Wealth

Mention of debtlessness and money reminded me of one of my many character flaws. I have no desire to pursue wealth. Is that a flaw in these times? In this land that is our land? I think of it sometimes when i think that any image I might have among the world at large would be improved formidably if I earned great amounts of money, or simply made more than you.

Greed is a character flaw but is not lack of greed similarly counterproductive? If greed is too strong a word then maybe “lack of ambition” is more appropriate.

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Wandered upper east side for a spell today. I found one of the first payphones I used when starting the payphone part of .MOBI. It is outside a school. When I called from that phone a year or 2 ago I noticed the sounds of bells from the school, bells which I assume signaled the beginning or end of a class period.

It made me realize that I have no memory of those sounds from my schools. Surely those sounds existed but they are erased from my mind, with not even a vague association to work with.

The only sounds of that sort that I remember from school was the clocks from grade school. They were machanical clocks that made a very deliberate sound with the milestone of each passing minute. The new minute was preceded by a light thud sound, followed by a decisive thud as the minute hand moved forward one precious minute, leaving the previous minute behind for eternity.

I also found a phone near the restaurant where I took myself out for a steak dinner to celebrate moving on from the Apology Project. As undue an influence as that experience held over me I cannot imagine being so vulnerable to such a thing today.

I lived on the east side from 1993-1997 (I think). I had a shoehornable apartment on 78th Street. The place was tiny but i liked it a lot.

One time some friends from the lower east side came up to visit. They were all white, and one of them said “Look at all the white people!” I replied “It’s just another ethnic neighborhood.” The others glowered at me in disbelief and confusion.without saying the words aloud they were saying that white people aren’t ethnic, they are just… white.

I don’t think it is controversial to say that a white neighborhood is an ethnic neighborhood any more than saying a Beethoven symphony is an example of ethnic music.

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Yesterday was a long wander around Manhattan. Crowded streets nearly made me claustrophobic, but I was rewarded by a set of peoplewatching photos from the upper level of a sandwich shop — one of those “upstairs seating” areas that is almost always completely empty, even during lunch hour.

People, human beings, are fascinating and interesting creatures. After looking through the pictures from yesterday, pictures of unpretentious to-ing and fro-ing of people in the Garment District, I found myself looking at live humans differently. Mouths are puvkered or grim. Clothing is scruffy or well-appointed. Posture is rigid or relaxed. Wealthy people rub elbows with the poor as I rob them both by confiscating their visage and potentially posting it to a global computer network. Specimens. I seize peoples’ countenances and thrust them onto the world stage as examples of human specimens.

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I need more Manhattan in my days. I could taste the taillights yesterday, and the street pavements felt like cake under my heavy shoes. Looking up 3rd Avenue I wanted to fuck it all, fuck the setting sun and the oversized caterpiller-style buses, fuck the air as I breathed it in.

I used to look for God in Manhattan. Sometimes I thought I saw It at the bottom of a big hole, other times in the reflection of a cab driver’s sunglasses.

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Overheard last night, black woman in her 30s talking on the phone, all I caught was: “OF COURSE I CHANGED WHEN I HAD MY SON. I MATURED. STUPID.” I laughed and laughed, hoping to remember every word of the statement before getting home and writing it down. “I MATURED. STUPID.” Nothing spells maturity like calling someone “stupid.”

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I think I could stand to make more money. Not for greed or averice but for appearances. Success in America is calculated largely on financial intake.

I overheard an absurdly heated argument about Tiger Woods the other night. One fellow thoughttiger was a God among mortals not just for his golfing but for his generosity in donating so much of his fortune to charities. I was not in the argument and did not interrupt, but when fabulously wealthy individuals give money to charity I feel like it is a cop out. There is no way these poeple could spend their money on themselves if they lived a thousand lifetimes, and while charitable donations are not to be shrugged off I think the rich have a responsibility to invest wisely.sinmply dumping millions into charities is quick and easy, though, you can’t deny that. I think Bill Gates and to a lesser extent Ted Turner represent intelligent and farsighted investments of wealth into the greater good.

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Looking through an open window i see an enormous television. Television looks strange out of context. Look for www.egaugnal.com, my little monument to pre-DTV tv, when tv screens were rounded and thus inviting of viewers’ sympathies. TV became hyperreal with the flatscreen thing, more real than reality but not something which attracts sympathies of viewers. I do believe Marshall McLuen was right when he said that TV would lose its charm when it became too real.

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Windows are open.
Windows are open.
Everywhere I look,
windows are open.

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