When I lost my Davy Crockett cap in the late 50s, my Irish Nana told me in a stern voice, “If you lose something, then it wasn’t yours to begin with.”
Over my lifetime I’ve lost money, cameras, glasses, wallets, keys, apartment, girlfriends, cars, houses, clothing, friends, family et al.
Possession is not permanent.
Tempus fugit.
Seconds can’t be regained except by memory, but French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book What is Property? declared, “If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? And I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . . . Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!”
Or more simply put “Property is theft.”
So my losing things is an act of revolution against the strictures of property, although the Bangkok Post reported today that a Texas man has recovered a treasured convertible stolen in Philadelphia nearly 42 years ago, which he found on Ebay.
“I hate to sound indelicate,” The owner told the dealer, “but you’re selling a stolen car.”
The LA dealer offered to sell it back to him for $24,000.
The owner called Los Angeles police, but they did nothing. The owner called Philadelphia Police, who found a record of the theft. The owner drove to California, paid $600 in impoundment fees, and took possession of the Austin.
Fucking A, Philly cops, I thought possession was 90% of the law.
Right now I’m sitting in a hotel room with my computer, a small bag of clothing, a camera, a telephone, and several cans of beer. The beer will no longer belong to me once I drink it, it will be me by my possession in my stomach.
I’m sure that Proudhon didn’t include wine or beer in his thesis, although the Marquis de Sade’s recounted in L’Histoire de Juliette: “Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft.”
My son’s and daughter’s first lessons were those of possession. Toys were theirs. They shared them with no one and I asked myself, “Did they learn that from my beer-drinking?”
Impossible.
They were still in their diapers. They got everything they wanted without working for it. They were treated like royalty.
They shared nothing.
Property is not theft. It is obsession.
“Now where the fuck is my Davy Crockett cap.”