Free Ticket to the Circle of Trust

I find it strange to look at the sadness in the aging rich; those who lived their lives building up an empire only to realize that ultimately money won’t keep them young, or keep people close, or keep the important things vibrant.

A man and wife I helped on Friday ended up trying to give me the full tour of their mansion, room by room, and the man tried to explain his legacy, while walking a home built for a community, where the upstairs and basement is no longer used. cobwebs in the closets. He wanted me to be impressed with his expensive, imported wood carvings of his hunting-dog room, of his world-travel room, of his jacuzzi bathroom with gilded marble. All I saw was sadness and a dying hope someone else would listen.

Strange to be a big-wig while everyone you love is dying or lives far away. Strange to see a man seeking something he didn’t know he had lost.

His home was his mausoleum, the museum of his life. The fifty thousand dollar vase won’t hold his memories, no matter how hard he tries.

Yet, the energy he gave off while I followed him–desperation, loneliness, or whatever–infused everything in that home with energy. Mourning energy. Painful, once-exhuberant energy. His grand, lofty foyer felt cold and preservative. Yet the wood, the rugs, the paintings, the statues and busts and bronzes, soaked him up like sponges.

Long after he dies, long after his wife dies and his children disassemble the home–or be forced to live there–the objects of his life will carry pieces of him with them. People will be compelled by the pieces, by the collections. Friends will touch the things and know they were his, and impart their own energy to the thing–perhaps more mourning, or love, or envy–and the cycle will continue. Who knows how many owners owned the antiques he filled his home with? Who knows what little things will gather his energy up and haunt the places they stay?

On another note, met a man without meeting him yesterday. I met his groundskeeper, his mechanic, his mother, and his apartment. His mother was exhausted but full of love. She unpacked for him, even though he was perfectly capable of handling it himself. The things he had were rich-person things, though they were new. Inch-thick wood dressers of birch, sculptures he identified with, fuzzy rugs anyone would love to have in their home. Yet his TV stand had no holes in the back of it. His deer-antler knife was dull and couldn’t cut a rubber band, his paintings were framed poorly. He sacrificed function for form.

New money. Recently made rich, or well off, or wealthy. He was single. The way his mother spoke of him, I got the feeling he was gay, or severely unsuccessful in the dating scene. She didn’t worship God, but she prayed to Him. He had an iPad, a Kindle, a Macbook Air, Apple TV, an iMac, state-of-the-art stereo soundsystem rigged into a series of Bose wireless speakers, and a bigscreen TV that would choke a normal family room wall. Three-seat sofa with fake plants everywhere.

He knew nothing of art, but he had Warhol knockoffs. He wanted style instead of substance. He couldn’t take care of actual plants–or didn’t have the time to–and he had a glasstop stove.

All this means, really, was he had an impact on me. Especially given my later encounter with the dying rich.

"He’s young!" his mother said. "Only thirty-five, single, footloose and fancy free, dating around, working over the river, traveling everywhere."

Meaning he lived in her basement–especially since his sister still did, at thirty. Young at thirty-five? The bubble was big with that one.

But he was kind on the phone. Nice man with a lisp, hard edge at the end of his words, more appreciative I hooked up his internet than the fact he passed me all his personal information over the phone.

The greatest tool this world could give a writer is the opportunity to see people. Truly see people, behind the business suits and the Lexus, the winning smiles and accomplishments, to where they see themselves.

Always, to see the person as he sees himself, is to understand the thing he lives in. The thing, meaning, his reality. His universe. His environment.

I wonder if I should be writing about this in my OD… lol