Dear diary,
It’s weird, to move thru space. Cuz you can’t figure out if the times are a-changin’ or if you yourself are a-changin’. Here’s an example from the life of a common chimp: I Bryan awake each morning & wonder “Is the world becoming more consciously political, or have I just aged into a geezer who’s lost all interests except for politics?” Cuz I swear it’s impossible for me to think of anything other than the effects of [long list of political subjects deleted, not limited to the Great Depression; FDR’s “New Deal”; the system of capitalism & its ways of warfare & history of chattel slavery & wage slavery; government’s relation to commerce; the meaning of money; the benefits & drawbacks of taxation; etc.]
What a bore: this is the nightmare of nightmares, to have no interests beyond the way that power circulates.
OK so ya got rich people; & they’re nice people. But are rich people good people? I guess we could say that—why not? Let’s call rich people good people. So they’re good & nice: What more could you want from a person!
Well you could want that person to solve all the problems in the world.
But why is a rich person responsible for solving all our problems? God created & carefully arranged these problems, one could even say God planted these problems in our world, so that we space-travelers could knock them down like a long line of dominoes. Why should this pleasure be wasted on the rich? It’s not like the current system that governs our existence respects nothing other than money. (That last sentence was a joke.) Now consider the facts:
A rich person is just a poor person who found a way to make their tree yield cash. (Cash grows on trees; and men are like ambulant vegetation.) If you discover the keys to wealth & power, by watering your tree & giving it sunlight & hugs, then why should you be responsible for your fellow gardeners, the citizens of paradise, whose trees remain barren?
Yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess there’s no reason to expect that those who possess abundance would want to share it with those who lack even life’s basic necessities. But I think that if I were a wealthy fool, I’d share my riches with the world: I’d scatter all my coins upon the heavenly landscape like they were the ashes of a slain deity that I always hated.
Yes, but this is easy to say, because I’m not wealthy. It’s easy to claim that you’d give your money away, when you have no money. The real challenge is to get rich quick and then immediately grow poor again. That would be the true roller coaster.
Someone should invent a self-destructing nation. I think that the finest painters have already invented a painting that un-paints itself; so why can’t we do the same for nations? I don’t mean to zero all the nation’s citizens: God forbid! I’d like to keep everybody alive & well, but just to take the country — the abstract notion of the bounded nation — & teach it to lie on the ground & play dead. Breathe very slowly & stay still, so the camera cannot register the rise & fall of your belly: otherwise you’ll ruin the illusion.
I’m imagining the dead nation as if it’s an actor playing a shootout scene in an old Western film. It just got blasted in the gut by its nemesis, and it stumbled out of the saloon and fell in the dirt. The country is motionless, flat on its back, clutching its torso. Its citizens are spilling out in a pool on the ground.
I’m only suggesting this because I think it’d be fun. Nations are so serious nowadays. They act like they don’t rise & fall as the grass. But nations are as mortal as the men that make them up. So it would be a genius move for a nation to say “I’m dead,” & let its people go, without forcing everyone to do a big protest & march out into the wilderness.
$$$
I should mention, before I forget, what gives money its strength. People have been arguing for ages about the definition of money, & they engage in fistfights over the exact reason that money is able to persuade everyone to desire it. One drunkard suggests that money derives its value from its scarcity. Another drunkard yells that money ain’t even scarce anymore: it was only scarce when they kept it tied to them gold ingots (whoever he means by “they” must remain a mystery, for the speaker fell unconscious directly after uttering this speech, and we haven’t been able to revive him). Then a third drunkard, I myself, the Real Me, kicks open the door of the church where all these skirmishes have been occurring; & I roughly push the bystanders aside, cuz I’m super confident, & counter all the previous arguments by crying:
“The real secret of money’s value is not its scent, which is sweet, or its form, which is light & papery, but its ART; by which I mean the pictures that appear upon it: for look, this dollar bill from the United States, a country that recently gave up the ghost (but don’t worry: it was just feigning death for a scene in a film), has a portrait of good Georgie Washington on its obverse. Now this photograph in acrylics is so beautiful that no one can resist stealing all their neighbor’s spouses to obtain it. And once you get one in your hands (I’m talking about a dollar now, not one’s neighbor’s wives; for that’s childsplay) you gotta have another and another. They’re not like the Mona Lisa: you can’t graffitti a goatee & mustache upon them to bring out their hidden masculinity; Monsieur Washington was no gorgeously hypnotic androgyne. He was rather wide-waisted, with child-bearing hips, and less than attractive. I’ve no idea how he bore so many children, & crafted multitudes of green-hued people after his likeness. For his image, when I bought it (I own the original) was said to be barren, like the poor person’s cash-tree mentioned above. And they say that every event transpires (& I quote) on earth as it is in heaven; but then Jesus put a curse on this new king George: for it had been written, long ago, in the holy book of Genesis (2:16-17) ‘the LORD God commanded the U.S. Army, saying: Every living thing of the land thou mayest freely slay, except Washington’s Money Tree: thou shalt not even trim it: for in the day that thou choppest it down, it shall surely play dead’.”
And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: & he looked round about upon all things. Then, when the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany; &, on the morrow, he was hungry: & seeing a tree afar off, he approached nigh unto it, if haply he might find any cash thereon: & when he came to it, he found nothing: nada; for the economy was in a recession, & the time for a jubilee (general debt amnesty) was long overdue. So Jesus answered & said unto it, “Let no man pluck thee hereafter for ever, in commerce!” And the next morning, as the camera crew panned by, they portrayed the money tree as dried up from the roots. (Mark 11:11-14 & 20)
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