The Answer

He took the train. Usually he went by car with friends or family or sometimes even the bus, but this time he rode the train.

There wasn't much to bring along. He only had a backpack slung over his shoulder. College students can travel lightly; they have so little clutter. So when the train pulled rolled slowly into the darkness under Wacker Drive and came to a stop, he was the first onto the platform.

He walked toward the double glass doors at the far end. As he went, his heart began to race. He tried to remain calm, but his mind was too far ahead of him.

She had said to him on the phone that she wasn't sure how she felt anymore. Her words were like a knife driven into his already crumbling heart; yet in those words he had detected a glimmer of uncertainty. She had not said they were through, only that she wasn't sure. And so although she had broken his heart again, she had also given him reason to hope.

When they had spoken on the telephone, she said that she needed time. She had told him to look for her at the station when he arrived. That way he would know her decision. So it was that his heart raced as he walked past the passenger cars, past the baggage car, past the idling diesel engines and thru the sliding glass doors.

With a hushed whoosh, the doors parted as he approached. A crowd of people stood and stared behind burgundy velvet barricades. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, face upon expectant face, waiting for the other passengers. But in all those faces he didn't see the one he was looking for.

After only a few moments, he spotted a tall man at the back: dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, standing still with his gazed fixed straight ahead. It was his father, and his father saw him, cracking that half smile that he would reveal only once in a while. The crowd began seething in anticipation as more debarking passengers came in thru the doors. His father stood at the back letting them seethe.

There were shouts of recognition and hugs of welcome-home. A small boy burst into a run from somewhere behind to jump into the arms of another father who stooped and picked up his boy, swinging him in the air. There were smiles and peering faces. But he couldn't see hers.

It was only seconds that he stood there. He only had a brief chance to look around. But in those moments, his hopes were crushed and his heart collapsed. Still, as he greeted his father, who insisted on carrying his pack, he continued looking around, thinking perhaps she was late, that she was walking up to him even now.

So as they walked down the hall and up the stairs and out into the vast waiting room with cool stone floors and long wooden benches, and as they went out into the street and around the corner to his father's usual parking spot, he was barely present in their conversation, looking still for her.

But when they got to the car and closed the doors and his father pulled away from the curb, the fire was utterly extinguished and his hopes were dashed. He knew her answer and sat in silence the rest of the way home.

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Intellectual Property

In this post-Napster era in which ideas are being labelled as property and fenced off behind corporate walls, in which the notion of fair use is withering in the face of its redefinition as theft, law professor Lawrence Lessig suggests in this interview that we step back and think about the notion of ideas as property from a different perspective:

Everybody talks about intellectual property as a form of property. One thing we might ask these people is, Have you paid your property taxes for this property?

The notion of theft, has allowed corporate America to recast the conversation about intellectural property in a light that favors their terms. It has effectively squelched dissonant voices and effectively labelled those on the other side of the issue as counter-culture contrarians who advocate free theft for all. The corporations would have us see it this way; they would have us see their fight against fair use and their efforts to perpectually extend copyright protections as the only hope for civilized socity. (Apres moi, le deluge.)

Perhaps introducing the notion of property taxes can dim that light a bit, permitting those with different points of view to state their case (and have that case heard without being written off) and allow the conversation to continue.

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