The Economist in Love Part 1
Mrs. T and the Tea Boys
Connection
Some say the whole universe is connected, others say for humans there is connection only where there is self-interest in order to give reason for that connection. But how does that explain the field of connection that links the world beyond human mind and intention.
For example, in some far-off rainforest an animal snatches a prey, and the causal effects radiate and ripple from species to species until one day the result of this action, no matter how insignificant, reaches each of us.
Everything on earth is connected by this reasoning, every facet of our lives is affected by each other. Nobody or nothing is an island, nobody is immune from this.
And yet there are those by way of vested self-interest deny connection or impede it. Take sex for example. This is the closest two people can come together, sharing bodily fluids and procreating. People who seek power are frightened by this and attempt to control it. They create religions and ideologies forcing people to sacrifice or deny parts of their lives in order for those seeking power to exploit them for their own gratification especially when it involves financial gain.
Such action serves to inhibit the ultimate value and benefit that can be derived from connection.
There was one woman, an economist, who as a result of an outrageous set of decisions on her part, a period of apparent temporary insanity, was enlightened to the power of connection and discovered why connection must be understood in all its complexity and not simplified or misrepresented for exploitation.
In a seminal paper her experience led her to propose the effect of what she called ‘The Black Coat event.” This was an event that existed outside an economic framework that none-the-less had a profound effect within the network.
It might be an event with an origin in some facet of our personal lives, or some hidden part of society, seemingly unrelated and unknown apart from its effect that it ultimately had.
This is her story.
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The beginning
Justine stepped back from the garden she had been weeding diligently. She took a deep breath. It was a searing hot day; the sky was bleached a powder blue. She was nervous that this might be the start of a drought. It had been a wet spring and the fields were still green, but the weather forecast was for dry and hot. Wiping her moist brow, she inhaled the aroma of her freshly cut lawn.
Justine had started earlier, riding her ride-on mower. Now she worried that she had cut the lawn too short, and the grass might dry out. She had driven the mower recklessly, madly frustrated from the results of her investigation online following an unsatisfactory early morning zoom session with her husband, Alex. At this point she was convinced her marriage was over.
Justine desperately wanted a family and she thought Alex did too, but he was working in the UK and had been unable to get back for six months. Either he was unable to get a flight or a place in a Government Covid Quarantine facility on his return. Then there were projects they had given him while he was there that just had to be completed.
It had been bad enough during lock down. She was forced by circumstances to spend that alone. When Alex secured a place in quarantine to enable him to be home by Christmas, she was ecstatic, but joy turned to dismay when at the last minute he reneged for work reasons. This left her in limbo, alone for Christmas with no end in sight.
This left Justine frustrated and confused. She suddenly did not feel confident in the future. She left the house early to seek solace in riding her horse, Muzzy, but now she was back in her garden. For her it was a precious place with a link to her mother, Nola from which she had inherited it. Her Garden had always had an intangible ability to sooth her, to recuperate from the day’s trials and tribulations and this morning it was a ‘biggy.’
Riding the ride-on was one of her little pleasures and she did it naked as she was mostly when she was gardening. Naked she was now; in fact, she was a firm adherent of nude gardening, the location being private or so she thought.
It was now late morning. She could hear the undulating drone of a topdressing plane like some angry bee flying up and down a neighboring farm as it weaved around the hillocks and paddocks ejecting its load to fertilize mother earth below. It served to irritate her further, but she consoled herself, it was just another sound of the countryside. Giggling to herself, thinking how the pilot would be shocked if he ventured over the macrocarpa hedge that made a solid wall on her western boundary.
This property was all that was left of a substantial farm her family had run. Now it had been split up, divided with the fortunes of the family. This last remaining piece consisted of the old rambling arts and craft bungalow, with black adzed joinery throughout, wrought iron hardware and a pebble dash white external wall finish. It had once been the station house, now it was a home with a glorious garden and a limited amount of land leased out for grazing of cattle.
The garden had been her mother’s pride and joy. Nola had graduated with a university languages degree then ventured to the home country, Great Britain. Like all good middle class girls setting out on her overseas experience she had lost her virginity on the boat trip outward.
She arrived in London amidst the swinging sixties and as girl of means, virtue of an inheritance from an elderly aunt, she squandered it having the time of her life. It was an experience that would change her life and her earlier aspiration as a secondary School teacher evaporated in a cloud of psychedelia.
Tripping on acid one day in Kew Gardens opened her mind to the spiritual qualities of the garden. She became a fully-fledged member of the cult of Flower children. In London at the height of the movement she grooved and moved with the most. Her friends were musos, artists and poets. Her clothes were by ‘the fool’ and she collected artworks and prints from Aubrey Beardsley, Marijke Koger and Martin Sharp. She and a group of likeminded girls began to tour the great gardens just to trip in them with their floral head wreaths and extraordinary colourful gowns. It all came to a horrible end following a trip to Marrakech with her then best friend.
Nola had been inspired to travel overland through India to return to New Zealand. She had meant the trip to Morocco to be a taster for what laid ahead. While there she met some English Hippies who extolled the virtues of Druidism. Taken by their philosophy of magic and connection to nature she and her friend joined them to explore this new take on an old religion.
It all ended one night deep in an English wood where they went to practice their Neo-Druidry. The following morning her friend was found dead, and Nola was rushed to the nearest hospital. They said that her friend had died of a heroin overdose, and she had nearly joined her. Nola always claimed she had no idea how she had been given heroine. Besides uppers and downers, she only ever had weed and acid. The rites the night before, that is before she had blacked out, had terrified her. She only ever divulged this to Justine once, just before she died. She had never told anyone but suffered all her life from the trauma.