Brother Can You Spare...?

It's hard to lose myself in television distraction when the constant disturbing election ads insult our intellectual sobriety.  Both sides slinging perpetual political mud and manipulating information that warps any attempt to distinguish truth. The massive money spent on these contests that could be spent to ease world hunger or bail us out of this medical morass... new teeth for all. I can't find peace, nor any comforting scenario.  It's like watching my two least favorite teams duking it out in a pre-doomed Super Bowl that will surely end in a brawl. 

I lie in bed trying to imagine a third Constitutional Party which would represent equality and reason... but I also realize my moneyed friends are loath to give up more than a small pittance of the warehouse of gain they've put aside and invested. New York City, I am told, now represents three trillion dollars in wealth. If the banks kept their holdings in $100 bills they'd have to reach the size of the massive new Data Centres just to accommodate. Monopoly money, we called it in the good old days.  Now it's AI money, galactic proportions... 

As a longtime stubborn owner of a formerly inexpensive apartment, I've watched many friends reluctantly leave a city they loved. Rents rose more drastically than my HOA.  But now... I'm reaching a saturation point. Just a few years ago I used to visit a homey little midtown office and deliver my crumpled bar-money in an envelope to a kind man. I felt damned self-righteous and tough-- a single Mom earning a living and self-supporting my little family. Now new management requires electronic payment, sends bills with constant increases and assessments one cannot fight; no one replies.  For this automation they charge a huge fee and treat me with condescension and disrespect-- as though intelligence and wealth were bedfellows. After deducting my HOA I have barely enough to cover my crappy health insurance for which I am charged disproportionate fees while being notified once again my minimal plan is discontinued due to lack of profitability.  Health? Medicine?  That is secondary. We are a sick country.  

Here in the city we have elected a social democrat mayor but even he cannot remedy the massive discrepancy between rich and poor. Welfare is expensive here.  Most just receive their monthly benefits and shut up.  As for the low-end workers and artists and the struggling-- we are caught between extremes... the young are amassing debt and partying hard, the baby boomers often sit on family trusts, and the rest of us are being silenced. I enter my old age with trepidation and financial handicaps. I remind myself how I love to read, how my food stamps get me free access to museums, how I can still play my ass off when I get the underpaid opportunity. Lol. Occasionally the club buys one a drink and my Senior Omnicard gets me home for $1.50 where I do not dare turn on air conditioning or extra lights for fear my electric bill will be prohibitive.

I'm reading Saramago's 'Seeing' which begins with a foiled national election in which eighty-five percent of voters cast blank ballots.  It's kind of a revolutionary idea, and manages to stonewall a democratic process which, as the narrative goes on, is less and less a democratic demonstration than an opportunity for persecution and autocratic control.  It's a frightening scenario-- the sequel to his brilliant 'Blindness' which explored the societal consequences of an epidemic Oedipal metaphor. Paradoxically, the darkness of the subject is offset by exquisite weaving of language and vocabulary. One remains enthralled. 

US paper money is fairly ugly although finding a coin or quarter on the sidewalk always strikes me as a kind of sign.  Dimes are my favorite; they are so humble and unobtrusive. When I worked a cash register back in the early 1970's a roll of dimes had a special feel to it. In the final Dawn Powell New York novel one of the perpetually-broke and alcoholic characters describes the 'ecstasy' of finding a dime in the gutter. In those days, it was a 'tipping' coin.  I worked in a diner for a few weeks in high school and a cup of coffee was still ten cents. Cops left a quarter which made a generous tip. My little apron pockets were filled with dimes. Some people these days don't pick up coins; they don't want jingling pockets or excess weight... or maybe the germs we thought they carried during the pandemic.

Ironically Tencent Holdings despite the name is one of the largest media companies in the world.  Like many successful conglomerates they have interests in everything from the military to music publishing. When I was a girl my father gave me a few Japanese yen coins.  They were near-weightless and felt like toy money. Unlike our poor obsolete pennies, they are still being manufactured. 

One of the great pleasures of old noir films is watching the characters put a dime in a payphone. I remember so well the feeling of this-- how my Mom put dimes in our loafers so we could call her in an emergency. We'd walk to school and carry nothing but a small stack of books held together with a rubber strap.  I'd look down at my shoes and feel safe. The irony of this seems especially poignant tonight when I am straining to solve the challenges of this month-- the plumbing repair, the fuel surcharge, the insurance increase. I thank God I am still here--old enough to remember these tiny rich moments with which I try to feather my aging proverbial nest, from a time when a pair of dimes was all the insurance we required.