Control

Control is the illusion of the uncomfortable
With the unceasing floating of our place
In the world
And I feel its waves washing me out
to somewhere
Unknown
But I can swim
I can swim
I can swim
I do not where
Where i will go

I do not pretend to know the map of what comes
Its contours and its markers
Even as my body's every anxious knot yearns for its every detail
My heart wants to know who I will love
My arms and head want to know what they will work
I am uprooted
But not without roots
I am displaced
But not without place
I love her deeply, still, but I know our task
I know it “may not always be so”
I bow before the sublime vastness of the world
and Being
and all that I am yet to know, yet to understand
(Even Knowing is Controlling)
And I give it away finally, as if I ever had it
As if it were something to hold, exchange and give
But we learn now, and we learn and we learn
Until we know Or until we have figured it out

Still, I place one foot after the other
I wake every morning
Sometimes reluctant to meet its newness
But I feel,
But I feel
I am strong
I am brave
I am me

Recovery

We mistake but we recover

We live and learn and

hurt and struggle

We create and destroy

Create and destroy

Search and destroy

Are created and destroyed

With the cuts and scars and the bruises

                the backhanded compliments,

                the absent presence

of each passing moment

of each day, of each love

We strive

We stumble and

We recover,

Indefatigably

We are continually inspired and

continually traumatized

Torn down,

Built-up

By the world and

By our images of others

as much as

                of others themselves

                those we love,

                       With all of the fibers of our being,

                                With every artery and vein coursing warm blood

                                         Every sinuous connective issue,

Worn down by the grinding of the machine

Of

                those we cannot stand

(A difference that makes a difference?)

We live in defiant testament to the

                Overwhelming

Forces that envelope us,

         have enveloped us

                 will envelope us

Edifying always, annihilating always

Like water on the falls

Each moment

With each touch

Each sucker punch

Resist worry, resist hate,

Resist always

 your body’s

urging 

     to fear

to seek out something, seek out someone
to blame,
for the pain of the world, 

            scapegoated

to give in

to give up

                (Blockade always, others from the sting)

Of what will sting,

This is part and parcel,

This is the road,

This is it

Embrace the joys, 

      discard the pains

The infinite fleetingness of the

always present

Remember always

Overcome, overcome

                If something deep within you

Cannot allow the inhabitation

          of the present

Of the now, then the almost-here may

                Clothe and comfort you as a warm friend,

As family you haven’t seen since when

                Or may ignite you to something

Un-seen

Our senses may betray us,

                Our last lines of defense

But we always meet and overcome
      meet and overcome

It is in our very nature,

                Something primal

                Something deep within us

     That no scalpel can remove

We, us

                We must live,

                We must strive

                We must be

How The Other Half Banks, 2016, Mehrsa Baradaran Book Review

How The Other Half Banks, 2016, Mehrsa Baradaran

Book Review, Joseph Homer

Towering, national, corporate banks were not always the dominant monoliths that they are today. But as ‘big-banks’ edged out their local, community-lending competitors, lower-income clients, whom they no longer banked, had nowhere to go but to a growing payday lending industry (Baradaran 8). Chronicling this history of banking, Mehrsa Baradaran’s “How The Other Half Banks” begins by reviewing key founding-father concerns about federal banking and its relation to power and goes on to describe big banking’s near-total abandonment of the non-rich, non-corporate public. She reviews current banking practices and suggests alternatives that may very well provide credit opportunities – opportunities to live and thrive – for all.

Banking, in her view, has long been bound up with morality, democracy, and opportunity. Importantly, Baradaran explains that the under-banking of the poor is, in part, bound up with a deep-seeded but misguided moral conceit: that the ‘poor’ are unable to bank themselves, and they cannot handle or manage their finances, not to mention complex financial services (Baradaran 115, 119). Likewise, she shows how a landscape once covered by community banks concerned with the banking needs of its local inhabitants was eventually supplanted by that of a concentrated, centralized system of a few national banks. This trend was the direct result of increasingly-deregulated industrial and market forces, fierce cost-cutting competition, and decisions to systematically bank only debtors seen as lucrative (Baradaran 7, 53, 57, 64). This trend, enabled by financial deregulation, dried up easily-accessible credit sources for the hard-of-luck, and fueled the payday-lending industry, which has since unscrupulously and predatorily banked those abandoned by mainstream banks (Baradaran 8). She observes these unwinding and seemingly-irreversible trends as indicative of a troubling development in our democracy, one that strikes at its egalitarian tenets and especially the notion that, if we work hard, we may each have the resources necessary to live fulfilling lives. In the place of banks that have failed and neglected most of us, she suggests that we re-create a public option in banking, returning to the roots of what, in large part, gave rise to our democracy and the strength of America in general: the Post Office (Baradaran 9).

Postal Banking could bank those willfully abandoned by big banks and usuriously exploited by fringe lenders. This high-interest industry, while serving a market need, preys upon desperate citizens in complicated financial situations: those grappling for the rescuing ropes of credit only find the entrapping chains of endless cycles of debt, exorbitant interest-payments and hidden fees (Baradaran 10). Given this reality, she urges us to consider Postal Banking as an alternative. Not only had it been a success in the United States in the earlier part of the century and had contributed to our victory in Europe; it is also widely practiced and popular around the world (Baradaran 9). Perhaps most importantly, however, is the fact that we already have the infrastructure to make it a reality, with postal outposts inhabiting even the most remote American corners (Baradaran 9, 205). As private for-profit banks and their payday-lending counterparts continue to abandon the public-at-large in spite of being funded and routinely rescued by it, Postal Banking might well provide a new path to social solvency and equality of access to credit.

Baradaran provides an interesting look into the history of debt in the particulars of the United States as well as a defense of those struggling in poverty, and reminds us of the importance of creating financial opportunity for all. Moreover, she provides us with a meticulously-argued case for why we must do so: it is incumbent upon us to put this idea into action, and what is at stake is the very financing of the American Dream (Baradaran 10).