Patricia Highsmith: The Prize Is Privacy

Jim Hampton just gave me this massive volume by one of my favorite authors.

“Privacy,” wrote Patricia Highsmith in September 1957. “An expensive thing in the modern world. How many young writers give themselves a chance? It is considered eccentric to like to be alone. 

“Yet for such a short time, either a stay at a country cottage, or absolute quiet for six hours a day produce more than the trouble costs.

“Take yourself seriously. Set a routine. Once you are alone, relax and behave as you will. 

“Stand still for a moment and relish the novel sensation of knowing that you are utterly alone and will not be disturbed by a ringing telephone, a baby’s cry, an order from a boss, a groan or a whine from a spouse.

“Privacy is expensive. Perhaps it costs somebody else something. Relish it. But don’t feel guilty about having it. Take it as your due.

A Swift Sighting of Sonder

Painting by Michael Rimbaud

Behind the windows

Of that passenger train are

Others vivid, gone.

How to Keep Moving

We've got it rough. 

So did lots of honest people throughout history, in the plagues, in the Inquisition, in the Civil War, in the world wars, when we came damn near close to blowing up human civilization when I was 8 years old. 

We can but fight on, or give up. I'm for fighting on with a smile, and assuming we'll eventually get the breaks. 

As Shakespeare said, the night is long that never finds the day.

Rilke: Growth and Loss

 “You suffer, you say, because the people closest to you are distant: this shows that your world is beginning to grow vast. And if what’s near you is far, then how enormous your whole extent, reaching all the way up to the stars. 

“You should be happy about your growth. You can’t bring anyone along with you anyway. Be good to those who remain behind, be calm and self-assured before them, don’t punish them with your doubts or frighten them with the confidence and joy they cannot understand. 

“Try to have some kind of simple, loyal common ground with them that doesn’t necessarily have to change when you yourself change and change again; love in them life in a different form; be considerate of the elderly who fear the loneliness you are learning to trust.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I Call It 'Kleptocapitalism'

Whatever the “free market” economic theories, it’s clear that the de facto function of American corporate kleptocapitalism is to collude to make basic goods EVER MORE EXPENSIVE for ordinary citizens — health care, insurance, rent, cable TV, water, the internet, you name it. 

Corporations call it “anticipated earnings.” Criminals call it “vigorish.”

Corporate Criminals Now Go Free

Thom Hartmann: "In the 1980s, Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan industry; predictably, within a few years, a handful of executives had made themselves multimillionaires while hundreds of thousands of families across America were wiped out. The Justice Department stepped in and prosecuted 1100 banksters, 839 were convicted, and over a hundred went to prison.

"When the so-called "Dot-com Bubble" burst around the turn of the century, dozens of bigshot executives from Enron, WorldCom, Qwest and Tyco, among others, were prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. We were still occasionally sending executives to prison as late as 2005.

"Not anymore.

"After Glass-Steagal was repealed in 1999, banksters spent the next decade lying to investors around the world about the value of their "Collateralized Debt Obligations" and other recently legalized "exotic" financial instruments that were packed full of "liar loans" and bad mortgages.

"That led straight to the Bush Crash of 2008, when guys like Steve Mnuchin (who threw over 30,000 California families out of their homes) and Jamie Dimon got fabulously richer. America bailed out the Wall Street banksters to the tune of over a trillion dollars.

"But only one guy went to jail for the thousands of lies, frauds and outright crimes that occurred during the Bush years and led to the Bush Crash. He was a mid-level banker born in Egypt (who grew up in Michigan), has brown skin, and his name was Kareem Serageldin."

Saved by a Liberal Arts Degree

Yes, a university liberal arts education is so useless, I'm sure the rich will stop sending their children to get them at expensive private schools. Or is it only the working class and the middle class who are supposed to remain ignorant of the finer things in life?

Here's Why Fox News is Never Exposed

 

This is the way the dirty game is played between the GOP fascists and the cowardly corporate news media.

Looking at Liquid

Like a crystal ball,

The clarity of water

Invites the eye.