san francisco. une nuit n’est pas assez pour dire au revoir à cette ville qu’elle aime autant. on se tient dans les bras l’un de l’autre avant cette ligne que seulement les passagers peuvent croisser. giulia retourne dans son jungle urbain de londres. et je retourne à la ville avec un coeur leger, ou plutot soutenu, carried, par toute cette amitié et amour. avec chaque pas dans le mission je me sens plus remplie de ce bonheur qu’on partage. une journée merveilleuse, comme ce monsieur sans-abri me dit, et si je pouvais lui donner un peu d’argent (appellé si ironiquement “change”…) pourqu’il ait un repas aujourd’hui. parfois on est si heureuse que tout le corps l’expire, que cela contamine tout autour. quelle promenade au mission, pleine de rencontres et de soleil. oh giulia, t’étais là , tu sais?
can’t wait to share the mission with sahar. i go to the mission dolores park and install myself in the grass with a Jarritos limón, read the Olive Readers. the world of U.S. empire as we know it gets destroyed through ecological crises, and is re-shaped along the lines of economic power of different companies, dividing the territories and global production of commodities among them. No more countries or political entities such as nation-states and governments – the unities of power are The Companies and their boards and CEOs. People are not citizens but workers for a particular company, bound to that company. (uncannily non-science fiction for a science-fiction novel…)
“The old countries had disappeared a long time ago, their names and languages forbidden, their peoples and histories suddenly non-existent. Thousands of men, women and children were secretly sent out to space to form new colonies, but none survived. Countless others disappeared and were never accounted for, although rumours circulated that they had been sent to work camps to be retrained as the world re-created itself. Nationalities melted away, although some individuals managed to salvage tiny fragments of their old languages and their customs, drawing on a distant memory of oral histories and the subversively foraged books. Individuals were stripped of any sense of belonging, and torn from their communities and families at whim. There were mass transportations of people to camps where minds were altered, memories stripped and bodies trained to obey.”
The underground resistance in this world is grounded in finding and keeping books from before the take-over by the Companies, in reading and translating those books (the resistance is called the Readers), in reclaiming memory from Company fiction, in locating oneself in a secret genealogy working towards the moment when an underground movement has the resources and opportunity to overthrow power. Whether the underground resistance manages to transform this world or not, will be revealed in the last chapter, which i haven’t read yet…