The Country of Abundance


At length I found my way to a land of great abundance. In this country, every person was of such wealth that they found their homes entirely filled with diverse and sundry items, such that it was often difficult for them to move about freely. In this land, the most precious item was holes, which were mined from caves in the mountains nearby. Each day the miners would bring buckets to the mine filled with goods, and return with their buckets empty. The precious empty space within these buckets was then sold at a profit. Some miners offered a weekly service, in which they would come and pick up a full bucket from a home, and return a bucket filled with empty space, for a subscription fee.
Because the cost of holes was so high, in that country the poorest often had the most things, and the rich, in contrast, were those with the most space.
The holes thus mined were used in the manufacture of vessels of all kinds. Potters, for instance, would take holes and carefully wrap clay around them. These clay-wrapped holes were then distributed to those who would use them. They were also used in laying the foundation of buildings.
Furthermore, certain food items required the holes for their preparation, such as bagels, effervescent water, bread, or certain types of cheeses. The rich would pay more for those food items which contained the most holes and the least food (and thus were often thin themselves) while the poor resorted to eating rich and heavy foods, and became fat.

Comments

Marci said…
I thought this was a very profound essay. I wish I could hire someone to take buckloads of my stuff away and bring me back space.
Rapunzel said…
Alas in this country we have to haul away our own bucketloads of stuff....and the recycling center here is a tempting place to bring back different stuff instead of empty space. Sigh.

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