Poverty is Nuanced

i was just thinking...wishing.. dreaming..

that i had people who were on my same vibration..epicureans

where food was nothing to be enshrined, made special, like if ti is gold

but run of the mill, its exactitude, beauty and wholeness never compromised

but totally enjoyable..

wishing i had people whose purpose was really to enjoy life to the hilt, at the level they are on...

and then i realized...remembered...

someone i do not know just earlier this week asked me to expatiate on a point i made that poverty was a nuanced and complex thing. and in this context of wishing for mirrored people, homes, hearth, life and living sameness...how people are indeed poor but it is obscured.

i think of all the people I know, that i am most like..here in trinidad...and i cant think of one who is single, in their own home, that was not inherited from a parent, or who arent living with parents or relatives, .folk who have no extra. folk who appear to have but it is not theirs, like cars, vehicles, businesses...ultimately what i am saying is that i see no one who is able to help anyone else. we are all in various corners, on the edge of nothing, failure, forms of destitution. in the states they call it one paycheck away from homelessness or financial ruin. here in trinidad, it is more complex and nuanced. cause these folk they have a liming and public life. but...if you check it, count it, seek it out, try to deconstruct it, or exact it out to its conclusion, you will find, there is nothing there. nothing translates to anything real.

i will use myself as an example.

folk come to my house, where i live, and I get asked all the time either one of two questions: is that my house, or who do i live with. and what they see is this huge maco house. fancy to them, and they want to know whose, beyond that, they extrapolate a lot of meaning that is all empty. they think we have money. when my relatives chinks on food. call me boiling two eggs, labash. opening a tin of cornbeef as grounds for world war three and I wonder what kind of stinginess births that kind of depravity.

then the car port has three vehicles. all big and or suvs. my own cousin told me that my house looks like one of those indian family compounds. now tell me. listen to the various cultural signifiers in that one comment. first, black folk dont have that, those things, those appearances, and what do those things mean for this population. it is another means and levels of what i talk about really poor people: who dress nice, have gold and expensive shoes and sneakers, guys in particular, and or a car, but living in a broken down house. for us middle class people of a certain ilk and class we live in really nice homes but may be on the fringe of cash and cutting and dicing our spending.

my point is, what i look like, where i live, how i live, means nothing, if i cant tomorrow go to the bank and pull out a 100K cash, no scene. or give a friend or family $10K if they are in trouble, or watch someone in my circle struggling, and know they dont desrve to be, that they invested and tried to end up differently, and you cant pull out and say, let me help you do something, ...to me that shows a level of poverty in the social fabric.

i maintain that poverty is an elusive all everywhere apparent juggling dynamic thing. and each to its own level, culture, family, network, block, clan... endless

the only time you not poor or in poverty is when you have something to cash out and save yourself. or have cash that you can access without losing, at least once. or have business and resources you can employ others, or create opportunities for others to build themselves, without you for one moment thinking it is a loss, minus or debilitation for you.

and i talking from experience.

you are only not poor when you have it to help someone else.

like house a single mother and her new born daughter in tuskegee

or leave a rental house that was empty when you rented it, now furnished with new full sized washer and dryer, japanese silk jacquard futon, hand made wood queen sized bed, a full bedroom suite, from your childhood. lol

and a diy book shelf made from board and bricks covered in contact paper and plants ;)

or when you loaned a cosmetic company owner $10K when the city council mashed down her facility, filled with contents and stock

or even when you save land for a family name and maternal legacy with your last $30k and your network of ministers. not using resources for yourself but for the benefit of others.

and then you turn around and find after all those decades, you really are poor, cause you can do none of that again. and cant even save yourself.

that is the mark of poverty and the poor. those who cant save or help themselves.

the poor are us. not the ones we wash our mouths on ...presented on tv news