Alms for Oblivion – Everything Costs Money by DAVID BURKE, ISLAND CATHOLIC NEWS, February, 2008, Vol 22 No 1, Guest Editorial

+++  I write out of sheer desperation.  Some people write for pleasure, enjoy the process and make money; I’ve made a little while struggling on the disability pension for the past twenty frustrating quasi-suicidal years and when I think back to when I read all of Proust – au recherche de temps grande fondu – I  think that man really had the real ticket, in spite of a lack of humour, and perhaps I love my electric typewriter more than any member of the opposite hex.  Everything costs money.  ++  The structure I impose on myself to avoid insanity is a dubious one but it works.  Commodity – the bias of the world according to Shakespeare – my refuge and bane.  The price of everthing.  While we all know that welfare is a death sentence, sometimes there are small victories that make the whole thing worthwhile, but the thirty-nine thousand dollar Jag-dream awaits.  One day I will write for money.  One day I will date J. K. Rowlings and the Queen of England.  One day.  We live forever on the never never back in my hometown.  ++  Tomorrow is cheque day and the poor of B. C. can breathe easy for a second, with Christmas coming and the sun always shining on Welfare Wednesday.  Beating the system is a full-time occupation and every government office should employ a small core of system beaters, just to be on the safe side.  When every farthing counts every penny looms large.  When every penny has signficance a twenty spot is still a windfall, even though it can hardly buy anything et al.  ++  I retired from acting because there was no money in it, sold a few paintings and reinvented myself as a writer of small chapbooks.  A meagre war.  A war of attrition.  George Orwell and his downs and outs very much became a god to me.  I thought of changing my name to Eric Blair.  Ordinary milk I cut in half, which makes a tolerable cup of coffee, with extra brown sugar stolen from Starbucks.  Toilet paper I buy in single rolls.  I use dishsoap for my laundry and buy tea candles in bulk.  Every now and then I buy two bottles of wine and have a welfare party.  This is as good as it gets.  ++  It’s a crying shame and grievous sin when money means everything, yet underneath the gay camaraderie, the joking, the drinks, the winks, the watching videos and making frantic love is the ticking of the clock of money, for those where time is money and money is time and finally one is driven to church to say please sir, I’d like a little more….time.  ++  So we all reap alms for oblivion.  For it is to the church that we must ultimately turn when times get rough, and times have been so very rough over these last twenty long years.  ++  I’m in constant pain and constant prayer mode.  Poverty is depression and anger is depression in another form, but I can’t market my anger, and so must subdue it, allay it, deploy it and finally satirize it, before the past twenty-seven years become a cross which I bear, from which I learn nothing, bearing only bitter fruit.  ++  Sure I wear clothes with stains on them.  I’m proud of the stains… to me a badge of honour and an indication that I never sold out or sold myself short.  The alms for oblivion take many forms and exactly what was the oblivion Shakespeare spoke of and the great sized monster of ingratitude.  How grateful should we be for our blessings and how willing to move to where the grass is greener and the bananas riper and the lotuses faster and sleeker???  ++  A cup of coffee is heaven, salmon and mayo a benefice and a donut with filling the high life; a day without a touthache is a good day and the evidence of hot water for a bath is the evidence of a God, who art not David Bowie.  ++  Many times I have been suicidal – tobacco-related illness and the ghosts of George Orwell and Beckett hover close by and assure there will be tailor mades in heaven.  Finally I have my superb books to sustain me in moments of smoker’s cough.  The pages crack open.  I enter and escape.  One day I shall not return.  And then the bus pass will not be so important.  The window is open… The field is clear for jumping.  But upwards with wings or downwards in smoke is anyone’s guess, and then the many many I have helped with their little lives are going to have to fend for themselves, as I make my way towards the podium.  +++