financial fragility

According to research cited in a WSJ blog, nearly half of us (Americans) are "financially fragile." Curious that eggheads have to undertake a study to verify this. The respondents were asked if they'd have trouble ponying up $2,000 in 30 days -- the amount representing a major car repair, such as transmission replacement, or some other unforeseen emergency: medical, legal, home repair, or addiction. (OK, so I threw in the last one; it's not crazily unrealistic, though, is it?)

A few qualifiers:

-- 2009 data were used
-- US respondents were not nearly as financially fragile as those in other countries

The results certainly don't shock me. While I have only consulted the article, and not the study itself, I'd have to muse:

-- Can I borrow to come up with the $2,000?
-- Can I tap into 401k or other money set aside for retirement?
-- Must I resort to legal means?
-- Does reckless gambling count as an option?
-- 30 days? ARE YOU KIDDING? Like the transmission guy or the dentist or the lawyer or the mortgage company is going to just spot you 30 days, just like that? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (I'm making sure I can come up with $60 cold cash for lawnmower repair tomorrow.)

Folks, it's 2011. Let's hope the "financial fragility" ratios have improved, rapturously.

Talk about AlbatrossDreams.

City Lights Illuminati

The pure pleasure of City Lights Books, at Columbus (near Cafe Vesuvio and across from the patina of Zoetrope, reminiscent of the Flatiron Building), Lawrence Ferlinghetti's literary mecca in San Francisco, is encapsulated in this incident from last evening.

Browsing upstairs, in the poetry rack, I spy a vineyard of tasty selections of poetic treats. I page through them. One of them entrances me. Its spare, few words magnetize me. "Christ,/a mirror/in each hand./He multiplies/his shadow./He projects his heart/through his black/visions./I believe!" This from Symbol of the "Mirror Suite" from "Suites," by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated from the Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg. It is Green Integer 31 from Green Integer, Kobenhavn & Los Angeles. 2001.

So, Lorca is born to me, in San Francisco. Lorca is baptized to me here and now, introduced not by water and fire but by sidewalk and stairs on an August Saturday evening in the city of Saint Francis.

The priest of this sacrament is Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his City Lights Books, whose iconic gray on black bags beckon beauty, whose store is a conclave of revelation, one not found on the Internet or World Wide Web electronically but in the tactile tent of this nomad's journey, in the silence of the Kierkegaard leaping heart.

May Day, or Whatchamacallit

Calling from Brooklyn, a dear old friend of mine said to me last night, "This [referring to the financial mess] could make the Depression look like the Feast of San Gennaro." I laughed robustly because it was such a great line -- which we both hope turns out not to be prophetic. Speaking of feasts, it's more like May Day! May Day! Well, October 4 was (and still is) the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. He's an apt model: a spoiled rich kid who gave it all away and devoted his life to God and others. And found joy in poverty. Picture a hot shot on Wall Street or Hollywood celeb who discovers the emptiness of it all. Something like that. He may be remembered most as a kind of Dr. Dolittle, but the statue of him in your garden stands for so much more. In my teens I thoroughly enjoyed the novelization of his life by Nikos Kazantzakis. Don't you just love that name? I do. Incidentally, the epitaph on his tombstone reads: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."