"There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income" (Edmund Wilson).
Need clothes, shoes, things. Decide to go to fashionable mall. Drive in traffic and sit on interstate. Get frustrated. Then angry. Get to mall and turn around. Go back to your little village. Decide never to go out of your village again. Pity others. Shop on Avenue. Be happy. Have drink at beautiful sidewalk cafe. Go home. Read. Make dinner. Watch Olympics. Have whiskey. Fall asleep on couch. Dream you are young enough, strong enough, quick enough, fast enough.
Life will beat you when you expect it to be better. It could be, and it is the promise of that which provides the friction. Like those who've come before us, we believe that "tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further. . . and one fine morning. . . ." There is always that promise. There is The Dream.
It is falling just this side of it that makes it all maddening, knowing it is there.
do we REALLY know it's there?
ReplyDeleteI do. I live with it. I see it every day.
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