Friday 30 October 2009

The Depression special

I mean Depression with a capital D, though I know 'recession' is the favoured term. When one is paying for tomatoes what could have bought a steak three years ago, there's something wrong somewhere. (I suddenly had a vivid memory of when my dad would bring home a bushel of 'beautiful peaches - just cut off them rotten spots...' - and we'd 'cut off them rotten spots' and have pits...)

One dear friend of mine holds a degree in economics - but later, and thankfully because it ended up meaning a much higher quality of life if a lower income, ended up a comedy writer. This is a day for loose associations (I'm trying to fight off hyperventilating because I just found out that, though the economists insist the cost of living has gone down, an unexpected, recurring, added expense means my net income will be lower in January than it is now... and I already am exceedingly occupied with various versions of cutting off 'them' rotten spots.) When it comes to 'economics,' one indeed must laugh - or one will cry constantly and ultimately be carted off to Bedlam's modern day equivalent.

I read today that the 'cost of living' has not increased this year, or that it was less (by something such as one tenth of a percentage.) I wonder where the economist who cooked up that gem buys his tomatoes... and I say that as one who had very little success trying to grow her own, where Sam could have raised a bumper crop on three feet square of concrete. Still, however one may manipulate statistics, does that mean things are better when prices (and this for simple items) are still through the roof? Yet those hoping for things to improve a bit won't be receiving any 'cost of living' increases... more expenses (whatever the economists want to say), no relief even on the tiny scale of having a tiny bit more in the envelope.

According to 'economics,' the 'economy is good' when just about everyone is broke. Banks are king - foreclosures don't matter in the sense of meaning people are in the street, because debts are wonderful since everyone has to borrow money. The 'economy is bad' when people are surviving. Personally, though no one will admit this (because, deep down, we all fear being indigent, and need to believe we are superior and it cannot happen to us), I think every one of us is afraid. Don't let the wealthy (or solidly middle class) fool you if you are lower class! Sometimes (such as today, when I was ashamed to pray because I know former rich kid Francis didn't mind sleeping in the street with lice using him as a lodging house), after I sing a few choruses of "Richard Cory" and bemoan how being working class meant that even a scholarship girl with degrees she could go through like a deck of cards was greeted with "You don't type?! What could you do - be a waitress?", I comfort myself with the knowledge that many of the upper class have a net worth lower than... well, Francesco's. Their lives are complicated. If they need a car or home, they 'cannot afford one' - because they have to have the home or car in keeping with their status. Many are in debt beyond what my income was, in total, in the course of my entire life. If they do need emergency money, they have to take out loans, at high interest, to borrow their own money, because everything is in retirement accounts (even if they are not yet 30.)

It's no use trying to discuss this - a sympathetic ear is unavailable, because most of us are broke, all of us are hurting, and God forbid anyone should admit this. Headlines can announce that some major, prestigious company let 40,000 people go this season, yet everyone not only is in shock to meet anyone who is unemployed but thinks (or pretends) that all sorts of jobs are available - and that one who is 'hard up' could make double what he makes elsewhere. Poorer relatives cannot expect help from the middle class ones (as they could in my parents' time), not only because the poor one cannot risk the gossip and scorn, but because those less impoverished cannot admit how tight things actually are for them... and they still have huge payments on that Mercedes Benz and the second mortgage to pay...

I wish I could pour out the fear - don't most of us? But I'd not only be whacked for not being rich (everyone who was never married is assumed to be wealthy, by the way), but beaten with that old rod of "why did you work at this or that, when you could have made such a fortune with (the company that sacked 40,000 people this year)?" (Worse - my family have long forgotten my diploma collection, and assume that I learnt to type, since I wasn't a waitress...)

It strikes me, at times, that one of the first questions I'll have for Jesus when I meet him is how a worldly wise, Galilean peasant could have made such an odd statement as that about the "lilies of the field." (Of course, some of you who are overly pedantic - even more so than I - might come out with "You aren't going to meet anyone in heaven..." With apologies to Fulton J. Sheen, my response will then be, "Then you ask Him!") Jesus, after all, was in an occupied territory. The gospels give even those unfamiliar with the period a flavour of exiled, despised lepers - widows' mites - the Son of Man with no place to rest his head. I'm torn in two directions, as are most hybrids (peasants with theology degrees.) My mother took problems of any kind to the Infant of Prague, Mary, or her paisan Gerardo. How I wish I had that kind of trust! Still, those of my generation were in two categories. The rich kids' parents (though in no danger of begging for a place on the housing list any time soon) had somewhat less than what their parents had. The children of the poor had parents who were all too conscious of how much more the kids had than they'd known (even if it was an indoor toilet and a tub), and never let us forget how 'spoilt' we were. Last but by no means least, the nuns from Cork 'laid guilt trips' on us working class kids about who was starving in China (partly because they thrived on guilt - also to fill the mission boxes), though, as I would learn in adulthood, many of them came from backgrounds that were far from poor.

People (whether extended families or friends) tended to be closer in my youth than they are now - more conscious of others - more considerate of others' needs - more likely to help in a crisis in any way they could (even though everyone was broke - though at least that could be admitted.) I know that, for example, my family has survived far worse than I've endured - but I can't help but remember that they had each other. I come from a family where (until recently, when some rudimentary version of the yuppie virus became epidemic) people generally were major "givers." They would have done anything for one another, and often 'did for others' in ways that I could not match. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is doubly afraid because she is far more alone than her parents, aunts, and uncles were. (The rare Italian family member who never marries not only isn't 'alone' in the way that I am, but indeed had siblings looking out for her.... better luck today trying the Infant of Prague...)

How can I beg Jesus to answer that 'lilies of the field' prayer, when I know that a huge percentage of the world's population are living in conditions similar to... well, I suppose peasant, first century Palestine? Yet I can mutter to Jesus, "You had that right" when, in the same gospel, He reminds us that anxiety achieves nothing, and that sufficient to the day is the trouble thereof.

Maybe a glass of that cheap wine will ease my stomach cramps a bit... and I, already expert at turning sueded rayon into something akin to silk, will find a nice disguise and fancy name to call the egg dish I make tonight... which I hope differs a bit from that of last night...

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