One day, I burned 50,000 dollars.
Paid someone one thousand dollars to transport them to me while I sat on my armchair in one of my many living rooms, though this one happened to be my favorite, of my, many living rooms for the sole purpose that it has my favorite armchair, it is actually the World’s Best Armchair™, really it is, I bought it, and because it is the best, World’s Best ™, there is only one of them in the World, this one right here, so I couldn’t order more.
But I turned my lemons into sweet glasses of French citronnade by allowing this restriction to free me of the question I get asked often from my guests, which room is your favorite?
To which I ask them to clarify if they are referring to rooms in their entirety, or just if the favorite pertains to this specific type of room, I usually wave my arms around, gesturing the expanse of what surrounds us in the living room, these conversations mostly happen in the living room, one of my many living rooms, to which they usually almost always answer (usually in a quick or timid tone, I don’t know why they always respond in this way):
“Um-er…just the type of room I guess, so which is your favorite living room?”
The last word is always said with a subtle bitterness, even when they consciously try to mask it, the poor out of understanding their question “Which is your favorite room” has one meaning for them, probably always have only one meaning for them, and for me my material realm is actually a completely different realm than theirs, at a seemingly unreachably high level, where my abundance is so vast I need sub-categories, or specifics, to choose from a sea of diamonds.
And so, my response is now this living room, of my many living rooms, is my favorite because I have the Worlds Best Armchair™, ya know, this one here.
So I made a fire in the fireplace, sat in this very chair naked, if you can imagine the Worlds Best Armchair™, you can imagine the reality that not even the Worlds softest cashmere can be between your bare skin and its perfectly conformed, almost enveloping embrace.
You feel weightless in its hold, yet behind this comfort is a security of structure, so delicately precise that it is the very essence, the tangible equation of the best armchair in the world.
To correctly hold you up in perfect alignment for your anatomical build and energy flow, gently massaging you on every minuscule fascia to smooth out any muscular knots, yet doing so, so delicately and constantly that you feel a euphoric blissfull stillness.
It is Yin and Yang in a common material form.
So I was naked on this very armchair when they brought me the 50,000 dollars I requested. I asked for them to drop it in the middle of the room and leave.
I stared at it a long time, days passed as I sat naked staring, first observing all its physical qualities, in sharp detail, before thinking of it’s history, of my history, how my life was influenced by it even before I was old enough to understand its concepts, I thought of its concept, its changing worth, what it is and what it means.
After many days I stood up and went to it, it was still there in the middle of the floor, and I counted each bill, always noting its year and origin, and I spent so much time counting them, over and over, until it happened that my counting them became my reading them.
My acute awareness of their physical and metaphorical properties, and having 50,000 bills that were each as similar as they were different, thus having their own specific histories or origin, and different physical attributes, some slightly worn with age- I specifically asked for no new bills- some stained or torn, the same thing and the same worth logistically save for the higher value of monetary special editions, or prized years…
This was 50,000 dollars but it also wasn’t due to the variety of bills. As I counted I read them, got to know them, and they would have their own set of attributes, and I did not ignore this but accepted and explored this concept, creating a special relationship with each bill, sometimes reading them in alphabetical order from geographic place or origin, sometimes by age.. though in each grouping there were large groups of similarities, depending on how they were arranged when counted they would read different stories, and my incessant counting was joyful and entertaining. After countless days counting, I felt closer to these slips of paper than I did to many friends, we had spent a lot of time together and while I learned to enjoy a meaningless task, counting and recounting 50,000 dollars so much that they became intimate to me not in their allure but in my knowing them, as their physical self object and what meaning I now have understood from them, in my ritualistic devotion.
I created their meaning for myself by choosing 50,000 as it was a fanatical number to count to, in fact it was physically exhausting, but achievable, and it was a number of, dramatic median worth for me to understand, or try, to understand, its meaning and value for another person, like my guests in my living room, asking me the question, what is my favorite room—except in this equation the tables are turned and I am imagining their meaning for myself.
After an indescribable amount of time spent with these bills, I stood in front of them, and burned them all.
I took the larger similar groups and burned them together, in bundles, and would burn the special ones individually until I realized that’s what we’ve always done, hence my initial action, and I set flame to them all.
They burned right there, in the middle of the floor, and I watched the flames of the real time I spent with them, the meanings I created for them, all that time thinking of infinite number of possibilities they could hold for someone, and the names of each number. I stood watching until it burned itself out.You can still see the burn mark, there, in the middle of the floor, it represents the place where I met Power, though I have evolved from the cave mans genius by adding meaning behind the materials used.
Long silence ensues.
After a very, almost absurd amount of time, the REPORTER meekly addresses the Man.
THE REPORTER
And, um, after that sir?
THE MAN, without even an inkling of acknowledgment of the bizarre moment that passed between them, continues naturally.
THE MAN
Ah yes, after that. After all that was described, I was still naked you know, I came to this very armchair, yes the one I’m on now, it really is the Worlds Best™, I came here, sat down in lush bliss, and watched reality TV shows for 96 hours.