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Bill: Recent stocking market isolations, gyrations and other manifestations have me – Bill
Smooshfoot just reflecting.
When you think about money in the historical sense – it has a calming effect on one’s
nerves. I have been thinking a lot about monetary systems lately – the strange nature of it.
I think about the actual thing itself, the money - the dollar. What does dollar mean?
Do you know?
It made me think of the Roman soldiers – of course the Roman soldiers were paid in salt,
which led of course to the phrase – worth your salt probably. Well they didn’t fight
very well in the rain – salt seems to me to be an odd way to pay a man, but there they
would go – those legions, shoulder to shoulder and it doesn’t make a bit of sense! They
would overtake the known world for seasonings – I don’t understand it.
How on earth, did our most fundamental transaction – between one and other as human beings,
somehow become abstracted? Wouldn’t it be nice to go into a sandwich shop and be able
to give to that man – a fine length of hickory wood? That’s what a salami man wants – something
for his fireplace. So that he and the wife – perhaps 3 small children like I never
had. How did we get on that s***? How am I supposed to just be reflecting?
Of course you’ve heard me talk many times about the native-American cultures and of
course the beautiful system of wampum that they had – what could be more elegant? Gathering
by the seaside – beautiful shells colored purple by the incoming waves. Myself – of
course, I’ve never actually seen the ocean. My second wife was from a shore town and therefore
I hate the ocean.
There is somebody here that’s in charge and keeping me on the script and when I get
off the script, somebody’s got to say Bill – you’re talking about your divorce again
damn it. I sometimes think that that first man – coin maker, who from the rough materials
he mined from the earth created the first coin.
Who knows what inspired that first coin maker? But I’d love to get a hold of that son of
a b****! If I walked into a shop, see a fine, older perhaps middle-aged woman – ***,
who had in her own life – fashioned certain dolls from available natural materials. You
find her – beautiful, and you’re going to hand her something abstract – something
that is not from you, what kind of culture is that?
Wouldn’t it make better sense – to draw from your pocket, something enormously personal?
Why are the interns laughing? Something that you had made yourself - to barter with this
robust woman. Perhaps you could give her a large hickory log. These are the kind of personal
economies that we have to find. We need to get away from these abstract concepts.
Imagine a more personal transaction. One in which – as the sun goes down, you emerge
from your domicile and walk down the humble sidewalk to your neighbor. You smell coming
from the house – beautiful cooking aromas, but she’s fashioning her famous homemade
tortillas. You knock on the door, she answers – that robust middle-aged woman, and you
accept her warm tortillas. In exchange you give her a humbly fashioned pillow – these
are the kind of smaller transactions that can still save this country. As you go about
your busy day in this grand and great materialistic society, take a little time to make something
and to trade it with someone else.
I’m Bill Smooshfoot and I’m just reflecting.