Intensity of the monetarised economy

I need to read my economics textbooks all over again. I'm not sure what the formal terminology is for the intensity of the monetarised economy, i.e., the process of bringing more and more of life under a monetary system.

The day-to-day economy of Moldova, for example, hardly used any money back in 2001. Where I live, without money you simply don't eat. This is valid even if you eat at a soup kitchen, which is ultimately funded by people who have jobs in the formal economy, either via donations, or via taxes.

In our apprehension of Mammon, I think we need to take into account just how intensely monetarised our daily-life is. It's one thing to be concerned about money in self-sustained rural Moldova where you don't need it, and it is another to be concerned about money in some parts of county Durham where you need it to live.

I'm just upset because the introduction of a monetarised economy on the shore of lake Victoria meant that the Nile Perch became internationally profitable and now countless Western mothers have blogs with pictures about how to cook filets of Nile perch.

Of course, the population on the shores of Lake Victoria which produces them does not work in the fish-processing factories and cannot afford the fish. It can barely afford the fishs' heads, if it's got any bit of money that is. And to get it? Well, there's always prostitution.

In fact, the whole situation is even worse... The fish heads need smoking, and as a result many of the area's trees have been chopped off. What's more, in order to transport the fish to Europe, investors look for the cheapest planes... Russian planes... which, on their way from Russia to Africa bring over discarded Russian weapons for whover happens to want them, and we know who that is.

This fish is the evilest thing on the planet, I promise. I know I'm only blogging about it years after everybody else blogged about Darwin's Nightmare, but this is just unbelievable.

Here are two statements from the documentary's director:

It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores.

It seems that the individual participants within a deadly system don't have ugly faces, and for the most part, no bad intentions. These people include you and me. Some of us are "only doing their job" (like flying a jumbo from A to B carrying napalm), some don’t want to know, others simply fight for survival.

When it comes to deeds

In 2001, I was living in central Madrid with Adriana, a 55 year old diva (for real, a singing diva!). We didn't get along too well. I think she was a bit bitter that she had to take in someone new to make the rent, she was dead-set on not letting me change any of the decoration, and we had different standards of hygiene. It was not a catastrophically conflictual situation either, but on occasions we passed like ships in the night rather than really share the place. A few times we ate together, I gave a her a couple of massages, and she once borrowed my version of Pie Jesu to train for a concert she had to give.

Adriana really didn't strike me as the most kind-hearted person on the planet, and definitely not a do-gooder. Yet her situation in artsy, marginal Madrid during the Movida (and before) meant that her friends had taken the brunt of the 1980's Aids crisis. Because the "artsy" community is extraordinarily transient and noncommital, Adriana became one of the few permanent fixtures. As it happens, when two or three of her friends became ill from Aids, she was the one to visit them every day, bring them food, and hold their hand when they were dying. I had moved in about three weeks after the last one had died, and I only found out much later.

My aunt doesn't have the best reputation on the maternal side of my family. Emotionally speaking, she's rather harsh and can be hurtful. I suspect she makes up stories a lot of the time too. She's not instantly likeable in a "cute movie" sort of way. She's also outwardly religious. Because she lived near my grandfather, she took responsibility for his well-being, coming to have lunch with him, driving him to hospital, etc. before he died in June. And this despite the fact that my grandfather used to beat her, threw her out of the house at 19, and never ceased to express his fondness of her younger sister, my mother.

After the death, my mother did not want to sell the house, to which she was very attached, while my aunt needed the money for her projects to move down South. In the course of a few months, she not only processed the hurt of having been beaten and thrown out of the house as well as that of losing her father after having done all of the caring, she also put her projects on holds (she's in her mid 60's) so that my mother, the baby, would have the time to grieve.

Parents of angels

“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.”

This is my third post about Sandra’s blog and I’m still not linking. I think I’m afraid of being traced back by her. By comparison, my own blog seems like a collection of irrelevant musings, and the last thing she needs is someone pontifying from a “Christian” perspective. I don’t think there is anything that Christians can say to a mother they don’t personally know whose 28-month old son died before her eyes. I would find it indecent to draw her attention to this place, even indirectly.

But increasingly, I realise that her blog involves 100 times more pistis than mine does. A couple of days ago, she wrote: “it’s so long; it’s so hard to have to wait to see you, to tell myself that I have to wait out my whole entire life for the hope of, one day, just hold you in my arms again”. In French culture (and surely in other Western cultures as well), parents whose children have died refer to themselves as parents of angels. Their children might have become angels, but the adults left on Earth are still their parents and the relationship remains, in which the kids still love their parents, care for them and even need their love, to an extent.

I really, really love the orthodox understanding that the Church is all the living and all the dead, together assembled before God, at any time. And I believe that there is not better example of this than the inter-status love displayed by Sandra. She and her son are one of the most visible manifestations of the Church eternal.

Type B

For a little while now, I have been dating a former high-profile lawyer turned diocesan super-priest whom everybody believes will be a bishop in no time. I’m also in the final days of writing up my PhD. My high-achiever boyfriend does not see what the big deal is. He does try, but at the end of the day it’s just a piece of written work, right? Today, a computer scientist came to fix my computer. He was extremely shy, sweet and soft-spoken, with a foreign accent I couldn’t place. A minute after he left, I dissolved into tears and found myself longing for an environment in which the high expectations were gone and we could all be shy, sweet and soft-spoken.

This made me laugh!

How holy is your cublicle?

Scattered thoughts

Indulgence without repentence. Jesus is my best buddy. I’m sure he’ll understand. I’m sure he likes me as I am. Loses the meaning of grace. Like fresh water on my red-hot shame. Indulgence without repentence, a take-away coffee and a cinnamon bun, while the world burns. I’ve said it before, the only grace there is the grace that changes your life. And it’s the only one I want.

My church is in the business of embodying indulgence, and maybe it is right. For if the people know little, they sure should know that. God’s grace will flow their way, no matter what. Food for the babes. So we live without the burn, we live without the scream, there is no way we’re entering this mighty wall of flames. Until someone we love will lure us into it. Life begins in purgatory.

(Obvious) parallels

If willfully ignoring the WWII holocaust turned people into unspeakable assholes, then willfully ignoring the holocaust in the DRC turns us into unspeakable assholes. In fact, we may know more than they did.

And yet, appart from supporting NGOs, I've no idea what we can do. Sometime I feel so utterly disempowered that I wonder if I'm not uncounciously wishing that there was nothing I could do. In a way, that would be sort of convenient. Hey, I'm a nice girl. I even say it when a cashier operator gives me back too much change, and do I ever...

Life in the mainstream: loneliness online

Quand l'écran s'allume je tape sur mon clavier
Tous les mots sans voix qu'on se dit avec les doigts
Et j'envoie dans la nuit
Un message pour celle qui
Me répondra OK pour un rendez-vous

Message électrique quand elle m'électronique
Je reçois sur mon écran tout son roman
On s'approche en multi
Et je l'attire en duo
Après OK elle me code Marylou

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Quand j'ai caressé son nom sur mon écran
Je me tape Marylou sur mon clavier
Quand elle se déshabille
Je lui mets avec les doigts
Message reçu OK code Marylou

Quand la nuit se lève et couche avec le jour
La lumière vient du clavier de Marylou
Je m'envoie son pseudo
Mais c'est elle qui me reçoit
Jusqu'au petit jour on se dit tout de nous

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Quand l'écran s'allume je tape sur mon clavier
Tous les mots sans voix qu'on se dit avec les doigts
Et j'envoie dans la nuit
Un message pour celle qui
A répondu OK pour un rendez-vous

Goodbye Marylou,
Goodbye...

Michel Polnareff

(I really like Polnareff, because he's frequently quite vulnerable and "needy", and sometimes his stuff is just plain cathartic. Goodbye Marylou is one such song in which he almost beats Wim Wenders' 1980's sensibility. Polnareff can also be credited for introducing Christian universalism to the quasi totality of the French population, with the hilarious song On ira tous au paradis, [lyrics here])

Less magic

The universe has lost its magic. I think I stopped believing in a God that would intervene in the physical world all that much, and, as a result, the world seems a lot less safe. I think the miracle narratives are valuable not so much because people were getting cured of various ailments, but because they show that the Lord cares, and that his love is inconditional.

I'm a bit ashamed to say that, for a period, I used to read plenty of little signs here and there. But after reading Sandra's blog, I have taught myself not to. "So God would send me a sign that I may after all survive my PhD, and not delay by a milisecond the deathly car accident that took Sandra's two-year old?" Well, maybe not.

But anyway, the world still felt empty with or without direct divine intervention. Even the experiential God was hard to sense, for me it was a totally new way of relating to the Divine...

This yukky dry spell did not go away. But the other night I think I grasped why. It's all well and good to have my own sense of God. But of the people around me might have another. I think I was being introduced into someone else's experiential landscape, someone fairly close to me.

I realised that it was no help being on my little Quaker cloud when the people I love are not on it with me. And so I embrassed this dry spell for the time being. This all happened in one split second though. Next thing I knew I was back on the dry spell.

At school, during tests, one of our teachers used to ask: how's the grub? We used to grumble something mildly annoyed in way of a response. I sometimes picture God asking the same question.

(On this empathetic note, I'm actually happy to report that another mum who also lost her baby and who lives close-by has gotten in touch with Sandra. They've met a few times. She'd never mentionned anyone like this before, or any kind of support system solid enough to cope and not disintegrate in the face of this tragedy. I don't know Sandra at all, but I was devastated by her divorce. Blogs are a funny thing.)

God's poetry

"I tried to write a poem in Mandarin about you. I wanted to make you understand how I feel. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t. I tried for days. The more I wrote, the more empty my words sounded. At first I felt panic; I could not sleep for many nights. But then the pain would go away every time I saw your face, or just heard your voice.

I used to write poetry because to me, it was like writing a letter to God. To tell someone I couldn’t see how I felt inside. Then finally God replied with a poem more beautiful than anything I had ever written. He gave me you. You are my poetry from God, Orked. Let me hear your voice. Please call me. I’ll be waiting. Please call me, Orked, so I can sleep peacefully again." From Sepet.

This cracks me up

Click for larger picture...

Note: I'm having trouble finding the source of this cartoon. I basically found it while looking for something else, then forgot about it, then today looked for it again with a couple of keywords in Google Image. Google links to a blog, but once on the blog I could not find the pic, so I don't know who the author is. Please leave a comment if you do.

Sunday morning...

"Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."

Francis Bacon