More
Heat, politics, and multiple priorities. So many elements challenge my ability to focus. "Pick anything and start there," I advise overwhelmed clients, "everything is connected." This afternoon, I feel camped-out in my office, the air conditioner quietly churning, waiting for rain clouds to build. Intense thunderstorms that bring a break in the heat are an undervalued feature of Midwest living. For me, their theatricality compensates for the region's lack of bold topographies. So many storms are brewing. Shelter is an imperative. "Money lives in the brain," I jotted down the other day. I've been interested in the concept of value since I began working on sustainability issues. In the pursuit of generating and accumulating monetary wealth, environmental, and social value has been sacrificed, but it can take time to realize the impact of it. Feedback happens on multiple timescales, whether a well-paid corporate legal associate becoming dissatisfied with their "soulless" job after a year, or the melting of polar ice caps over a decade. Imbalance can be experienced personally and globally. Drip, drip, drip, eventually it adds up and, in some way, becomes intolerable. My issue with renewing my office lease isn't the cost, it is the ratio of the rent to my income and the small increases imposed by the landlord every year without the building ever being improved. Capitalism demands constant upward mobility. For me, economic wealth is a means not an ends. It exists in the head (where it can play all kinds of games) and is unable to (ful)fill any deeper human spaces. Yet, a week from now, when the rent is due again, cash still matters if I still want to continue to occupy this office, studio, refuge. Here comes the rain.
