cafecouture

To be honest, I never really was very good at being productive. Not through laziness, though. Well, maybe a little laziness. But mostly I was never very good at being productive because it's much easier to act like a writer, artist, or congressman than to actually put in the work that awards that title. I have called myself a writer and an artist at various points in my life, but I am twenty two now and have not completed a single fully realised piece of work. Just the journals, just the sketches, the outlines, the ideas. It's a wonderful life - to profess to be something and get a lot of the acclaim without having done anything. It is not a life I am aware of however - it is not something I am familiar with. I am only fooling one person with my beautiful charade. Sadly, it isn't me, I've haven't yet been completely taken in by my shirt and jacket, sunglasses and haircut, pubescent facial hair - so if it is you who I have enraptured, somehow, accidentally, you should call me. Perhaps we could have sex, and later you could introduce me to your boyfriend.

It is easy to put on some fancy coat and wear leather gloves in the autumn, practice your moody cover sleeve photo in the mirror and pretend that it will all come true without your doing, but it doesn't get anywhere, unless you plug away at that novel that's been shuffling around inside your head all these years. You know the one, where the small town girl moves to the big city and finds herself. They'll make it into a movie you say. Dakota Fanning will be the perfect age by the time they come to cast it. But that's ok, don't worry about it. I will continue to haunt the cafés with my ungainly presence, spiriting the baristas with my unsolicited advice and aimless chatter.

"Oh yes, I am an artist, you see. You can tell from the look in my eyes as I silently pour disdain on your tacky furniture and artwork."

"Would you like cream on that?"
"Oh no, I couldn't possibly."
"Is that everything?"
"Why don't you work that one out for yourself, hmm?"

What ghastly vision is this? The cruel blade of self-knowledge. It's a bitch, I will give you that.

So I am sat - in some coffee sales place, clacking away at this thing - writing something. Lord knows what. This I suppose.
Oh my.

Slash.

There is that awful blade again.

If you ever want to fall in love, utterly and unavoidably in love, coffee shops are the place to do it. Why, I can fall in love up to four times in any given coffee shop session. They are filled with beautiful people, staring wistfully into the distance. It helps if, like today, Miles Davis is playing, and the hairs on the neck stand to attention, and the other parts stand to attention, and the ears prick up, and the moment is beautiful. It's a miraculous institution. A peculiar institution for the modern age perhaps. There was one boy who would have had been sucking on a cigarette if it were not for the prohibition of such things. I wanted to take him outside and hold it to his lips, in some sort of Felliniesque still frame, where the smoke would wrap around his lips, down around my wrist and up into my face, crashing against my sunglasses. The lighthouse abides.

It is wonderful how sad people can look here. I shall have to draw some of them some time. So beautiful, and so sad. They have faces that stare endlessly, in slow motion, a lightly lifting breeze carrying the steam away into some other conversation - also slowed down and faded, like some awful photo. Like the photos on the walls, of smiling women, and old men playing cards. They stare out, stock still, onto the world outside moving in all its unbearable acceleration.

So I suppose I belong here. Because no one here is being them self. Or perhaps I have it all wrong. Perhaps everyone here is hopelessly them self. Sitting at that big glass window, clutching their latté, staring out forlornly, yet not so forlornly that they lose their enigmatic charms - the couples with hands pressed on each other's knees. The beautiful boys, longing to call up the gods of nicotine and rape their veins, their beautiful blue blue veins. The women, reading Nabokov and listening to Joni Mitchell. Maybe it's not as false as it looks. Maybe it's all deeply, unflinchingly real.

I can't say much for the rest of them - but if ever I need to stare, clinging to the caffeine, riding on the false words, if ever I need to stare outside and wonder why they're moving so fast, I can count on café culture to embrace my fabricated desires.