Are You Experienced?

Yet another wonderful weekend at my brother's digs in Oakville, Ontario and a visit to my sister's in Georgetown, where we (several family members) hung out like one is supposed to. Actually, this piece is on the good "supposed to do" stuff rather than the not good "have to do" stuff. In it I really question if the "have to do" stuff needs to be done at all!


But first things first. Some loose tidbits and random observations.


Enjoy.

1. Fluffy Talk

My brother and I have decided that we like the girls bands in pop music these days. Our list includes Destiny's Child, Jennifer Lopez, Christine Aguilera, and... at the bottom of our list... Britney Spears; but she still makes our list.

My brother thinks Aguilera has the pipes (a good voice), I think J-Lo is an OK actress, and we both think Destiny's Child are hotties. As much as she is corn-ball and of questionable talent, Britney's poppy dance-able sound is OK too. We decided we like listening to these new songstresses while driving in a car (a rarity for me!) as the music is multi-layered, upbeat, with jazzy resonances and the lyrics parallel the male "lovey dovey" cooing styles of a generation back. Time was the guys (viz. Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Al Green) talked about getting it on--well we like the gals singing in that provocative style now too.

OK, if you have any more hottie gal acts to let us in on, please do give us the coordinates to see/hear them. And yes, they don't have to be American--I'd be curious to hear about the Japanese hottie gal singer scene as well as other international ones.

As for the boy bands, well, we are not that interested. But we do think 'N Sync is multi-layered and put on a good show (viz. the Superbowl). My nephew (age 20) likes Limp Biskit over Eminem because he feels Eminem's lyrics are "disturbing." I dunno. Never heard the dude sing, nor do I know Limp Biskit.


2. Hard Ball

The issue of economic realities living in way society wants you to live can be downright disturbing, right after being silly. A fellow Spam Family lets you in on why:

I've been thinking about those Buddhist economics mails this past week, having been over to see my CPA recently. I have a CPA. That information alone seems ridiculous to me, somehow. This isn't a rant against capitalism, or taxes, but just some observations that have come to me in the past week: I sell sailboats, and spend my time finding and brokering used boats for sale, and ordering and commissioning new boats. I have averaged a steady $6,000 per month in sales commissions since January, meaning I've made roughly fifty thousand dollars so far this year, and will likely end 2001 with about $70,000 in income. $70k, a decent income, and roughly what I made in Japan the last few years I was there. I have no expenses to speak of--$600 a month in rent, $200 in phone, gas, electricity, and $2-300 in food and juicing around. I own my car, and I have a small sailboat that would fit in my living room, which costs me $120 a month. That's about $1,200 a month in fixed expenses, which I'll round up to $2,000 for sloppiness sake. In my naive mind, that leaves about $4,000 a month in income to save, etc.
In Japan on 70k, I paid higher rent, travelled four times a year for several weeks each time, and still saved about ten grand a year. Here, I work six and sometimes seven days a week, do not travel more than two days at a time, and I am virtually penniless. I went to the CPA and asked him why.

He pulled out my records and said, "Look, you're single, have no debts, and you're in the highest tax bracket." Of my six grand a month, fully 55% is taken by state and federal taxes combined. That leaves me $2,700 a month to function, and I can expect about $1,800 back from the state and federal government next April. Again, this is not a rant, but a discussion of philosophy. My more-than-full-time job is paying someone else more than it pays me. As a single worker with no debts, I am technically in an ideal situation--there's nothing to tie me down--no mortgage, no crippling credit card debt, no car payments, no extraneous loans--I am the solvent wage earner that every analyst claims as the goal for individual Americans. The reward?

More is taken from me than I am allowed to keep.

Here's the part that induced me to tell you about this: The solution, according to my CPA, is to get some write-offs. Write-offs. What are these?

They are debts. His advice was: buy a new car with payments of at least four hundred a month for five years--you can write those payments off as a business expense. Eat out at restaurants and save your receipts--with some creative lying you can claim those as business expenses. Charge your gas and everything else on your credit cards (at 23% interest) and try and write those off as business expenses. Buy a condo if you can afford it (I can't) and write off the 30-year mortgage. These things should get my tax liability down to 28%!

I couldn't really grok the whole thing. The car, at four hundred or greater each month, would be a SECOND car. I need to keep the Jeep, which I own, to be able to claim the other one as a business deduction. I need to park and insure the second car, and of course move two cars to opposite sides of the street every Tuesday and Wednesday morning before 8:00 am. I won't actually get any more money back, but, as the CPA said, "You'll get a new car out of it." I told him I don't want or need a new car, and I don't want the liability of four hundred a month for five years--that's a $25,000 debt that I can't walk away from should I go somewhere for six months. I like to cook;

I don't like eating out for several reasons. I don't want to have credit card debt. etc. He said, "Play the game." I am playing the game, I thought, by being that most unusual American ideal--debt free, hard-working, and responsible. I'm thirty-eight years old and I'm just figuring out the truth; if you do not have debts that force you to stay here and grind away, you are penalized, because you are a threat to the system. Do you know what it's like to think you are owed $6,000 and get $2,700 of it, without national healthcare, or free legal advice, or anything else, for that matter? You are rewarded for chasing material goods (car debts, house debts), and penalized for not wanting any of that. You can't keep your own money just to keep it, but you can have some of it back if you want to spend it on a bunch of shit.

No wonder the whole country is so deeply in debt. I'm making $70,000 a year and I can't afford to leave for a month, but my option, in the freedom country, is to stay here and have a bunch of bread and circus. If you don't consume, it's taken away anyway. I am running in place.

3. The Gaga Comeback

There is a guy locally that is now lobbying against the government because, as a single person, he feels he is discriminated against. He might not be all that wrong. Society is set up for the family unit, with all the strings attached. Single people are not part of the "good life" described by the constitution of either the US or most other countries in the world. So, the singles have severe limitations on pursuing what they wish to do.

Your plight is extremely vexing. The insane values and little hoops to jump through just to play the game is enough to make me ill. Really. I find it very hard to subscribe to playing these games, and then get the shaft for doing so. So, that is yet one more reason I do not take up residence and play this silly game.

To wit, the contract I agreed to for this test writing at Carleton was I get $5,000 for 5 tests, to be finished by Sept. 14 (a day before my 45th birthday). When I went to sign it, I made an addendum to the terms by saying the $5,000 had to be the net amount.

The director called me in and asked me for clarification, and I said I wanted $5,000 clear to walk away with. He then explained that the "formula" they used to calculate the payment was based on an annual salary of $63,000 and that the $5,000 I receive will be taxed according to the projected annual salary. He then said that meant 45% of the money would go to taxes.

I told him I wouldn't accept those terms. I want $5,000. So we worked it out (cordially too!) that I would get an honorarium in the amount of $5,000 and then he would tell the government I received that amount. I said fine because seeing that it will be my only income in Canada this year, no big whoop. I am well below the poverty line in Canada (which stands at around $24,000).

I have nothing really in Canada to speak of in terms of assets. I have a bank account, a visa card (liability?), a bicycle, and everything else was purchased overseas (my computer, for example). Well, I do have some art I created and all sorts of books and stuff in my mom's house, but I don't know what the dollar value would be on any of it--if any. I have not filed income tax returns in Canada since 1992 (it's way different than the US in that respect-- they don't come knocking on your door if you don't). But I do pay all the sales and service taxes whenever I buy anything here. I did pay income taxes in Japan and Thailand (I didn't pay tax in Hong Kong, as I split before that happened).


Anyway, my point in all this is to say I'm glad I don't really have anything. It makes it possible to move around freely. And given the horror stories about those trying to do the right thing and play the game, and how much it burns, I don't think I want to.

The evidence is starting to pile up against the insanity of the economic model now used. The casualties of this system are human beings--nice people that want only what is their God-given right--happiness. And look at how
twisted out of shape people are over it. Hmm.

Well, there may be a time when it might not be possible for me to float around because of illness (inevitable illness I might add) or other circumstances, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I don't want to end up being like millions of others who work their asses off honestly, do the right thing with the promise of being set up only to have the rug pulled out from under them. No wonder folks are so weird these days.

It finally became clear to me this Buddhist thing I read on the wall of the monastery in Thailand: "O joy to realize that there is no joy in this world."

I don't mean to say "joy" comes from somewhere else or that way of thinking, but rather the joy comes through knowing the way things are, and accepting them as they are. But inherently there is nothing of substance holding any of it together. Condition arise and things arise, the conditions go and the things go. Easy.

The only refuge in this unsatisfactory, impermanent world is to know it for what it is--and only "a little" of it has any basis in our hubris and design.

4. The Unspeakable

This bit is an addition to the stuff brought up recently about the tautology revealed in the notion that those that know "it" need not speak.

Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything."

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist, goes on to comment:

We cannot talk about it, but we can experience it. We can experience the non-born, non-dying, non-beginning, non-ending because it is reality itself. The way to experience it is to abandon our habit of perceiving everything through concepts and representations.

The ultimate dimension of reality has nothing to do with concepts. It is not just absolute reality that cannot be talked about. Nothing can be conceived and talked about. Take a glass of apple juice. You cannot talk about apple juice to someone who has never tasted it. Nomatter what you say, the other person will not have the true experience of apple juice. The only way is to drink it.

Things cannot be described by concepts and words. They can only be encountered by direct experience.

5. Are you experienced?

Well-- are ya?