- Hi.
- Sit down.
- Ok. Have you seen Donny?
- Donny is the old guy? No, not since this morning. Why do you ask? Did he make you a business proposal?
- How did you know?
- I should have warned you. You didn't give him any money?
- What should you have warned me about?
- A few years ago he was working as a professional confidence man. I know because he tried his tricks on me. He saw me sitting with my computer in at the cafe window, came in, asked me if I was a writer and if I was, did I want a probationary job writing a TV serial at minimum wage. I said yes, of course. He said he was in the Producers Guild and could only hire writers in the Writers Guild. Was I in the Writers Guild? I was not. No problem, his lawyer's office was just around the corner from the Guild; he'd call him and send him over to buy for me a temporary membership and I'd be hired there and then. Let's go to the ATM and get my money.
- You didn't give it to him?
- Didn't have it, and wouldn't if I had. But he was good, very good. Something in me wanted to believe. He taunted me, told me I was missing a chance of a lifetime; my doubts were pathetic weakness and irresolution.
- But last night you were sitting down at the same table as him as if nothing had happened.
- I can't tell if he remembers. I think he does and is pretending he doesn't.
- He said he'd get me job managing a hedge fund and I'd be making 50,000 dollars a month.
- I doubt he has a dollar in his pocket. You know, last night at the café is the last for us. They're closing the terrace.
- Really? They're taking in the tables?
- Yes. This morning I overhead the policeman who comes at closing ask them if they wanted him to clear everyone off the terrace.
- What did Starbucks say?
- No.
- Why?
- People living on the street must serve some function if they are allowed to accumulate in such visible numbers. After all, we live in a society whose god is efficiency and profit. Coming in here I stopped when I saw a new guy. The security guard looked to see what I was looking at. She pitied them, she said, these people, we were all only one step from sleeping on the street.
- The job they do is scare people.
- That's my conclusion. Too much tolerance defeats the purpose: the powers that be don't want objects of their tolerance enjoying themselves with the Starbucks terrace to themselves in the middle of night.
- If they enjoy themselves they don't scare anyone.
- Exactly. Thus the rules must be changed. The rules are changing everywhere in the neighborhood. The university seems to have hired a police informer, a tall long bearded foreigner about 60 years old who rides a skateboard in the middle of the night. He claims to be Scandinavian but if you ask which country he won't say.
- I haven't seen him. How does he talk?
- I can't identify his accent. Perhaps South American. I've seen him many times in many places late at night riding his skateboard. He's generally in a hurry, not friendly. But a couple nights ago he skated right up to me and said, Hey, I was looking for you. You look like a bohemian, like someone who'd knows things I need to know. I got evicted last night from my studio. Can you tell me where I can crash on the street?
- What did you say?
- I said I couldn't help him and he shouldn't do it. He said why not, it wasn't forever, looked at in the right light it was romantic. I said if he tried it he'd find himself being hunted 24 hours a day, always on someone else's property, in a permanent fight with the world and his own building paranoia. And tonight, as I walked here a woman who sleeps in a doorway on Weyburn called out my name and demanded, why don't I get a job?
- How did she know your name?
- Don't know. A few days earlier a habitué of the research library who'd always waved off my attempts at conversation did the same thing, practically chased after me saying he'd forgotten my name, what was my name, would I tell him? I expect this dining area here at the market soon will be closed too.
- This is making me uncomfortable. How do all these people live?
- They keep track of cultural events where they can get free food, they know the library's where they can get some sleep during the day, and where's to be found the strongest wifi...
- So the University hires old bearded spies, and businesses in Westwood are pulling back on their tolerance. This because the people living on the street weren't frightening enough. Too many of them were smart enough to keep themselves alive and not die promptly and publicly.
- At Starbucks last night there was you, recent University graduate, employed part time. Me, reader who claims to write. Donny, elderly confidence man. And the Tunisian refuge waiting on a visa to Australia. No drug addicts or alcoholics. Neat and presentable all.
- Not dying to order.
- We're disappointments. Now, do you want to know what I think is most interesting about this situation?
- What?
- You, me, the con-artist, the Tunisian, we don't know each other and we aren't ever going to know each other.
- But you know all about us!
- Observation goes with the job.
- The job of writing?
- Thinking. The writing's just for the Internet. What I wanted to say is we live in a society of doing for the sake of doing. Nothing is respected but producing and profiting from what is produced. Only technical skill and achievement. But skill and achievement for what? For its own sake. And if you look at this little group of ours you see the same thing: people who have skillfully managed what you'd think were intolerable circumstances and making what looks like a lark out of it, a romantic vacation.
- Gathered together on our private middle-of-the-night Starbucks terrace.
- Yes. We too are doers for the sake of doing. Working not to make profit upon profit we can't use, but working profitlessly simply keeping ourselves alive.
- What's wrong with that?
- The Tunisian is well up on political theory. He is in favor of direct democracy, is against any form of representative government. He asked, was I interested in politics, what did I think? I agreed with him that only community decision making was safe from representatives using their power against the people who they were supposed to represent. But democracy was only a sharing of power. It was always in the interest of some to jump ship, form a faction and force themselves on the people. This would always happen as long as people only thought of their power, their ability to do things.
- What else should politics be concerned with?
- With why we wanted power to do things. With the reasons we become so expert with our techniques. With what we do things for.
- And that is?
- Our relations to people and the world. Our loves, our sense of beauty, of truth, goodness.
- Abstractions.
- Realities. There is nothing more abstract and senseless than doing things without being able to say what you are doing them for.
- What did the Tunisian say?
- Human nature was bad, so maybe I was right. I said No, our nature was both good and bad. When we know ourselves better we can take steps to protect ourselves from unwanted political developments.
- Give me an example of what we can know.
- Two examples: hoarding and employment both predestine any politics to totalitarianism. But we'll get into this some other time. What I want to say is that our defunct middle of the night Starbucks society was a microcosm of the society at large, we too were politics without knowledge. We were extremely efficient people with nothing in common, were even former antagonists, who had established the most efficient society possible in the circumstances but had no real relation or knowledge of each other. No sympathy, friendship, admiration, nothing. Or do you not agree?
- I agree. You don't even know my name, do you?
- I don't.
