Farm Tour

Now that elk cliff farm has become a destination and no longer occupies the boonies, jellystone resort traffic fills the air like main street usa and eyes wander through farm listings in west virginia where larger farms off the beaten track don't require a heavy pile of gold. Just for fun, mind you (really?), they call like a long beachfront farm in new zealand, a zillion miles from friends and family, a short drive from new acquaintances. 

I think nietzsche talked about happiness being poverty and filth and wretched contentment, while the taoists speak highly of the contented person who can be happy with what appears to be useless, and certain religions suggest that contentment, though a virtue, is not natural to the human heart; it's strange that the same words can be used by different people in varied, seemingly contradictory fashion, with admiration and disgust. Maybe fashion or fad guides feeling.

Complacency, contentment, self-satisfaction, contented cows -- political conventions suggest these are enemies of capitalism, the greener grass engines that drive a growth-oriented economy beloving bootstraps. Picture wrinkled visages in tattered clothes, sitting along a fenceline, frowning, living on years of past labor, or make them young, yawning, collecting welfare or living on parental kindness, or think of someone hoeing at high noon, a grand garden richly ripening, not punching a clock or suited and tied for wall street.

As our bodies change, we dream. Overcoming bias is a furious fight after years of work and hating laziness, settling down gives us the shakes, searching seems more sensible.

"What on earth are you trying to say?" says Virginia.

Duh. How about a burger, french fries and milkshake?