Kloncke

Slowly making my way through the Faithful Fools’ canon. In a conversation about economics, Carmen recommended Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. Not even 50 pages in, and it’s already transforming the way I see my everyday life.

Basically, Hyde is interested in the material and spiritual benefits of gifts and gift economies, as opposed to capitalism and economies of exchanged commodities.

Given material abundance, scarcity must be a function of boundaries.  If there is plenty of air in the world but something blocks its passage to the lungs, the lungs do well to complain of scarcity.  The assumptions of market exchange may not necessarily lead to the emergence of boundaries, but they do in practice.  When trade is ‘clean’ and leaves people unconnected, when the merchant is free to sell when and where he will, when the market moves mostly for profit and the dominant myth is not ‘to possess is to give’ but ‘the fittest survive,’ then wealth will lose its motion and gather in isolated pools.  Under the assumptions of exchange trade, property is plagued by entropy and wealth can become scarce even as it increases. 23

Having lived for more than a year now with no income, depending somewhat on my savings but largely on the generosity of others (including the major generosity of the foundation that paid for my undergrad degree, allowing me to graduate from Harvard debt-free), I’m beginning to see firsthand the ways in which scarcity, that fundamental rule of the economics preached in Cambridge, truly is myth and perspective, not fact. I’m becoming what Khalil Gibran calls, in The Prophet, a “believer in life and the bounty of life”:

There are those who give little of the much which they have–and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

At this very moment, for instance, I’m sitting on a big, lovely, suede couch in a big, lovely, 4th-floor condo in the big, lovely Embarcadero neighborhood, enjoying cranberry juice and Pellegrino, as well as the company of an adorable terrier-greyhound named Maxine.  I’ve been invited to help myself to anything and everything in the condo, and to have friends and loved ones over during the week to partake, as well.  And more importantly, I’ve been invited into the lives of a wonderful, loving, giving couple: Chris and Donna.  How did I get all this?

I got it by giving.  I gave of my love, support, and time to Lori, by taking care of Buster — overnight for a few days, and now once a week in the afternoons.  There’s no business relationship, she hasn’t hired me or anything, but she’s a true friend and I’m happy to offer what I can.  She, in turn, takes me out for breakfast and tea, gives writerly feedback and advice on my blogging efforts, and stocks the freezer with frozen raspberries (my favorite) when I’m sitting Buster through the night.  And then, when she heard that her co-worker Chris was looking for someone to care for Maxine while she and Donna vacationed in Hawaii, Lori recommended me.  Chris and Donna had Lori and me over for dinner, and the rest is history.

This is just one example, but there are so many blessings in my life right now that trace directly back through gifts.  Gifts of donations sustain the Faithful Fools.  Dana (generosity — through financial support and volunteer labor) sustains the East Bay Meditation Center.  An exchange of kind letters (one of my favorite types of gift) planted seeds for my current relationship.  My family (including my eighty-something-year-old Oma) footed the first semester’s bill for my Masters program at Goddard.  Unpaid organizers continue investing their blood, sweat, and tears into building power for workers.  Everywhere I look, it seems, people are giving.

And what makes gifts “erotic” as property, as opposed to rational exchange commodities, is that they connect life, rather than separating it.  Gifts bind us to one another, with a web of invisible umbilical cords.  Sure, they can be abused, offered with the intention of obligating someone else, creating a debt.  But then they’re not really gifts at all — just exchanges in disguise.

Even this blog, I realize, is a gift in its own way.  Offered freely to whomever might find it useful.  And for me, that’s what makes it more than a diary, a scrapbook, or journal (none of which I was ever any good at keeping).  In the giving there is real contact.  And abundance, too.  I’ve connected and reconnected  with such lovely people through Kloncke, and many of you continue to offer me your own wonderful gifts through comments, emails, letters, conversations, and encouragement.  Not to mention the greatest use of the gift: not reciprocation, but taking inspiration to give to someone else.  I’m reminded of my friend Ashley, who watched my Stevie Wonder video blog way back in the day and decided to call her grandparents, just to say hello.  I’ll always remember that, you know?

So thanks, y’all, as always.  For reading, for commenting, for linking, passing on, and participating in what Hyde might call an erotic connection:

Gift exchange and erotic life are connected…The gift is an emanation of Eros, and therefore to speak of gifts that survive their use is to describe a natural fact: libido is not lost when it is given away.  Eros never wastes his lovers.  When we give ourselves in the spirit of that god, he does not leave off his attentions; it is only when we fall to calculation that he remains hidden and no body will satisfy.  Satisfaction derives not merely from being filled but from being filled with a current that will not cease.  With the gift, as in love, our satisfaction sets us at ease because we know that somehow its use at once assures its plenty. 22

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Happy Wednesday!

love,

katie

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Ps: special thanks to Kyle Maurer, one of my first true surprise-blog-reader friends, for your encouragement and warmth, and also for the Hojicha, which has warmed the bellies of many people in Fool’s Court and dwindled down to one last teapot’s worth. :)