Greed and other Hobbies

Forget calling the Got Junk people. The fastest way to clear a room of its contents is to have a death in the family and call in the relatives to come and choose an item as a keepsake. We went through this with dad, but it wasn’t relatives, it was his neighbours. It’s amazing how quickly seemingly incapacitated seniors can move when a pull-out couch and a synthetic-wool blend throw rug is involved. When my own meme died my aunties reenacted the battle of Sparta just to get their mitts on a pair of china birds and some crochet needles.

It’s easy for me to scoff at the corpse-still-warm greed that sometimes possesses family members at the death of a loved one- I’m an only child and so is my son. I think it’s just a human failing to be greedy. We all have it in us. It might not be things, either. We’re piggy about food, booze, attention, free time. And as Canadians we’ve hidden behind this “Ah shucks, have a donut” hosery that belies our collective greed for land. Walk over the beautiful rolling hills along the Grand River and you’ll see why Mohawks are so pissed off.

Sure I’ve entertained all seven deadly sins: anger, greed, lust, gluttony, envy, eating animals and wearing braids after forty. And because of this, I now have a stupid hydro pole in my front lawn. Like stepping in dog shit after making a nasty remark about someone, my karma pole chides me. I’m incapable of consistently thinking pure thoughts ergo, I now have this ridiculous green, plastic phallus in the middle of my front lawn. Behold my gossiping, petulant, ego-driven albatross. It’s causing me a great deal of dukha, and the bullies at Ontario Power Generation don’t give a flying fig.