(Howell Creek Radio address for June 6, 2011 -- ) # Eggplant Suede Chairs Trixie and I determined that we would spend Friday evenings at the coffee shop by the University. It's seventeen minutes away, but this coffee shop stays open until midnight, so we suffer ourselves the horror of spending seventeen perfect minutes alone in the truck together. Just recently we were married, although I prefer to think of it more like she promised to "move in with me for life" -- hits all the same notes of commitment and togetherness but it just feels more homey somehow. I only mention it by way of explaining how, although of course things change after marriage, the telling thing for us was how many things stayed the same, only better. Trixie could have been all like, "no more of those evenings at the coffee shop!" But I married the right one; she not only approves, but what is better, we go together. We are two of a kind, cut from the same bolt of honest, homespun cloth. We both need to write and journal, we both need to get out and drink something hot, and what is more, we are both confronted with the same problem: how to carve out of the raw granite-block of life something that we can really enjoy looking at. The conflict is an old one. We both crave a life together that is reflective, thoughtful and creative; which demands in the first and last case, _time_, lots of time, time to think and reflect and create. But a need for time suggests a need for money and a need for money suggests a lot of wearisome busywork. Wearisome busywork is the bane of reflectivity and creativity. Meanwhile, money is tight, and time already runs through our fingers like water. We have a house to finish building in the next two months somehow and bills to pay. These questions weighed heavily on us. We held hands and walked into the coffee shop in subdued silence. We sat down in the eggplant suede chairs with our drinks and a piece of coffee cake between us. We looked into each other's eyes as we chewed and sipped, and I could tell we were both lost in thought, lost in the deeper questions, lost in some far-flung wavelength of life's puzzles and possibilities -- but it was the _same_ wavelength. We were truly at one in thought, whatever else might be happening. "Someday you just know they're going to make a modern version of Anne of Green Gables and she's going to work in a coffee shop," I said. "She'll find a mouse in the caramel." "Noooo, that would not be cool," said Trixie. "Well unless they did a really good job of it, you know, like the new Sherlock Holmes," I said. "Hmmm, true," she said, considering. * * * _Shades of emotion, No. 312:_ That curious mixture of wistful regret, envy, amusement and disbelief you get when a perfectly snatchable opportunity glides soundlessly past you, and, just when it is out of reach, turns and waves. This kind of thing happens all the time in the stock market, but I gave up on the stock market ages ago. I taught myself the ins and outs of investing with a brokerage account several years ago, and I happened to turn a decent profit; but, after brokerage fees and taxes, it turns out I simply am not rich enough to invest on a big-enough scale to make it pay. I also am not good enough at telling the future to make winning long-shot bets. So no, I wasn't alive in time to buy Intel at six, but even if I had been around I would probably have passed. I _was_ around last May, however, when a new digital currency called "bitcoin":http://www.weusecoins.com/ was trading at about 6 cents per bitcoin. It's the kind of wonky technical crypto-project I would have sunk my teeth into if only I'd known about it, no doubt about it. I'd have accumulated a few thousand of them without hardly even trying, and today they'd be worth sixteen bucks each, a cool fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars would solve a lot of my problems just now. But it's the emotion I'm talking about now. It _feels_ as if, let's say, I'd been going to the same coffee shop every week for years to hang out with pals, and then one week I didn't make it for whatever reason, and then when I did I show up, everyone was like hey, check it out, John Travolta showed up last week and gave each of us a Porsche! I'm pretty philisophical about things like this. I must not have really needed a Porsche. It doesn't really mess with my zen thing. The planet Earth is my Porsche, driving me around the solar system at 67,000 mph, so there. But on the way to work I'd purse my lips just a little, and you know in my mind I'd be tellying everyone else on the road, "I _could_ gone to coffee last week, and then I'd be driving a Porsche just now and have John Travolta's cell phone number. I just decided not to, you know. I can take or leave these things." Dang it. I guess we still have an opportunity to prove to ourselves that maybe the artistic, contented life isn't solely the provenance of the millionaire. In my gut, alas, I would still much rather have my fare down that road all paid for. But if such joys can eventually be farmed out of nothing more than the raw, untilled land of the creativity and energy of two lower-middle-class newlyweds, then maybe that's a path worth hacking out, and one that would bring hope for others besides. Maybe it wasn't worth fifty thousand free dollars to give up that chance. _Maybe._ > And Nature, day by day Has sung in accents clear This joyous roundelay 'He loves me, he is here Fal la la la fal la la la He loves me, he is here Fal la la la fal la' * * * Synopsis: ---------------- Radio address for June 6, 2011. Maybe if you're denied a pile of money, you're better able to think outside the box and focus on what matters. But who wants to be denied a pile of money. I ask you. Music is [_Ah, Leave Me Not to Pine_][1] performed by the King's Singers, and [_Awaiting Spring_][2] by Benji Flaming. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013AWO5U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399701&creativeASIN=B0013AWO5U [2]: http://benjiflaming.com/2011/03/31/monthly-music-sketch-1/