lost in a cab
(I don’t write much anymore. I’ll start something and wonder where it’s going. It won’t have the same tempo as my other posts. It isn’t fitting my formula and I don’t have time to experiment. So the story dies unfinished. Here is an example…)
“We were from the mountains. The Atlas mountains. We are Berbers, we were forced to the mountains by Arabs when they came to Morocco. My father left the mountains, the Atlas Mountains, went back to Casablanca and opened a business, a grocery store. He did well and now owns 4. I read somewhere that people without land turn to commerce. People with land are content to collect rents. Easier money.”
My cab driver Yusef told me this story. He was dropping me off in front of my house, I’d spent the night at my girlfriends. She is wonderful, but it’s best not to talk about her. A woman needs privacy.
My apartment is well situated on the top of a hill and has a nice view of ships passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, but I am a renter. A man without land. I myself have turned to commerce. Unlike the Berber’s, or Jews, or Palestinians, I was not chased from my land.
San Francisco was just sitting here, in the West, where everything seemed new. Did I chase a shiny bauble?
(Not ready for another wandering son story. The real point was to lament leaving my favorite brown fedora in that cab, I got so wrapped up talking to the driver. So I start a new one.)
Commercialization turns out to be this generation’s desire. As we transformed from men in suits wearing fedoras aligning with the wardrobe of the powerful, we donned t-shirts and baseball caps, each advertising something we don’t even own. Instead of wearing the clothes of the powerful, we gave up trying to mimic the rich and without calling it a defeat we accepted the subjugation by wearing the labels of corporations, pledging allegiance via silkscreen.
(In the old days labels were on the inside of clothes. They still mattered though. But this rant isn’t working for me either. Normally I just delete it and go to bed, but this time I’d thought I’d share what isn’t working.)