abundance, empty

Tiffany & Co. has a large ad in The New York Times (page A3, March 20, 2010) for a "butterfly brooch of diamonds and sapphires set in platinum."

"Spring Is In The Air," reads the ad's headline, accompanied by an image of the beautiful piece of jewelry.

Price?

$56,000.

Who buys this?

The same people who complain about taxes they cannot afford?

The same people who lament excess [excess!] on the part of government trying to serve its constituents?

I do not dispute the right of anyone to sell this, nor of anyone to buy this. Free market. Laissez-faire. All that. I am not disputing that right legally or morally. After all, I don't know: perhaps the person who buys this also writes, moments later, a check to Doctors Without Borders, for Haiti relief.

Perhaps.

I make no further comment.

Pause for reflection.

Reflection.

That's all.

why the rage why the fear

The recent healthcare vote was revealing.

One side enraged; the other defensive. One side spiteful; the other tentative. One side stiff; the other bending.

These perspectives were recently revealed in recent Gospels heard in church.

The Prodigal Son. The jilted brother.

Mary washing Jesus' hair with perfume; Judas counting cost.

Fear and rage.

Tears of rage.

Fear of what? Losing privilege? Fear of finding out the basic truth that life ain't fair? Fear of losing comfort. Fear of reality?

Fear breeds anger.

Fear comes from change. Some people fear it.

It is the law of nature.

Rage against it if you will; it is inevitable.

Fear not.

Healthcare?

Just a metaphor.

The Tea Party Republican House of Fear and Anger.

A house with a narrow door, a chilly hallway, a dark vestibule.

Come on in; there's always room for more fear.

Fear not, we are told.

Fear not, he proclaimed.

Seems the evangelical crowd forgot.

Fear.

Not.

Twenty Subjunctives

1. We might have. 2. I could if 3. You never would have 4. He should 5. She should not 6. If it were 7. Would that we were 8. You may if 9. It's have time you stated 10. If they had only said 11. Would that I could 12. If I were a rich man 13. They might be dwarfs 14. If only we acted 15. Might I inquire 16. come what may 17. May God bless you 18. Woe betide 19. May the best man or woman or woman or man win 20. Come Monday, until death do us part

vindication

It is not stretching the elasticity of truth to say that AlbatrossDreams was on to something from the outset, from its very first post. In the broadest sense, we detected the early fissures that led to the financial nuclear fission explosion (or is that fusion?). Not saying we were unique in doing so.

Well, have not posted here in a while.

How I have.

I'm still kicking.

20 verbs

Twenty Verbs to describe my day:

1. awoke
2. ate
3. drove
4. talked
   
5. prayed
6. thanked
7. listened
8. watched
9. heard
10. walked
11. touched
12. washed
13. brushed
14. communed
15. sang
16. napped
17. meditated
    
18. saw
19. learned
20. read

You?

litteroti: a sentence

Walking from near the tip of Tipperary Hill, I wended my way walking down Whittier, onto leaf-laden Lowell, onto sunny South Wilbur in front of Saint John's and its onion domes and on through West Genesee Street, its largest former car dealers shuttered, showing us the lonely signs of the Great Recession, ending my pedestrian promenade at Freedom of Espresso on Solar Street, but not before seeing the detritus of American consumption, the litteroti of careless consumerism: cigarette cartons (why so many boxes of Newport?), a cereal box, a can of Arizona ice tea, lottery tickets, a squashed plastic water bottle, and so much more lessening the landscape, aching for trash cans either missing or brimming over.

the landscape of wealth

". . . all those expensive citadels which simply to see triggered wonder at the immense wealth in America, at the vast depth on its bench. Who were these people? How could they have gotten so much money? How could there be so many of them? Their homes made his mouth water. They looked like fraternity houses, country clubs, embassies. Tudorial, stately, with high green hedges and curving driveways like painterly exercises in perspective. Blue Lake Michigan sucking up to their backyards. Attached to their carriage houses and wide garages were basketball hoops, gleaming cat's cradles of white net, taut and tapered as hourglasses. He imagined lean, expert girls in blue jeans, home from Radcliffe, Holyoke, Smith, setting them up, pushing them in, playing Horse and 21, with their tan, continent boyfriends who had once been pages in the Senate. The cropped lawns, green as felt on gaming tables, made him gulp, and an occasional sound from the swimming pool of splashing water like polite applause made his heart turn over. Lake Michigan and a pool. . . . "

-- from "The Condominium" in Searches & Seizures Three Novellas by Stanley Elkin, copyright 1973

Alas, what would Stanley Elkin write today if he were alive to describe our landscape of wealth or poverty or anything in-between?