Getting/Spending/Laying Waste

October 26, 2007

Filed in: The Home Front, The Middle Ages

I loathe when people tell you how busy they are. I’m like, save it, Sistah, we’re all busy, it’s a busy world out there.

Having said that, it’s been a rough patch of busy-ness here in Swellville, and not the we-sure-are-living-full-lives kind, more the slog-till-you-drop kind.

Which is maybe why I was so struck by this passage in the most recent New Yorker, citing some history book:

“Before the [capitalist] market revolution: Americans grew food and made things for themselves or to barter with neighbors; they were humble but happy, rallying around `enduring human values of family, trust, cooperation, love, and equality.’

After: they grew food and made things to sell, for cash, to cold, unfeeling, and distant markets; they were frantic, alienated, untrusting, competitive, repressed, and lonely.”

Okay, actually I’m none of those things (besides frantic), but after this particular stretch of cash chasing, I do feel powerfully drawn to the bit about growing things and making things.

Of course the entire family would be dead in a week if they actually had to depend on what I’m capable of either growing or making with my bare hands, but you get the point. Dreaming of simpler times etc.

It’s nothing eight hours of sleep wouldn’t cure.

Or six. I’d take six.