aici<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I saw him in a show at the Chicago Art Expo. He was wearing a heavily starched Australian coat and a hat with wide brims like the wings of an eagle. He stopped in front of me and as if I had known him forever and told me:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do nothing but milk me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d I told him as if I had any idea what he was talking about.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m serious. It’s true. We live in a world where everyone consumes and no one produces. How do you explain this paradox?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tough to say, after all, we cannot consume if we do not produce. \u00a0His observation held a grain of truth because we are only aware of the times we consume and less of when we produce. As if to work was something shameful, a secret disgrace that must be kept out of sight.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t go that far\u201d he said, reading my mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019ll tell you why. Do you see this painting?\u201d he told me, pulling from under his coat a cardboard with beer caps glued on it.\u00a0\u201cI paid $250.000.00 for it. Why, you\u2019d ask? To produce something.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right\u201d, I said again and walked into the crowd.<\/p>\n
Later we met again near the exit. He felt my eyes on him and he signaled to show me that he had bought a painting. To strengthen that, while he was walking away, he pulled out of his coat two cardboards with twinkling beer caps and raised them above his head as if they were the Tablets of the Law.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The back of his coat had a bright pink udder painted on it which said, \u201cmilk me.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Adrian Ioni\u0163\u0103 [USA] translated by Diana Maftei pentru versiunea rom\u00e2n\u0103 click\u00a0aici I saw him in a show at the Chicago Art Expo. He was wearing a heavily starched Australian coat and a hat with wide brims like the wings of an eagle. He stopped in front of me and as if I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[794,22],"tags":[23,852,1155,1116,312],"class_list":["post-8213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-33","category-short-story","tag-adrian-ionita","tag-diana-maftei","tag-egophobia-33","tag-short-story","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-28t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8213"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8879,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8213\/revisions\/8879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}