Money in Madrid

Why not start with a Frank Ocean quote!

"My silver spoon has fed me good
A million one a million cash
Close my eyes and feel the crash"

From "Super Rich Kids"

I’m a pretty fair-weather communist. There are stretches of time, usually when I’m doing well on cash flow, that I’m a staunch one. For instance, anyone that was in my Modern Standard Arabic class this summer would probably tell you that I’m a radical and slightly unreasonable bleeding-heart leftist. Pretty much every day in class ended in an argument about economics, and I was always the champion of the oppressed. Now if you put into perspective that this summer was directly after a year of saving, a very lucrative graduation party, and my birthday, you’d understand that I was pretty comfortable on cash-money. Not to mention that I was in Egypt, where you can get a meal for 14 cents and top floor (beach front) apartments cost 200 dollars a month.

Fast forward to right now, post summer. I am sitting in a hotel room in Madrid, sick as fuck. I’ve been in Spain for a couple weeks and although the first 12 days or so was one of the greatest experiences of my life, the last 4 days has been a physically and emotionally challenging experience. It turns out that being sick in a country that you have no insurance for is expensive! Especially for me, because I’m completely clueless when it comes to taking care of myself. Usually I call my mom and she tells me what to do. So, in my attempt to be independent I’ve fucked up a lot the last couple days and spent a lot of money that I could have saved with 5 more minutes of thought. In this sudden and large loss of revenue, I’m a lot more stressed about money than I was 2 weeks ago.

A 22-year-old “communist” who’s had everything handed to him since he was born, and who will probably never really have to worry about money, is stressed because he spent a lot of money unnecessarily in 4 days in Europe while he was sick.

How fucked up is that? Honestly, I’m sure that I think about and consider money more than most kids my age. Even those that are much worse off than me.

Lol. I don’t want to shit on myself too much. I’m not conceding my title as a communist, even a staunch one. But I will admit that even though I hold those views, I’m possessed by dat paper. I’d lust to have so much of it that I could do whatever I want, buy any toy that I want, and have sex with more women (I’m also a feminist). The dissonance between what we aspire and what we achieve can really resign us into a state of inaction and apathy. But I don’t think it HAS to. I hope that although I’m a green-faced sexist and angry fuckhead I can still fight for communism, complete equality for women, and world peace without being called a hypocrite.

THAT’S JUST HOW I WAS RAISED DAMMIT.

Last year I went to a lecture by Norman Finkelstein, cool bro. He talked a lot about this dissonance between what we believe and what we do, and I’ll end with a (paraphrased) quote from that lecture.

“You want to know how to fix the financial crisis? Cancel money. Just get rid of money and there will be no crisis. Of course I’m not going to say that though, because the public is not ready to accept it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a communist.”

Well Dr. Fink, you’re a better communist than me because I still haven’t completely accepted the idea on my own. I hope to have that harmony between belief and action one day. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep writing and see what happens.