They have tables and they have chairs. We sit under our favorite ash tree and chew on big and small ideas over lunch. On weekdays my friends and I often gather in this public courtyard and order a choice of salad, pasta or pizza to-go for $9.00. The venue is Il Forno Restaurant on Ocean Park Blvd and 29th St. It’s the best kept secret in Santa Monica.
I suggest that Zelensky and Putin meet here and end the
carnage in Ukraine. BYOB, bring your own borscht. Let them first have a food fight if they must and then
settle in and save their people from further bloodshed and displacement. Nothing ever happens on an empty
stomach, so go ahead, Vladamir and Volodymyr, keep eating. Share your salad and pasta. Nobody's looking.
On another table Bibi, Trump and the Ayatollah could spring for falafel and then get real. After hostages are freed, Gaza can be declared a
demilitarized free city with open access and reconstruction. Let them admit their shame as pasta slides off their forks. Then the three of them can start writing
their Nobel Peace Prize joint acceptance speech.
The tables are round, great for conversation. We huddle and
think great thoughts. Basil expounds on pre-history and intergalactic speculations.
Dean offers his views on Erasmus’s advocacy for humanism as opposed to Martin Luther. I sit
in awe of my learned friends, busy contemplating the arrangement of broccoli and peppers on my vegetarian pizza.
There is much to be said for a public square. It wouldn't hurt if speakers on phones were banned as a courtesy. It is hard to find such a space without going to the park and dealing with picnics and flying frisbees.
But for
civil discourse on the meaning of life in a godless universe and other light subjects, nothing beats my
courtyard on Ocean Park Blvd. where revolutionary plots can be hatched at the
drop of Caesar salad, and you can't beat the price.
Off to the side, I spotted a rather stout man giggling under a bodhi tree. But that may have been an apparition.
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