Saturday, April 17, 2010

Thought Reserves, Actionable Posts and Bukowski

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these care­fully mad wars
Into the sight of bro­ken fac­tory win­dows of empti­ness
Into bars where peo­ple no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shoot­ings and knif­ings
Born into this
Into hos­pi­tals which are so expen­sive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a coun­try where the jails are full and the mad­houses closed
Into a place where the masses ele­vate fools into rich heroes
Charles Bukowski

Over the past few months the good folks at Seeking Alpha have been selectively publishing some of my musings. Their selection process involves the "action-ability" of the views (not a critique, just an observation).

Thus, this post will almost certainly be left on SA's cutting room floor (and rightly so).

When attempting to tailor my musings to their needs, I can't help but be reminded of my earlier incarnation as trader asking house economists to tell me me how to translate their views into trades.

I didn't need the theory, I thought, just the trade.

Eventually I ran into an economist who convinced me of the error of my ways.  Alan Ruskin (a very bright economist, and man of great integrity) showed me the virtue of reserves of thought.

If you've spent the time understanding the theories, and creating a library of potentialities, events will "make manifest the theories".

I've spent the years since this epiphany studying theories and creating my own library. The blog you are reading is one repository of this process.

The longer it remains online, the more current events can be covered by referencing earlier thought experiments.

Now I'm on the other side of the issue, with others requesting actionable views.

Months ago, I wondered, "Will Goldman Sachs do it again?" They did. The earlier musings weren't a forecast, just a potential, waiting for an event.

Yesterday I wrote about The Price of Gold Backed FX Reserves. It's not a forecast, just a potential, waiting for an event.

If the event manifests, the work is already done.

Paraphrasing Bukowski,
the events are
born into theory

3 comments:

rjs said...

im curious, dude: did you happen to know buk?


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Dude said...

Only through his writing.

I find it sad, but brilliant. He never internalized on a deep level that he got a good deal (relative to, say, a Van Gogh).

rjs said...

sorry, just my nostalgia...

close friends with cleveland poets d.a.levy & tom kryss...levy published him 1st, letterpress, genius of the crowd in '65...

early last year i ran into "RealityZone" at marketwatch, who owned the LA bar where buk hung out, & who's now a team member on one of my blogs, and i on his...