(Diary entry, 6/20/13)
Sitting here at the MoMA sculpture garden, I am thinking of Europe. Both America and Europe yield public space to those poor unfortunates who beg for food and the basic necessities; but in America, there is a SELF-clarion call that roots in those indenturing individual rights and freedoms, which, of course, is why the homeless are more prominent outside these cloistered walls. Remember, fifty percent of the world’s welfare subsidy payments are doled out in Europe, which has only nine percent of the world’s population. *
That will change but not soon. Europe will remain a place where the espresso and croissant flags the battalion of the AMERICAN breakfast, “Yo, bitch! This is America!” So quaint, this tidy power. If there is a single luxury that I would husband for myself it is to prolong my visits to this bygone place, where the political economies cannot sustain themselves on the weakening productive capacity, or through the antics of aging leaders misguiding young people. See and feel it now before the inevitable change sucks the air out of what we’ve come to know and love. Time will kill fantasy like rising saltwater does the roots of even the grandest oak.
* Harper’s Index
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