ONLY THE HONORABLE SACRIFICE THEMSELVES

LIFE IS A HIGHWAY

Back in San Francisco, back where we started.

We did manage to road trip through some of California, heading south through San Jose, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Pebble Beach, Monterrey and Carmel, Morrow Bay and last stop Santa Barbara. We spent two nights in Santa Barbara, as it's a pretty nice city. Nice in a very unproductive-unaffordable-homogenous way. But whiteness tends to add a tinge of manufactured niceness to places, as evidenced by certain limited areas of the world. The streets were lined with sky high palm trees, sidewalk cafes, Italian eateries and South Asian restaurants, againt a backdrop of elaborate idleness.

I am here right now, at a cafe called Mochilla in The Mission district of San Francisco. Observe this sad scene of every patron staring at a computer screen. Cafe's, for those who have trouble remembering or were not aware of its significant history, were originally places of socialization when first established in the Muslim world. A French guy named Jean Chardin wrote in the 17th century about his first experience of a cafe while traveling through Persia -

"People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played." (from Wikipedia)

Another degradation of a culture by the soulless West. Is this the beginning of a bleak and apathetic future? Because if this is San Francisco, and the way of progression, count me out.

LIBERATION

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

- 1984, George Orwell