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Footnotes
A brief time out from all the heavy stuff. From this month’s issue of The Wagon Magazine.
Impressions,
Through a scarlet haze,
And shockwaves,
From each passing phase
Take flight, take wing,
Pretend to sing,
But truly,
They don’t mean a thing.
Insight,
Hindsight,
I-don’t-mind-sight;
Can you see to find the way
That carries us from day to day —
Or is there none?
What’s done is done.
The die is cast.
All’s lost
Or won.
Academic ignorance
Of symbiotic circumstance
Entailing only random chance
Is such a shame.
A formula less erudite
Perhaps could have success despite
Evidence not to the contrary.
But tell me: who’s to blame?
There was a time,
That waxed sublime,
A moment bought
Without a thought,
But that was then.
So when again,
As shadows fall,
Do we begin?
Confusion,
Self-delusion,
Slightly frightful inobtrusion
All askew,
Are only footnotes on a page,
Wild beasts within a cage,
When I’m with you.
Anywhere is my Destination
It was a spectacular November morning, the high desert air clear and sharp, the sun ablaze in a cobalt sky. The future was mine for a song.
It was my first day on the road, the beginning of my grand adventure. It was my ultimate break with the past, my rejection of the familiar, and my repudiation of the predictable. There I was, on the cusp of metamorphosis, about to tear through the walls of my cocoon and take flight into a brave new world.
I was terrified.
It had seemed like a good idea, leaving everything and everyone behind to hitchhike across America. But that first morning out, standing on barren stretch of New Mexico highway 650 miles from where I’d started, all I could think of was getting back on the train to Southern California and slinking home to confess my reckless folly.
The evil of economics
It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong.
There are few men bigger than Alan Greenspan. And there are few men who have gone wrong in such a big way.
Although he stands shy of six feet tall, the former Federal Reserve Chairman was the colossus of the business world as he oversaw the longest economic boom in American history. But when financial collapse swallowed up the bulls of Wall Street like the cows in Pharaoh’s dream, Mr. Greenspan’s reputation deflated along with the economy.
To his credit, the erstwhile guru humbled himself and confessed the error of his ways. In October, 2008, Mr. Greenspan gave testimony on Capitol Hill before the House Oversight Committee concerning the economic meltdown that ravaged the country. This was the takeaway:
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
In other words, despite all logic to the contrary, people cannot be trusted to do what is in their own best interest.
The question is: why not?
Yonason Goldson 