Cafe Revelations: Thanksgiving

I didn’t come to Paris to run away. Or so I like to think. It would be nice to have the comfort of knowing I came with no knotted braids linking my naïve heart. But then again, I am nineteen, and the depths of a nineteen-year old heart sometimes are shallower than I remember.

Was the magic in the glances? The quick flutter of eye meeting eye, of the whisper of eyelashes and mirror of color, the sense that there is all apathy and empathy within the glare of shimmering blues or hazels or the coolness of grey.
Or maybe it was within the bâtiments, the curled and jutting balconies with elegant rives and glossy black against sandy stone. Sots of hazelnut, of a rustic ivy, of a faded plaque, statue of Mary solemnly dozing in a cranny of concrete. Doors of etched initials and brick fences and baskets of young flowers struggling to remain vibrant with the cool breezes, stale clouds, the pit and pat of smoky rain. Color against a smothered yawn, a weak pink and orange against a dusting of history.

Or, maybe, the magic was in my fluttering heart.

I did not come to walk down the streets with remorse, with fallen dreams, with hopes that some attention would fall back upon me. I came because there is a sensuality of darkness, of not knowing. The appeal of running away. Of putting expected meetings on hold, of taking the rush of maintaining relationships and tossing it to the sea. It felt beyond good, too good, to step on that plane, to say goodbye.

I know I would not be the same and I did not want to be the same.

I was too expectant, too anxious, too dependent, too hot-headed, too ignorant. I was breathing in life on the hills of my town but with people it was stale. Or I sold myself too much to the will of others.

That is no way to live.

I have sold myself to a selfless love of the moment. I walked through the misting rain, lost, amidst dusty streets and the stale air of cars and laundry mats and pharmacies. Yet. A monastery in the mist. Children on a pile of leaves. The wonderful feeling of being beautifully distant.

It’s Thanksgiving.

I miss my family because I spoke to them. I remember what it’s like to talk with no filter. I’m so difficult with friends, with not peeling back my layers to be completely real, completely relaxed.

But I fear the nothing, the emptiness of others. Being absorbed by their hollowness. I fear losing myself and my integrity when I’m around other girls. I don’t want to lose my personal beat to their stiff apathetic nonsense.

How can I balance it? Dignity versus empathy. Attention is too sweet, even when one can be fulfilled by anything but that in a place like this, when one runs away from the chamber of their heart.

Take the warm voice of a father/owner in a café and take his grey fluff of a mustache and his rosy cheeks and capture it. Capture all.

The flicker of candlelight, warmth of spiced foam, the roll off cette langue, mon sang est tiède avec l’esprit du nature drôle de ce café. Mon âme est en train de d’allumer. Puis-je rester ici pour ma vie?

Fluttering mind.

Playing “Play That Funky Music” with the warmth of a family. The girl is sad over a garcon. They discuss the news, the events of Paris, over wine and coffee and light.

Their words embrace.

 “Bon courage.”

Find the strength to tear yourself from this place; and when you are ready again to reinvent your soul, when you’ve lost all again, when love has fluttered into ash and your pen no longer flows, when your eyes slip closed too easily, too frequently... go back to Paris.

Go back to where your soul burned and you burst from the shell of conformity.