Friday Philosophy: Money

Apparently when I was born, I was entered into this huge game, the Game.  I never chose to play it.  Apparently I can’t opt out.

Once upon a time, some women bought some prints of my graphics.  I sold them at a Women’s Project Retreat, I think for $10 a piece or so.  Mostly I had a “booth” to let my artwork display to the community I wished to be a part of a little more about who I am.

Occasionally when I have shown them in the world of solids, someone has asked how much I would sell a print of one of my graphic/poem combinations for.  I’ve asked back, “What do you think it is worth?”  Truthfully I haven’t got a clue.  I’ve always ended up not making a sale.  I have given some as gifts to people who have meant something in my life, on occasions where it seemed appropriate.  But truthfully I have no knowledge of their value.

Nor do I want that knowledge.  Isn’t that a hell of a thing.  I have absolutely no interest in money.  I don’t want to play the Game.  But I’m not allowed to opt out.  Helluva thing.  And people talk about losing freedom?

After I spent two years of involuntary servitude in the Army, I took advantage of a program called the GI Bill in order to return to being a student, the only thing in my life I had ever been successful at.  I got 5 years of money for education in return for that “service.”  [For new readers, I received an honorable discharge as a Spec 5 correctional specialist at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, where I received a Presidential Commendation for work performed in the Prisoner Pay Unit of the base Finance Office.  It was signed by Richard Milhouse Nixon.  No comment.]  I attended Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus for 8 months and then Portland State University for 22 months and graduated with highest honors.  Got to sit on the stage of Memorial Colosseum in Portland and everything, after which my father once again managed to not ay he was proud of me.  But that’s another story.  And with what was left I got a start at the University of Oregon graduate program in mathematics where they let me teach some classes.  And paid me some money.  Damn little money, not enough for a family of three to survive on in the economy of Eugene, OR, but some money anyway.

And I was hooked.  I’m addicted to teaching.  I would do it for free if I could gather an audience.  Sort of like here.  And now.  I do admit that a bigger audience brings me more enjoyment.

At some point they decided that I was so good at being a student, I should be called a teacher.  And they paid me marginally more money.  Subsistence as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t have control of my money.  Ever.  Until I began transition and got divorced.  And that’s another story, too, and one I shall quite possibly never publish.

I’ve sometimes wondered if other kids had to lie to someone to whom their parents owed money.  frosti has told me that she had to take on this responsibility in later years.  Our parents were buying a house privately from Mrs. Palmer.  Too many months I had to answer the phone in case it was her and lie to her, explaining that my parents were not home.  This was my introduction to economics.

Money was borrowed so that I could go to school, but I flunked out…placing a huge financial burden on my family.  So I ran away, to become a homeless hippie sleeping in the parks and the occasional crash pad, living on the streets, panhandling for spare change or a cigarette, or, you know, food in the Haight, and working with the Diggers so that other people would not go hungry or unclothed.  

And on the streets of Skid Row in Seattle I had to make the choice about whether surrendering control of my body was a good price to pay in order to avoid freezing to death.  One meal a day at the gospel mission had to do for food.

Working in a car wash in Coral Gables, I learned that people could push slave wages up to maybe subsistence level by stealing change that had fallen down the cracks of the seats of the cars…subsistence level as long as we were willing to live on day-old donuts and coffee.

I met a woman and she got pregnant.  We had a child in Joplin, MO, to where we had run when the Haight became too dangerous for homeless folk like us.  There began the worst case of codependent behavior my therapist had ever encountered…or heard of.  But I had a mission.  I worked up to 60 hours a week with no medical benefits, for $400 a month, schlepping pizzas while my wife worked as a waitress in a Pizza Hut so that we could feed and clothe our baby.  Our budget allowed $25 every two weeks for food for us…and a variable amount for milk for Jen.  Everything else went for rent to live in a freezing apartment…our heat coming from running the oven with its door open.  And for gas so that we could get to work.  Once a week we splurged and spent more many than we should at a bowling alley with the few friends we had.

But for getting hunted down by the FBI and arrested during my first week at a new job in Venita, OK in 1971 and choosing the Army over the penitentiary, I wouldn’t be here writing this now.  I don’t know where I would be.

Penniless somewhere, I have no doubt.  Or dead.  I suck at the Game I never wanted to play.

Truth is, I didn’t want anything to do with money.  Some people would call it a phobia.  That would include my therapist.  I break out in a cold sweat if I have to play the Game for any length of time at all.

I do not keep track of my bank account, other than to know an approximately value to avoid bouncing checks.  I let the bank keep track of the actual number.  Maybe they’re cheating the hell out of me.  Could be.  I don’t care.  My object is to be able to get up in the morning and either learn or teach.  Preferably both.

It’s nice that I have some place to live in.  It’s not mine.  I’ve never owned, you know, property.  Except the car I bought in the mid-90s so I could visit my friends, who mostly lived hundreds or thousands of miles away.  I donated that car to charity last March.

I try to have as few things as necessary to do my teaching and learning.  I feel bad that I’m using more than my share, in the grand scheme of things.  But people around me play the Game and I sometimes I have to keep them happy, or quite frankly, they probably wouldn’t be around me.  People get freaked by my view of the whole thing.

What I believe (pardon the pronouns, but it is a quote):

Minus any of the surrounding context or subsequent history.

Ideals.  We all have our ideals.  Sometimes they differ.  In an ideal world…in * my * ideal world, people would do what they do because they love to do it and it helps their community.  In my ideal world, of course, the community would be the entire planet and people would actually want to make this a better world for everyone.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  When needs are fulfilled abilities may be honed, for the good of all.  Of course, in my ideal world, people aren’t greedy.  They, like me, don’t play the Game.  Or at least try not to.

My words are free.  How can you sell what is free?

Sometimes people have told me that if I wrote a book, they would buy a copy.  I’m pleased when that happens.  But I also feel that cold sweat thing lurking in the wings.  I don’t know how to do that.  I don’t want to know how to do that.  It seems too much like playing the Game.

So I’ll continue writing the book.  Maybe someday someone else will do what I cannot.

My words are free…which is still a price too dear for some to pay.

Game Pieces Entropy Born into a game I never wished to play Predestined to lose while someone else controls the dice Not born a winner Whole industries created to enticed me into not breaking even Escape from the game impossible I seek (in vain?) to avoid becoming a pawn on someone else’s board –Robyn Elaine Serven –June 27, 2008