December 28, 2010



"Oliver Twist" is the name I give to my Upcoming page on Yahoo, and is the Pen name I post under, while
over on that site. If you
take a look at this event, and have ever heard of Charles Dickens, you'll probably see why. If not,
watch this video, and all should become clear.


















For one to look upon the Chicago of late 2010, and see an upwardly mobile society, a vivid imagination would
not be enough. One would have to be willfully deluded. Yet, one would never guess this, to look at the entertainments
advertised, the price of attendance for these continuing to climb upward. One need not look far to see the reason
for this seeming absurdity, as one looks into an Art Institute far emptier than it once was, now that rising ticket
prices have removed that simple pleasure from the lives of the outsourced and downwardly mobile professionals of
this city, the ones who wonder why they ever wasted money on college tuition. The rich do not wish to rub shoulders
with the poor, any more than they really want to see the poor have an honest chance to get ahead or see the
Middle Class return, and yes, they do love
that empty floor space. It's a luxury made all the sweeter by the fact that it comes at somebody else's expense,
one that no doubt opens the pockets of generous benefactors and keeps them visiting a little more often. There
is a logic to these developments, if it is a rather cruel and shortsighted one.



We could go into denial about life's ever mounting injustices, as many will. Some of the pages on this site are
written in rebuttal to the things that some of those people have to say. We could obsess, and make ourselves and
those around us miserable. Or - we could play a role in this drama that life has cast us for, treating those
who live to close doors in the faces of others as if they were a force of nature. They aren't - what we see out
of them are choices, not mindless natural events, but a little make believe can make a bad day more bearable. We're
going to pretend that those opportunities and pleasures which we are forever denied, no matter how hard we
work and no matter what we accomplish, don't exist. They're not part of our emotional world, even if we can't help
the fact that they are part of our mental worlds. Think of the experience of trying to seriously perform a role
in a play, if you've ever taken an acting course. You're up on stage, pretending to be your character, doing
all of these crazy things that you'd never let yourself do for real. Unless you're really gone, you intellectually
know that you are not that guy, and you are not doing any of those things, and yet ... for just a moment, you
can emotionally detach yourself from that reality, and give yourself a little escape, courtesy of Mr. Stanislavski.
As long as you know that the game is a game, you get this little escape from the tedium of your day, doing no
harm to yourself, and a good mood that will carry you through some of your chores.



Yes, one can see the game seem to break down with very bad results, as one counts the number of professional
actors who seem to be truly disturbed. Seem - one might well wonder how many of these bizarre incidents are
publicity stunts, followed by much laughter in private from the "crazy" participants. But make no mistake -
if you don't find some kind of mental escape while you are trapped in poverty, one way or another, you are
going to go "bye bye", so take your chances and loosen up a little.



Think of that first event that you saw me link to. Let's say that you've lost the career that you've spent
forty years working at, because some MBA found that he could make the quarterly report look better by firing
people a month or two before they were eligible for full pension, you have no prospects of finding gainful
employment, and no idea of how you're going to hold onto your home. I'm not going to tell you that's funny
or acceptable or that you should "get over it". Or let's say that you never had that career in the first place,
because having worked your way through school and emerged with sterling qualifications, you've run into nothing
but obstructionism and cronyism, finding that the only work you've been allowed to do is that of ghostwriting reports
for functionally illiterate ex-frat boys, alumni from some university football team or another, living on
rice and beans as a "tutor" to those who put their names on your work, and the work of others for six figures
per year. No, that's not amusing, and you are right to be angry about that, and to be angry with those who
would dismiss your anger. This is the reality from which we should not intellectually detach, but can and
should emotionally detach, from time to time. How? By developing exactly the kind of dark sense of humor that
Political Correctness told you that you should be ashamed of - irreverence is your salvation. See the humor
in an absurd world, while looking away from the pain, if only for a moment, in your heart though you dare not
do so in your mind.



"But what if I forget that there's something to be angry about?", somebody might ask. If that somebody is you,
then ask yourself - if somebody is kicking you in the stomach, are you really going to forget that sensation?
Don't worry about losing your humanity or desire for a better life. Life will do a splendid job of bringing you
back to reality, the moment you let down that well crafted guard. Call it the gift of destitution. That, and the
understanding that creature comforts aren't the only thing that the system takes away from people, and that
sometimes in losing something of value, we gain something else. Look at that window you're fogging up and
trying not to stick to, at those people in their $800 suits, sitting so stiffly at attention, eating expensive
food that doesn't really look like it tastes very good - plain boiled buttered carrots artistically arranged
around an overcooked steak. See how forced so many of their smiles will look, how pained their laughter, how
little that is genuine is to be found in their special evening. You might have lost the feeling in your toes
for the moment, but perhaps you still have the feeling in your soul.














One thing that you learn a poor person is how to make your own pleasures. In some cases, those are getting to
be better than those which real money will buy. I remember a "chef" I met, who, having admitted that "chef school"
was ... fertilizer ... told me about his fabulous new creation, which he was selling at high prices to the
pampered few: a dish sauced with a "chorizo vinaigrette". I did know what "chorizo" was, even if it wasn't kosher -
it's the bright red Mexican sausage one sees for sale in the market, nice but hardly an expensive luxury. I
had to know what he meant by that description, so he explained: one took the oil of the chorizo ... "The oil of
the chorizo?", I asked, looking puzzled. Yes, that was acting, because I was fairly sure of where he was going
with this, and sure enough, he went there - "The oil that is released when one fries the chorizo". In other
words, sausage grease. "One then blends it with vinegar, and there you have it" - sausage grease, spiked with
vinegar. Sold for fifty dollars per plate, or so, apparently. This is not a vinaigrette, any more than a
buerre blanc is a "butter vinaigrette" - vinaigrette has an oil base, by definition - but more importantly,
once you get past the pretentious title, one is left with a description of something that's not very special,
at all. Forgetting the price, wouldn't one much rather have a taco than this absurdity? This is cooking done
as marketing, not as art, done without love of the thing for what it is, served to impress those who'd waste
their money trying to impress others.



At least a whole generation will grow up in this country, thinking that this is what fine dining is, a
pretentious hoax, and that's a terrible shame. In living memory, there were people who truly did elevate
cooking to the level of a fine art. For modest prices, one could enjoy meals one would remember years later,
and for a real investment - albeit, one in the tens of dollars, not the hundreds - one could experience something
that would take one's breath away. In this was a tradition worth preserving, but look to your own life, and
you already know the story - spoiled little rich kids who saw school as being, not a chance to better themselves,
but as a chance to purchase credibility. You can surely do better for yourself than that, and maybe take a
mild pleasure in this thought - in creating a system in which wealth and positions are given out based, not 
based on what one knows, but who one knows, the very worth of that wealth is being undercut. Those
who would have created those things of beauty than money could buy, are now to be numbered among those who've been
excluded, more often than not, unable to afford elevated tuitions bid up by well to do, and lacking the
family connections needed to get onto the path of advancement.



But nothing is to keep you from picking up a few good quality cookbooks, maybe finding a few old women fresh
off the boat who'd like to have a few traditions remembered, and teaching yourself to do well, what so many are
well paid to do poorly. Nor is this principle limited to cooking. Be honest with yourself, in the privacy of
your own thoughts: before you were discarded by the system, did you ever find yourself watching a play - having
put down a good chunk of your painfully earned income to be there - and as the audience exploded in applause at
the end, wondered what everybody was making a fuss about? Did the plot seem contrived, the actors screaming
at each other as if dramatic tension could be measured with a decibel meter, the "jokes" and the "plot twists"
so formulaic that one could predict their arrivals minutes in advance? Have you wandered into an art gallery,
found nothing but ugliness, and then wandered over to the art fair a few blocks away, amidst all of the garbage,
found pieces that you wanted to hang on a museum wall, to be shared with everybody?



Again, I won't tell you that you'll be able to write like Shakespeare or sculpt like Michaelangelo, or claim
that I could, either - but you can surely, with love and sweat, create something worth enjoying, something so
much better than that which money has bought. There's even an expression for what will be created, as you and
others like you build on what the others have created, each learning from the others: folk art, in which, perhaps,
are to be found the roots of true fine art, someday to be seen. But for now, whatever the unknown future
will or won't bring, you're having fun. The consolation prize for
those who've been cheated out of the careers for which they've worked - one of the prizes - sometimes is that
one now has the time to pursue those interests.



Though one hardly takes time to think about this, more than that is happening. The system, corrupted by the
venality of the few, is healing itself at such moments, newer, healthier connections between people arising which,
in the long run, can replace the old. Also, as anybody who has been poor knows all too well, poverty tends to be
a socially isolating experience, and that isolation tends to render the very just rage of the poor politically
impotent. When the poor build connections with each other on their own terms, instead of one the self serving
terms of those more privileged, that is, in and of itself, a revolutionary act, in however quiet a way.
 













Some of that will be what this page will be about, but for now, a little silliness is enough. It's a good
start, letting people get comfortable with each other, before moving onto anything more ambitious. Just
getting people out of the house is a huge step in the right direction. There are a number of groups associated
with this page, which should end up so tightly interlocked with each other, that I wouldn't dream of trying
to give them separate ring memberships - they'd become one-way sites, if I did that. Here they are: