margaux

“The Blue Iris”, from Andrea Zanatelli’s embroidery series

Megan Fernandes, “May to December,” in I Do Everything I’m Told

@fairycosmos / Comic by @shhhitsfine / Comic by @incendavery

@ryebreadgf / alison zai / phillip roth / unknown / @archbudzar

Albert Camus, The Misunderstanding

[ Text ID: I have always loved everything about you. / Even what I didn't understand. ]

roominghouse, winter, margaret atwood

neil hilborn, numbered days

— Anne Carson, The Glass Essay

Victoria Chang, from "The Islands, 1961" (for Agnes Martin)

Mary Oliver, from “Hum, Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

Recently, I was watching television when a formless ghoul appeared and told me that it was my fault for not owning a house. Despite the fact that I do own a house thanks to the unsolved death of my landlord and the subsequent squatters-rights law that allows me to keep adverse possession of the property unless I leave for over 24 hours at a time, something else about what she said stuck in my craw.

She explained that if I would just take $1500 a month out of my paycheque, and put it aside, and never touch it, I would have enough to make a down payment on a house. This made sense, but only that kind of sense which is made until you put down the bong and ask the other person at the party to repeat themselves very slowly while you pull out your Bowie knife and body-snatcher detector.

if you did indeed start saving $1500 a month in January 1st, 2018, you would indeed have $90,000 by January 1st, 2023. Probably a little more from interest, but not nearly as much as you would have had by repeatedly putting that money into literally any investment vehicle, such as a 1978 Plymouth Volare.

Now, here’s where things get really crazy.

If you take that same $1500 a month and you start putting it in your bank account in the year 620, by January 1, 2023, you will be able to afford a $25 million house, all cash. Or the 20% downpayment on a $125 million house if you’re feeling like you can stretch it a little. And you also will have experienced the entire arc of the industrial revolution, which you will have been unable to enjoy while paying rent to more than two dozen landlords, even as the concept of serfdom collapses around you.

Here’s where things get even crazier.

If you had $1500 American dollars per month in the year 620, you would actually be able to just buy the papacy and install yourself as Pope, replacing the uncharismatic Boniface V. In this case, you would be living rent free in the Vatican for over 1400 years, unable to be removed unless through direct sub-papal fiat, although still vulnerable to the radical side-effects of internecine warfare in Italy and especially the pressures of standing up to a politically strong emperor in a time when the Church’s absolute power over politics is beginning to wane. Then, you can spend that $1500 a month on whatever you like, instead of housing or food. I recommend a 1978 Plymouth Volare.

This is the real life hack, and it’s shocking nobody talks about it.

Subscribe to my tiktok for more finance tips, and by “tiktok” I mean the sound that the broken camshaft on my 1978 Plymouth Volare is making. If you buy it, I swear it’s an easy fix.

My wish:             I want to say                           what happened to me. I want a say             in what happens to me.

— Paul Tran, from “The Santa Ana,” All the Flowers Kneeling

[Text ID: It’s January. Tomorrow we’ll grieve. /End ID]

the years by alex dimitrov