My own privilege has hardly been more visible to me than now: I have no income right now, and that seems like a marvelously amusing joke. It feels free and exciting, like a new game I can master. This is, of course, obviously, genuinely, not the experience of most people who have no income. I have absolute faith that this is a temporary situation for me (and, indeed, it looks as though I shall have an income this fall), and I am very well provisioned.
Mostly, this feeling of luxury comes from the food I have been eating. Every last bite has been delightful, an almost unlooked-for surprise. Split-pea soup filled with chunks of glazed ham, studded with chunks of orange carrots, and then, as if that weren't sufficiently rich and hearty, filled with freshly made, very buttery croutons. Fresh hot coffee every morning (with fancy-pants organic milk, no less), but with the coffee? Toasted cinnamon-swirl bread, rich and golden with eggs and milk, just barely sweet. Dishes of cold sectioned grapefruit. Mugs of hot earl grey tea. Have I ever fed myself so well?
But then there's the handmade, organic soap I get to use every morning in the shower. I bought it cheap (scrap sacks that hold a pound of soap for just a little more than the price of one bar), and I bought it during times when I had a little extra cash on hand. And the lotion I bought by the gallon a year or so back--lasts forever and I am all set.
This isn't poverty. Not this. And if it weren't for all those loans to pay back, I'd be quite content like this, employing my metaphorical spindle, shuttle, and needle and living in luxurious simplicity.
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