As metal doors clattered open before me, with visions of penetrating Darth Vader's lair, I slipped my car full of puppets, ladybug accoutrement and guitar into the dungeony garage. I'd already circled several black granite behemoths in search of their epicenter, this Early Childhood Enrichment building. It made sense, really, for the bankers to keep their progeny locked in the safest vault of the best fortified gated realm I'd ever close encountered.
After two security check points, several phone calls, a signed affidavit, one visitor's pass and three doors that sprung mysteriously open as I approached, I made my way to the well appointed story room, set out my effects on the beige leather couch and waited for the children to arrive. Considering my tax contributions had helped fund a $45 billion bailout of this very bank, I felt right at home (sort of).
This very morning, driving through tree lined, mansion-appropriate boulevards, I wondered at my sense of well being. With giant insects adorning my tee shirt, ladybug necklace and freshly washed hair, here I was, jazzed up on chocolate and some quality time with my amp. I was happy. My question: does a person living in one of these gigantic houses feel gigantically more at peace with her world than I do? Is there a direct correlation between the two, and if there is, how does it feel to be any happier than this? I wondered if waking up in the morning felt monumentally better to these castle dwellers than to me. Just curious.
On the way to Wellington and Lorain schools earlier this week, past trailer parks, farm houses and tidy clapboard bungalows, I wondered the same thing. If a person has just enough to live on, a creative passion or two and love, why ramp it up to the next per capita?
There's a great scene in Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All where Castalia, a former slave, explains her theory of the grand scheme of things:
In her own invented history, Castalia uses Reba, an outcast witch of sorts, to voice her ideas of why slave traders are in business. ''We bout to fill that deep white maw what's felt real empty way too long. . . . We the very nourishment-answering earth they lack so bad.''
Castalia sees the 'privileged' whites as much in need of nourishment. Her people, she reasons, were brought to America to save them from soul starvation.
The kids in the bank building are doing fine - don't get me wrong. When they're happy and they know it, they shout hurrah and stomp their feet and clap their hands just like kids in Wellington and Lorain. But if things don't work out as well for the privileged people of our land as they've come to expect, maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons in happiness from unexpected sources. Full places, that money can't buy.
Public domain painging by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Young Gypsies
