Status Vivendi Quo:Greetings from the land of the free and the home of the brave

drawing by marguerita

Life Arrangementos 1

painting by marguerita
The arrangements of comestibles, crockery and cookware and the occasional piece of fine silver or porcelain imply a humble, folksy lifestyle that appealed to his upper-class clientele. There are no skulls or bugs delivering vanitas-type morals about the ephemerality of earthly existence, and there is no fancy brushwork asserting the painter’s virtuosity.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/arts/design/26mele.html?ref=design

The Fundamental Thing Is To Dream a Dream Together d'apres Tom Jobim

drawing/collage by marguerita

At the heart of the matter, of course, are the complex feelings we all bring to the subject of money itself. We covet it but we are ashamed of overtly lusting after it.
As a culture that tends to look for black-and-white, reductionist explanations, it is doubtful that we will ever fill in the gaps in our understanding of a situation that is shot through with ambiguity. There is no single code word — no “Rosebud” — that will lead us to decipher the Madoff phenomenon, no eureka realization that will account for his strange and ultimately ruinous trajectory or the dissociative behavior that allowed him to believe one thing while doing another.
What this intense focus has enabled us to do, however, is to skim over the psychology of the other participants in the drama: the ones who got taken.Op-Ed Contributor - If Looks Could Steal - NYTimes.com