axiomatic maxim #1: the road to hell is a trip worth taking
Posted on Thu Jul 26 12:42:00 UTC 2007
A variety of awkward positions, a history of interesting mistakes. They say that there are some things in life that money can't buy, and that the best things in life are free; clichés to be sure but clichés that got that way through being so overwhelming true so many times that they don't bare repeating anymore, except unless as a kind of empty prayer: the futile flapping of hands.
I want to say something brilliant. I want to be an articulate rake, some handsome and charming paragon of gallant haberdashery. If I could I would like to cover myself completely in a riot shield of witty sophistication, but as per typical my tongue grows thick, it congeals in my mouth like a dying fish –- I gape the silent O –- I gasp, helpless.
“Ah well Zebadiah”, says Bobby-Joe. She lives in a mud hut with sixteen children full of dirty faces, the all pervasive smell of linoleum and siphoned gasoline. Oh how wistfully, so wistfully she stares out at the world through the one grainy window of her television screen: the bright lights, the big city vision of unlimited success, a bloated casino Elvis daydream of infinite oxycontin and fast cars and choreographed shoot outs set airbrushed on the Hollywood hills. She pauses. She looks at her husband. He looks back at her. She thinks hard, lips pursed tight together to prevent her mind from spraying out like a fire hydrant from behind clenched teeth.
She speaks, “Ah well Zebadiah, least we got each other right? Best things in life are free, that's what mah mammy always said. Now don't you look at me that way Zebadiah! Don't you call me ignant! I ain't been ignant more than one day in twenty since the day we was hitched. You got no right! Zebadiah, it's looking mightily to me like you just can rustle up your own damn skunk stew for dinner mister - and I don't much care who's turn it is! Come sundown I'm the one gets to sleep in the barn.”
Zebadiah looks back at her with the mild indifference of a collapsed lung.
Which just goes to show that just because something comes for free don't mean it's in any sense worth having. Still, it comes as some comfort that not everything can be commodified. If we enumerate the metaphysical types of things resistant to commercialization we find that they are generally of an experiential nature. I could buy myself a woman for the night, but I can't buy her love. Products and services can both be easily sold for cash dollars but I can't climb up a mountain without actually going and climbing up the damn mountain, you can't fake a summer's day spent drunk with good friends, money can buy all kinds of semi-convincing imitations but it never comes close to the genuine article.
Which is not to say that any of these things come without a cost, they just got no quantitative price tag. Everything worthwhile is expensive in some sense. You spend your time, you break your heart, shed blood, sweat tears, you'll fight and get knocked down and fall over flat like a shadow and offer up the best and worst you have to give, and possibly all for nothing, but possibly, just maybe, for everything.
I wouldn't trade places.
I want to say something brilliant. I want to be an articulate rake, some handsome and charming paragon of gallant haberdashery. If I could I would like to cover myself completely in a riot shield of witty sophistication, but as per typical my tongue grows thick, it congeals in my mouth like a dying fish –- I gape the silent O –- I gasp, helpless.
“Ah well Zebadiah”, says Bobby-Joe. She lives in a mud hut with sixteen children full of dirty faces, the all pervasive smell of linoleum and siphoned gasoline. Oh how wistfully, so wistfully she stares out at the world through the one grainy window of her television screen: the bright lights, the big city vision of unlimited success, a bloated casino Elvis daydream of infinite oxycontin and fast cars and choreographed shoot outs set airbrushed on the Hollywood hills. She pauses. She looks at her husband. He looks back at her. She thinks hard, lips pursed tight together to prevent her mind from spraying out like a fire hydrant from behind clenched teeth.
She speaks, “Ah well Zebadiah, least we got each other right? Best things in life are free, that's what mah mammy always said. Now don't you look at me that way Zebadiah! Don't you call me ignant! I ain't been ignant more than one day in twenty since the day we was hitched. You got no right! Zebadiah, it's looking mightily to me like you just can rustle up your own damn skunk stew for dinner mister - and I don't much care who's turn it is! Come sundown I'm the one gets to sleep in the barn.”
Zebadiah looks back at her with the mild indifference of a collapsed lung.
Which just goes to show that just because something comes for free don't mean it's in any sense worth having. Still, it comes as some comfort that not everything can be commodified. If we enumerate the metaphysical types of things resistant to commercialization we find that they are generally of an experiential nature. I could buy myself a woman for the night, but I can't buy her love. Products and services can both be easily sold for cash dollars but I can't climb up a mountain without actually going and climbing up the damn mountain, you can't fake a summer's day spent drunk with good friends, money can buy all kinds of semi-convincing imitations but it never comes close to the genuine article.
Which is not to say that any of these things come without a cost, they just got no quantitative price tag. Everything worthwhile is expensive in some sense. You spend your time, you break your heart, shed blood, sweat tears, you'll fight and get knocked down and fall over flat like a shadow and offer up the best and worst you have to give, and possibly all for nothing, but possibly, just maybe, for everything.
I wouldn't trade places.