I am trying to come up with an angle to answer this question. The pandemic ended all these romantic experiences. Yes, it’s true, I have had many affairs with many cafes, coffee shops, call them what you will, and although I know what a patisserie and a boulangerie are, I know that I would be hard pressed to find one here. I am in a foreign part of the country, as if in the South, for example, nothing against the South, but it is so different, so deep, so complex, as someone, maybe Faulkner said: it is such a rich place because it has such a deep bedrock soil of suffering. I do not know this depth, because truth be told I so often avoid the depths of suffering. I’ll need more strength, even just to read Faulkner. Kingsolver is about as close as I can get at the moment, and I guess that’s something.
That would be enough. To be in a foreign part of the country, where I am out of my depth. I tried to make the “Brew Ha Ha,” the small chain here a coffee place, never mind I can no longer drink coffee, even decaf. I do have one of her coffee cups, which by the way, contains magic. One day I put it on the top of my car prepping this or that and drove away. It remained on top of the car, and when I made a left turn just before leaving our development, she slid off of the top of the car, in the bitter cold, no less, and was thrown for about four feet; bounced about 4 times; and this ceramic cup, laying on its side as I gingerly picked it up, was still whole for me. No crack. No chip. No break. Sometimes, when things don’t transform, that is magic too. Even that can transform us. Exhibit A, the mug that dropped 4 years ago, still alive in memory, in this writing.
But magic comes in many forms, and I guess we have to call the pandemic magic. Magic is that which transforms, and certainly the pandemic did its best to transform everything. So now, I was not only in a foreign part of my country, I was in a completely foreign country altogether, pandemic country. A country with no cafes, restaurants, even grocery stores were on wheels and in little bags at the door. Some part of me tells me to get over. Some part of me is not over it. Not the least because, we still mask everywhere we go. I am already well into long aging and chronic illness; I don’t need long COVID to go with it. The cost benefit ratio sadly tends towards the cautions. I know too many true stories. I have a dear friend that died. I don’t want or need to get any closer to this. Farther from this though, also means farther from the places of dear memories.
Because I would like to go to a café; even though the “Brew Ha Ha” I like best is kitsch for the upper middle class. Still, they are trying, and it is wonderful, as a semi-disabled retired person, to go the marketplace of saucers and coffee stains, and watch, with wonder, how industrious and focused all the people of the world are — and in ways they don’t know, and might not even imagine, they are making this world somehow a better place. I know, at least, I feel better when I am around them. The matter-of-fact world seems so healthy minded, virile, assertive of its own nature in an unconscious way. Perfect.
And then, of course, there is the smell of coffee that matches their ambience olfactory-wise. Robust, no no-nonsense, with a hint of the exotic, and the warning of bitterness on the backside.
I am outside the window looking, in. I can somehow smell the coffee, even though I am on the wrong side of the glass. It is enough, because my perspective includes the imaginary smell, and the awakening sharp bite of that first sip. Awakenings have to come from other kinds of biting experiences now.
And because I do know what it’s like to be on the inside, I needn’t dawdle. It was always about the friends met inside those cafes, anyway, and peeking deep towards the back tables, I don’t see any of them in there now. I always remember my mother saying, frequently, with wistful disappointment, how the smell of coffee was so much better than the taste. Just so.