The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    quinn esq's picture

    There Is No Wealth But Life.

    By quinn esq on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 8:39pm |
    When we were kids, we got one present each year. 

    Pick something faddish, or breakable, or only useful during a limited season, and you were out of luck. Worse, luck might actively turn against you. Like the year I chose skates, used them once, stashed them in a garbage bag to take on the bus, and then had to live without, after they accidentally got tossed - and forever lost - at the dump. 

    I remember those presents. Each one. The wonderful, dark green, 3-speed bike I got one Christmas, completely forgetting I couldn't drive it for 6 months, but trying anyway, and wiping out on the icy road, chipping its paint, bending a rim, on Christmas Day. Or the year I chose a baseball catcher's glove. Even though I played both baseball & softball, I could only choose one glove, which I would then have to use in both games, catching balls of very different sizes. I chose wrongly, enthralled by the professional-looking, but smaller, baseball glove. Its real-world upside was greater padding, but the downside outweighed that, as it made catching the larger softball almost impossible. 

    Lest you fear I'm headed toward (another) nostalgic glorification of poverty, let me reassure you, hunger & cold haven't yet taken on any happy glow in my memory. But there are things to be learned from those days of being poor. Things our economic high priests have worked to obliterate. Things we might do well to bring back up, within ourselves, in these times. Things like, the value of something doesn't necessarily rise with its glitzy appearance; that flexibility or durability or quality may not equal dozens of specialized, add-on, features; that value may, instead, rise when we put more skill into its use; rise again if we add passion; even more, if its social & natural setting gives it room to breathe; and move of the charts, if it's shared with others.  

    For a kid, each present was of real importance, as it shaped what we could & could not do for the next year. And it's for that reason each one sits in my mind, fully-detailed even today, carrying not just memories, but lessons. Like the Christmas my brother picked one of those plastic race-car track sets. The initial, incredible, excitement. The plans for a hundred magical configurations & derbys. All smashed when the cars broke, late that first day, impossible to repair. And the gloom that followed. 

    Or the year he chose incredibly wisely, a basketball. This, on a farm of 16 boys, most of them already past 6 feet (& headed closer to 7), made it truly, our golden ball. Beyond the joy of the game, however, lay the fact that he was its sole owner - there was no chance the parents would ever buy two. Which meant that whenever he felt like it, he took his ball... and went home. Not being permitted to punch him (amongst other very specific, and strictly-enforced, rules on how we were permitted to fight), I remember following him on that long walk home, kicking him the entire way, using the side of my foot (no toe-kicking allowed.) We both remember that walk. And yes, we worked it out. We all learned to play together, to take care of each other's stuff, to ask to borrow it, and say thanks after. And the games got better, and so did our enjoyment. (And yes, I've since apologized to him. Although he - the miserly, game-wrecking, Grinchy bastard - has yet to do so.) 

    Without wanting to be too snotty ("too snotty" being anything over 7 on the snot scale), there is more economic sense in what I learned from the present-picking process than from most of the Latin chanting our high economic priesthood offers these days. The most important lesson? I donno. Perhaps that the most hyped characteristics of products, and in particular, their appearances, weren't just of secondary importance, they were often pumped up to actively distract us, lead us away from questions of the thing's real value. It was as though the advertisers aimed straight for our inner magpies, to stimulate us until our nests overflowed with shiny objects. Like those shining, whizzing racing cars & their incredibly flexible tracks that first captivated us, then led us into ruin. As I grew up, the cars grew as well. But... the lesson held. 

    Or the bike. I had wanted to be the first kid with a 3-speed. Both because I wanted to be able to go faster than the others, but also because... I'd be the first kid with a 3-speed. We lived on bikes in those days, and it was always a race. Which made this, potentially, the perfect present. Except the downside also turned out to be... that I was the first kid with a 3-speed. Which meant that when it broke, I owned the first 3-speed to be stripped down, taken apart & repaired according to the DIY ethos. Or rather, DIO - Do It Ourselves. Because there was no way everybody wasn't going to get their hands in, learning the mysteries, looking to the day when they too owned a bike like this. 

    I also learned that this "feather-light" bike was somewhat ill-suited to our favorite cycling activity - The Midnight Ride. The Midnight Ride actually took place between 9-11 p.m. The point being to ride as fast as possible, down the pitch black roads. The challenge was to listen listen listen, ears big as bats, and to feel with our fingers right down through to the road, waiting for the sound & feel of pavement turning into gravel. Because once you'd gotten off-line enough to have hit the shoulder, you had roughly 0.14 seconds to respond, or you'd get to go Night Flying. Into the ditch. At an unhappy speed. I could pretty much avoid taking a ditch on that part of the course, but the last laps were always run back in the farmyard, endless circles, talking & driving round under the Big Light, interrupted only by someone shouting your name, and you having to race your bike, as fast as possible, into the barn. Not inside the barn, but rather, into its side. Admittedly, an unusual game. Perhaps even unusually stupid. But the Midnight Ride was intended to prove alertness, fearlessness & toughness - not intelligence. 

    And thus, I came to realize that my dark green, feather-light, utterly-sleek 3-speed - with Derailleur Gears - bike was... less than well-suited for its purpose. And as we weren't about to change our course simply I happened to now own some pathetic foreign bike that wasn't up to real racing, the bike had to be... modified. Into a barely-painted, 1-speed, brakeless & well-bent thing, more suitable for rigorous, country riding. 

    I suspect, now that we're all grown up, each of us owns a number of these bikes. Though we may call them electronic devices, or even houses. The thing is, I'd been waiting, so long, for my Derailleur Gears. Or, as some called them, Disraeli Gears.....

    The basketball pounded a few more lessons into my head. Obviously, wearing glasses & being 5' 11 + ¾" amongst a crop of giant Philistines, I learned first that basketballs, while full of air, are surprisingly hard. Capable, in fact, of embedding the nosepiece of your glasses well into your head. Longer lasting though, was the lesson my brother taught. That what we buy, or use, is often... social. Or can be, and maybe sometimes should be.

    It's especially useful these days, when it seems we all own our bedrooms, even our own bathrooms, and pretty much every house has its own washer & dryer. Many of us also possess not only our own sports equipment, but our own set of power tools, in our own personal storage space, whether basement or garage or shed. And our own lawn mower. Maybe even a bar in the basement, a pool in the backyard. And for some, our own second & third & fourth cars, and cottages & on & on. 

    Why have we chosen to own this stuff for ourselves? Well, ask my brother - he can tell you. Dealing with other people - even when they had the stuff we needed, and they weren't using it, and the capital equipment or asset in question had a capacity utilization rate of somewhat less than 2% - just got to be too much hassle. 

    Now, I know you all abhor violence. But just consider the hundreds of billions of dollars (after-tax, often with interest on it, and don't forget maintenance & repair & insurance) we've now tied up in privatizing - and thus, duplicating & underutilizing - all this equipment & all these spaces that might have been more inexpensively provided either socially, or shared. Think about that, and I suspect at least some of you would swing in behind my Father's view that a "side-foot only kicking" rule might usefully be extended to adults, including your neighbors. 

    And no, in case you were wondering, this is not Nostalgia Week. It's Economic Analysis Week. I just can't bear to talk the priestly talk. You all get it. How we (as an aggregate, a people) have trillions of dollars - literally, trillions - tied up in excess floorspace, excess horsepower, in shiny chrome & specialized equipment & capital assets that we barely remember that we own. Things. Stuff. Crap. Call it what you will. I'm just saying we'd probably do well to remember that we have it now, and think about how to get the most out of it. And also, think about who can get the most use out of it. Who.

    Funny, this piece didn't go where I thought it would. Which was to Ruskin's point that real wealth requires both possession of a valuable thing, and that the possessor have the valor, the skills & character, required to gain full value from its use. Wealth, as he said, and as Gandhi loved to repeat, was "the possession of the valuable by the valiant." Which - road not taken and all - therefore didn't lead me into how much of our increased spending has been wasted in bidding up the price of "positional goods," as the great Fred Hirsch would have wished to discuss. And in the end, my tangent has left me many miles from where I wanted to end. On a riff about the destruction of the beauty of this continent, the unbelievable beauty that once extended into every damned corner, spread even across these miserable flat prairies, once covered in astonishing tallgrass meadow, and across the tundra, today, increasingly hacked into mining claims, strewn with oil & gas and industrial waste, its beauty slowly melting into muck. When originally, it made everything, every single thing of ours, more valuable.

    Nope, I never got around to any of that. Which also means, my conversation on the tundra, with those great destroyers of unproductive wealth, my friends, the Ice Weasels, must go unrelated. Other than this summary/warning: 

    1. There is no wealth but life. 

    2. The stuff? Use it or lose it, folks. 

    Best to end, perhaps, with where I should have gone, and not where I did. With something magical & wise. A gift for your Thanksgiving, from someone who knows beauty, and knows how to share it, the luminous, the deeper-than-sane, Jane Siberry.


    Hat-tip to FDRdog, for the Thanksgiving reminder.