Years ago my dearest friend (yo) visited Karl Marx’s home town of Trier, in Germany, and brought me back a zero-euro bill. I carry it in my wallet always. It is a convincing counterfeit, with the feel of « real » currency — that money feel, a paper of linen and cotton rather than wood pulp. It is a bit faded and wrinkled now.
The zero-euro bill — a fetish of a fetish, a commodified meta-fetish — proves the adage that parody is the sincerest form of flattery. But it shows some cracks, too, despite itself. It might stir a nostalgia-in-advance in an era of odious crypto-currency; or a salutary doubt in the cold « cashless society » toward which we have been steered.
« A black cat sneaks across a flower bed toward a shed, past some asters, and squeezes into a gap an arm's width wide. Some worn-down club-goers lay wasted on sofas, sweat and smoke in a late-summer landscape. » On Berlin clubs and Calvino's cat flâneurs.
« Eine schwarze Katze huscht über ein Blumenbeet in Richtung eines Holzverschlags, an einigen Astern vorbei drückt sie sich in eine armbreite Lücke. Einige Abgefeierte lümmeln auf Sofas; in Schweiß und Rauch in dieser spätsommerlichen Club-Landschaft. » Über Berliner Clubs und Calvinos Katzenflaneure.
→ → Pursuing / you lead me to come to the future.
← ← coming to the future, I lead you / demanding.
→ → 求索 / 你引导我来未来
← ← 来未来我导引你 / 索求
From the office of the future to the office of the past. What endures?
Capital, Volume 1.