I feel rich because I'm not destitute (but it never seems impossible) & then I go uptown & see, I dunno, private gardens & people spending hundreds & thousands of dollars on a single meal & lines for expensive delicacies... & I'm so happy to get back to my shabby, unpretentious (except in unpretentiousness) East Village. Did I find the EV or did it make me? No, I'm pretty sure I was lucky enough to find a place that suited me & smart enough to stay.
NauenThen
Elinor goes to the Upper East Side
April 8, 2022
6 Comments
Comments
Apr 16, 2022 7:02 AM EDT
I'm with you but when I see the extravagance what is it that I actually feel? I just hope it's not envy but I suppose somewhere deep inside we might all harbor just a bit of that?
- Michael Sharpe
Comment by EN on Apr 16, 2022 9:54 AM EDT
I think (hope) the only thing I envy is the security. The people & landscapes & experiences I like don't have or need wealth; quite the opposite for the most part. I mean, money is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
Apr 16, 2022 8:14 PM EDT
Many years ago when I lived in the North West, my good friend Ann and I were driving in the hills above downtown Portland where there were (are?) some beautiful and solid old homes. We both sort of simultaneously sighed and confessed that it was about the sense of solidness, perhaps continuity, and, yes, the very old fashioned and still fashionable 'security!'. Not about status, power, or being rich, but I'm sure some of the residents hold or held those things dear!
- Michael Sharpe
Apr 21, 2022 7:45 PM EDT
Speaking of being poor, I'm reading some selected poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and one titled "The Habit of Perfection" contains the lines, "And, Poverty, be thou the bride/ And now the marriage feast begun.." Has to do with his conversion to Catholicism and becoming a Jesuit.
- Michael Sharpe
Comment by EN on Apr 22, 2022 10:34 AM EDT
I love GMH & have learned several of his poems by heart. But I'm not sure I ever got past the gorgeous language, which always does me in so I can't think.
Apr 23, 2022 6:06 AM EDT
IMO Hopkins is kind of a miracle poet and I've often wondered if anybody has noticed that Dylan Thomas seems to have been influenced by him, at least as far as my auto-didact sensibility can detect?
- Michael Sharpe