Oh My indeed....

"Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.
Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely
concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd,
because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were
unhappy. "

The clawback dull as death grind from the desparate edge of bankroll busting horror continues.

Frankly, being profitably bored makes a pleasant change from being scalp crawlingly, teeth shatteringly, monitor throwingly(its a word....its a word...) terrified, but broke. And with that sentence, I say goodbye to my youth forever.

For there was a time when I was a fan of fear and terror. When I gobbled it down in fistfuls, and stomped upon the earth. When youth meant the measure of myself was the measure of what I could contain. Be that beer, vodka, whiskey terror, rage, laughter or ideas. When the abyss and I were on friendly terms, and were happy to gaze into one another for hours at a time. There were rumours. There were scandals. There were awkward social situations. There were partners who just didn't understand.

But the abyss and I were never more than just good friends.

These days I tend not to contain too many things. I've found you can catch all sorts of infections if you try too much. I'm measued in intangibles - money I never see, paid for work that doesn't actually make anything, for people who don't really want it anyway. They say you can't take it with you when you're dead. The 20th century seems to have updated this idea. I'm having a damned hard job of it trying to get my hands on any of it while I'm actually alive. I play poker against people who aren't actually there. Even the chips I use, which are supposed to represent money which isn't there, arent there. They're representations of chips. They're not even real simulacra. They're fake fakes.

I studied philosophy in college. And for that reason, that sentence really screws with my head. Puts me in mind of the day I saw an add saying "genuine fake Mexican furniture for sale". And they meant it. Quite a lot of the world stopped making sense right then.

Its becoming increasing difficult to believe, in the modern world, that anything outside of reality television, media trials, Medieval Total War and grapefruit are actually real.

Which makes me wonder why I get so wrapped up in losing money online when it happens. And why I have such a feeling of wellbeing when I don't. Money Money Money Money.

Money. Fiduciary or Fiat Issue. Literally "Faith Issue". The magic of money. Its worth is a function of the community of belief. Now thats the power of positive thinking for you. Theres a very real sense in which it deosn't exist, unless we all really really want it to. Some countries wanted to believe in it so much that the penalty was death for refusing to accept it in trade. Ir represnents something which isn't actually thre. It represemts our willingsness to believe in it.

Money has never meant that much to me, which is an odd statement for a poker player to make, I guess. Its a thing worth mentioning only in its absence, and not important enough to talk about for its own merit.

So why do I get so wrapped up in it?

For this reason, and its a wrong one.

Money is a problem to be solved. And like most of us, I exist in a community of belief that binds us together in some sort of reasonably workable civilised manner. And wrapped up in the social contract is an acceptance of several common currencies, the common currency of politeness, beahviou, conduct an manners. The currency of morals. of toleration, and the balance with freedom. The currency of charity, where we accept we are linked by a common bond within which we exercise our responsibilities to one another. And the currency of finance. All composite parts of the project of civilisation that frames our lives.

But with money, its so easy for the means of life to become an end. To measure ones worth with it in any meaningful sense is a self defeating exercise. It lacks the language. It lacks the words. Its vocabulary is too slim a thing to contain anything but its simple self, and to measure oneself by it is to lose too much in translation.

And these are good thoughts to remember when the cards run cold.