"Attainment Is Revealed To Be Merely An Opportunity To Give"

During my last trip home to Arizona I paid a visit to Alex Ozers, an artist and friend of mine. His obsession with painting awes me -- I think it's utterly transformed him in the time we've known each other. I perked up when I recently heard that he was planning to offer more of his work for sale, remembering one particular painting that I'd admired when I was in his studio. But then again, who has money to spend on art these days? I figured I'd just have to let this one go.

When I spoke to Alex a while later, he mentioned that he'd actually been considering sending me the painting as a gift, which struck me as incredibly generous -- we don't see each other too often, and shipping such a large piece across the continent seemed like a lot of work to put into such a sweet gesture. We worked out an arrangement: I agreed to accept the painting as a gift, and he agreed that he'd accept a sum of money to offset his costs and hopefully fund whatever he might be working on now. It wound up being one of those rare transactions where everyone involved got to feel that they were giving something instead of spending something, and in the process grew a bit richer.

Having just received and re-stretched the canvas this week, it occurred to me that I ought to keep that ball rolling by posting about the experience and sharing Ozers' work with you. (On his site he says he's currently trying to develop "a method of painting that utilizes traditional methods/philosophies of divination." I don't know about you, but I want to hear more about that!) And what better card to deploy than the Six of Coins, in which attainment is revealed to be merely an opportunity to give?

Before any town-hall tea-baggers show up to say "ZOMG SOCIALISM!!1!" I'd like to point out the prominence of the scale in the Rider Waite card I just linked to. Money creates personal and material imbalances in our lives, and the Six of Coins merely shows a person taking the correction of these imbalances into his or her own hands. The amount given or gotten is less important than the equilibrium that's restored. You could hardly say that the gentleman in the card appears to be enduring any sort of sacrifice -- his pursuit of his own best interest happens to work out in the favor of those in need. (Since I went ahead and done went there already, I don't mind commenting that this is a perspective that's very sorely lacking from America's frenzied discussions about health care. A healthy workforce will make the rich richer!)

You know who understands this concept already? The people who don't have very much to spend or give, who have to be very discriminating in their largess. People like Alex and myself, for example, artists and writers and craftspeople who are constantly weighing the desire to earn a living from their work against the urge to disseminate ideas freely and purely. It has been humbling for me to live in New York City during this recession and see the lengths to which people in arts communities go to give each other a leg up. We barter, we donate, we buy tickets, we promote each other with as much energy as we promote ourselves -- whatever it takes to help each other survive one more week, one more month, and working as hard as we can all the while.

Invest in yourself -- your true self -- by investing in others. It's such a deceptively simple economic principle that at the best of times it hardly bears repeating, but during lean times, the only thing you can't afford to lose is your generous spirit.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Coins