I was thinking about the possibilities for this blog’s outcome at the end of the first 100 days of Barack Obama’s Presidency. To be more specific, I was thinking about the possible outcomes for my husband and myself and about how writing a blog might actually affect that outcome. The prefix “meta-“ comes to mind - as in the term “meta-cognition” (thinking about thinking.) In essence, in this entry I am metablogging, i.e., blogging about blogging.
So the question is this. Given that I am writing about my husband’s lay-off during the economic down turn, am I the writer and you the reader anticipating that this blog might end up to be an all- too-close-to reality “Grapes of Wrath” tale? We could just call it then, “The Asp of Wrath” (asp being the un-aconym-ized form of A.S.P., one of the many software languages my husband uses to program the software he writes for companies.) The use of “asp,” of course, over other programming languages we could use like JAVA and .net, has a nice sinister snake-like reference appropriate for the sting of foreclosure and Madeoff's madness. Besides, the use of “asp” and “wrath” together creates desired assonance as they do in poetry and this is certainly an economic time of “ass-o-nance”.
The blog of the first 100 days and later the book that would follow, “The Asp of Wrath,” has the potential of being as poignant a drama as its predecessor. Only now we'd feature my husband and I treking eastward instead of westward with our 5th wheel instead of the Joad's broken down pick-up. To add to effect we'd be pulled by some other poor soul going east - someone who actually possessed the truck we truly don't own to haul our RV . There would be scenes of tearful good-byes to my daughter, the gig-less actress in LA and our son the unpaid sound engineer intern in Sylmar. We’d stop along the way to bid adieu to our other son, the still employed graphic designer in Arizona. He’d probably give us some extra cash he had for our trip, and we’d head east along with all the other software engineers and unemployed self-proclaimed geeks and countless others who were non-geeks. Lucky we don’t have a grandma to die along the way!
But how else could a blog like this turn out? I thought, and that thought scared me. I immediately tried to imagine how a scenario of prosperity could manifest itself and manifest itself quickly. It was quite a difficult task. So it occured to me that Barack and I, in order to have a non-Asp-of-Wrath outcome, need to start changing and change quickly. We need to re-listen to our CD’s on “The Secret.” We need to stop saying, "It's going to get worse before it gets better." We have to stop using the word, "dire". Calling reality what it is has never been useful to me. If we have euphemisms for death, for war, for Donald Trump, why can't we have a euphemism for word "dire"? If Taco Bell can call a huge 22 ounce cup of pop "a small drink," then why can’t we call this down-turn a slight adjustment. If we can call whatever it is that Pierce Bronson did in "Mamma Mia" singing, why can't we call this bleak time dancing?
Barack and I have to be careful about getting hooked on the drug of making it through hard times. I remember hearing the mother of a friend of mine, years ago, recall bad times with almost a sense of joy. "Remember when we had only one hamburger left to share, Joey, while we waited on the bed for the repo guys to take the furniture? Those were good times." She actually uttered those words.
And yes, I do find it energizing now to be creative about getting money. I'm glad I thought of doing our taxes right away in anticipation of a refund. I'm glad I thought of selling the lawnmower. I'm proud I got two meals out of the pound of turkey. It was all actually kind of fun.
But I say, we mustn't become too comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s all very romantic to link our arms together and tell each other we suffer through it all with dignity. It’s intoxicating to find the coins in the cushion and get cash for selling our books and junk on ebay and amazon.com. But let us not get too excited about being creative in adapting to scarity. Let's, instead, get excited about being creative in building prosperity with a whole new energy source and creating new paradigms for city developments. Let's believe something miraculous will happen for the people whose homes were foreclosed. I can't imagine what it is right now, but we can believe that it exists. There's no sense in saying we can't make abundance again and quickly.
So I refuse to let this blog end up as "The Asp of Wrath". I'm going to believe that my husband will find an even better job than before, and because of that job, we'll be able to buy a house in this perfect time to buy a house. I chose to believe we'll have enough to add to the abundance of others. It's my belief that a great deal of impropriety (and I use a euphemism here) was going on throughout the country. CEO's were lying to themselves about how they were gaining wealth and justifying their actions with rationalization. They were like the weeds that were choking the garden. Yes, pulling them out has left depressions in the soil, but that's just where we can experience fresh, new and greener growth and a healthier garden.
