{"id":648,"date":"2010-11-15T08:23:11","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T16:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/?p=648"},"modified":"2011-06-14T15:57:29","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T22:57:29","slug":"the-struggle-of-modern-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/reading\/the-struggle-of-modern-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Struggle of Modern Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0553383108?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=idealistcafe-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0553383108\" target=\"_blank\">The Caliph&#8217;s House<\/a> by Tahir Shah:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the end of May, I flew to London for three days, for the launch of a film I had made. It was one of those dull trips filled with forced conversation and solitude. Every moment I was there,  I missed the children, Rachana, and the Caliph&#8217;s House. I met an old school pal who was still trapped in the cycle of zombie commuting and pseudo-friends. We laughed about English life, the terrible blight of flat-packed furniture and of information overload. He seemed impressed that I had moved to Casablanca. We had always conspired to break free together, but something had held him back. As I left I joked that he would put up with the chicken tikka sandwiches and the dreary weather until the end. His expression faltered.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all I know,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0553383108?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=idealistcafe-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0553383108\" target=\"_blank\">The Caliph&#8217;s House<\/a> by Tahir Shah:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the end of May, I flew to London for three days, for the launch of a film I had made. It was one of those dull trips filled with forced conversation and solitude. Every moment I was there,  I missed the children, Rachana, and the Caliph&#8217;s House. I met an old school pal who was still trapped in the cycle of zombie commuting and pseudo-friends. We laughed about English life, the terrible blight of flat-packed furniture and of information overload. He seemed impressed that I had moved to Casablanca. We had always conspired to break free together, but something had held him back. As I left I joked that he would put up with the chicken tikka sandwiches and the dreary weather until the end. His expression faltered.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all I know,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealistcafe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}