25>The Queen's Wad

The queen's wad gazes wanly from my wallet, giving a faint smile of encouragement for my enterprise.
It is hard to make a gentle living.
And seemingly getting harder.

We are all tied by fiscal strings to the outer world. However sufficient we become, there are obligations and services that require money.
Sawblades, seeds, shoes; making do can become wearisome.
Man cannot live on cabbage alone: let there be chocolate.

Children find it particularly hard to live within the cage of their parents righteous penury.

Words to do with caution and restraint seem archaic after fifty years of consumerism, but part of the pull we have felt back to the land has come from knowing this Great World Party of excess can't last.



But even if you step out of it, the traffic roars by.
I have never felt any lasting joy in disconnecting entirely from your mother culture.
It smacks of grim faced zealots, cursing outsiders for not undergoing equal hardship.

That dialogue called trade is where common values meet. Where we appreciate each others skills and sensibilities.
It is where we offer the fruits and rewards of an alternative lifestyle.

Wow, I feel almost saintly, put like that!

There is a continual need to keep a check on where your enterprise is being led, by the logic of scale, and the slaver of success. To keep that resonance between it and your life and the resources. In a Culture founded upon the principles of growth and increasing wealth.
I have seen simple woodcarvers ready to turn into ruthless tycoons when a big order beckons.

We try to make a living from simple acts of creativity.
But the irony is that most of what we offer as trade goods are hardly the staples of life. It may feed the soul or the imagination, but not the body.

As people become more cautious about spending money,  as they too become wary of excess, so we will feel it in fewer sales.




That is just how it is.
We are not an isolated elite.

This is part of a shared journey.