Peace

So simple.

So elusive.

Peace.

The pulse of prayer

the current of flesh

circuiting 

 

Uber-Wealthy Word Economy

Arianna Huffington and others have aptly remarked on the fact that our growing cadre of billionaires face rising challenges when it comes to gifts. Well, let's clarify that. There's no end to the possibilities of their giving (and I seriously and sincerely laud the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

What to get you favorite billionaire?

Hmmm. As noted in The Wall Street Journal: A Triton submarine? Jewels? flashy cars?

How about a commissioned biography for $30,000?

Presumably, said bio would praise its subject lavishly.

There's a more economical yet spiritually enhancing (as well as more capitalistic, for me at least) alternative:

I hereby present this special billionaire's offer:

Haiku for You.

A bargain at $1,700 apiece.

A hundred bucks per syllable.

(But think of all the free enlightement!)

Gluttony

True, I haven't been

at this space

in a while.

May today's surfeit

of gravy and turkey (in U.S.A.) not

drown us from finding

gratitude in the smallest

morsel, a graciousness that leads

to sharing our abundance.

Unjust Desserts

I imagine you heard about someone coming up with a $25,000 dessert in New York? The day after someone concocted a $1,000 bagel?

Sounds like one of those zany things in the 1920s, before the . . . well, we won't get into that.

The heavy weight of adundant shallowness.

WWKS? *

* What would Kierkegaard say?

Camera Obscura

As you may know, I am a fan of the Saturday edition of The New York Times. Saturday's read is so much more manageable than Sunday's mammoth wordspray.

Picture this.

On page A3, a thoroughly wrenching story of holocaust, Khmer Rouge edition.

It tells the story of Mr. Nhem En, who was forced to photograh the inmates of Tuol Sleng prison.

Just before they died (at least 14,000 were murdered). Only six or so are known to have survived.

The story is almost impossible to fathom, to assimilate, to process.

Try, if you can.

What can we say about the context of evil, its placement, its milieu, its backdrop?

The story is surrounded by these sizable advertisements:

Tiffany & Co.: diamond engagement rings in patinum. $4,220 to $1,000,000.

Saks Fifth Avenue: Ermenegildo Zegna shoes. No price.

The Balvenie scotch whisky. No price.

Tourneau watches: Bedat & Co., $2,950.

Rothmans Union Square clothier: no prices.

Incidentally, some of Mr. Nhem En's portraits have found their way to art galleries in the United States.

Why do we hear so little about this?

Is it not palatable enough for the palaver of television news?

In the eyes of news executives (remember, news is typically entertainment these days, even if macabre entertainment), does this horror involve the "wrong" people? Is the story, from the 1970s too "old"? It doesn't have "legs"?

Subprime Beyond the Pale

I look at all these hundreds of homes burning out in California, and wonder, along with pondering the subprime crisis:

Do all things ultimately just balance out -- however painfully and tragically it appears to us?

(I myself am subpar, below prime, beyond the pale.)

The Dreams

The

unbearable

lightness

of dusk.

Albatross as Anchor -- Or Not

The following is from today's San Francisco Chronicle, quoting the manager of the red-hot Colorado Rockies:



Perspective: [Rockies Manager Clint] Hurdle has a rough and gruff exterior that shrouds a more thoughtful side. He showed it when discussing a reporter's description of a late-season loss to Arizona as 'crushing.'

'It was just kind of funny at the time because that day I had gotten a call from a mother at Children's Hospital (who) wanted me to come by and see her son before he was going to pass that night,' Hurdle said. 'That was debilitating. Crushing was when a doctor told me my little girl was born with a birth defect. Baseball is a game, and I've learned that, and I've embraced that, and I've tried to share that with my players.


'Let's keep it a game, and let's not wear it like an anchor around our necks afterward.'

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

The masthead of this weblog reads:

"The dead weight

of shallow

abundance."

Sometimes I feel

like I'm sleepwalking with the dead

weight of the abundance

of my solipsistic shallowness.

The Albatross of Grief

Today I saw, and briefly wore around my neck, the albatross of grief. However, it is feathered and lifted by comradeship, camaraderie, and caritas.

A Sporting Chance

If "the love of money is the root of all evil"

(cited in one of the readings in our Episcopal church yesterday, from Paul's Letter to Timothy)

(incidentally, ever notice how it's usually misquoted as "money is the root of all evil"?),

then expectation is the root of all albatross dreams.

And sports is one of the most egregious generators of expectation.

With my team (San Francisco Giants) safely eliminated from major league baseball postseason play, I am delightfully free from the multiple albatrosses of tension, hope, expectation, success, failure, winning, and losing.

But who am I kidding?

I'd wear those albatrosses in a heartbeat, given the chance.

Crazy, huh?

Not Craig's List

If you have $1.3 billion in your pocket, join the club,

The Forbes 400.

Square-jawed speech not needed anymore. Just cash, not class.

The Albatross of Commuting

You have probably read of the extreme commutes that are commonplace for many; how millions are on the road by 5 a.m. and after 7 p.m.

It's hard for me to sympathize with these people.

At all.

Scaredy cats.

They want to live in their parochial, gated, seemingly safe and seemingly secure suburbs. They want to be vampires of our cities, sucking out what they can, only to run away at night, or to dabble back in the evening if there's enough safety in numbers, otherwise scared by the phantoms of fear.

The Culture of the Cul-de-Sac.

It's just a dead end, now, isn't it?

Prepositions

Prepositions or pre-positions? Either way, the choice of prepositions makes a world of difference when one speaks of the albatross of war or power or freedom or tyranny or terror or dreams.

A local Congressman, Rep. James Walsh, R-Onondaga, a former supporter of the war to and in and for and at Iraq, now calls for a change, saying,

"We've done enough. No country has done more than we have for Iraq. . . . I think we have given enough."

For?

For Iraq?

Does not an ocean of tears shed by Iraqis cry:

To !

To Iraq !

Pax vobiscum.

Line Item

Waiting in line can be a test of one's patience.

My patience, that is.

Impatience, though, can be its own albatross.

And sometimes the albatross surprisingly falls off the neck and into the sea.

Albatross of Addiction

I tend to be all or none. Addictive. Yesterday I bought a Take 5 New York State Lottery ticket, quick pick (QP), two games, each with two chances to win, two bucks. Then a QP for Wednesday's lotto. Then even another two Take 5 QPs. (Someone once told me Take 5 has the best odds, so . . . .) This morning, driving to work, not even having checked the numbers, I'm thinking and saying to myself but not out loud while driving, "This is usually a bad sign for me. I'm no philosopher, but Pawlie, you are literally attempting to buy happiness. To purchase it. Cheaply. You literally believe that your happiness can be purchased, for, what, four dollars? Five? Five million? Just ask Britney Spears. Or Paris Hilton. Or Donald Trump. Or Leona Helmsley's dog [I just threw that last one as a bone to my readers, hahahahahahahaha]." It wasn't until evening I checked the tickets. Whew. No dice. Losers, all. In case you are wondering, my numbers for tonight are: 05, 19, 20, 28, 39 and 01, 30, 32, 33, 38. "A dollar and a dream," as the slogan of the New York State Lottery goes. A dollar and an albatross dream.

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.)

Mayday! Mayday! Labor Day!

Labor Day. Or in this case the day after.

Long forgotten amidst the barbecues and telethons and swimfests and political campaign kickoffs:

-- the eight-hour day (becoming long-forgotten again before our very cyber-eyes)

-- paid holidays

-- paid vacations

-- paid sick time

-- et cetera

-- you can add to the list

... all because of the blood, sweat, and tears of unions (before they were run by their own politically connected fat cats) and the workers who needed them.

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"?