The word that comes to mind most readily when trying to describe the production of the great Portuguese film director Oliveira is “odd”. Take his film Cannibals, an opera about a man from distant Brazil who wins a singing contest by virtue of singing the strangest song; and thereby he wins the hand of a beautiful maiden; during the nuptial night he reveals his heart-breaking secret: that his arms and legs are artificial. His new wife flees in horror, he sings another strange song and – throws himself in the fireplace, where he roasts to death. In the morning, his brothers in law arrive, and finding no one in the house, in puzzlement take some of the strangely delicious roast on the fireplace.
Odd, but beautiful.
Portuguese architecture is like that, too. Everywhere one sees strange features – shallow arches crossed by columns, rope-like stone decoration of windows, greeting servants in white and blue tile on staircase landings, rounded corner balconies, steep, pointy, Hindu-like domes in red tile, unusual color combinations (e.g. dull pink with pale grey) – which appear unique to Portugal. Somehow, these brilliant Portuguese inventions never emigrated outside of Portugal. Like a population isolated on an island, Portuguese architecture evolved in its own, strange directions. Oddness seems prized. Per plaques which decorate them, the oddest buildings seem to have received highest architectural prizes.
The food is like that, too. At Quinta da Regaleira, the restaurant serves deer chops in purple cream-cranberry sauce. It tastes alright, but looks surprisingly beautiful. How was it, asks the waiter, named (oddly) Nelson. “Strange”, I said, “but good.” “Ah, yes,” said Nelson. “Try this: roast a rabbit in vegetables with cinnamon and saffron. Then add three leaves of fresh mint”. “My God!”, I said, “that sounds odd!” “Yes!” he said with a victorious smile. “I was glad to invent it.”
Sep 5, 2008
Sep 4, 2008
More about the nun
Mme Cyr says further – a propos the fact that for centuries a debate ranged among scholars as to whether the Portuguese Nun’s Letters had been written by her or rather by a man – that women have been denied the right to speak. In this she picks up the favorite argument of the femlib movement. There is something to it: some (male) scholars’ insistence that the author could not possibly be a woman does seem to betray a strong wish that she should not have been. But the general remark makes no sense: whoever had written the letters, man or woman, they were published – and made a stir – precisely as the production of a woman. Apparently, there was no social barrier to a woman’s literary success in 1666.
(Besides, the relationship between gender rights and gender publication is completely made up: in male chauvinist Victorian England more women published than men).
But to the point.
Mme Cyr then adds, a propos the Brooklyn Seamstress who had found her feelings helpfully expressed by the letters, that such exclusion from literature has meant a kind of crippling of the whole sex, leaving, as it were, women uncertain how to feel. But then, given that the feelings of the letters may not really be those of the seamstress, but only put on, one wonders whether such publications are in fact a good thing.
For centuries now young privileged people have read Marx and been worked up by him into white fury about social injustice which they themselves did not actually experience. Their feelings of personal frustration – perhaps with parental authority or lack of sexual fulfillment – were channeled by a craftily crafted book into feelings of revolutionary fervor. But the so-called revolutionary class consciousness, which they thereby acquired, being proletarian consciousness, is false – cannot be anything but false – in upper middle class youth: it is not their consciousness at all.
Just so the Portuguese nun’s love may not be the Brooklyn Seamstress’ love, either; by putting it on, the seamstress may not be adopting the correct diagnosis of her ills, and therefore not getting at all closer to a cure; and the book, by offering wrong diagnosis of her ills, may in fact be reducing any prospect of improvement.
Books are dangerous things. If we are to read like this – impose their creations upon us – perhaps we better not read at all?
(Besides, the relationship between gender rights and gender publication is completely made up: in male chauvinist Victorian England more women published than men).
But to the point.
Mme Cyr then adds, a propos the Brooklyn Seamstress who had found her feelings helpfully expressed by the letters, that such exclusion from literature has meant a kind of crippling of the whole sex, leaving, as it were, women uncertain how to feel. But then, given that the feelings of the letters may not really be those of the seamstress, but only put on, one wonders whether such publications are in fact a good thing.
For centuries now young privileged people have read Marx and been worked up by him into white fury about social injustice which they themselves did not actually experience. Their feelings of personal frustration – perhaps with parental authority or lack of sexual fulfillment – were channeled by a craftily crafted book into feelings of revolutionary fervor. But the so-called revolutionary class consciousness, which they thereby acquired, being proletarian consciousness, is false – cannot be anything but false – in upper middle class youth: it is not their consciousness at all.
Just so the Portuguese nun’s love may not be the Brooklyn Seamstress’ love, either; by putting it on, the seamstress may not be adopting the correct diagnosis of her ills, and therefore not getting at all closer to a cure; and the book, by offering wrong diagnosis of her ills, may in fact be reducing any prospect of improvement.
Books are dangerous things. If we are to read like this – impose their creations upon us – perhaps we better not read at all?
Sep 3, 2008
The Portuguese Nun
Myriam Cyr, who performed the letters of the Portuguese Nun in New York, writes in the introduction to her book on the same, about a seamstress from Brooklyn who came to her after one of her performances in tears. "She was going through a painful break up and Mariana's letters had given her the words to describe everything she felt but had not been able to express until now." Two thoughts suggest themselves:
The seamstress is like many, perhaps most, humans: she does not know how she actually feels. It's hard to manage one's life as a result; and practically impossible to be happy (unless the happiness come by accident).
So, to put some shape on her feelings, she borrows the words of others. She feels that these words express her own feelings well, but, since she's not in great touch with her feelings, who knows whether this is actually the case? Who knows whether the words, by expressing pain, and sounding nice, do not bamboozle her into thinking that she feels what the words express, while in fact what she feels would be better expressed by, say, the Lisbon-Sintra line timetable?
The seamstress is like many, perhaps most, humans: she does not know how she actually feels. It's hard to manage one's life as a result; and practically impossible to be happy (unless the happiness come by accident).
So, to put some shape on her feelings, she borrows the words of others. She feels that these words express her own feelings well, but, since she's not in great touch with her feelings, who knows whether this is actually the case? Who knows whether the words, by expressing pain, and sounding nice, do not bamboozle her into thinking that she feels what the words express, while in fact what she feels would be better expressed by, say, the Lisbon-Sintra line timetable?
Sep 2, 2008
The Sleepiness of Lisbon
The state of soporific exhaustion which overcomes one here is perhaps the result of the goodness of the environment. There are no unpleasant stimuli which force the system to respond or defend: the temperature, lovely at 9, never seems to rise beyond what is wonderfully comfortable; nor fall at night; there is no traffic noise during the day, and no karaoke noise at night; there are no mosquitoes; in the street there are no crowds; in shops no one seems to care to sell a thing. All systems slip into idle. One yawns. It is time for siesta.
At first glance all Portuguese seem to live in this lazy, slow-motion state, like flies in ointment. Asked whether they feel soporific, they would probably ask to be explained what that means; explained, they would probably nod and say that in Portuguese it is called Saudade.
In Morocco, the climate explains religion; in Portugal, poetry.
At first glance all Portuguese seem to live in this lazy, slow-motion state, like flies in ointment. Asked whether they feel soporific, they would probably ask to be explained what that means; explained, they would probably nod and say that in Portuguese it is called Saudade.
In Morocco, the climate explains religion; in Portugal, poetry.
Sep 1, 2008
The Loneliness of Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai, one of the multimillion cohort of Indians whose first language is English, feels alienated and sees her alienation a result of being a foreign language speaker in her own country. By this measure, of course, most Indians are foreign language speaker in that they do not speak Hindi as their first language. Yet, though no doubt some of them feel alienated also, many do not, just as many Indian English speakers do not.
Kiran Desai, I submit, feels alienated because it is her nature to feel alienated.
Kiran’s argument is more sophisticated than that of the Moroccan lady I discussed here earlier. Kiran ascribes her alienation not to the (presumed) demeaning function of agreeing (being compelled?) to speak to the Bwanas in the Bwanas' language, but to the fact that while, growing up in the Himalayan foothills, she experienced a kind of forking of consciousness: she found her body in the Indian hills ("reality") while her mind dwelt in the English flatlands ("novels"). Those English flatlands were of course not accessible to those around her without the literature bug. This -- she feels -- made her “odd”: it made it impossible for her to share her inner world with the physical persons around her.
But her condition is not different in this regard from that of others with oddball interests: that of a Pole in
This proclivity to feel alienation is no more than the obverse of the so called desire to belong.
This appears to be a strong desire with some people. I am not sure, however, what the term “to belong” might mean. The concept seems to me a muddle. The fact that we instinctively assume that we know what it means, and react to it emotionally, only hides from us the obvious truth that the phrase, simply put, means nothing. Consider this quote from Illakowiczowna, returning to Poland after 6 years of exile during WW2:
"This (experience) cannot be compared to anything else on earth, believe me: that every encountered man is familiar, that he greets us, smiles, gets angry in our way. That one wants nothing from these people: no profit, no popularity, not even decent treatment; that one desires nothing except that they exist, and that they be familiar."The term familiar appears to mean here a certain state of Illakowiczowna's mind; it is hard to see how the ability to reach it can be anything other than a property of her own mind.
Aug 31, 2008
The French Professor
Why is it that the mere appearance of something like Sur le bateau d'Ulysse, a series of talks on Radio France Culture dedicated to the exploration of the Greek heritage, raises my blood pressure? I love the Greeks. I should eat this stuff up.
That it does rattle me, of course, has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of such production, especially that emanating from France, is aimed at creating the ideological apparatus with which to shore up imaginary boundaries between us and them – broadly speaking those whom we will have in Europe (e.g. modern Greeks) and those whom we will not (e.g. modern Turks). As such, much of this effort is the first cousin of “Revealed Truth” and “the white man’s burden” – and all the other high-sounding dreck which has been generated over the centuries in order to infuse with a sense of noble purpose otherwise less than noble projects, like the crusades or, closer to home, colonialism.
But also because the “culturalist” thinking is simply intellectually bankrupt.
In the 25th installment of the series on RFC, with the electrifying subtitle La Grèce au risque de la Chine (the which risk, to exonerate its speaker immediately of any responsibility for the subtitle, is actually never mentioned by him at all in the course of the interview) was an interview with François Jullien, a professor at Université Paris VII, who has written widely on Chinese classics. In the course of the interview, the speaker points out many differences between the Greek and the Chinese classics – two large bodies of literature which arose almost simultaneously, independently, and at the opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. He points out things such as the absence in ancient China of epics or drama, the absence of an explorer figure similar to Odysseus, absence of the concept of “essence” (this was introduced along with Buddhism under the guise of “original face”), and different approaches to philosophical discourse.
This is all very interesting, of course, in the way in which comparing stamps or butterflies may be, and I love to do nothing else, actually, as long as we do not take any it to mean anything. The absence of an explorer figure in Chinese ancient classics hardly means that the Chinese have not explored (either then or since). That Chinese discourse is generally more agreeable, hardly means there haven’t been different schools of thought directly, sometimes even violently, opposed to each other. China created its own epics and drama in due course. And essentialism has been taken lately by many western philosophers to be more of a bane than boon in western philosophy. I’d like to honor the professor for not claiming otherwise in the interview.
But he does not avoid all risks and skirts terribly close to bankruptcy: noting that the Chinese language has no tenses he moves on to claim that in classical Chinese there is no concept of time; only concepts of “occasion” and “duration”. The western (true?) concept of time, he adds, is more like that of a flowing entity, like a river.
Really? A westerner since birth, I somehow managed to live all my life in the company of all sorts of westerners without once noticing this inalienably and uniquely timelike quality of time.
But alright, I can be blissfully clueless sometimes. Maybe “time” really is more like a river; still, I fail to see the significance of the finding. How does exactly this fact account for the westernness of the west, the scienceness of its science, or democtraticness of its democracy? How does it make the West more significantly unlike China – more significantly than, say, forks?
The suggestion made by the professor appears to be (if I understand him well) that the ancient Chinese were therefore somehow unaware of, or less nimble with, such concepts as “the past” and “the future”. This is – I apologize for the directness of this phrase but I can’t see how I can put it any less brutally – utter bunk.
The professor, says his entry in the French wikipedia helpfully, has studied at the Peking University. Which is impressive, of course, but – how well actually does the good professor speak Chinese? Does he feel in the language the way I do – at home? If so, when thinking and speaking in Chinese does he experience difficulty thinking about time (which I do not)? And if he does, could one perhaps suggest that the fault isn’t of the Chinese concepts but of his -- maybe not so fluent fluency? I don’t seem to experience such difficulty, and neither do any of my Chinese friends. The professors findings puzzle me.
Really, I feel tempted to point out that the French language lacks (yes, lacks) the superlative form of the adjective. Do the French therefore experience difficulty comparing more than two objects? Is the French mind therefore somehow less capable in this area than Italian? (“Perfettissimo!”) Certainly not, it would appear, since the thought that “The Greek (er, French?) Heritage is the best” comes so easily to the French mind.
That it does rattle me, of course, has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of such production, especially that emanating from France, is aimed at creating the ideological apparatus with which to shore up imaginary boundaries between us and them – broadly speaking those whom we will have in Europe (e.g. modern Greeks) and those whom we will not (e.g. modern Turks). As such, much of this effort is the first cousin of “Revealed Truth” and “the white man’s burden” – and all the other high-sounding dreck which has been generated over the centuries in order to infuse with a sense of noble purpose otherwise less than noble projects, like the crusades or, closer to home, colonialism.
But also because the “culturalist” thinking is simply intellectually bankrupt.
In the 25th installment of the series on RFC, with the electrifying subtitle La Grèce au risque de la Chine (the which risk, to exonerate its speaker immediately of any responsibility for the subtitle, is actually never mentioned by him at all in the course of the interview) was an interview with François Jullien, a professor at Université Paris VII, who has written widely on Chinese classics. In the course of the interview, the speaker points out many differences between the Greek and the Chinese classics – two large bodies of literature which arose almost simultaneously, independently, and at the opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. He points out things such as the absence in ancient China of epics or drama, the absence of an explorer figure similar to Odysseus, absence of the concept of “essence” (this was introduced along with Buddhism under the guise of “original face”), and different approaches to philosophical discourse.
This is all very interesting, of course, in the way in which comparing stamps or butterflies may be, and I love to do nothing else, actually, as long as we do not take any it to mean anything. The absence of an explorer figure in Chinese ancient classics hardly means that the Chinese have not explored (either then or since). That Chinese discourse is generally more agreeable, hardly means there haven’t been different schools of thought directly, sometimes even violently, opposed to each other. China created its own epics and drama in due course. And essentialism has been taken lately by many western philosophers to be more of a bane than boon in western philosophy. I’d like to honor the professor for not claiming otherwise in the interview.
But he does not avoid all risks and skirts terribly close to bankruptcy: noting that the Chinese language has no tenses he moves on to claim that in classical Chinese there is no concept of time; only concepts of “occasion” and “duration”. The western (true?) concept of time, he adds, is more like that of a flowing entity, like a river.
Really? A westerner since birth, I somehow managed to live all my life in the company of all sorts of westerners without once noticing this inalienably and uniquely timelike quality of time.
But alright, I can be blissfully clueless sometimes. Maybe “time” really is more like a river; still, I fail to see the significance of the finding. How does exactly this fact account for the westernness of the west, the scienceness of its science, or democtraticness of its democracy? How does it make the West more significantly unlike China – more significantly than, say, forks?
The suggestion made by the professor appears to be (if I understand him well) that the ancient Chinese were therefore somehow unaware of, or less nimble with, such concepts as “the past” and “the future”. This is – I apologize for the directness of this phrase but I can’t see how I can put it any less brutally – utter bunk.
The professor, says his entry in the French wikipedia helpfully, has studied at the Peking University. Which is impressive, of course, but – how well actually does the good professor speak Chinese? Does he feel in the language the way I do – at home? If so, when thinking and speaking in Chinese does he experience difficulty thinking about time (which I do not)? And if he does, could one perhaps suggest that the fault isn’t of the Chinese concepts but of his -- maybe not so fluent fluency? I don’t seem to experience such difficulty, and neither do any of my Chinese friends. The professors findings puzzle me.
Really, I feel tempted to point out that the French language lacks (yes, lacks) the superlative form of the adjective. Do the French therefore experience difficulty comparing more than two objects? Is the French mind therefore somehow less capable in this area than Italian? (“Perfettissimo!”) Certainly not, it would appear, since the thought that “The Greek (er, French?) Heritage is the best” comes so easily to the French mind.
Aug 30, 2008
Why you should not hire guides
"In the summer of 1902 there appeared in Paris a number of Orientals, of doubtful aspect and mysterious actions, who laid before the astonished eyes of the Paris experts a series of gold medals, similar to the ones found many years ago near Tarsus, but far surpassing them in beauty and boldness of their design. But the possessors inspired little confidence; the whole business looked too "fishy"... It was the astounding quality, preservation, and the bold workmanship of these medallions which prejudiced numismatists against them in the early days of their discovery." (E.T. Newell, The Gold Medallions of Aboukir, AJN XLIV (1910), p. 128)
11 of these Aboukir medals, having first been acquired by J. P. Morgan Library and bought from them by Gulbenkian in 1949, are today at the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. They are astonishing: large (about palm sized), round, very yellow gold (perhaps 20K), with very high relief of excellent quality. The obverse represents busts of famous military figures -- chiefly Alexander the Great but also Caracalla, the other a smaller scale figure in action: a man spearing a boar, an armed goddess holding up a shield.
Although fragments of several such series survive, and more may have been made in antiquity, their purpose is completely unknown. Some have suggested a propaganda effort, possibly by Caracalla who aspired to great conquests in the East.
The guides leading groups through here announce blandly that these were -- Olympic medals.
Aug 26, 2008
Blabbering old fools
A financial discussion board breaks out in one of its occasional asides. They are always longer and juicier, but rarely interesting. This one is typical: a discussion of Eastern European politics by a mixture of Poles, Russians, Germans and Jews. In their real lives these men are accomplished professionals: traders, bankers, industrialists, real estate developers. There is even a jeweler. But when it comes to politics and history, they are all blabbering fools repeating whatever propaganda their elementary school has taught them and whatever prejudice they sucked with their mother's milk. There isn't much we can do about mothers, but spare a thought for education. Would it be nice if it actually taught us something? Taught as in -- delivered facts?
Aug 25, 2008
In The Tangier Medina
In the Petit Socco, the typical odd-shaped Medina square (they would call it a campo in Venice), I sat around 3 pm in a street-side café, drinking a mint tea. (All tea here is green tea, unlike further in the Arab East where all tea is black; and it is stuffed full of fresh mint leaves, and sweetened with way too many clumps of sugar). I was drinking, or rather not drinking my tea (not drinking, is the essence of the art of successful café-going), watching tenacious touts touting their trundles to tourists. They were quite vicious with the tours passing by; but they did not hesitate to invade the cafes and attack the tourists sitting at the tables there; it is a hard, persistent sell, friendly but dogged. I kept imagining how I, with my many years' experience at this sort of thing, would respond to an advance, but didn't have to. No one seemed to bother me at all. Must be my leather shoes (instead of flip-flops) and the long pants (instead of baggy shorts). I don't wear the international uniform of the rich tourist: I am perfectly camouflaged. In fact, no one here has offered to sell me anything in the street, no shopkeeper has tried to shortchange me, even though I speak not Arabic but lousy French, and Tangier is famous for pretty vicious touting. Everyone but me. I am made of teflon. I am invulnerable.
At 4 I got up and slouched over to the American Legation. It is the first US Embassy abroad. It was set up in 1777, only one year after the American Declaration of Independence, in a building gifted to the young nation by the then Sultan. (It is in return for this, it is said, that the US was the first country to recognize Moroccan Independence in 1950's). The building is now a museum of Old Tangier and a lending library; the building itself is supposed to be interesting and there is a Paul Bowles room. But I only know this by hearsay. The museum opens from 10 till 1 and 3 to 5, but if the day is hot, or there is a vicious wind, or the caretaker has other business, or it has been raining, or it is a holiday somewhere -- or for any other reason at all, it may not reopen after lunch. And some days it may not open in the morning, either, which makes its continued closure after lunch -- automatic.
At 4 I got up and slouched over to the American Legation. It is the first US Embassy abroad. It was set up in 1777, only one year after the American Declaration of Independence, in a building gifted to the young nation by the then Sultan. (It is in return for this, it is said, that the US was the first country to recognize Moroccan Independence in 1950's). The building is now a museum of Old Tangier and a lending library; the building itself is supposed to be interesting and there is a Paul Bowles room. But I only know this by hearsay. The museum opens from 10 till 1 and 3 to 5, but if the day is hot, or there is a vicious wind, or the caretaker has other business, or it has been raining, or it is a holiday somewhere -- or for any other reason at all, it may not reopen after lunch. And some days it may not open in the morning, either, which makes its continued closure after lunch -- automatic.
Aug 24, 2008
A Paul Bowles Short Story
Mustapha is a square, silent sort, with square jaws, low forehead, and thick black hair slicked back. His wrestler’s exterior hides a warm, generous, caring and polite beast. He has taken good care of me. He keeps surprising me by his gentleness. Two days ago, returning home around midnight we discovered a lady at the door struggling with the lock. I rushed back to open and hold the door for her, by doing this, I startled her. Only then I noticed that Mustapha's reaction was the opposite of mine: to fall back and leave her alone to achieve her doings in peace. He’d never correct me, but when I asked him he explained that educated Moroccans know to keep a distance, to be circumspect.
Knowing Mustapha is a bit like stepping into a Paul Bowls short story. He’s been in Tangier these 18 months, looking for a job. (Back in Casablanca he worked for his father’s construction company and ran his own internet shop). His job search routine is persistent and the same every day: he wakes around 1 or 2 in the afternoon; if it is the maid’s day in (she comes 4 times a week for 4 hours each, at 100 euros a month), he helps her clean up the house and cook; if not, he goes out to the beach; then he takes a nap; then he goes out to read his newspaper in a cafe (he reads Arabic with difficulty, moving his lips: he is an Arabic speaker but French reader), then to eat something in the dining quarter, usually some grilled wonders in some hole in the wall, then comes home around midnight, chats with his boyfriend on internet and surfs the web for music videos or watches TV. He turns in around 4 or 5 in the morning.
Last week, after visiting several jewelry shops, mostly machined 18K, I observed that there surely must be an opportunity in importing Indian jewelry; costume, if not gold. After all, Moroccans love beautiful, colorful, busy things; and the Gulf Arabs eat that stuff up. “Excellent idea”, said Mustapha. “On Monday I will investigate the legal ramifications”.
He’s investigating still.
Knowing Mustapha is a bit like stepping into a Paul Bowls short story. He’s been in Tangier these 18 months, looking for a job. (Back in Casablanca he worked for his father’s construction company and ran his own internet shop). His job search routine is persistent and the same every day: he wakes around 1 or 2 in the afternoon; if it is the maid’s day in (she comes 4 times a week for 4 hours each, at 100 euros a month), he helps her clean up the house and cook; if not, he goes out to the beach; then he takes a nap; then he goes out to read his newspaper in a cafe (he reads Arabic with difficulty, moving his lips: he is an Arabic speaker but French reader), then to eat something in the dining quarter, usually some grilled wonders in some hole in the wall, then comes home around midnight, chats with his boyfriend on internet and surfs the web for music videos or watches TV. He turns in around 4 or 5 in the morning.
Last week, after visiting several jewelry shops, mostly machined 18K, I observed that there surely must be an opportunity in importing Indian jewelry; costume, if not gold. After all, Moroccans love beautiful, colorful, busy things; and the Gulf Arabs eat that stuff up. “Excellent idea”, said Mustapha. “On Monday I will investigate the legal ramifications”.
He’s investigating still.
Aug 23, 2008
Being swooped down upon
Walking very briskly through the Medina two nights ago I was startled by a slender woman in black with a haggard pointy face swooping down on me very close, nearly soundlessly, like a prowling owl, and then running along in small, busy steps, talking to me urgently in a rasping voice. She was asking for a handout. I was startled, but kept walking on, shaking my head. She persisted through several turns of the walkway – walking through the Medina is essentially like walking through Venice – but then was chased away by a passerby. Don't give her anything, he said. She will just use it for drugs. She was once a beautiful woman with her own house. She smoked it all.
Aug 22, 2008
Skirting the Rif
Driving to Chefchauen (in a shared taxi, which is a beat up old Mercedes, driver + 2 in front, 4 in the back – I soon learned the trick to pay double and have the whole shotgun seat to myself) is very pretty, with rolling hills, mostly green, covered with pine and cedar near their tops, with occasional craggy rock above. It must be delicious in the spring, after the rains.
Chefchauen itself is a pretty Medina on a slope of a mountain, with a view of a broad valley before it, with white towns and villages here and there, and a huge, delicious spring at its base. It is painted pretty white and blue; and for this it is crawling with tourists both foreign and Moroccan. Moroccans are forgiven for thinking it great: it is still cheap and the people are still friendly; and Moroccans like the feeling of visiting an international resort, even if the Ghauris who make it so are badly dressed and vulgar European backpackers. (The backpacker is an international phenomenon, I have learned: one can’t tell the Spaniards or French from the Ozzies or the Americans by merely looking: same dress, same hairdos, same tattoos). Having said that, Chefchauen is still learning how to be a backpacker haven: they haven’t learned the Banana Lassi trick, yet. (Give them time).
From Chefchauen to Oued Laou the road is beautiful, it skirts the Rif, descends through some pretty magnificent rocks, tiny villages populated mostly by goats, and onto a broad, moon-shaped beach. The beach is not much: no trees anywhere, the village is rough and the sand is black, but the sea is clear and wonderfully cold. From here back to Tetuan one can drive along the coast, on a road which goes several hundred meters above the sea (since the Rif comes down to the sea here) and in places flies over cute little beaches hidden between the rocks, each with a huge apartment complex under construction. (Those worried about the absence of good cheap accommodation in Morocco need only wait: all of this will soon be available for a song).
Chefchauen itself is a pretty Medina on a slope of a mountain, with a view of a broad valley before it, with white towns and villages here and there, and a huge, delicious spring at its base. It is painted pretty white and blue; and for this it is crawling with tourists both foreign and Moroccan. Moroccans are forgiven for thinking it great: it is still cheap and the people are still friendly; and Moroccans like the feeling of visiting an international resort, even if the Ghauris who make it so are badly dressed and vulgar European backpackers. (The backpacker is an international phenomenon, I have learned: one can’t tell the Spaniards or French from the Ozzies or the Americans by merely looking: same dress, same hairdos, same tattoos). Having said that, Chefchauen is still learning how to be a backpacker haven: they haven’t learned the Banana Lassi trick, yet. (Give them time).
From Chefchauen to Oued Laou the road is beautiful, it skirts the Rif, descends through some pretty magnificent rocks, tiny villages populated mostly by goats, and onto a broad, moon-shaped beach. The beach is not much: no trees anywhere, the village is rough and the sand is black, but the sea is clear and wonderfully cold. From here back to Tetuan one can drive along the coast, on a road which goes several hundred meters above the sea (since the Rif comes down to the sea here) and in places flies over cute little beaches hidden between the rocks, each with a huge apartment complex under construction. (Those worried about the absence of good cheap accommodation in Morocco need only wait: all of this will soon be available for a song).
Aug 21, 2008
Juj
The shape of Morocco is the cipher juj – the Arabic for “two”. Write a horizontal stroke, right to left, near the top of the page. This is the Rif Range. Then beginning at the end of the first, write a second, longer stroke going down and sloping to the left: this is the Atlas. The space below and to the right is the useless Sahara; the space to the left and above is the narrow coastal strip, useful only in parts.
The coastal strip can be further divided into Belb el Makhzen and Belb es Siba. The former is “governed” -- they are three large, fertile areas, watered by mountain streams or underwater aquifers. Over near the bottom, to the left, is Marrakech, the southern capital; in the upper left corner, Tangier; and at the kink – the place where the two strokes meet – the fertile central valley with the northern capitals, Meknes and Fes. Settled, fertile, rich and densely populated, these areas were amenable to centralized rule. They produced an easy life of plenty, and with it a morally ambivalent and permissive approach to life. Forgetting about God, people grew wine and enjoyed the arts.
But these areas are but islands in the sea of Siba – the marginal land, populated in times of plenty, but deserted in times of drought; consisting of thousands little oases, often no more than scraps of meadow in which to herd one’s sheep in wet years, sometimes no more than a cave from which to run a smuggling racket. Life here has always been chancy; the dwellers repeatedly forced to fall on robbery to support themselves through the hard times. The residents of the Siba are thus not merely country bumpkins of the sort you and I might know because they are shaped by a different, more rigorous, more fundamental environment. Their bodies are sinewy, their laws simple, and their religion undisturbed by doubt.
Their roughness revolts the Makhzen while the decadence of the Makhzen both tempts and disgusts them.
The history of Morocco is the history of the climatic pendulum and the oscillating relationship between Siba and Makhzen which the pendulum drives: sometimes, after a long drought, when Siba has been emptied by a long drought, the climatic pendulum turns back, rains come back, things begin to turn well, the Makhzen springs back to life first and then soon generates sufficient profits to control and repopulate the Siba; then the Siba grows; and as it grows, it becomes too large for the Makhzen to control; then the drought returns, Siba, at best times marginal, becomes unlivable, and, now overpopulated and hungry, it turns against the Makhzen.
Throughout the history of Morocco, time and again, the hungry Siba has conquered the Makhzen, usually in the name of religion, and it is these roughneck desert men who preside over each reflowering of Morocco when the climate (as it always does) turns friendly again. Muslim historians have seen the "moral renewal" (i.e. the imposition of the rude standards of Siba) as the source of the revival; but morality, like the bloom on a tree, is no more than the product of the cycles of the weather which come and go in their own rhythm.
One more element makes part of the picture: Al Andalus: Spain. The Moroccans conquered and reconquered Southern Spain several times; holding onto it, or recovering it, has always been the central dream of any Moroccan government as soon as it managed to strike some balance between the Siba and the Makhzen. This was for the simple reason that Spain has a better climate, more reliable rainfall, and more plentiful crops. Every new dynasty of Morocco (and it is always a Siba dynasty) have always felt that if only they could seize and hold Spain, they could then use her resources to alleviate, perhaps even prevent, the political turmoil of the perpetual climatic ebb and flow of Siba and Makhzen. And so they wasted uncounted precious resources on the dream of holding onto Spain; and even now, when it is lost forever, Al Andalus inspires a dreamy reverie in any Moroccan. You see, by comparison to the rigors of Moroccan climate, the easy Al Andalus is, simply put, heaven.
The coastal strip can be further divided into Belb el Makhzen and Belb es Siba. The former is “governed” -- they are three large, fertile areas, watered by mountain streams or underwater aquifers. Over near the bottom, to the left, is Marrakech, the southern capital; in the upper left corner, Tangier; and at the kink – the place where the two strokes meet – the fertile central valley with the northern capitals, Meknes and Fes. Settled, fertile, rich and densely populated, these areas were amenable to centralized rule. They produced an easy life of plenty, and with it a morally ambivalent and permissive approach to life. Forgetting about God, people grew wine and enjoyed the arts.
But these areas are but islands in the sea of Siba – the marginal land, populated in times of plenty, but deserted in times of drought; consisting of thousands little oases, often no more than scraps of meadow in which to herd one’s sheep in wet years, sometimes no more than a cave from which to run a smuggling racket. Life here has always been chancy; the dwellers repeatedly forced to fall on robbery to support themselves through the hard times. The residents of the Siba are thus not merely country bumpkins of the sort you and I might know because they are shaped by a different, more rigorous, more fundamental environment. Their bodies are sinewy, their laws simple, and their religion undisturbed by doubt.
Their roughness revolts the Makhzen while the decadence of the Makhzen both tempts and disgusts them.
The history of Morocco is the history of the climatic pendulum and the oscillating relationship between Siba and Makhzen which the pendulum drives: sometimes, after a long drought, when Siba has been emptied by a long drought, the climatic pendulum turns back, rains come back, things begin to turn well, the Makhzen springs back to life first and then soon generates sufficient profits to control and repopulate the Siba; then the Siba grows; and as it grows, it becomes too large for the Makhzen to control; then the drought returns, Siba, at best times marginal, becomes unlivable, and, now overpopulated and hungry, it turns against the Makhzen.
Throughout the history of Morocco, time and again, the hungry Siba has conquered the Makhzen, usually in the name of religion, and it is these roughneck desert men who preside over each reflowering of Morocco when the climate (as it always does) turns friendly again. Muslim historians have seen the "moral renewal" (i.e. the imposition of the rude standards of Siba) as the source of the revival; but morality, like the bloom on a tree, is no more than the product of the cycles of the weather which come and go in their own rhythm.
One more element makes part of the picture: Al Andalus: Spain. The Moroccans conquered and reconquered Southern Spain several times; holding onto it, or recovering it, has always been the central dream of any Moroccan government as soon as it managed to strike some balance between the Siba and the Makhzen. This was for the simple reason that Spain has a better climate, more reliable rainfall, and more plentiful crops. Every new dynasty of Morocco (and it is always a Siba dynasty) have always felt that if only they could seize and hold Spain, they could then use her resources to alleviate, perhaps even prevent, the political turmoil of the perpetual climatic ebb and flow of Siba and Makhzen. And so they wasted uncounted precious resources on the dream of holding onto Spain; and even now, when it is lost forever, Al Andalus inspires a dreamy reverie in any Moroccan. You see, by comparison to the rigors of Moroccan climate, the easy Al Andalus is, simply put, heaven.
Aug 18, 2008
Sitting
One thing that strikes you upon arrival in Morocco are the rows and rows and rows of men sitting in street side cafes lining both sides of each street, drinking (or rather not drinking) their teas and coffees, glancing at their newspapers from time to time, sometimes chatting (though mostly not). It seems a strange custom. Do they not have anything else to do? And what is the attraction of sitting endless hours in cafes doing nothing?
Well, cafe life is like the cake, its proof lies in the doing. Try it. The moment you sit down, a strange languor comes upon you, a feeling of utter calm; all cares and worries leave you; nothing in your life seems important anymore except sitting here, doing nothing.
Well, cafe life is like the cake, its proof lies in the doing. Try it. The moment you sit down, a strange languor comes upon you, a feeling of utter calm; all cares and worries leave you; nothing in your life seems important anymore except sitting here, doing nothing.
Aug 15, 2008
Ergot, like yoga, is natural
“In the clouds of nonsense” was a title of my favorite book as a child. “Clouds” is actually not a good translation: Polish “opary” means a kind of stifling emanation, like steam in a Turkish bath, or the fetor of a sulphuric spring: one that blinds the eyes and offends the nose. The disorienting, mind-boggling power of “opary” is tacitly implicit. Assonance with “opicie” (drunkenness) is also readily apparent.
I am reminded of this title when I talk to my newly met female Moroccan upper-middle class friends. They are all about vegetarianism, feng shui, meditation, yoga, healing through polarization, reiki – precisely the same stuff and nonsense I discovered in some Indian upper middle class females two years ago, German last year, and Polish middle this. This new age ideology is a strange beast: it is not clear why all of its disparate elements should hang together, except their sheer stupidity (and perhaps their slight whiff of dissent), but they do; and they spread together, like a single body; perhaps like a kind of symbiotic conglomerate of fungus, slime, and rot. They spread like ergot through wheat, or mold through bread, through long dark musty crevices of empty minds and crop up unexpectedly in full fledged form, bloom and eject their poisonous spores clear across the globe.
The only way to destroy this thing would be to burn the whole crop.
Our minds have been poisoned.
We are lost.
I am reminded of this title when I talk to my newly met female Moroccan upper-middle class friends. They are all about vegetarianism, feng shui, meditation, yoga, healing through polarization, reiki – precisely the same stuff and nonsense I discovered in some Indian upper middle class females two years ago, German last year, and Polish middle this. This new age ideology is a strange beast: it is not clear why all of its disparate elements should hang together, except their sheer stupidity (and perhaps their slight whiff of dissent), but they do; and they spread together, like a single body; perhaps like a kind of symbiotic conglomerate of fungus, slime, and rot. They spread like ergot through wheat, or mold through bread, through long dark musty crevices of empty minds and crop up unexpectedly in full fledged form, bloom and eject their poisonous spores clear across the globe.
The only way to destroy this thing would be to burn the whole crop.
Our minds have been poisoned.
We are lost.
Aug 14, 2008
Besides
Of course, there is a structural change of sorts going on also. Time was when people had time to take holidays and went somewhere for the whole summer. Or large part of it. Cape Cod in the 50’s rarely rented for anything under a week, but a month was far more common. Today Cape Cod, even in the height of season is a 3-4 day affair, a week is tops. The change is this: people stay shorter periods, but in return they can afford to pay higher day rates. (And they work longer hours to support them). This creates an economic environment which for us retirees is unsupportable: the day rates are just too high. Favorite tourist destinations become inaccessible for any longer stretch, the most anyone can stay is a few days. And pay through the nose for it. We are all being forced to live like the hardest working of us. This does violence to my lifestyle. I resent it.
Aug 13, 2008
How the middle class ruin my world
Touristically, all value has gone out of India, and the whole third world is going the same way – thanks to the rise of the middle class in the third world.
I don’t mean of course that India hasn’t anything to offer to a tourist: indeed, few places posses a richer palette of wonders, experiences, and knowledge; and few places will change you the way a good visit to India will. But India is simply no longer good value. Accommodations are lousy, food is often poisonous (if delicious), getting from place to place is a bloody pain. It has always been thus, of course, but until recently it was also – cheap.
One didn’t get quality, but one also didn’t pay for it.
Now one does, and how.
In 2001 I stayed in the YMCA in New Delhi: $20 bought me a very basic room: stone floor, camp bed, a tuberculotic wardrobe, a sink, a shower, a single setting a/c, a big, very antique-looking sort of phone which connected me (feebly) to reception. Everything was, like everything has been in India since the Brits left (and perhaps since the Mughals were toppled) a little tired, a little tatty. But then one only paid $20. In 2005 I stayed in the same room and paid $55: the same room in which nothing has changed, only a little more paint has peeled and the bed squeaked more for all the abuse of the intervening years.
All this means that, from the point of view of value -- when one is compelled to pay for Indian vacations about what one pays for Venetian holidays -- then it is hard to find any VALUE in the Indian holidays: the quality of the wares is simply too low to justify that sort of price. One might as well go to Venice, or Paris, or elsewhere. Maybe the spiritual values gained are no more, but the quality of creature comforts is much more -- and all at the same price.
Indians blame this dramatic repricing of India on the BRIC phenomenon. (Some Wall Street guru declared that henceforth all money would be made in BRICs, them being Brazil, Russia, India and China). Nothing like a good acronym to move the market: western businessmen began to arrive en masse. And here a shocking statistic: all of India has 100,000 hotel rooms, less than New York City. And hotelier’s response to increased demand is not to build more, but to – jack up rates. Five star hotels which in 2001 went for $120 now go for $350, with no change in quality. YMCAs went up in line.
But the truth is that Indians blame foreigners for something for which they themselves bear full responsibility. Foreign arrivals in India are not up all that much. It is the Indian middle class, finally paid something resembling real wages (in the same order of magnitude at least, if not quite in line, with western middle class) who travels – and books all those hotels, and all those restaurants. Eager to spend their earnings, they bid up prices to western levels; which is way out of line with what a similar property might fetch in, say, Europe. To Indians it is still cheap: to go and stay at a lousy hotel in Goa for $55 seems a great deal if you do not have to pay for the airfare to Europe to do this. But for Europeans to fly to India only to pay home-style prices for Indian-style quality is plain silly.
Don’t.
Now I see the same happening in Morocco. Waterfront properties here rent in August for silly money: you could do better in Sicily, or Portugal.
Damned Bourgeoisie. It’s all their fault.
I don’t mean of course that India hasn’t anything to offer to a tourist: indeed, few places posses a richer palette of wonders, experiences, and knowledge; and few places will change you the way a good visit to India will. But India is simply no longer good value. Accommodations are lousy, food is often poisonous (if delicious), getting from place to place is a bloody pain. It has always been thus, of course, but until recently it was also – cheap.
One didn’t get quality, but one also didn’t pay for it.
Now one does, and how.
In 2001 I stayed in the YMCA in New Delhi: $20 bought me a very basic room: stone floor, camp bed, a tuberculotic wardrobe, a sink, a shower, a single setting a/c, a big, very antique-looking sort of phone which connected me (feebly) to reception. Everything was, like everything has been in India since the Brits left (and perhaps since the Mughals were toppled) a little tired, a little tatty. But then one only paid $20. In 2005 I stayed in the same room and paid $55: the same room in which nothing has changed, only a little more paint has peeled and the bed squeaked more for all the abuse of the intervening years.
All this means that, from the point of view of value -- when one is compelled to pay for Indian vacations about what one pays for Venetian holidays -- then it is hard to find any VALUE in the Indian holidays: the quality of the wares is simply too low to justify that sort of price. One might as well go to Venice, or Paris, or elsewhere. Maybe the spiritual values gained are no more, but the quality of creature comforts is much more -- and all at the same price.
Indians blame this dramatic repricing of India on the BRIC phenomenon. (Some Wall Street guru declared that henceforth all money would be made in BRICs, them being Brazil, Russia, India and China). Nothing like a good acronym to move the market: western businessmen began to arrive en masse. And here a shocking statistic: all of India has 100,000 hotel rooms, less than New York City. And hotelier’s response to increased demand is not to build more, but to – jack up rates. Five star hotels which in 2001 went for $120 now go for $350, with no change in quality. YMCAs went up in line.
But the truth is that Indians blame foreigners for something for which they themselves bear full responsibility. Foreign arrivals in India are not up all that much. It is the Indian middle class, finally paid something resembling real wages (in the same order of magnitude at least, if not quite in line, with western middle class) who travels – and books all those hotels, and all those restaurants. Eager to spend their earnings, they bid up prices to western levels; which is way out of line with what a similar property might fetch in, say, Europe. To Indians it is still cheap: to go and stay at a lousy hotel in Goa for $55 seems a great deal if you do not have to pay for the airfare to Europe to do this. But for Europeans to fly to India only to pay home-style prices for Indian-style quality is plain silly.
Don’t.
Now I see the same happening in Morocco. Waterfront properties here rent in August for silly money: you could do better in Sicily, or Portugal.
Damned Bourgeoisie. It’s all their fault.
Aug 12, 2008
How an egoist travels
The Irish couple’s reactions to Morocco are typical of many Europeans visiting the third world: they are focused entirely of income inequality and political freedom. They are of course convinced that their solutions (usually based on whatever it is that they have at home) are the best and must immediately be applied here and now and tisk-tisk at every instance in which local conditions differ from those at home. (Construction workers in tents?! Fie!)
They are not entirely wrong: democracy and capitalism do seem to work everywhere better than any other system; and respect for human rights is everywhere better than the lack of the same.
But they are also blind: there are more matters in life than income inequality and political freedom. The further away one gets from dire poverty the less income inequality matters; or the less it should matter – after all, how many cars does one actually need? And political freedom, once acquired, tends to be important once in a blue moon – at elections, around some burning political issues (such as wars and presidential sexual dalliance).
Once the political and economic basics have been achieved, other issues become more important: the amount and quality of one’s free time, the quality of one’s relationships, extracurrical concerns like clubs, sport, literature and art. It is because these things matter to me more than my income relative to that of others, that I come to places like Morocco to learn: the food, the music, the manners, the clothing, interior decoration, a new way of brewing tea; I am less inclined to teach. Maybe because I am more humble; or perhaps because – I am more selfish.
They are not entirely wrong: democracy and capitalism do seem to work everywhere better than any other system; and respect for human rights is everywhere better than the lack of the same.
But they are also blind: there are more matters in life than income inequality and political freedom. The further away one gets from dire poverty the less income inequality matters; or the less it should matter – after all, how many cars does one actually need? And political freedom, once acquired, tends to be important once in a blue moon – at elections, around some burning political issues (such as wars and presidential sexual dalliance).
Once the political and economic basics have been achieved, other issues become more important: the amount and quality of one’s free time, the quality of one’s relationships, extracurrical concerns like clubs, sport, literature and art. It is because these things matter to me more than my income relative to that of others, that I come to places like Morocco to learn: the food, the music, the manners, the clothing, interior decoration, a new way of brewing tea; I am less inclined to teach. Maybe because I am more humble; or perhaps because – I am more selfish.
Aug 11, 2008
Tents!
Some Irish travelers were shocked that construction workers were housed here at the construction sight in -- tents. One would not countenance that in Ireland, they said. What they don’t understand is that climate has its rights: one generally lives here more out of doors than in Northern Europe, because one can; but also because often it is nicer that way. In Marrakech home owners sleep on rooftops, camping out in the open air, just like these construction workers. And they do so because they want to, because it is more comfortable that way. Besides it is not impossible that the men working at the sites have grown up living in tents; that a tent is an abode with which they have grown up and to which they are used; and would not necessarily love living in a cinder block shack. And it is more than certain, in any case, that if they were offered a more permanent form of housing at the construction site in return for some kind of reduction in wages, they would probably refuse it.
Aug 10, 2008
Damned Replacements
Headline inflation is an item about which many central bankers and investors appear to fret these days. But the headline inflation is only a number. It is an artificial figure. For example, from it the cost of energy and food is stripped out. “Because they are volatile, up one month down the next”, say the inflator-deflator folk (responsible calculating inflation); but this should go to undermine their credibility since rather persistently food and energy have been up and up of late, with precious little down. The inflation deflator, as it now stands, does not reflect that pain to the pocket.
A more worrisome idea is that of “replacement” which was incorporated into inflation calculations. This seemed like a good idea at first: why compare prices of the same item in the same department stores from month to month when into the neighborhood comes a Walmart with radically lower everyday low prices on a private-brand product replacing the one whose price we wish to measure. (Cheapy beans vs brand name beans, say). But there is a danger here, for one could easily take this too far, by saying for example “why compare the price of lemons this and last month when this month we have a new lemon juice extract, as healthy and as useful in cooking, one bottle being the equivalent of 7 fresh lemons, which makes it, on a per lemon basis, much cheaper”? And further: one could say, yes these Florsheim shoes are up 10% this month, but one could buy flips flops instead, which are in fact much cheaper than the Florsheims, and thus by their cheapness reduce the notional cost of Florsheim shoes (which no one is obligated to buy) and thereby – inflation.
More worrisome is another aspect of replacement: when a whole segment of a market, usually the bottom, disappears. In early 90’s the whole segment of cheap shoes – shoes for under $20 dollars – seemed to disappear in the US. Merchants no doubt preferred to sell the expensive sort and didn’t feel much incentive to carry the cheap; and consumers were rich enough by and large to go happily with the expensive sort; so the cheap shoes just disappeared. The disappearance of the cheap segment of the market did not therefore seem to happen by violence or manipulation, but it did happen. Yet, I do not think this was reflected in the inflation deflator figures: no one in the inflation calculation department seemed to have said: “wait a minute, the cheap shoes have been replaced with the expensive ones! Let’s calculate that!” The same seemed to happen with eyeglass frames after the establishment of Luxotica as a major market leader. It is still possible to buy reading glasses in the US in cheap frames – for under $10 a pair, which proves that cheap glass frames can be made and distributed; but such cheap frames for normal prescription glasses have disappeared from optical shops. In both cases, the resulting pain to the consumer was huge – a matter of several hundred percent in price increases – but not reflected in inflation calculations at all.
And what about cars? Cars cost now nearly double what they cost a decade ago. This has in part to do with such phenomena as the increasing size of the average vehicle – a market phenomenon perhaps comparable to what happened in the shoe market; but also in part with the government mandated air-bag which added $1,200 to the price of an average car. The option to buy a no frills car without an air bag has been closed, and that segment of the market eliminated forever.
These changes make our life more expensive. They do so by stealth and they are not reflected in the inflation deflator. But they hit us in the pocket; and hit us in the pocket more than then 2% rise in the cost of toothpaste recorded in 2007. Don’t be lulled by the inflation figures put out by the central bank.
A more worrisome idea is that of “replacement” which was incorporated into inflation calculations. This seemed like a good idea at first: why compare prices of the same item in the same department stores from month to month when into the neighborhood comes a Walmart with radically lower everyday low prices on a private-brand product replacing the one whose price we wish to measure. (Cheapy beans vs brand name beans, say). But there is a danger here, for one could easily take this too far, by saying for example “why compare the price of lemons this and last month when this month we have a new lemon juice extract, as healthy and as useful in cooking, one bottle being the equivalent of 7 fresh lemons, which makes it, on a per lemon basis, much cheaper”? And further: one could say, yes these Florsheim shoes are up 10% this month, but one could buy flips flops instead, which are in fact much cheaper than the Florsheims, and thus by their cheapness reduce the notional cost of Florsheim shoes (which no one is obligated to buy) and thereby – inflation.
More worrisome is another aspect of replacement: when a whole segment of a market, usually the bottom, disappears. In early 90’s the whole segment of cheap shoes – shoes for under $20 dollars – seemed to disappear in the US. Merchants no doubt preferred to sell the expensive sort and didn’t feel much incentive to carry the cheap; and consumers were rich enough by and large to go happily with the expensive sort; so the cheap shoes just disappeared. The disappearance of the cheap segment of the market did not therefore seem to happen by violence or manipulation, but it did happen. Yet, I do not think this was reflected in the inflation deflator figures: no one in the inflation calculation department seemed to have said: “wait a minute, the cheap shoes have been replaced with the expensive ones! Let’s calculate that!” The same seemed to happen with eyeglass frames after the establishment of Luxotica as a major market leader. It is still possible to buy reading glasses in the US in cheap frames – for under $10 a pair, which proves that cheap glass frames can be made and distributed; but such cheap frames for normal prescription glasses have disappeared from optical shops. In both cases, the resulting pain to the consumer was huge – a matter of several hundred percent in price increases – but not reflected in inflation calculations at all.
And what about cars? Cars cost now nearly double what they cost a decade ago. This has in part to do with such phenomena as the increasing size of the average vehicle – a market phenomenon perhaps comparable to what happened in the shoe market; but also in part with the government mandated air-bag which added $1,200 to the price of an average car. The option to buy a no frills car without an air bag has been closed, and that segment of the market eliminated forever.
These changes make our life more expensive. They do so by stealth and they are not reflected in the inflation deflator. But they hit us in the pocket; and hit us in the pocket more than then 2% rise in the cost of toothpaste recorded in 2007. Don’t be lulled by the inflation figures put out by the central bank.
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