It comes, it goes...

I live within strong spitting distance of the richest man on earth. I could throw a rock and hit any number of other people that man has also made very rich. This city's (and many many other's at this point) obsession with coffee has made another bunch of people quite flush with cash. I've even served hors d'oeuvres and cocktails in some of their houses as a member of the Gay National Guard. As a member of that esteemed brotherhood of mens, I have catered in decadent houses that would amaze and astound, and feed a third world nation for a year.

While serving food to these people is fun and mildly demeaning, and who doesn't love that, it's not what I do for a living. I teach the music to the kids, more specifically the piano and the clarinet to the lovely children of the 21st century. While I will avoid a diatribe on the qualities of the 21st century child I will say this; attention spans of fruit flies. I think I may soon try strapping a TV to my head and playing hi octane instructional classical music videos (don't laugh) whilst spinning plates from my finger tips and shooting smoke out my ass. Perhaps that will get them to practice. But I digress. I teach the kids the music, and they hand me checks, which I have to say has been one of the nicest parts of the deal this past week, and let me tell you why.

Summers are slow, the some kids take the summer off, some quit all together, and generally there just isn't much money coming in. So, by September of this year I was poor. Not in the way that the smelly guy down on the corner is poor, or the way that that large black woman pulled out through the roof of her home in New Orleans 3 days late was poor, but unable to buy groceries without borrowing money from my friends poor. I have no desire to turn this into some pity party, so no pitying comments, it wasn't that bad.

But it did suck. I was stressed out of my mind as bills kept arriving, as the bank account started to overdraw, and my belly started to rumble (on the brighter side I think I lost a few pounds....). I've known that type of stress a number of times in the last few years, music lessons are not a wealth building proposition, but it's been awhile and I had forgotten how much it sucks. When broke I have no motivation to do anything at all, not even to clean my room, because all I'm thinking about is when the next check will appear and I can get back to my life. Everything goes on hold and even the more fun things in life become stale and loose their draw.

But now I'm through that, my students, who for just this week I love more than my mother, have all given me their parents' money and things will be fine again until next summer. But I couldn't help but sit back and look over the whole situation and be a little embittered by it all, socialist that I am. Waiting on the rich and not so fabulous right in the middle of it all didn't help, certainly, as their income in one day is more than I make in a year (not an exaggeration, if anything it's an understatement, which is crazy to me). But I have an even greater appreciation for the poor, especially the working poor, who's numbers are growing horrifyingly in this country. The stress on ones life is immense, and if my experience is anything like that of other peoples', the energy and desire to make your situation better is perhaps the hardest thing to come by. It's wildly demoralizing and downright angering when some prick drives by in his BMW and throws a McDonald's wrapper out the window while you're walking home with top ramen and plain lettuce.

While unfortunately one can't get it without (perhaps ironically) paying some cash, I recommend checking out Stephen Bezruchka's presentation on Health and Wealth, broadcast on Alternative Radio on NPR (http://www.alternativeradio.org/). Perhaps you can catch it on a broadcast. In a nutshell he says that the lack of "caring and sharing" (while kind of silly sounding he explains it well) and the gap in wealth is making us continuously more unhealthy (we're 29th in the world for developed nations). And, surprisingly, the rich are more adversely effected than the poor. They statistically die earlier because they're wealthy, which is a wee bit poetic. Dark, but poetic.

At the next event I cater I plan on passing out small cards that tell the patrons that their wealth is killing them. That there are documented scientific studies that show having more money than everyone else is eating them alive and that there is only one remedy. My address will then follow, "cash only please". If I get enough I'll share with those for whom I care. Make up your wish lists now.