The Law of the Patronage

Day Twenty-Two is an OUT day. Yesterday she read the signs and kept her point; today she turns outward and meets somebody. Patronage is what a woman spends on another — her attention, her name, her custom, her backing. The Adventure CEO becomes courteous and learns to equal: to meet a person level and match what she was handed. What she has to work with is others — not a market, not an audience. Others. The Architect becomes cordial, from cor, the heart, and this is the beginning of love: warmth, not manners. Now she does more than equal — she enhances, and nothing passes through her hands the same size. What she is, in that place, is the other: the side of the coin that answers. And this is the turn of the day — you are always somebody's other, and in another woman's realm you are the others she has to work with. Understand that and nothing in the exchange is outside your control, because your half of it never was. In the Sovereign she becomes congenial, of the same kind, born agreeable, and what she does is equalize: she raises the low side, which is what a patron has always done for the one with the gift and no room. What she increases is outlay — what she lays out. Patronage costs. The old cultures were rough in their own way, and out of that rough came the rough of the rough: raw material that became the masterpiece because somebody paid for it.