Buyers and sellers....

Want a good deal on anything I own?

Zap me an email.

You can probably have it for less--if not far less--than market value. Of course, I realize that--due to economic pressures well beyond my control--the "fair market value" of anything I might have has plummeted, in part because that's the nature of goods in our disposable society and in part because the market for used goods (like the housing market) is currently flooded.  I wonder why . . .

Seriously though, you'd get a good deal, and I wouldn't hold it against you. I might ask that you understand or at least try to understand. I might just ask for the cash, the miraculous gateway to an evening at Taco Bell, the tiniest shred of something like normalcy to help my wife and I forget--even if only for an hour--the sudden spiral of fear and the knotting stress we've been feeling in our shoulders, our backs.

Yesterday, my wife and I gathered up two boxes of books and took them to sell at the local Half-Priced Books. We didn't get a good deal. We knew it wasn't a good deal. Still, we took the offer. My wife and I adore books, so this--our second trip in a month--was particularly painful. The money we got wasn't enough to buy dinner and gas. We picked dinner.

Today, we took a bagful of CDs and DVDs to sell. We tried one vendor. He attempted to rip us off something serious. We took it to a vendor next door and got twice the amount. Was it a fair price?

It depends. Depreciation. Emotion. Objects invested with peculiar meaning. No, not really. Still, it was more fair. The second vendor will make a tidy profit. We could (though it was dumb) afford a taste of Taco Bell and the briefest illusion of normalcy.

McDonald's posted quarterly results. They were excellent. Surprised?

Although our savings, by now, would very likely have been depleted regardless of how frugal, fastidious, or adept at investment we'd been, both my wife and I struggle with not blaming ourselves. If only, if only, if only is a constant refrain of interior monologue. If only, for example, we'd gotten different degrees. If only we'd stayed in Oakland.  If only we'd bought a condo rather than a house. If only . . . . There are thousands more. They all tighten the knots in our backs.

Being poor isn't healthy.

If you're still with me, listen. We know, intellectually, this wasn't our fault. We know that we're slightly different than the millions of others who've lost their unemployment, the millions who soon may lose their unemployment again. I have peculiar prospects and the promise of returning to my PhD program.

My wife . . . . I worry about my wife every day.

Soon, the unemployment will return for a short while. Soon after--given today's politics--it will end again.

Who knew that by hanging onto my wife's services as long as they did, my wife's former company might have doomed her to this? Who knew?

Why am I writing this? Breaking taboos of money talk?

Listen: I want to tell you the truth. Selves have already been eviscerated. Now, actual lives, actual hopes will be. It's not OK to watch television through this. It's not OK to simply buy green and donate to a charity or two. It's not OK just to vote the rascals out (whoever you think the rascals are).

My wife and I swore not to forget. We'll do more if we make it back to where we were. We've been broken, I think, but we're still, somehow, here. But seriously, we have more of our lives to sell and sell we will.