white butter

raspberry compote and a blue fur pelt

A past employer took out hundreds of dollars from my bank account, unauthorized. Apparently an issue with Stripe. I took screenshots of everything, and stuffed my phone in my pants pocket.

“Hey, can you set the dinner table silverware for the event tonight? Put two forks here, then two tablespoons, and a sharpie knife there, and a...”

“Please set the example on the main table,” I interjected.

“Come on. You can’t remember this?”

I sucked in my breath sharply. I wanted to scream. Poor man wasn’t even the reason. He was just doing his job, but the money being swiped from my bank mere hours ago, this job paying me half the rate after 4.5 hrs (so fucking weird, I know) and it potentially lasting till 11pm (my call time? 4pm), and generally being super displeased that I am not elsewhere geographically...

“Give me a second,” I say, and in a faint exasperated murmur I trail off, “I am at my wit’s end.” I flee to the restroom where I clench my fists as hard as I possible can.

I hate this. I hate this so much, I chant, channeling my rage out through brutally frank affirmations. I unfurl my hands, my fingers feel sore.

Why can’t people pay their employees reasonable wages? Why do I have to grovel to get MY money back? Why is it taking so long to get their problem fixed?

If this country I live in is all about free market, then why am I not seeing that? All I see instead is exploitation. Callous handling of company mistakes at the expense of the worker. Two or so years ago I even had to report a restaurant to the labor department because they were pocketing all our tips! Rest assured that unscrupulous man paid out what he owed us.

I currently work two jobs. People I know juggle same amount, sometimes more. Others work doubles, regularly. And mind you, most of us are using that money for basic necessities. Forget Gucci, we want groceries, bus passes, no debt!

I’ve had experience on the other side of the spectrum too. I remember living in LA and almost falling into depression because no matter what little hobbies I picked up, everything seemed soulless. Giving it my all as a ‘kingdom builder,’ I volunteered countless hours every week at my church (audio, camera, teen program), and tithed generously on the regular. Come to find out that the pastor and his wife had been using it to fund a new lifestyle — Cartier bracelets, first class flight tickets, expensive dinners, and all. It felt like these religious leaders completely forgot who Jesus was.

I used to have such an easy relationship with money growing up. It was always there, and so I never really had to think about it. I wanted to take a trip to India after freshman year. No problem. New LV Neverfull? Cool, want your initials embossed on it? Going to college was an immense joy. The privilege was incredible. But after graduation, I cut off that easy access. The money bound me to a family that hurt me, no matter the distance.

So now that I am in different circumstances, class consciousness: on, I grapple with the question — what do I actually want. Do I want billions? Honestly, no, not really. I care too much about people to go down that road anyhow as there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. Do I want to own 5 houses? Nope. All the latest “luxury” items? I mean if it’s made well and I actually need it, sure? But I am good. What I want is to be with my man, write, travel, pet cats, puppies, birds, laugh with my friends, bake for my neighbors. I want to live.

WHITE BUTTER

I made a torta paradiso a few weeks ago. One of the first steps was to mix the sugar with the butter for up to 15 minutes. You’ll know it’s ready when the mixture turns white — not cream, not pale yellow, but white. The minutes flew by, and though my arm grew tired, I marched on, excited for the delicious cake I was making. There’s something almost meditative about that repetition, the way the texture changes under your hands, granules dissolving, resistance giving way to silk. Later I’d add the eggs. I almost freaked out because the batter now looked a bit curdled but I trusted the process and the recipe.

The cake was divine.

I don’t mind putting in the elbow grease. I can work long hours. I can make guests feel welcome and taken care of, anticipating needs before they’re spoken. I can sit myself down and write satisfying amounts of words within a specific time frame, wrestling language into something that sings. I can do a lot. I have the endurance and general goodwill to deliver something wonderful.

But here’s where it gets murky: that transformation I create — where does it actually go? When I whip butter and sugar into something white and cloud-like for a cake, I know exactly what I’m making and who will eat it. The exchange is clear. The value is visible. But when I work a shift that generates thousands of dollars for an establishment, creates repeat customers through careful attention and genuine care, transforms a dining room from empty tables into an experience people remember — what am I actually receiving in return?

Getting paid less than $25 an hour is crazy to me when I can track my labor’s worth in real time. Even more insane is how in the US, a la carte servers are paid $2.13 an hour in some states, with the rest supposedly made up in tips. Many restaurants expect you to stay after closing to clean the entire front of house. So yes, you’re scrubbing floors and wiping down every surface for $2.13 an hour. We are such cheap labor, my god. The transformation we create — turning strangers into regulars, chaos into smooth service, raw ingredients into memorable meals — that alchemy is worth so much more than what hits our bank accounts every two weeks.

I think about my arm getting tired while making that cake, and how I joyfully pushed through because I knew it’d turn out great. But when our efforts out there in the world don’t even guarantee personal satisfaction, much less a livable wage, how are we to reconcile out innate sense of fairness? Our labor transforms and transforms and transforms, and the white butter we’ve created just... disappears into someone else’s profit margin and pockets.

The question isn’t whether I can do the work. I can. The question is: what is my labor actually producing in this exchange, and why does it feel like I’m giving pound cake but getting back crumbs?

RASPBERRY COMPOTE

Money, currency, is like a flowing river. Or at least it should be. I receive, I let go. I bless, I am blessed. Over and over again.

This summer I really tried to get down to it. I wanted to get the metaphysics right. It’s an energy. Got it. You have to allow flow. All right. Don’t block yourself from receiving. ...Umm? As if I would turn down a windfall.

You know what though? There’s some truth to that advice, even if it sounds like LinkedIn wellness nonsense. When you’ve experienced hardship, what do you tend to do when you hold something in your hands? You hold it tighter. Scarcity doesn’t just empty your wallet. It rewires your nervous system. Every dollar becomes precious in a way that makes it hard to let anything move through you. The river freezes.

When I had steady income and family money, I definitely overbought, but I also dropped off the coolest things at the closest Goodwill without a second thought. Circulation felt natural. So I personally can’t speak to why many wealthy individuals are so keen on rolling around on their mountains of gold, fuck everyone else. Maybe it’s a different kind of scarcity they’re responding to? Never enough power, never enough security, never enough proof that they matter. I don’t know. What I do know is that this experience — working hard and still struggling — taught me how fear can dam up the flow.

For a moment, I had to surrender and ask for help. My community, mainly neighbors, didn’t give handouts (I’m too proud for that anyway) but their kindness softened my anxiety. The little culinary treats we exchange are a delight. Someone leaves banana bread or the tastiest shrimp EVER at my door. I bring over tangerines, flowers, slices of torta paradiso. We’re not doing charity; we’re doing circulation. I keep trucking at work, but at least now I am not mentally tortured by constant worry. I feel loved. The jar I give away, raspberry compote with a gingham lid and ribbon, comes back as something else. A quiet pleasure that sits warmly in the navel. Joy.

I didn’t stop giving things away, even when money got tight. In fact, I may be generous to a fault — or maybe not, because I don’t regret anything I’ve given. I think things through. I’m deliberate, keeping in mind the receiver’s likes and dislikes, how to give it without making a big deal out of it, and so on. I simply refused to let fear of a proverbial winter turn me into a dam. When I have extra food, I share it. When I have books I’ve finished, I leave them on bus seats or little libraries in front of people’s houses. When someone needs something I have, and I can spare it, I give.

It would be easy to call this foolish when I’m working two jobs and tracking every dollar, right? But no, friend. Wealth isn’t just what you hold. It’s what moves through you. Raspberry compote takes time: gathering the berries, cooking them down with sugar, jarring them carefully, sealing the lids. It’s preservation, yes, but preservation for sharing. You can’t eat seventeen jars of compote yourself. The abundance is in the circulation.

Community wealth works like this. You give what you can, you receive what you need, and somehow (✨ mysteriously ✨, against all capitalist logic) everyone ends up fed. Not equally, not perfectly, but genuinely. The metaphysics supersedes manifestation magic, the ‘attracting abundance through positive thinking’ line of thought¹. Laws of the universe are about recognizing that you’re already part of a system of exchange that’s older and truer than the modern take on money. You’re the raspberry plant and the person dissolving the raspberries in sugar and the neighbor who’ll receive the jar. All at once.

To quote Job from the Old Testament, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” I give. I receive. What a joy it is to experience life as an unending gift exchange.

BLUE FUR PELT

One of my friends who is older and Canadian, grew up on a farm, was telling me how a kid will be so completely bewildered when they’re told that the nugget they’re eating is a dead chicken. Knowing a creature’s life had to be stopped short so one can eat feels weird, doesn’t it? I’m not saying I don’t eat meat, but when I do, the thought of what it used to be does cross my mind. And I feel gratitude. For the creature that I’d probably pet if it let me, back when it had life. For the hands that prepared it, and those that cooked it.

Sometimes I imagine this awareness as a blue fur pelt. Strange, not from this world, something that fell into my hands when I wasn’t looking. Now that I have it, I can’t pretend I don’t see. The pelt is alien, uncomfortable even, doesn’t quite sit naturally on my shoulders. But it’s real, not synthetic. As in something had to shift, crack open, maybe even die in me for this awareness to arrive. Once you wear it, everything looks different.

I see the chicken nugget differently now. I see my paycheck differently too. I see the phone in my hand and know what it cost to extract the minerals inside it. Not just dollars, but Congolese blood, children’s hands in mines, ecosystems destroyed. This is why I went and got a refurbished phone instead of giving Apple more money. Now that I know what that piece of technology costs us, I refuse to be a complacent participant in the suffering of another fellow human being. The blue fur pelt on my shoulders doesn’t let me look away.

A lot of us simply forget that we truly only have one planet we can call home, and whether we like it or not, we share it. I smile when I remember that as I type away there are pods of orcas traversing the Pacific. That when I clock in for my dinner shift, pigeons are cuddling in forgotten recesses of the city, maybe cooing to each other about what fries and donuts they got to eat that day. During my breaks, I go to the park nearby, and as I inhale deep, I watch how the trees sway over me. They’ve been breathing out what I breathe in long before I arrived, and they’ll continue long after I’m gone.

The awareness sits heavy sometimes. It’s a gift I didn’t ask for and can’t return. To be honest, I don’t think I even want to return it. Going back to ignorance gives me zero solace. Once you see that everything you touch required someone else’s life force, whether it be animals, tech devices, trees breathing out oxygen, or the labor of invisible hands, you’re responsible for how you hold that knowledge. You become a steward whether you want to be one or not.

The blue fur pelt also reminds me of what Jesus said about how man doesn’t live on bread alone. Beyond the terrestrial, there is the momentarily unseen. Our ecosystem is far greater than what we imagine. It extends beyond the ecological and encompasses the spiritual, the energetic, and the relational. We’re bound up in exchanges we can’t even track. The orcas and I share saltwater currents. The pigeons and I share city air. The Congolese and I share humanity. My heart beats just like theirs.

Suddenly my banquet serving job seems like a speck of sand on a very long shoreline. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it’s part of something so much larger than the transaction my employer thinks we’re having. They think they’re buying my time, and morbidly so, they may even think they own me. But what’s actually happening is I’m in constant life force exchange: with my neighbors, the orcas and the trees, Congolese children, my coworkers and the guests. And you.

Money is not the end all, be all. But you know who is? Honey...

It’s us.

White butter, raspberry compote, blue fur pelt.

Labor, community, stewardship.

We are what gives money meaning.

---

1. Conscious manifesting doesn’t even work like that. We don’t attract, we are. But that’s a topic for another day heh.