Dexter Gordon deliberately makes his way through “Soul
Sister.” The Village is now “TaiKooLi”
and the place where I wrote much of my manuscript is gone. Starbucks facing north and west on to the
plaza is boarded over. I’m told a new
frame store will open soon. During the
dry, cold winter I had my spot. On the
way in I’d eye an empty stool, grab it.
Force it, if necessary, into the small space by the west-facing
window. Throw down a bag so it was
claimed and take my place in what was invariably a long line. And they knew me. The triple espresso was ready by the time I
ordered. Writing deliberately, about
seven different Starbucks cast about the east of Asia and one back home. Writing about my and my host’s iratation in that very setting. It was envy in my neighborhood Starbucks that
had set me off like this initially. I
came back from the summer and the venue had changed. Now, in
a Chuck D voice “another summer” and another absolute makeover. My spot, where I’d rest my face into my
fingers and watch the traffic step by like James Baldwin at the Village Gate, had
been erased. This is why we write. So moments, perishable are explained.
I needn’t tell you that a new, bigger Starbucks has opened now
in the adjacent location. I’m looking
down the plaza toward Gongti Beilu now.
In the past I’d complained that the site was tight and unimaginatively
decorated. Now it’s two stories tall
with rusty, industrial girders cast into the ceiling. The wood I’m resting my arms on is nice to
the skin and there’s an electric outlet beneath my and the neighboring seat. It’s packed.
No big-bad-data, algorithmic prowess required to tell you that if you triple
the space, it’ll still be crowded. As
always, 人山人海. I wasn’t intending to
stay. Just have a look at what they’d
done. But there’s enough of the old
joint to it that I was pulled conveyor-like into the routine. A seat by the window. Claim it.
Before someone else does. Enter
the long line and on cue, wax grumpy. As
in “Invidia” everyone was new. They’d
gutted the place and once again, replaced all the staff. My mind galloped on, indignant. But it wasn’t true. Initial observation discredited. There was that guy with the irresistible
smile. His elfin colleague just popped
up beside him. Recognition. Affinity.
Now I was committed to a triple shot.
They’d have it ready. Write about
writing about Starbucks, now facing south.
We’ll have
something for public consumption soon. I’ll
let the world have a look at “The Seven Deadly Starbucks” (7DS) because the
tensions will shift and the locations like this one will vanish and the
prophetic bits will be revealed as wrong headed, or worse, correct, defanged of
whatever illustrative power they might have once possessed. Our speed bump’s pending, out there, drawing
closer every day.
Christopher Ford
took an admirable pass at the question somewhere near the crux of 7DS: “If
China Ruled.” http://www.newparadigmsforum.com/NPFtestsite/?tag=christopher-ford
“Beats me”
too. And it won’t be a light
switch. The two civilizations will have
an increasingly rich dialogue of fascination and acrimony to navigate for the
remainder of my time on the planet.
Before anything becomes clear South Korea and Japan must play out their respective,
collective wills, illustrate their capacity to evolve, to endure, to lead.
I’m working my way
through Fernand Braudel’s "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World
in the Age of Philip II". It’s on a
stool in the upstairs bathroom. I stood
in the Mediterranean this summer with my daughters.
"The
Mediterranean lands were a series of regions isolated from one another, yet
trying to make contact with one another.
So in spite of the days of travel on foot or by boat that separated
them, there was a perpetual coming and going between them, which was encouraged
by nomadic tendencies of some of the populations. But the contacts they did establish were like
electric charges, violent and without continuity. Like an enlarged photograph
the history of the islands, affords one of the most rewarding ways of
approaching the explanation of this violent Mediterranean life. It may make it easier to understand how it is
that each Mediterranean province has been able to preserve its own irreducible
character, its own violently regional flavor in the midst of such an
extraordinary mixture of races, religions, customs, and civilizations."
[Vol I p. 161.]
How different the silted
ochre current flowing out from our side of Eurasia; Bohai broadening to Yellow,
emptying larger, broader to the East China Sea.
Three seas, one continuous continental civilization, four countries, twice
the people, half the land, open water, unprotected . . . xanthous legends connect peoples in spite of
seas. No azure epics here. But perhaps Braudel’s view into the islands
set in his contentious lake between Africa and Europe helps to frame the tumult
pending as all distances diminish, and the photograph pulls outward from Corsica,
or Crete, satellite-like so the few civilizations perceptible are left to either
innovate a shared governance or default to “electric charges” and usurpation.
Welcome.
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