Save The Yellow Perch

For those of us at civilization's foundation, doing the actual work turning the wheels and lifting the stones, even pressing buttons and generating sweet tones, living large and living long do not mesh well.  But since we want the money and security of a position on the mandala of society, we save some things, like eating properly and dodging stress, "for later."

WEAR AND TEAR

(February 22, 2022)

"The mountain rose to their fervent calls,

Although they did not see it;

To them it came as single grains,

A process most discreat."

But when "later" does arrive, either our muscles are toasted by limited and repetitive labor or our insides are fatty and sluggish from a lifetime of pencil pushing and, in the evening, watching teevee and movies.  And now, living "just enough for the city" MAY not get you the retirement income you're depending on.  With only one national "bail-in," our savings can be vaporized.  Life's not fair, eh?

It is not.  As their personal desperation increases, the Oligarchs and their hierarchies have turned to tampering with our food and water and outdoor leisure activities to, you know, "even the playing field" of aging.  It's like a golf or bowling "handicap," or functioning as electronic pitch correction does for a choral group's weaker voices. Such adjustments improve  overall performance.

Nothing tees off a rich man, on his second liver and fourth wife, as does watching "the unenhanced" aging gracefully through caring for themselves.  Donald Trump, thus, is doubly envied because not only does he not play the toxic game of conspicuois consumption, he's taken that brass ring without the game's ankle weights.  

It's your choice:  either follow the lure of "more, better, always up" or look around and figure out what's truly enduring and what's only fluff and polish.  Going from frying your own potatos to buying precut and seasoned fries is not a move forward.  Going from home cooked chicken "from raw" to processed and seasoned breaded chciken shapes is not a step ahead.  Having a chauffeur, a gardener and a cook is to deny one's self opportunities to develop personal skills.  Most of the comforts of the rich life - the hi-tech underwear and padded shoes, even things like power steering and Rogaine, only make them more dependent on them. A study of European royal lines bears this out:  after many generations, these lines with their attenuated genetics lose the ability to chew their own food, or even wipe their...but I digress. I think the "soft" life is really no life at all.  Oh, they have plenty of company in their unspoken miseries, but free and reality-based folks won't ever want to be in their company.

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There has been an image, a desert painting, forming in my thought for some years.  I don't know whether it's an imperfect recollection of someone's work I've glimpsed in passing or some subconcious composition going on, because even at first is seems framed, its elements located much as they are this evening.

It is that of a man leading a burro with a long rope.  The man, feathered western style leather hat, denim pants and a longsleeved shirt, has this rope over his shoulder and leans into his task.  On the far end of this maybe 100 foot rope is the burro, who has trotted forward to munch on a clump of vegetation, uconcerned as the curve of rope beside him in the sand grows steadily smaller.

It is a landscape, a horizontal rectangle, with a line of hills beyond the desert floor.  A small brass strip secured with two roundheaded tacks reads, "His Ass Stinks."  

Pow, Alice! To the MOON!"