Leprechaun Gold

I hope that all Americans had a great Thanksgiving, and to them and everyone else and with indiscriminate love I hope you've had a great past few days, just because. Today, I'm thinking about gold.

I have asked myself before about the uses of gold, and wondered what, apart from the intoxicating sheen, is this metal really good for anyway? When explorers of any and all nationalities left their homes to search for the yellow metal, did they have any idea that it might one day prove quite useful as a conductor of electricity, dissolved in medicines, hammered and spread into a thin layer over airplane cockpits for de-icing? Well, medieval physicians did think it was useful in medicine, but not for any sound scientific reason, but simply because anything that beautiful and rare must have been wholesome.


The value of gold has been universally acknowledged since long before the time of airplanes, modern medicine, and artificial electricity production. Ancient Egyptians lined their mausoleums with the stuff, and the God of the Christians and the Jews has, depending on the occasion, conferred it upon those he favored and struck down those who have used it in ways in which he did not.

Not to be too self-consciously aloof about it, but I don't care too much for it. I have given it as a gift before, but mainly because I was supposed to, mainly because I had been worn down into thinking I was a bad boyfriend by the theatrical surprise of countless friends and family members when they learned that I had been dating for all this time and still hadn't given her some gilded something-or-other. I wonder how many relationships have met their end, finally, for lack of a bit of gold? How often has the promise of continued affection been held hostage with a bit of gold for ransom? I'm sure I'll feel differently when the time comes to get my sweetheart a ring and ask her to marry me. On that day, I have no doubt that I'll want to get the nicest ring I can afford to make her happy and show her how much I care. Still, there's something about it that doesn't sit well... It's just a bit of metal, after all. Something I'm supposed to give. I like to try to be romantic, and I like to try to be creative about it. The last thing romance wants is a formula, it seems to me, but...

...well, enough of that: There is a reason why I'm writing about gold this morning after writing about nothing for a month or so, and the reason is that gold is all I can think about today. It's all that I can see. I woke up early and walked a pretty girl to work, and then, having nothing to do for several hours, I made my way into town. As I walked by the harbor, I noticed that the pointed dome of the train station was... well, golden. And I, like countless many before me, was drawn in. As I walked toward the station, I noticed that an unremarkable street corner had been turned to silver in the morning haze. I set my bag down and withdrew my camera, and unself-consciously began to snap several pictures of concrete and metal.  Then, the sun stretched, yawned, and rose over the tops of the buildings that surround the harbor, and everything, everything, was turned to gold.

I wonder: Would European explorers ever have left home to find gold if they had risen early enough to greet a sun who's glancing blows turn indigenous stone to purest gold? Would they have had the heart to risk life and limb knowing that ordinary brown cobblestone turns to gold in the morning light? Of course they would have, and I'm glad they did. America might never have happened without a human's preoccupation with gold. Still...

People cherish gold because it is beautiful, but also because it is scarce. I have heard that all the gold that has ever been found would barely fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools. Scarce, indeed: Both in technical economic terms as well as in common usage (i.e. the opposite of plentiful). If the measure of the value of a substance is scarcity, then my gold is somehow simultaneously mundane and incalculable in value. It is at once plentiful and rare. A strange and inconsequential paradox, and to an aspiring romantic, the paradox itself confers value. Anyway, I don't suppose I will ever solve it, and I'm happy to let the matter rest. For the moment, I'll just enjoy fleeting glimpses of that most scarce of precious substances, the gold that disappears just as you reach out to take it. Leprechaun gold, and honestly, is there a better or more pure type of gold?