Spring Break

Smoking a joint on the cluttered back porch at 6AM on a Wednesday. Still dark, after the time change, and a cool 45 degrees.

Silver moonlight softens the brick pathway and a roof in the distance. Its back to half again after only a week ago being a full moon – the blood moon at 2AM on a Wednesday or so. I did not see it because I was in great pain from what I believe to be a kidney stone.

Yesterday I bought a tractor. To encourage me I had a giant margarita for lunch. Frozen with salt. A Kubota M6060. A lease tractor. I got it for the same price as the new smaller tractor. I suspect the dealer is making a killing on this, but I have heard he is a good self-made man, and Slade, the ABAC student who sold me the tractor, said he was going to stay down here after graduating rather than return to the out-burbs of Metro Atlanta in part because he really liked his job. So, I see this as an investment in my people.

The day before, I opened a business account at my bank so that I can write the tractor off my taxes. I am not sure how that works, but it appears to be what the upper middle class do. Around here its tractors and land. In the cities, where there’s no nature, people invest in art. I understand that in theory the purpose of the tax break on capital purchases is that it recycles money into the economy and like increased oxygen in a system, it provides more opportunity and creates a positive feedback loop of growth.

I was going to finance it – 0%. So, the finance rate would be far lower than the inflation rate. I was even willing to forego a $2000 rebate that came with not financing. But when I learned I would have to also pay $76 insurance each month I declined. I started to do the math and before I calculated it even roughly I realized that was more than I was willing to pay for 60 months. So I wrote a $38+K check from the business account opened the day before with 40k.

Since I began writing about the tractor I have felt uneasy about the materialistic nature of the topic. But materialistic isn’t even the right word. Materialistic is based on the spirit-matter binary, which I reject in its standard form.