My money is the Tao te Ching, translated and introduced by David Hinton. My $12.87 turned into this teaching:

Once it’s full of jade and gold
your house will never be safe.
Proud of wealth and renown
you bring on your own ruin. (#9)

My money is a boarding pass for American Airlines flight 5469 from Greenville, SC to Charlotte, NC, and my money is a connection in Charlotte for a flight to Philadelphia, PA. My money connects. My money flies.

My money is in my ear, amplifying your voice. Now I no longer yearn to hear you.

My money is my personal copy of Mishkan T’filah: A Reform Siddur, and my money is many prayers, pages and pages of prayers. I toss the coins of them into the Fountain of the Name, hoping to buy a little mercy and grace, forgiveness, goodness, and truth (rahum v’hanun, rav hesed v’emet… Exodus 34:6).

My money feels Newton Knight, played by Matthew McConaughey in The Free State of Jones, awaken to injustice.

My money arrives like a guest with gifts. Every month of my working life it arrives. It accumulates like snow, and it melts like snow. Water to water vapor to ice crystal to snow to water: it’s always on the move, my money moving through its cycle.

As Spotify, my money is music, more than I can listen to on a given day: John Cage, The Wailin’ Jennys, Angel Olson, Cloud Cult, Allen Touissaint, Arik Einstein, Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Byrds, Maya Beiser, Dacha Bracha…My money’s the world, loud when I’m alone in the house, subdued when Laurie’s home with me.

Your money, dear students, saved or borrowed, daydreams uncomfortably in desks while with chalk I scan “the darkest evening of the year.” Your money, North Carolina, is my mouth encouraging students to resist life driven only by a conditioned need to be productive.

My money is Advanced Mature Gold, the multivitamin that keeps me in my skin, my bones. My money is Timex, the Ironman strapped to my wrist so time won’t get away. In the nineteenth century, they tried to turn time into money. Some men got rich from that scheme and turned their money into luxury and leisure. Others—men, women, children—could no longer see the sun or moon as anything other than an hourly wage.

Barukh mshaleym sachar tov li’reyawv: Blessed is the One who pays good wages to those who fear, revere, stand in awe of God.

My money is Yosemite National Park, Mist Trail, its narrow, slick steps cut into granite walls climbing to the top of Vernal Falls. My money is my tent pitched next to an RV, its occupants gone while the motor runs throughout the day.

My money is blackout-curtain-sleep in Holiday Inn Expresses in Chapel Hill, Amarillo, and everywhere-but-curtainless-home in America.

My protean money: now it’s the black Converse Chuck Taylor All Star rubber sneakers with red laces for a late spring Boulder snow; now it’s the hour to roam from memory to memory, the space and time to compose this essay, O citizens of the State of North Carolina, with your money, the state property in my Karpen Hall office. Now it’s the SodaStream making water sparkle, my money is. Now it’s a Perfect Day (IPA, ABV 6.5%, Asheville Brewing Company). My money is my Book of Changes.

My money passes through me to the New Israel Fund and through the New Israel Fund my money passes to Tag Meir (Light Fund), an organization that seeks to expose and counteract racism in Israel, or it passes to Women Wage Peace, or it passes to Molad: the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, or it passes to…Like wind, my money carries seeds of resistance, courage, hope.

My life is fragmented, I complain; my attention scattered in ten thousand directions. From body, earth, heaven, art, homeland, faith, I am alienated. But my money is at home wherever it is. It gives its undivided attention to yogurt, urologist, fountain pen, Verizon…Physical prostate exam: when my money is that, that’s what it is. It’s simple, whole.

My money is necessity, indulgence, luxury, charity, prudence, waste. My money is ignorant, informed, foolish, wise. My money is happiness, security, vulnerability, comfort, social insecurity, fear. It is what it is, and it stands by its word, its face value. My money is true, even when I lie, deny, or withhold the truth, or some of the truth of its life in this world: what it loves, what it ignores, what it supports, what it harms. It’s my money; it’s my life.