaha)

Especially with feathered flying creatures.

(A bit of humour, that.)

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.

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.

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.