Many of you have borne with me through my personal travails and many transformations, each sadder than the next. You may recall Dick Minim, Senator (D) from MA, of the East Coast Minims who has done so much for both philanthropy and philatelism, kindly offering his internationally recognized stamp collection to the Beineke at Yale, on loan, and Captain Blowtorch, who is to be congratulated for his recent election to the GA House of Representatives on the Tea Party Ticket, and Missy Proctor, Admiral Harlan Proctor's daughter, who has done so much to put fun back in philanthropy, after all the tedious work on metrics, and Sister Lucy and Father Brennan, who have brought a higher moral tone to the philanthropy scene rooms in Wealth Bondage, and of course my generous patron and direct superior, Mistress (and honory Doctorate) Candidia Cruikshanks, the goddess of the Free Market System, and double bottom line paragon, par excellence. And, of course, we all know, and admire, my mentor, The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, whose tough love for those who have most and could do most, has set a high standard for all of us in the Family Office business who aspire to being Secular Priests to Dynastic Wealth, while building a thriving personal practice, without uncompensated compromise on the moral or financial side. Many of you have asked where did all the crazy characters go? Why now is it only me speaking, and so earnestly, adulterating truth with nonsense, to no apparent business purpose?
The answer is medical science. Through the good offices of my doctor and therapist, I hear voices less often. I am more myself. Now that so much of my brain has been excavated, it has become relatively easier in recent years to be myself, if only because there is so much less of myself to be. With so little brain remaining, I am almost normal now. I am, as my posts have shown, more authentic, more sincere, more fully present as a person and more confident as a consumer.
The problem now, and it is driving me crazy, is that my doctor says my therapist is a figment of my imagination, and my therapist accuses my doctor of being unreal too. I asked several of you too, and the consenus is that, sadly, both the doctor and the therapist, are fictions. If they were real medical professionals, you have told me, I would have gotten a bill by now, and that seems right. No bill, no Doctor and no Therapist either. Some of you with advanced degrees in literature, including my esteemed colleague, Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Director of Forensic Psychology in the Wealth Bondage Center for Post-Modern Moral & Political Sensibility, says that these figments may actually be Allegories, or Signs of the Times. He says that "reality is constructed socially," largely through what he calls "stories," and that these fictions while not "real" may actually be "hyper-real," more real than reality itself and determing reality-as-we-see-it. Father Brennan, my spiritual advisor, says they may actually be "signs and portents of the end," Omens of Millennium, or Spiritual Types, written in the Book of Nature, or vouchsafed directly to Tutor, for the instruction, not just of me, but for you too, that you may be liberated from Bondage to Wealth and Earthly Desire, that you may be set free in this world and the next, at one with endless love and grace, in which and through which we take our life and have our being. I would take Brennan more seriously, if he had not been defrocked and if I knew less about his personal habits, to which I am sworn to secrecy. He protects me the same way, under the veil of the confessional.
As for The Happy Tutor, his style of moral rehabilitation of degenerate humanity has fallen out of favor. The lash, the paddle, the dungeon, the stocks, the cross, the scalpal, salt, needle, clamps, and cauterizing iron belong to a bygone age, the Roman or Neo-Classical world where leaders were seen as ruling in part by moral vision, like Caesar Augustus, say, rather than as today by metrics to purposes that remain hazy, and as the expression of a humanity that seems ever more stunted. Wealth Bondage, Dungeons and all, The Great Pleasure Palace of Earthly Desire, The Glittering Casino in every Town, has become little more than a Theme Park evaluated by numbers of wealth holders on the rides, growth in numbers of wealth holders, and time on the rides, total fees collected, and in client satisfaction with the pleasure of the moral instruction received, and the utility of that instruction, as measured in power and dollars.
Tutor's once deft hands, those of a moral surgeon operating without anesthetic, now shake with age and delerium tremens. He is more butcher than satirist. He is not what he once was, though his wisdom is timeless - immortal, the sword outwearing the sheath. With Chadwallah, then, I am considering a book of Tutorisms Varioum, with commentary, so that this Ancient Wisdom not be lost on a postmodern age, much given to Idolatry of Brands and and endlessly entertained and enthralled by The Hero with a Thousand Faces, most often corporate. Even if this is another Dark Age, surely there will be a Renaissance, one sweet day, and learning will revive. With a grant from the Minim Foundation, we may yet be able to create a manuscript, as the Monks once did, in the prior Dark Age, handwritten on parchment, with a quill pen, or stylus on clay tablets, or scratched on the walls with a nail, that properly codified could join the Minim Family Stamp Collection, on loan at The Beineke, for the edification of today's best qualified youth. My theory of change, or logic model, is to do as I am told. So, before taking this project beyond the talking stage, I will ask My Immediate Superior's opinion and be guided by her decision. She sits higher in life than do I and her vision extends further. Her office is high in the tower, with a panoramic view of Wall Street and beyond to NY Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Mine is a cubicle in the windowless third sub-basement, by the boiler, and the shredder. Will a Book of Tutorisms Variorum be good or bad for Business and the Business of being Good, to which Mistress Candidia has dedicated her every effort, since precocious childhood, and which accounts for her rising to the Top, in a just world, through Market Means by her merits alone? Seems like a longshot.
I am deeply sorry if all this makes no sense to you. I have come to understand that this is often the case when I use Figures of Speech, and other artful indirections and embellishments of the literary imagination, when writing for my Fellow Financial, Tax, Legal and Moral Professionals, at the Senior AP level, or higher. Without figments of the imagination, though, what am I but a sad old man talking to himself? A morals tutor as tedious, complacent, self-deceived, and as literal as _________, JD, or as pompopus and pre-reflective as Dr._________ and Dr._________, or as suborned and servile as Rev. Dr. ____________, or as confident and blind as Distinquished Professor ________ of ____ Studies at _____ University of _________. And that would be living death, frail human clay from which the holy spirit has long since departed. Names in the blanks? Real people? Distinguished men and women, scholars, theologians, philosophers, historians, legal minds, therapists, real and existing advisors to the world's wealthiest families? People I know as well as I know Dick Minim or Sister Lucy? Figments too. Figments all. Were they real, I could be whipped for my temerity, or even sued. None do offend. None. We are all just strutting Figures played upon a stage without footlights, in open air, mingling with the crowd. We are no longer allowed masks on the internet. It all has to tie out to a valid credit card. So, please join the dance, but come as you are, in real life. The bill comes due later. We know who you are.
