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.
8.18.2009
"Attainment Is Revealed To Be Merely An Opportunity To Give"
7.01.2009
"This May Be A Good Time To Retire Your Pig-Nose..."
Political cartoons have always fascinated me, even as a child. I remember reading the comics section of the paper every morning before school and then skipping over to the editorial section on the off chance that I'd actually be able to understand the grownup joke in the Steve Benson sketch. The pig noses, the talking elephants, the horrifying caricatures -- I couldn't get enough of them, and still can't. That side of me was thrilled to see that Victor Juhasz' top-notch illustrations in this month's Rolling Stone, accompanying Matt Taibbi's blistering indictment of the sins of investment firm Goldman Sachs. According to Taibbi, the fraud commited by the investment firm has triggered every financial crisis in the last century.
More specifically, Taibbi blames Goldman Sachs for manufacturing (and ultimately bursting) five market "bubbles": the 1929 stock market, tech stocks during the Clinton administration, the housing craze, gasoline prices, and the Federal government's recent bailouts. The only copy of the article online now is the scan linked above, but it's worth checking out on paper if you get the chance. Apparently G-Sachs' tactic is to buy up the entire market, unsavory bits and all, to drive up confidence; then they sell it off in lots to second-tier investors who are eager to get a slice of the action -- all the while, they're secretly betting against the success of those investments and making a killing when they ultimately fail.
Hence the bailout section of the article -- when banks lost their shirts during last year's market crash, they mostly lost them to Goldman Sachs. Since a considerable amount of the bailout money those banks received was used to pay off that debt, G-Sachs' essentially got paid twice -- first when the bank reaped enormous profits from its fraudulent dealings before the crash, and then again afterward from the government at the expense of taxpayers. Taibbi claims that the next bubble that the bank has its eye on is the Climate Change bill, which is currently on its way to the Senate. I guess if any news story ever warranted a pig-nose or three, this would be the one.
The Five of Coins has always struck me as something of a editorial cartoon. The Waite version shows us a man and a woman hobbling through the snow, and the stained glass window (of what I presume is a bank or church) just overhead seems to mock their condition, hinting that warmth and wealth shall be kept just out of reach. Along with some of the more dramatic Swords cards, it's one of the most savage images in the deck. While the people in it are who we're drawn to, that looming black wall and window are a sort of third character in the image. In this case, wealth and power do not confer happiness or peace of mind -- greed, paranoia, and worry take over and demand that walls are built to shut others out. The worst-case scenario hinted at in the card preceding has come to fruition; desire for power has completely eclipsed reason and mercy, and all -- even the rich -- are worse off for it.
This is an ugly instinct that we all grapple with. No matter which side of the wall you happen to be on, no enduring satisfaction can come from grasping at everything you can get your hands on; that mentality perpetuates itself to the point where peace of mind becomes impossible. There is no magical cut-off point where you will have "enough"-- by the time you reach your goal, you'll have conditioned yourself to push onward and take more. In a reading this card usually points to the restlessness, discomfort, and anxiety that result from our desires, regardless of whether they're fulfilled. This may be a good time to retire your pig-nose and divert your attention to other aspects of life for a while. Generosity is more difficult to cultivate than greed, but it's a much better long-term investment.
4.17.2009
"The Body Is The Garden Of The Soul..."
A few weeks ago I started the Two Hundred Sit-Ups challenge, which of course led to my attempting the One Hundred Push-Ups challenge. Now I've been suckered into taking on Two Hundred Squats as well, and let me tell you, I feel like I've been kicked down the stairs, but I'm hoping to conquer them all eventually. All three sites allow you to track your progress, and measure out new goals for you based on what you've done so far. All that's required to begin is testing yourself to see how many of whichever exercise you can already do. From there, the path to super-strength (I'd settle for average) is laid out before you, all you have to do is follow it.
This should be a pretty inspirational card for anyone who draws it; the Nine of Coins promises concrete returns on any investment of labor that you can bring yourself to make. The Seven and Eight provide examples of disappointing or mixed results, but the Nine can be considered an unmitigated success story -- an unimpeded process all the way from seed to harvest, all challenges overcome. Drawing this card could mean that you're about to reap the benefits of a work already in progress, but it's also a good omen upon which to start a new enterprise, particularly one that is personal and self-edifying. I chose to highlight fitness goals (as Tony Kushner wrote in Angels In America, "The body is the garden of the soul.") but really anything well-plotted will do, as long as it's something you can tend with your own eyes and hands and effort.
