The high-end art market was awash with renminbi in 2011. In part, Chinese currency flooded the art market in a reach for cultural legitimacy as it snapped up art with pedigree, both East and West. After a long march of another kind, the success stories of the Chinese economic miracle are now ready to enter the international art market in a frenzy to purchase the talismans of refined taste. I consider myself part of the working class here in America and I thought I had it tough competing. Imagine the outrage you’d feel if that prized Pollack you were eyeing got price-jacked at the Christie’s auction due to another round of nasty Sino-based inflationary pressures.

But give it time. China has its own problems. We thought mucking our way through exposure to international labor markets was rough on our financial picture. China will soon face a billion workers who feel that they deserve a pay increase and better working conditions. A Chinese contestant on a popular reality show where a panel of women interview potential date material said it well. She was offered the opportunity to take a romantic bike ride with an eligible bachelor. Her response shows her to be perfectly in tune with western sensibilities by offering this nugget of capitalist poetry, “I’d rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bike.”

Well maybe not really. But it seems that way. And they should.

This summer was brutal for my tomato crop. We managed to grab a handful of those tasty red beauties in June before the blaze of summer put an end to it. I had decided to grow some different heirloom varieties, leaving my usual “Early Girl” out of the mix. Well THAT proved to be a costly mistake. In Western Kentucky you need to get that first crop out of the garden and into the BLT before the blast of high heat slams the door.

In July I checked almost daily for those little green pearls to appear in the blossoms. Only later did I learn from a fellow tomatista that the high temperature was putting the k-bosh to the whole process. “They just won’t set at all once it gets above 95,” he announced. A fruitless search indeed.

Maybe the bees get lethargic. July and August simmer down here somewhere just shy of the boiling point and everything… the river, the clouds, the air, yes even time itself melts into a haze that perfectly matches my mental acuity. Somewhere long about September the cool air draws me out of that languid dreamless sleep and I come alive again.

Its early October and I’ve been reasonably conscious for several weeks now. My memory is alive. The flavor returns of that one, single Black Krum heirloom tomato we harvested before both my tomato plants and I went off to the nether regions of heat related delirium. Stefanie and I once shared that tomato in all its transcendent deliciousness. The desire to relive that experience sharpens as I wait on the plump green fruit hanging from my re-energized tomato plants to show signs of transforming. I search for a blush in the green as I begin to reckon on the frost.

As the days shorten the heat I once cursed for abusing all that is vivacious becomes a precious resource for turning my fat green tomatoes red. Please! Allow me just ten more toasty days so that I may kiss the glory once more! For hark! I see the long winter parade of mediocre tomatoes emerging from Kroger on their resolute path towards me.

Amish rockers

It seems that life is tougher now. Certainly more complex. On drives through the beautiful countryside around our home here in western Kentucky I often joke about “Going Amish.” We could write our families and tell them that we wanted to simplify our lives and make beautiful furniture. I could wear that cool looking broad-brimmed black hat and skip shaving. Stefanie could sport the bonnet and her elegantly tailored frock. We’d still drive around in our little screaming yellow Ford Focus of course. Wave to people as we drove by. Give the larger Amish community a bad name when people see an Amish couple cruise by in a yellow hatchback. Endure taunts of “Hypocrites!” and “Why don’t you get a therapist like the rest of us!!”

But is life really all that tough? I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s sense of deprivation since these are tough economic times. But it is relative. And a quick look back at the history of mere survival would suggest that it has been worse. Maybe tougher in some ways like finding something good to watch on TV. It certainly is tougher to remain thoughtful and sensible with our brains infested with all manner of perceived threats to the continuity of the world as we know it. And with major problems looming, it would seem like the right time to sit down and think of ways to make a change. But then any plan of change we come up with begins to seem more scary than where we are right now. So we react. We pull back. We get riled up and demand simple solutions. We demand that our leaders reflect our “core values” as if that alone would somehow make it all clear, in black and white. We forget the preponderance of gray which requires a political process that wends its way through complex issues towards imperfect solutions.

We know change is coming. When it comes to change our brains get into a little scrap where our intellect says “go” and our emotions say “no.” No surprise then that we tend to shut it down and get cozy with the devil that we know. And what works better when faced with daunting change than a good old political platitude, or the balm of soothing escapist entertainment. But what happens to old fashioned thinking and to reasoned discussion then? Where are those spaces between our “events” where we can just sit and reflect?  And what ever happened to all those chunks of silence when there was, for whatever weird reason, no entertainment?

Priorities change. Today its not so important to know things like which philosopher best represents a particular school of philosophy. Even a fan of philosophy like me has trouble bringing those details to mind. On the other hand, I have more luck recalling the featured menu item at some fast food restaurant. So why does “Hand-Breaded Chicken Fingers” spring with clarity to mind when I think of “Hardee’s” and “Existential someone-or-other” emerge through the fog when I think “Heidegger.”

I remember now. One’s easy and one is hard. One involves issues of life and death, being and non-being, and painstakingly scrutinized methods of thinking and speaking. And the other is just plain delicious! Its a no-brainer! (what did I say?). It wasn’t always like this, was it? Am I just imagining a time not so long ago when discussions lasted long into the night about personal interpretations of reality? Seems like silly pseudo-intellectual bloviating now maybe but at least our brains and passions were fully engaged. Like Greece during the first millennium when there were basically two armed camps fighting in the streets because they disagreed about whether Christ was “of one substance” with God, or merely “of like substance.” That all changed of course when we discovered that Life is an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, smothered in secret sauce.