Observations

A commentary on the Amargosa Opera House, in the voice of someone else

The writer-photographer — who, for elegance, shall henceforth be called He — was born in the country that reckless white men five hundred years ago thought was the country He now lived in. He's idea of a Saturday night out in the middle of a week in Death Valley was to let go of fifteen and forty-five dollars, respectively, so that He would be allowed to sit through a eighty-two year old woman's pantomime and sleep in a bed in a motel so abandoned that not even an eighty-two year old woman would come to He's rescue if something (getting locked out by a peacock, for example) happened to him. Which, all would agree, was an improvement over a tent in a cold desert.

But at six o'clock on Saturday night this motel did not look abandoned. Derelict: maybe; desolate: hardly. Many that had done their google and dug their guidebook had assembled to witness Marta's winter weekly pantomime. Tickets were sold out of the Amargosa Motel that adjoined the Amargosa Opera House. An independent peacock strutted the yard and startled the many. Not one but two women womanned the office. One showed He to his room. He asked her if there was a guest laundry on the property. There wasnt, but what did He need washed? Fromming the country he was from, he couldnt tell her it was mostly underwear ("not much, shirts and stuff", quoth He), but inning the country He was in, He let her throw them in the washer, transfer them to the dryer, separate the shirts from the stuff and neatly lay them out on his bed so that they wouldnt wrinkle. Per the custom of the inned country, He offered her money for kindness, which she refused.

While the machine was working on He's stuff, He was crossing the stateline with the intention of committing the act of eating, the neighboring state being one where games of chance not limited to pieces of state-issued paper were legal, and such a house of chance was the only institution for many miles around where sustenance could be obtained. Included in its price was music that sounded like the live performer was being put to death in the manner prescribed fourteen hundred years ago for chicken by the prophet Muhammad.

At fifteen minutes to eight p.m., a sophisticated Saturday night performance hour, He and The Others were let into the Opera House by an impressing man in tails and top hat. The theater, equipped with a hundred antique seats obtained from another that had ceased business, greeted them warmly with a single stove's heat held in by foot-thick adobe walls, the latter's inner surfaces covered by Marta's paintings of an imaginary audience from a vanished time. The itemized list in the last sentence alone and only justified the admission. The impressing man played historian and art critic to He while He waited for the dancer's appearance, claiming a Diego Rivera influence on the painter. Daylight alas would reveal him to be the maintenance man whose most useful trait would be the possession of a duplicate key.

In due time, the lights dimmed, but instead of seeing the dancer He only heard a recorded voice for the next quarter hour repeat the history of the theater that He had already heard from the live voice of the impressing man. But it was the impressing man who had been repeating the history of the theater the man had heard from the recorded voice on Saturdays prior. Or had the man restricted himself to explicating the art, while the history He had absorbed from the numerous newspaper articles framed and displayed around the motel?

Suspicious of anyone able to make a living off art, He wondered if this was the painter's gimmick — living and dancing in the desert — designed to advertise her painting. The impressing man said that her brushwork sold while still in her head. The New York Gallery said "A solitary painter in the Amargosa desert, surrounded by ghosts of prospectors, she dances to a painted audience on nights when there isnt one."

Such malice was interrupted by Marta's eventual appearance. The show she called Masquerade: a parade of characters each occupying the stage for five minutes, played and sung by Marta, accompanied by a tape-recorder. At eighty, her performance had all the facility of ten eight year-olds in a school play.

Such slander would have to wait for daylight to be avenged by the peacock. The peacock had been flown from the country He had flown from. Not He's part, which was soft and muddy, but the sandy and dry part. So the peacock didnt mind Death Valley at all. So what if a bird that could actually fly was the national bird in this country? Here, the peacock, in pursuit of happiness, was free to harrass hotel guests for treats. Fearing that the bird would actually search He's room while He loaded the car, He slammed the door shut in the peacock's beak. Without the key in He's pocket.

There wasnt another living being around the motel for the next ninety minutes. The impressing man, shorn of tails and hat, but blest with a duplicate key, eventually let the writer-photographer back in. Penitent, He offered crackers to the peacock.

How I Made an American Patriot's Day

Inheritance Tax: Why Not?

But that money was already taxed! The parent already paid taxes on it! goes the cry. How can you tax the same money twice? Outrage!! Excuse me – if I hire somebody to paint my apartment, I'm paying him out of the remnants of my salary after paying taxes; he has to pay taxes again out of the money I pay him. That is how income tax revenues are generated. Why should somebody who makes money not by painting houses but simply by the demise of his rich parents be exempt from taxes?

To take the paradox to the extreme, consider the rich Mr Tree. He has two sons, the useless Younger and the hardworking Elder. Mr Tree has a special fondness for the Younger, arriving as he did ten years after Elder. Elder can get to his father's wealth only by working for him; the Younger is simply left the rest at Mr Tree's demise. The money comes out of the same source but Elder has to pay taxes because he actually worked for it! while Younger gets a free ride.

Comments

You, of course, chose to ignore the entire elaboration of my argument, i.e. the fairness of taxing equal income equally, irrespective of source.

> As for the capital gains and dividends - I am not sure why exactly you want to make investing in this country much less attractive ...

and that statement, of course, was made after a careful study of taxation system of comparable countries...

Shayok Mukhopadhyay     Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:17:36 -0400

Hindu Hair, Kosher Wigs

Apparently, married orthodox Jewish women are supposed to cover their hair out of modesty. So what do they do? They wear wigs! Made out of real human hair! C'mon, you're supposed to cover your hair so that you do not tempt men... now you choose to sport a lovely blond waist length Rapunzel that's far more seductive than your own wispy thin split-end strands?

Funny enough, but where do Hindus get into the story? There are some temples in India, like the one at Tirupathi, that are really big on devotees donating their hair. In exchange for the Lord providing a male heir, for example. The temples then turn around and sell this hair for the Western wig market. All was well till a rabbi ruled that such hair is tainted with the idolatry of Hinduism. Modest Jewish women from Brooklyn to Haifa are rushing to turn in their real human hair wigs for artificial ones. The more zealous ones are throwing them into bonfires.

Hindus have a convenient rule to deal with such situations — allow me to paraphrase from Sanskrit — Price Purifies. If you acquire something in a financial transaction, it ceases to be impure. This allows a Brahmin who would not sit under the same roof with a Muslim to buy fruit from him and eat it raw.

Let the rabbis and the pandits put their heads together, and I'm confident they'll come up with something for the hair situation.

Comments

Whitney Biennial