Cry me a river of molten gold

In NZ, I don't think there are 90,000 square foot houses.

I started to write about whinging, because I'm playing with the sound of the word in my head.  Whining is totally onomatopoeic, right?  Whinging, however, well, I'm not so sure.  I'm trying to decide.  If I whine, I sound like "whiiiiiiiiieeennnneee."  I don't really play with that soft /j/ palatal while I'm complaining.  My whines are pretty strictly comprised of screechy vowels let loose like a punctured balloon.

Anyhoo, whether you whinge or whine, please join me in a collective gasp of offense at this article from Saturday's Wall Street Journal, which describes the awful-- just awful-- economic woes of the 1%.  These folks are struggling.  Did you know?  It's heartbreaking.  Go ahead and cry in your ramen.  I'm wringing  tears from my sleeve to use for laundry later.

I like to cruise the Wall Street Journal.  I do it with the same tourist sensibility that I use when I ogle La Jolla or Malibu homes.  I like to imagine where the dirty laundry is piled, whether the toilet lid is up or down, whether the puppy's pee stain ever really came out of the carpet.  I imagine the fights between mothers and daughters, because these always happen, and the just as inevitable silence between fathers and their adolescent sons.  And I imagine how much more effort all these things might take because of the colossal scale of the living quarters.  Like, how many toilet lids are there to close?  How many hidden corners did the puppy exploit?  If you've got room, someone's going to get lost in it.

Which is why it's always boggled my mind why someone would want to showcase their wealth so ostentatiously.  Do you really need two home theaters and thirteen bathrooms?  Do you have to have a bowling alley and six soaking pools inside?  Why would you ever make use of the 20 cars in the garage if you had all that at home?  Why bother with a yacht if you can roller-skate around your great hall when there aren't 500 people doing the Viennese waltz or cabbage patch in it?

I mean, really, we're all going to suffer the same first-world problems.  We have a choice, however, of how much harder we choose to make it on ourselves.  If I ever have millions, I can promise you that I'm not building a house with it.  Unless it's one of those prefab enviro things with a small, sunny courtyard in the middle and a lot of solar panels.  Multiple bathrooms are really overrated.  And 20 cars.  Can you imagine dealing with the registrations on all of them?

But clearly, I am unAmerican in my dreaming.  If I was a true patriot, maybe I would want more.  Like, say, the Siegels did.  In the article, the Siegel family laments the calling of multiple loans on a 90,000 square foot property they were building in Florida.  Mrs. Siegel wanted enough space for 500 guests because the 26,000 square foot place they have now doesn't fit more than 400 people comfortably.  Her husband made bank selling timeshares, I guess.  It's been tough over the last few years so the plans they laid to own the largest single family home in the States have been scraped.  Poor family.  They had to give up their Gulfstream too, a tragedy which caused one of their children to question the presence of strangers on a commercial flight they recently took.  (I'm going to guess they were in first class when the kid asked because in economy, someone surely would have alerted an air marshal.)  Don't be too sad, though.  The Siegels still get to use their Gulfstream on occasion with the bank's permission.  Just like all those people who are losing their homes and cars get to use... oh wait.  Nevermind.

The article makes all these points about the taxes the wealthy pay and the problems they're having in keeping their income stable.  It mentions that there are other assets available for their use, when, say, they have to let go of the over-compensating skeleton of a house in a fire sale but really, come on.  Does the WSJ really expect that the wild ride of the 1% is in any way similar to the plight of the millions of people who can't negotiate with banks to stay in their homes, who have lost their jobs and exhausted their savings, seen their retirement accounts eviscerated and security upheaved?

Unfortunately, we're all going to suffer our first world problems.  We're going to have plumbing problems and broken computers.  We're going to get frustrated by our children and angry at our spouses for their neglect with the toilet seat.  The bright side of these issues?  They make up the human experience that unites us.  But we don't remember because all of that is behind closed doors-- mahogany or steel, hollow or grand.  Our lives are magnificently parallel.  But some of us have money and most of us do not.  It would be really super awesome if those who had the money recognized that the ability to contend with the first world problems is severely compromised by homelessness, unemployment and financial insecurity.  And, you know, there are a whole lot more of us than there are of you.

The 99% is kicking and screaming.

It seems that winter is reluctant to leave.  Or at least, it's interested in making a statement before it does.  We had beautiful, windless sunshine for six days straight last week but it couldn't stand up to the rain.  The rain is here.

Maybe the weather reminds me a little of the incipient protests on New York's Wall Street and in other US cities.  A little heat comes along to remind folks of their position: they're free, they have voices, they can wear shorts and liberate their legs.  And then the cold front returns, forcing everyone back into their homes to stew miserably in their frustrated efforts to surmount these crazy bad times.  Maybe I see the weather-- so out of my control-- a little like I see the many, many things that stand in the way of making things a little better.  Maybe I'm a cynic.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.  I'm right that the weather will do as it does.  But it's no use feeling powerless against the powers that be.  That, actually, is not beyond my position.  Or your position.  That is actually our obligation.

We have no reason to be ashamed of our naked legs when the sun shines.  And despite major news outlet commenting that the Occupy Wall Street bunch seems somehow disorganized, off-point, dirty, young, aimless or rambling, they're out there and they're trying to make springtime come. 

When I see the thousands of people gathering to stake their claim as the true majority, I cross my fingers that more will join them.  When I see the police lines confronting them, I wonder how long before show of solidarity outweighs the show of force.  (I also say a little prayer that the cops, based on pay scale, might empathize or at least keep their guns holstered.)  There must be a tipping point, when the people realize that the means of control used to silence them are no longer stronger than the force they can exert for themselves.  That said, any tipping point achieved would be but a brief moment in time that sets off its own consequences.  Power shifts quickly and radically and usually remains in the hands of those who know how to juggle it.

That power seems bound by inertia is no reason not to push to reverse its direction.  I hope more people join the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I hope they find a decent set of talking points to appease a media hungry for soundbites over more substantive meals.  But most of all, I hope everyone remains courageous in the face of angry cops threatening force against them.  Standing up to power is the only thing that ever made it change.