Token to Borading House Denizens Around the Table from an Old Photo Album

In this boarding house it is crowed. It is crowded in this crowded city. Time is now. The place is sitting at this here formica topped dining table – eating (nothing fancy – an unidentified roasted meat, potatoes with lumpy gravey and some mashy peas). A friend of mine arrives and wants to be put up in this house. We make room for him in spite of some grumbling. He may have to sleep on the floor. Later someone else arrives and he gave my name as a reference (yes, I do believe I once met him and may have mentioned to him this place where I am staying). The landlord reluctantly gets up and finds him a space also. I hear a rumor the landlord  is pissed at me. I go to see him. He gives me a lecture about following the rules and says that he requires advance reservations of at least thirty days and that I’m never to do this again. I try to placate him. I don’t know why he is so pissed. He is making money hand over fist and has me as a scapegoat for the complaints from the other tenants regarding these crowded conditions – but everyone must play the game and I apologies and tell him I won’t do it again.

MONEY


Money is a token
Sometimes a token is money
Sometimes a token is ersatz money
Ersatz money is still money
All money is money
But not all tokens are money
Money is not any thing
Money is a token

Arm in arm with your / fiancé you stood // and glared into the lens (slightly out of focus) / while the public eye scrutinized your shape – Basil Bunting – Collected poems, 2003 p116

To believe your own bullshit is often tragic or at the very least delusional

The tradition of dead generations weights like a bad dream on the minds of the living – Karl Marx – Eighteenth Brumaire

The value of the derivatives market is about ten times the value of the output of the entire global economy. The value of the US government’s commitment to bailout the banks who created this glut of derivative trading was a third of the value of the output of the global economy – or about one dollar for every 30 dollars in the derivative market.

Thinking for successful everyday adaptation requires not only factual knowledge, but the ability to recall it on the right occasion, to relate it to other occasions – Lawrence Weiskrantz – Consciousness Lost and Found, 1997

Poets have to be
     Creative
With the words of
     A language
They have to trod
     Unearthen paths
Flowcharts and recipe cards
      Are of no avail
Calendars nor stopwatches
      Mark progress
They are all on
      Their own, alone

The edge of steel and the glean of ivory are dulled, hives of bees, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air – Pliny the Elder

Only 52% of US personal income came from wages last year, another 17% came from government programs

The good numbers aren’t necessarily the winners, this being a matter of fate, not of money… which means that the losers can be lucky all the time – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p317

59% of adults now access the Internet wirelessly using a laptop or cellphone
[She] had known many men without becoming soiled; some women are like that, like horses caked in lather and the dust of the road, who emerge from the lake cleansed, so noble of form, so glowing with sunshine that you feel proud of them – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p300

Only two states flatly forbid civilians to carry concealed weapons – one state does not regulate concealed weapons at all, nine states have “may issue” concealed gun permits and the remaining 38 states require that concealed weapon permits “shall be” issued unless there exists a good reason for denying such a permit.

No such thing as a port! Not even a berth in the cemetery, unless you can produce half a loaf for the gravedigger – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p116

A Sheep dog – a self-descriptive term for a gun owner and advocate of concealed carry reflecting his believe that by carrying he is thereby protecting the rest of us [the sheep]. What I am curious aboutf is who is the Shepard of this methaphor?

The remedy is metaphysically achieved, not therapeutically: the cure does not lie in finding a cause and rooting it out – Henry Miller – The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941 p33

The victim injury rates of all violent crimes in the United States committed by felons with a weapon:
      Blunt object  36%
      Knives        28%
      Firearms      15%

There are … many sorts of memory, and emotional memory is one of the deepest and least understood – Oliver Sacks – Muscophilia: tales of music and the brain, 2007 p202

13% of the victims of a violent crime tried to attack or threaten the offender. About 2% of the victims use a weapon to defend themselves and about 1% bransihed a firearm. 30% of convicted felons claim to have had to face a firearm in the commission of a crime

Medical men are not interested in health, but in combating sickness and disease. Like other members of society, they function negatively – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p37