My Road-the fall

Thomas Paine-epitaph to a pet bird

When  eight years of age, Thomas Pain wrote the following epitaph to his pet bird:

Here lies the body of John Crow, Who once was high but now is low: Ye brother Crows take warning all, For as you rise, so must you fall.

The fall from virtue did not happen instantly.  It had nothing to do with the financial situation, at least not directly, which brought me to the brink of bankruptcy.  Instead it had everything to do with her.  Or perhaps I speak too rashly.  Perhaps it was enough for her to have saved me during the period of my financial ruin, to give me her strength to survive it and, as you will see, to almost recover.  I would be her success story, she would save me and then be done with me.

The full extent of her emotional detachment would only come much later and would be when I was alone and so stunned that I would barely be able to see it even.  It was, however, present even during the torrid period of our relationship, reflected when she kept me waiting, when she prioritized things ahead of our relationship, and when she would leave me.  It was always her decision, I never saw it coming and often times did not even recognize it.

But before the end came, I found myself hanging out in the local library waiting, wondering how many times I would wait her for her before I would be seen as a regular by the staff.

There were similarities in the sex we had, but only like there are with views of the Grand Canyon.   There might be some repetition if you saw it every day, the clouds, fauna and temperature would be different , there would be near infinite angle changes.  And it would always be beautiful and something greater to any but the most callous viewer.

The early days were especially intoxicating, when I believe we were both certain we would end up together. 

And so it was that we found ourselves together with some food I had bought while I was waiting, after I tired of being at the library. 

It wasn’t intended that this series of events would control my life, that they would bring us together and ultimately tear us apart.in the south.  It was unplanned and unbelievable that a combination of natural and man-made plagues would come together to bring me back to this city and the woman I loved.

The crazy business deals that spiraled slowly out of control, the real estate failures tied to dishonest banking practices. The CDW destroying the value of the buildings constructed with it and its slow moving litigation to provide some sort of remedy or at least cover the cost of repairs which would ultimately be tearing the buildings down to the studs, but until then was marked by the constant cost of the debt service.  And last, but certainly not least, the oil spill following the death of the deep horizon and the resulting shut down of the real estate market for 3 years followed two years later by a “settlement” which was nothing to developers and to others a series of appeals as the oil giant sought, more or less successfully, to gut the agreement they had entered into like the scientists opening fish to look for evidence of the results of the toxins released into the environment.  It is interesting how little the defendants with all their money seemed to understand what they were doing before they settled; but the brilliance of it is even greater.  By severely limiting the number of cases filed and taking out the big players, they were able to level the playing field, but this is another story.

It is enough to say that on BP’s behalf, the settlement was both brilliant excluding the best lawyers from the best claims to a large extent, and how stupid, opening up a wide funnel into which so many claims would flow that might otherwise have been excluded.  The role of the courts is refashioning the case was also difficult to understand, putting up roadblocks to the extent of the settlement while ignoring precedent that might have destroyed it altogether and acting with a rapidity that belied the preceding 200 years of lethargy.

And when we were together, none of that mattered.  She made me between bites of eating cucumber and fruit salad sex because we were both starved, but could not be bothered wasting time eating.  It takes quite a bit of playfulness and even more comfort with your sex partner to have sex with food, but apparently it can be done, the citrus tastes of the salad mixing with the other tastes of our bodies.

Against this backdrop and the fast evaporation of my financial reserves I was living my life, exploding in inner creativity while holding the outside world at a distance.  It was not working because without even knowing it, I created and destroyed what mattered to me while preserving what did not.  The interest was not only building financially, but I was also borrowing against my soul.  Honesty on time may have saved everything, honesty too late would only destroy it.   As I rose, so would I fall.

40022 (woohoo)