Cafe Work

It’s morning time in Lisbon and I have some work to complete before seeing a few last sights. I have ducked into a small café near the Barrio Alto district and sip an orange drink.

The café owner pecks away on an old typewrite from a corner table when he can. Between customers, black on white, he could be penning a new menu or the next National Book Award winner. I will never know. His work seems more deliberate and somehow more lasting. The pounding echoes through my body with a punctuated force. The tiled room, shades of brown, gives a false sense of height to an otherwise normal space.

A dog barks outside. There are few dogs in our travels that I’ve wanted to cuddle with. Most have been street dogs. Independent, hardened.

I wonder. Is there no limit to the amount of coffee one can drink in a day? The months it took me to really kick my coffee habit are all being forgotten here. There is no use fighting coffee. You can’t. They won’t let you, and you more than want to surrender yourself to them. Yes. Give me the brew. The drip that instills tranquility. If there is one thing they treat with attention, it is a cup of joe, which makes you stare a minute longer at your porcelainized shot glass.

I move on.

Another café and another beat. No typewriter here just the chatter of voices, the hollow click of heals on the faux-wood floor, and the bass-heavy beat of background music. No musac here, just beat. The coffees are bigger and more diluted than before. The seats are wider and more comfortable. The lingering moments more apparent. Every shop has its atmosphere; it’s purpose. No neighborhood run-in here. This is a place with leather chairs and couches, space that seems unending, and a menu that ia traditional only in the sense that a large family can be – a family of ten or twelve. It grows and grows as if obeying the heavenly laws of café Catholicism. This is where to escape for the afternoon, while my earlier locale was for a quick morning stop. Down and go. Standing all the time. Not that that would keeping people from staying all day or returning with the chimes of the clock.

Surreal. I am sitting with my back to a wall. I turn and realize. The wall is the canvas for a projection of a fashion show. The whole time I have been sitting and working, writing about things far from here and reading about serious things, people have been dancing the dance of Lauren behind me. Very odd.

There are no Starbucks here.