heads they win, tails you lose

The dwindling machinations of a few dispersed themes writhing like common words in the soil of the mind. So much to consider and so few places to act, as though our access to the world is blocked by rubble and offers only the chance to wriggle through in our fleshy vulnerability. Money increases our levels of available activity like a back-hoe hoisting barricades from our labyrinthine paths and lack of it sets up new obstacles with a hideous ease reminiscent of fantastical conceptions of magic. Welcome to the world, the flowers bloom in April, the leaves die in April, and you can only get what you want if you pay for it.

I am stuck observing the comfortable while they live out their dreams. The recession has changed the amount of piddling pittances doled out the poor, while company executives screech cross-country to plead for billions in hand-out money even though they are laying off works, raising prices, and generally using the economic downturn as an excuse to save money. Credit has all but evaporated, and the dream of a decent wage is being replaced with the possible loss of the income tax refund. It is rarely pointed out that what people are losing is not only money, but lifestyle choices and experiences, education opportunities and idealism rooted in an optimistic appraisal of their dreams. It is enough to lose one's life in the slow procession of aging, but to be sapped of faith in the future is quite another thing entirely, raising the low-level emergency of day-to-day living into a desperate pleading against forces which are paradoxically within our power to change and beyond us.

Personally, I would like to finish my education and move to Portland. But the budget cuts in California have ultimately timed themselves perfectly to add stress and nervous disappointment to my desires, since I am partially dependent on state supplemental income to make my way in the world. The only comfort proffered to me exists in the form of spiritual fantasy that tenuously grounds me in a world that has made too many mistakes while destroying the individual for their own. I would wish again for an ideology for which I can measure the world as if through a garden fence, but cynicism dictates that I could only be fascinated by grotesque depression brought on by noticing the severe lack of blossoming flowers.

I am a little disturbed by the great and somewhat innocently ignorant faith Americans convey by placing their faith without question into the government concerning the current economic crisis. As if the workings of the system hadn't already proved themselves to be far more inefficient than a logically-minded family possessing a savings account. It has been operating on borrowed money since time immemorial, and the recent policies of handing out money lack the real growth potential as developing new industries such as alternative energy and green technologies. It is disheartening to watch the treasury run the money printing machines while businesses have quit expanding. But, let it be known here, Americans have always been for the most part, a rather faithful people, excepting the American Revolution and perhaps the 1960's. Little improvements have been made in terms of changing the way that government and business is ran, just has few advances in combating social problems such as poverty, addiction, and underlying racial issues have been achieved.

It seems though as if the rest of the world is having similar economic difficulties, not to mention countries who are not even considered as developing nations any longer since the word 'developing' became too optimistic of a term to describe whatever buildings and groups of people counted as industries. America's problem is the world's problem, and the world's problem is America's. This means that we can no longer function with economic policies that act as a clever child flipping a coin to settle an argument, basically "Tails, I win, Heads, you lose." We must work to honor our interactions, first and foremost, in order that our communication and relationships honor us with side effects of prosperity that will salve the wounds of financial turmoil.