Progress

I am in the penny billionaires studio today. I needed to come in so I can communicate with the outside world in some way. Rob is working on his new series of paintings and I am using his Internet service to do e mails. Apparently we received our first official donation via pay pal. That along with the hand delivered two dollars and change we received on Monday takes us up to about the twelve dollar mark. Who would have guessed making money was this easy.

I used to use my neighbors computer for e mails, but theirs is no longer working. I hope it is nothing that I did. I swear I only went on Barely Illegal's website once. I now walk the mile back and forth from my house to Rob's. I have lost thirty pounds over the course of the winter. If anyone out there wants to know how to lose weight fast I have a program.

STEP 1- Get rid of your car. That's right, you don't need it anyway. I personally cannot afford one myself so I have structured my life around the original form of transportation. I figure that right now I am walking at least ten miles a week just getting to the places I want to go. Sometimes I wonder what the people driving in their cars are thinking when they see me casually strolling through the streets of Reading Pennsylvania. When I glance over at the line of traffic stopped at a light in town I try to imagine where all of these people are going in their personal transportation devices. The fat one in the red S.U.V is probably going to see her doctor to complain about knee pain of some sort, never taking the time to realize that the human knee is not meant to carry 150lbs of weight. I bet if she just walked to her doctors office a couple of times a week just to say hi, she would soon find herself looking and feeling better without the insane medical bills.

STEP 2- Eat less. The American diet is based on ingesting 2000 calories a day. That is an insane amount of food. I don't know the official consumption rate of the rest of the world, but I imagine it is probably far less. I cannot afford anything these days besides beans and rice. These two food groups are probably your best bet for cheap whole foods. I turned to the nutritional information located on the backs of these packages and realized I would practically have to eat the whole bag of beans and half of a five pound bag of rice in order to reach 2000 calories for the day. I am a very creative cook because lets face it, there are only so many recipes for rice and beans, but the great thing is if you don't go out and buy a giant variety of foods, no matter how well you cook it is nearly impossible to over eat.

STEP 3- Stop watching T.V. The reality in reality television is that while you are watching someone have a life, yours is passing you by. Do something else.


I know that it is probably impossible for most people to follow any one of these helpful tips. Lets face it we are all bombarded with images of people living the 'good life'. I have even been caught up in that view of life in the past. As long as I had a nice car, the coolest clothes, and the newest electronic gizmo to show off to everyone, so that I could let them know at a glance that everything in my life was just fine, I convinced myself that everything was alright. What a farce. That nice car was killing the very earth I depend on for life, creating war and carnage for people in possession of the fuel I needed to make it go. Those clothes were probably sewn by some poor 10 year old Asian kids, working for pennies a day in deplorable conditions halfway around my world(out of site out of mind). And that electronic gizmo was the coolest beeper that you ever saw back in 1993.

The point is that everything is related in someway, and maybe I will never need my own computer, or will never need a car again, and the world will be a better place in some small way. I am at a point in my life where I am willing to sacrifice certain conveniences in my life. I feel no different now than I did when I accumulated things. In fact I feel the same, insecure and uptight. Its not because of what I have or don't, it's because I can feel in my soul that things are not right in the world. I am connected to everyone in the world in some way, and if you take all the experiences of everyone and put them into a blender that is the knot that has been in my stomach for as long as I can remember.

So the next time I see that lady going to her doctor, I hope she is walking on my side of the street so that I can give her a friendly hello, and have some kind of real human experience. Maybe for that one second she won't feel that tweak in her knee and I will feel less of a knot in my stomach.