I was standing in the parking lot at work talking to Mandi, and she convinced me to photograph my feet. My ever elusive creepy little feet… once again covered.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. It fleetingly produces amnesia, and acts as an anesthetic. When everything seems to be going wrong, if you are lucky enough to have some, you can use it to overcompensate. It is the morphine of distraction.
Nice place, fancy clothes, pretty baubles, and decadent dinners every other night. How many bottles of champagne did you have last month? Happy yet?
Money doesn’t fix things. When you have made a mess of everything money is the band aid on a machete wound. Maybe those people who have exorbitant amounts know how to use it properly. Maybe there is a trick. Maybe you are just tricking yourself.
So you have your kids in the best schools, and have the best baby sitters. They are well fed and nicely dressed. Except they are too young to care, and just like the kittens you brought home, all these things are more for you than them.
But money makes it all seem sorted out. You can’t buy happiness or fix your messes, but you can purchase the proper shams to cover it all up. Window tintings that reflect back what you want people to see along with a massive hand crafted Persian rug to sweep all the leftovers under.
And ta-da! The perfect home, happy children, great career, beauty, elegance, ultimate success. All yours for the low, low price of the inner workings of your soul.
Happy yet? If not, then just go on another vacation. It is within budget, and you have had only, what, five in the last two months? Isn’t that what money is for? To get (run) away for a few days? Then you will have happy vacation pictures to post online. Keep up those appearances.
Besides, that is why you work eighty hour weeks. It keeps you busy and buys all the happiness you could ever want in whatever spare time you may have left.
But there is a catch. While you are running around like a crazed lunatic you are actually accomplishing things. Money couldn’t buy any of it, but they are yours, and no one can take them away. Those are the little rewards you cherish in private. Too special to put on display, but rather quiet, happy victories that no one except you cares about. The little things that keep you going so you can continue performing a maddening never ending play with endless costume changes and elaborate props, fully funded with your own blood. But still, those tiny joys exist even in all the chaos. Happy now? Maybe.
Post from Saturday night….
I am reading an article about love poetry, and one of the things that popped into my head is a song I rather dislike by Justin Timberlake, Mirrors. Every station on the radio seems to be playing this song, and listening to the lyrics I began wondering if Justin realizes the implications of what he is singing.
Although the article is primarily concerned with sartorial discussions, there is a short passage that analyzes the importance of eyes in said love poems and how their description can often be rather unfavorable to the love object despite their beauty.
I don’t think Justin reads medieval love poetry, but his song is the epitome of narcissism.
In this song he sees the object of his affection as a mirror image of himself. She is his “other half,” “staring back” at him. Basically, he doesn’t see her, but rather himself reflected back to him. To take this further, he does not love her, but the image of himself he sees, essentially deluding himself into a frenzy of self love.
Returning to the article, the eyes are used to glimpse at one’s own self, and moreover how this imagery relates to the idea of heterosexual love where a man will love another by using a woman as the central figure to facilitate this exchange. In other words, as he looks into her eyes, he sees himself, and simultaneously the image of another man – usually her husband, or intended husband. So what does Justin see in his song? Himself, or the image of the perfect man he either wishes to be, or wishes to be with? The first examples that come to mind in actual literature are Proteus and Valentine in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Arcite and Palamon of the Knight’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales where the woman is used as a place holder for male love. Granted I only skimmed both quickly just now, I did not notice the eyes as prominent features for this love. However, the idea can be extended, and either way, the actual love object is displaced.
In Justin’s song he states she is the love of his life. This is love, diluted, as it has nothing to do with the actual lover, but rather what she represents, which seems to be everyone else besides herself. Nowhere in the song are her qualities outlined, physical or otherwise. Instead he compiles lists of his own traits that he can now clearly see in her.
While women all of the nation are swooning, wishing they could be the recipient of such a song, I think what a sad existence, always a stand in for someone else, but never appreciated for the self.
As for whoever the recipient was (if there even was one)…
Does she know? Does she care? Does it matter?