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8.2 Your friend is your needs answered. She is your field, which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And she is your board and your fireside. For you come to her with your hunger, and you seek her for peace.
8.3 When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "aye." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; for without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unclaimed.
8.4 When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in her may be clearer in her absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
8.5 And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth; and only the unprofitable is caught.
<3
9.1 Olivia said:
I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
but offer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to us.
We shall not heap up what is called riches;
we shall scatter with lavish hand all that we earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid-up stores,
however convenient the dwellings,
we shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port,
and however calm the waters,
we shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes us,
we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,
healthy, free, the world before us,
the long brown path before us,
leading wherever we choose.
Comrade, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money.
I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
ugh
2.3 We may have to plan, said Ben, for the possibility of an insurrection in which we hold out in the I-Hotel.
2.4 You know we have our stash hidden, suggested a member. We could easily funnel it into the hotel, arm the place to the teeth. Once under attack, we could draw all of Chinatown in, set up multiple operational bases.
2.5 Olivia appeared in the doorway in the full bloom of her pregnant self, tapping her living belly as she spoke. What kind of bullshit are you talking? Have you asked the tenants? These guys'll kick you out on revolutionary asses. Have you even asked Chinatown? Ask me. I work in Chinatown.
2.6 The continued belief in the heroic individual who can change the course of history is a contradictory although romantic message to the collective cause. How many Ches will it take? Is the revolutionary dead? Who then will come forward in our time of great need?
lol
It's not easy to get into a boat with three people you don't know and go rowing off toward your destiny. If someone said, "Hey, get into this boat, it's going to change your life," would you do it? That's the trickery of being young. You figure, what the hell. I've never done this before. You've got time. Youth's supposed to have adventures. Even when there're folks who come rowing back from that trip and tell you what could happen or even warn you to turn around, you think you'll make your own mistakes but not those. But they never tell you everything. The past is always saved in someone's ego, so the really complicated and difficult things can only be known by living them out yourself. When it's all said and done, you too will save the hardest stuff inside your knowing ego. And you won't do it out of meanness, or duplicity, or vanity, but maybe because you just forget and get tired, because you've got to be an elder with a certain distance that they call wisdom, or because they never ask you anyway.
The fifth day of the takeover would be dawning in a few hours. The feeling of excitement and purpose was palpable everywhere. How many times in your life do you feel that kind of power, the sort that unifies a people in collective pride and knowing? This time, you and your people get to choose. It's not an idle feeling, but one that you pursue in various forms, like singing the same song or cheering the same team or praying to the same spirit. A connective wave carries you to the same infinite space, and you feel more alive than you ever felt.
For some people, this life begins with an interest in philosophy. Never mind that they don't know exactly what philosophy is; they just think it's something that can be figured out in the mind, like a twirling star that's an idea that blossoms into a grand explosion. Depending, that explosion might be a revelation or a revolution. Something inside the mind tells you that your thinking can be powerful. But then, the thinking has got to be put into practice, and how many middle-class activists checked into factories to find out what it's like to work? Even though this may have been a rite of passage, the truth is, really not many.[...]
[...] So yes, technically, Ria could sew; socially, she could organize; and theoretically, Ria could think political economics: Marx and C.L.R.James, to be specific; she did her MA thesis on the Haitian revolution.
Of course, this information was scratched from her resume, and the manager, who couldn't tell the difference between a Japanese and a Chinese, gave her the job because he thought if she could speak English, she could be an interpreter. What did he know? His factory had forty seamstresses, three cutters, and three packers, all Chinese. By the time he figured out that Ria couldn't speak Chinese, she had convinced two other college students to join up who could speak Chinese, and they were agitating for a higher pay scale and better benefits. Once, they got almost all forty seamstresses to go to a union meeting of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. But that was once. The Chinese ladies humored the students and went back to work.
Mrs. Lee explained things to Ria. "Union or no union, it's all the same. You got to get paid by the piece. Sew faster. Make more money."
Mo watcher her fingers flip and turn, pause and push, backtrack and cut, the artistry of the craft spinning up the same article again and again and again. "You're killing yourself, Ria," he said again.
"Look how cute." She held up a pair of baby overalls. "Mo, listen, I love this work. I love what we're doing. You should see the women when they come in in the morning. They're beautiful. It's so different from when we began. I'm living for that. I can't let it fail."
But suddenly, there’s Macario and how many others rushing the podium. They pull out their banners: Save the I-Hotel! Fight the Eviction of Elderly Tenants! Shame on you, Simon Solomon!
At precisely 5:12 a.m. Macario speaks: Mayor Alioto and the people of San Francisco. The Great Earthquake destroyed our city. It destroyed all of Chinatown, but we Asian Americans labored to rebuild this great city. Now another kind of earthquake seeks again to destroy our communities and to replace our homes and neighborhoods with financial buildings and parking lots for the rich . . .
That’s the mayor’s Earthquake Party.
I admit. I’m surprised. Life takes that kind of turn. A clumsy kid who just listens suddenly gets some guts. Spits out the cork in his throat. Maybe Phil’s thunder in his chest makes its way out.
You think about it. Food is the basis for everything. Without food, it’s all over. Kaput. They don’t lie when they say you are what you eat. If you can’t get nothing to eat, you are nothing. Nothing. They also don’t lie when they say you eat to live. And you live to eat. What’s someone’s culture but the way he eats? Everybody living from meal to meal, even if it takes somebody three days to get to the next one. Call that the culture of poverty. Maybe you a nomad or you tied to the land. It’s how you get your food. It’s how you organize to get your food. Keep your food. Keep your food for yourself. Who grows it? Cultivates it? Sells it? Cooks it? Who gets fed and does not get fed? Who throws it away? Who eats the leftovers?
What’s the story of the world? How come Magellan comes to bother folks like us in faraway islands? It’s to make their food taste better. Once you taste a secret, you go running after your tongue. It can’t be helped. Once you know this principle of the world, then everything becomes clear. You take Marx. You take Freud. You take Einstein. You take Suzuki. The politics of food. The sex of food. The relativity of food. The Zen of food.
I tell these radical kids, eventually all the answers can be found in food. Are they listening? Follow the food, I say. You born in the city. You forget your connection to the earth. And I don’t mean just Watsonville or Delano. That’s what guys like me have, the knowledge. We never stop. Everywhere we go, we touch the food right at the source. We digging the earth, sowing the seed. We pulling the weeds. Then cutting cane or slicing pineapple. Shucking lettuce or cutting asparagus. Dirt under the nails, under the blisters, in the grooves of our hands. It never washes out.
Then harvesting grapes. When grapes are ready, there’s nothing more beautiful and luxurious. I don’t say this like I’m the grower. I say this because who cannot appreciate the miracle of planted food comes back every year with your encouragement? These grapes are my grapes, my children. The small, sour, purple ones crushed for Gallo wine. Large, green, seedless Thompson for Dole fruit cocktail. The reds for Sun-Maid raisins. But that’s just the earth.