An Abstraction of Rose and Me “Picnicking” at the Lake 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20"
Hi Ecency and the Hive Machine,
I am 13 weeks into a year long project where I keep my income and expenses below the poverty line. I am back into crypto-social media because it is crazy that I ever disregarded it:) Over the next several days I will get readers up to speed on how it’s been going since I began accounting for every penny, and staying low so I don’t vicariously murder earthling flora and fauna with U.S. explosives. I wrote the following back on New Year’s Day:
Happy New Year! I wish you controllable poverty and access to affordable antibiotics. I am going underground, further below the emperor’s reach. He will hear from me the howl of an angry haint, but no longer be able to touch the makings of my goodness. As long as I can hold out on rice and beans, and cheap multi-vitamin chaser, this rogue government cannot force my acquiescence to build another bunker busting bomb, nor contribute toward the salaries of Congressional and corporate stooges and sycophants. As of today, I am born again a citizen of earth, residing on the shore of a Great Lake, married to another unfortunate prisoner of the United States, whom I need now more than ever to help manage our wonderful lives with access to easy money and occasional dollops of innocence.
I have a ledger to keep my accounts, a flask to instigate expensive dreams in public houses, and an aforementioned lenient partner tuned in to another one of my “edge of precipice” experiments, which appears hypocritical, but is really an unavoidable double-bind that all adult consciousnesses (rich or poor) must face while living in a fascist state. Sounds drastic, but I need to find out for myself if this modern living isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be. I believe taxpayers are disenfranchised on a federal level, which figuratively means that by mid-April each year, Uncle Mafioso Sam and gang have made their annual visit to the majority of American households with a baseball bat demanding a 10-37% cut or knuckles-be-smashed. And, in return, compliant citizens receive more brutes on the street stealing their labor for butter steaks and greasy bolognese. If Sam’s cut actually went to protect our neighborhoods from thieves with , for starters, universal health and elder care, guaranteed housing, education and a living wage, then U.S. Mafia good socialism, and another glass of Sambuca for the house please! I would welcome these tax hoodlums with open arms.
Instead, on any given day, our Mafia boss sends foreign thugs 2000 lb. bombs to drop on starving people while creepily filming adult entertainment for 90 year old segregationists at the White House.
Merry Christmas to us lucky peasants!
I need to be clear. This is not a moral experiment, and I am up to no good. I sit at a needy chair without a say for the future. I know I am a saint, hypocrite, fool, charlatan, creator, strongman, weakling… So are you. We’re all part of this universe together. We are billionaire, barking dog, flower garden. I do not write persuasive prose, paint provocative pictures, argue progressive politics because I am a moralist. I react, yes, like a slave slapped across the face for working so damn hard. I approach the table and easel to express rage and anger, seeking a solution to my problem, which could be everyman’s problem, but that is never my concern. I don’t care enough about your choices to criticize them. I need to care for the nuclear and limited extended family and friends under my influence. To take the slave metaphor further… I just want to be free, now! I don’t participate in the Civil War. I abstain because I am a non-entity in that world of decision-making. I don’t care what the masses do to destroy themselves, but dammit, whoever comes creepin’ aggressively near my wife and kids, taken from my side not too long ago, will get his throat slit first chance I get.
The artist is unhappily supported by a spouse, institution, government or bored millionaire. And perhaps it’s even worse for the canary-in-the-coal-mine type creator who looks like a beggar because the culture overwhelmingly rejects disobedience. It demands dishwashers and doctors for each newly constructed Smokeybones® franchise. The latter is born free while another round of human beings gets shackled in the dark. The trappings of federal capitalism. Low expectations with very low freedom rewards, and an army of consummate drug pushers for the new diabetics. My hope is that the more artists humiliated, the freer a community shall become. The more broke and outspoken the poets and painters, the better our chances at survival. I will consume less to punish the mafioso killers. Yup, a moral solution for sure! Another double-bind. Always the non-moralist moralizing. I am also very aware of how this “experiment” looks to other human universlings.
The Christian mind has always been haunted by the feeling that the sins of the saint are worse than the sins of the sinners, that in some mysterious way the one who is struggling for salvation is nearer to hell and to the heart of evil than the unashamed harlot of thief. It has recognized that the Devil is an angel, and as pure spirit is not really interested in the sins of the flesh. The sins after the Devil’s heart are the intricacies of spiritual pride, the mazes of self-deception, and the subtle mockeries of hypocrisy where mask hides behind mask behind mask and reality is lost altogether.
—Alan Watts from The Wisdom of Insecurity
Hell yeah, I’m the Devil’s advocate. Onward artist soldiers! Let’s make a world where every spoonful of brown rice gives President Genocide another hunger pang.
Here’s how I’ll proceed:
I plan to keep my expenditures below $15,000 (U.S. poverty level < $14,891) for one year beginning January 1, 2024. I will account for half of our house mortgage, (including water and local property taxes), car payment and insurance, and utilities (heat, electric phone and Internet). All expenses related to my painting (supplies and website) will be my responsibility. Groceries will be accounted for proportionately. That is, I will pay only for what I consume (and half of our cat’s needs too).
Now for the kicker. I will challenge myself to make under $399 profit for the year. Cottage industries making less than $400/year do not need to report income to the IRS. This does not mean you should refrain from purchasing Throop work. Please no! My annual expenditures to income ratio is 100:1 at least. That is, I make a dollar for every $100 worth of labor and material expense accrued while painting and writing. (I won’t even get into the undefinable ratios of homemaking that involve thousands of hours making zero dollars. Modern slavery is very real, and a great story for a future read.)
