A Cafe. A Corner. A Coffee.

“With any luck, Heaven will resemble a vast used book store, with a really good cafe in one corner”
Michael Dirda

Í want someone to look at me the way I look at coffee/If you’re not coffee, chocolate or bacon, I’m going to need you to go away/You should know that before 10am, whatever the question, my answer is always coffee/I pretend coffee helps, but I’m still insufferable/Patience is the time between drinking a cup of coffee and the motivation to begin your day/With enough coffee, I can dress myself and use my grown up manners/Sometimes I go hours without drinking coffee…it’s called sleeping/Life is what happens between coffee and wine/I will start working when my coffee does/Here’s to all the people who remain unharmed because I have coffee and a sense of humor.

The color of rich saddlewood or luxuriant leathers - dark brown with soft undertones - remind me how befitting is the word ‘mocha’. A heady froth, white like sea foam, atop a perfectly brewed cup of dark roast. My returning to a cafe for a second time is a profound choice. The cafe becomes mine, and I become all aspects of the cafe,,,a kind of proprietary self-puffery, a place where my private thoughts can reside - my ambitions and indiscretions; my impossible dreams and pragmatic realities. A place where it is quiet enough for my brain to run rampant and noisy enough for me to isolate within the din of chatter. Proximal, yet sufficiently remote and indistinct. A ‘white noise’ of humanity.

On the second visit, I am familiar with the entry, so I needn’t hesitate; I know from where the coffee is dispensed; I know the window seat, I’ve identified the green fabric chair in the back with the small, round metal table, I spied the rickety, wooden two-seater street-side where I can claim contentment. These people are my people no matter in what city. They share the search and the journey. Share the anticipation and disappointment. Share the joy and heartbreak. I can be alone amongst the many or notice a passerby who notices me and smiles or nods or simply makes eye contact and in that moment I am no longer alone, I am irresistibly part of a whole. Indeed, we are all mere passers-by observing the randomness over time.

Hard as we may try to have it be otherwise, it is all about ‘connection’. Connecting with ourselves. Connecting with our truth. Connecting with our reality. Connecting with our authenticity. Connecting with our purpose. Connecting with our autonomy. Connecting with our love. The internet is failing. Humanity is flailing. Phrases like “take back your power” and “winning is all” are in vogue, as if to describe some hidden specie drive to conquer and dominate those very things we need to connect with. People seek happiness and know not joy - one is external and continually needs feeding; the other emanates from within requiring little to achieve deep gratification. Coffee places help me connect even in my most solitary of moods.

I like writing at a cafe. Even my distractable self can focus and create in the impersonal warmth of a cafe. And, like a child who runs to play and then realizes they’ve gone too far so scurries back to mom or dad for a ‘touch base’, if I get too lost in my absorption, I can lift my head, and watch someone entering or leaving the cafe or walking their coffee to their seat, and reassure myself that I am they and they me and give myself permission to continue. A cafe is a place to overcome fear of dissolution and desolation.

"I loved the newsroom," Malcolm Gladwell responded in an interview. "When I left it I wanted to recreate the newsroom and the closest thing to a newsroom is any kind of random active social space." The best coffee shop offers what he calls "the right kind of distraction’. “There has to be some sort of osmotic process, just as happens with journalists together in the office…I do think that simply being around people who are not my age is really useful."

I would add being around people of another culture. Frankly, Americans irk me. I am not sure why? I’m annoyed by their habits, gestures, inconsiderateness, arrogance and pushiness. I know intellectually that I might be sensitive to these things in an American environment where I am familiar with social norms. But, that is the point. I am less picky and more tolerant when culturally infatuated. And, right now I am totally taken by the Danes. This makes sense. There is no need for Danes to scrimmage every morning, feeling like they are confronting their opposition head on in a competition of wills.I find them very up-front, even blunt, not in a rude way, rather more matter of fact.

Adele and I are leaving Copenhagen tomorrow on our way to Helsinki. Today will be our last visit to some cafe. We will remember Copenhagen, much like we did Vienna, by the cafes…and much else. So, I will end with other memories of Copenhagen.

Christianborg Palace

A highlight of the trip was a visit to The Louisiana Museum

…and their collection of Giocommetti’s

And, the assortment of parks…

…and even the touristy Nyhavn has retained its charm.

Of course, being joined by dear friends is such a privilege and treat