Sunbeam's Gift

I've got a fat check coming, and it's created some angst in me. I'm meant to stimulate the economy with it, which sounds a bit sexy, but, unfortunately, I've got new rules.

Believe you me, I've been very patriotic in my economic stimulation for 63 years. I've done it with finesse, buying hard-cover gardening books and GAP clothes in escalating sizes, paying for colleges and cosmetic wart-removal, while investing mostly in a Carbondale artist named Wewer Keohane, a foresightful decision, gracias por todo.

Currently, though, I'm spending hours a day divesting my Glenwood Springs apartment, an Ali Baba's Treasure Cave, of once-very-stimulating stimulations, piled up in corner, closet and antique Chinese cabinet. In Teote, I can't show my home fotos to the Betancos: this Uber-Stuff marks me as the grossest rico on the Planet Earth, even though I fit the American lower middle level by averaged income. I can hear the campesino calculators spinning: "There's 100 T-shirts in that closet, and I have three!" This makes me very uncomfortable, for very clear reasons. As well, I'm tripping over heaps of treasures, not good for an aged rainbow hippie with very delicate bones.

So, soon after returning to my Colorado Tower Suite, I commited to minimalization on a daily basis, while also standing in my power not to buy one thing 'til it's almost bare: just me, a bed, a desk and chair, a scant summer wardrobe and my enormous art collection. It will rival campesino cupboards in utility-simple: my sister Marta feeds thirteen people a day at la casa de palomas with four sandwich plates, three soup bowls, 12 plastic glasses, four coffee cups, and 13 pieces of silverware, so I've a perfect model in my head. I've spent a week packing china and glassware for consignment! "I will not purchase anything but diet food and prescription drugs 'til I'm living like a peasant," my brand-new mantra: count on a porch sale at Palmer House in June.

However, living in Glenwood Springs while "Not Accumulating!" is ridiculously difficult. In Nicaragua, there's nothing to buy but Dollar Store Specials, so it's easy to keep my life light there. Here, however, with the caravan crossroads of the globe right up the road in two directions, I'm learning to say "No!" real hard.

Maybe I'm a glitz-magnet? Even more difficult, my friends are also downsizing and want me to pick up their unwanted things. It's hard to say "No!" to a rain of intriguing gifts, especially since "Free!" tingles my poor-Welsh-peasant soul: I am getting better at it, gracias a Nicaragua. Plus, I simply have no place to put one more thing!

I'm feeling, however, almost unpatriotic: Using our three trillion dollar spendfest in Iraq as a model, I imagine we're to get to a BigBox pronto and BUY, but that disobeys my rules. As well, the "Good Citizens Shop" idea does not work for me as a criteria of valued citizenship: Grammy Edwards always taught me that "Good Citizens Save," but maybe that's become Obsolete nowadays. What to do? What to do? I certainly wouldn't want to be considered a terrorist for living on the interest of my interest.

On top of all that, this E.S. check looks like "found money," money for Teote, for land, cows, turkeys, fish-farms and the like. Even though money spent there usually ends up in a Miami bank, this doesn't seem the intention of OHG's gift, and as a diplomat from Teote, now, I walk with measured steps, especially with money from the Gods of War out there.

I wish my Nicaraguan son, Ramon Ernesto, that joyous sunbeam, were here to reflect and focus my thinking. He's a very good communicator, despite the language barrier, as he knows me pretty well after 15 years, yet thinks that everything I say is downright magical--What can I do?--even when I'm being an utter fool. Perhaps because of that, I . . . Huh? That's it! I'll give it to Ramon! An official gift from OHG to welcome a son of the Americas to our shores, one packing a US Passport. I've decided to adopt him here in the States, which fills me with the joy of a completed turn-around, both for me and Nicaragua, and certainly for Ramon Ernesto.

I'll buy his airplane ticket north--Support the Airlines!--and the rest will be his first Estados spending money, once he's here. I imagine he'll know exactly how to stimulate the economy.

And I'll find a pathway through this glitz, so I can live as simply as a campesino, even here, deep in the heart of Colorado.

Gracias, CenterDoug