bank robbery

my savings are 0's and 1's on a computer server somewhere in New York at JP Morgan Chase.

i have a few thousand dollars in Iş Bank of Turkey, paid to me by the U.S. State Department for my work as a teacher. some of it reimbursement for the two months i financed on my own while attempting to set up a bank account in Turkey for the US govt. to transfer money to.

to transfer that money back to the United States, where it started, i just paid 188 lira ($122). a few sheets of paper, 15 minutes of labor time, numbers rolling on servers in Istanbul and NYC.

"fee" is a self justifying linguistic nugget.

what are you going to do?

this was my third time in the bank, my third attempt to provide the right stream of numbers for the transfer to take place and only just before the transfer did that self justifying nugget appear.

the bank has the power in the situation. i'm given a few seconds to decide, customers rubbing close behind me, my gracious translator's time ticking away, the rolling eyes and exhalations of a frustrated bank clerk for whom "fee" is a magic and efficient explanation. don't hold up the teller. next customer.

what exactly am i buying with that $122? i would like someone to answer. the security of not having to transfer my bills physically. the ability to keep them in 0's and 1's, transferring through space-time as bits of heat precisely contained. how that is more comforting, i don't know.

what else are you going to do? that's all the bank has to count on when determining the fee of any transfer, hidden or otherwise. are you going to deal with customer service for an hour over a 5 dollar hidden fee? are you going to decide to take your wad of hundred dollar bills through 4 international airports with no insurance if something happens?

when the bank robs me my frustration is a crack in an otherwise seamless reality. on the other side are options full of creative justice.


no wonder we're so depressed.
no wonder we want to unleash by tossing bricks.