Cafe Love Quotes

I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.

The cafe windows wrapped all the way around the observation floor, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the skeleton army that had come to kill us.

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in very small cups. One not necessarily very beautiful man or woman who loves you. One fine day.

I loved him, but love isn't enough. All the fairy tales, the romance novels, the soap operas; they're all lies. Love does not conquer all.

I grip the edge of a sidewalk cafe table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don't care. I'm reeling, and I gasp for air. How can I have been so stupid? How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn't in love with him?

It's funny, most people can be around someone and they gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened; but Ruth knew the very second it happened to her. When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart.

The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.

...nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother's machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop on women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds?

what love looks like what does love look like the therapist asks one week after the breakup and i’m not sure how to answer her question except for the fact that i thought love looked so much like you that’s when it hit me and i realized how naive i had been to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person as if anybody on this entire earth could encompass all love represented as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for would look like a five foot eleven medium-sized brown-skinned guy who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast what does love look like the therapist asks again this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence and at this point i’m about to get up and walk right out the door except i paid too much money for this hour so instead i take a piercing look at her the way you look at someone when you’re about to hand it to them lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation eyes digging deeply into theirs searching for all the weak spots they have hidden somewhere hair being tucked behind the ears as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation on the philosophies or rather disappointments of what love looks like well i tell her i don’t think love is him anymore if love was him he would be here wouldn’t he if he was the one for me wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me if love was him it would have been simple i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat i think love never was i think i just wanted something was ready to give myself to something i believed was bigger than myself and when i saw someone who probably fit the part i made it very much my intention to make him my counterpart and i lost myself to him he took and he took wrapped me in the word special until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me hands only to feel me a body only to be with me oh how he emptied me how does that make you feel interrupts the therapist well i said it kind of makes me feel like shit maybe we’re looking at it wrong we think it’s something to search for out there something meant to crash into us on our way out of an elevator or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual but i think love starts here everything else is just desire and projection of all our wants needs and fantasies but those externalities could never work out if we didn’t turn inward and learn how to love ourselves in order to love other people love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing who to choose

All those calm, adult discussions. When all she really wanted to do was scream for her momma, her sweet momma, the one person in the world who loved her better than anyone ever would or ever could.

Idgie smiled back at her and looked up into the clear blue sky that reflected in her eyes and she was as happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.

We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people

There was a time Jeff and Helen loved each other and touched each other's hands and ate breakfast in cafes together and secretly fucked in public, the way people in like do. Then came a time they made each other crazy and beat their hands on steering wheels and tore up love letters and photographs and said goodbye.

I’m sorry, I said, I’m really sorry. I stood up in a cafe and screamed I’m in love, and now you’ve made a fool of me…

The commonplace becomes exceptional when God is involved.

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat. It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking. It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal.

Who Am I? I’m a creator, a visionary, a poet. I approach the world with the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, and the soul of a writer. I see rainbows where others see only rain, and possibilities when others see only problems. I love spring flowers, summer’s heat on my body, and the beauty of the dying leaves in the fall. Classical music, art museums, and ballet are sources of inspiration, as well as blues music and dim cafes. I love to write; words flow easily from my fingertips, and my heart beats rapidly with excitement as an idea becomes a reality on the paper in front of me. I smile often, laugh easily, and I weep at pain and cruelty. I'm a learner and a seeker of knowledge, and I try to take my readers along on my journey. I am passionate about what I do. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me.

Books enveloped the room floor to ceiling like wallpaper.

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.

As never before, he understood the vitality of tradition, the dignity of the worship of what had existed before one's own self had come into being. There was no shame in awe; there was exaltation. (“Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”)

I love you, Sophie," he repeats and I grin. "Now get your ass back in bed so I can show you how much.

Travel Tip: Relax. It's not a crime to want to sit in a cafe and not take a walking our of all those historic monuments in your peripheral vision.

No, my advocates, my angels with sadist eyes, this is the beginning of my life, or the end. So I lean affirmation across the cafe table, and surrender my fifty years away with an easy smile. But the surety of my love is not dismayed by any eventuality which prudence or pity can conjure up, and in the end all that we can do is to sit at the table over which our hands cross, listening to tunes from the wurlitzer, with love huge and simple between us, and nothing more to be said.

But Chloe loves it, and I love her so I’m willing to do what it takes to spend the day with her.

Love reduces the complexity of living. It amazes me that when Henry walks towards the cafe table where I wait for him, or opens the gate to our house, the sight of him is sufficient to exult me. No letter from anyone, even in praise of my book, can stir me as much as a note from him.

The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to disappointments because it gives a heightened concept of living, it leaves out the dull or stagnant moments. You, in your books, also have a heightened rhythm, and a sequence of events so packed with excitement that i expected all your life to be delirious, intoxicated." Literature is an exaggeration, a dramatization, and those who are nourished on it (as I was) are in great danger of trying to approximate an impossible rhythm. Trying to live up to dostoevskian scenes every day. And between writers there is a straining after extravagance. We incite each other to jazz-up our rhythm. It is amusing that, when Henry, Fred, and I talked together, we fell back into a deep naturalness. Perhaps none of us is a sensational character. Or perhaps we have no need of condiments. Henry is, in reality, mild not temperamental; gentle not eager for scenes. We may all write about sadism, masochism, the grand quignol, bubu de montparnasse (in which the highest proof of love is for a pimp to embrace his woman's syphilis as fervently as herself, a noblesse-oblige of the apache world), cocteau, drugs, insane asylums, house of the dead, because we love strong colors; and yet when we sit in the cafe de la place clichy, we talk about henry's last pages, and a chapter which was too long, and richard's madness. "One of his greatest worries," said Henry, "was to have introduced us. He thinks you are wonderful and that you may be in danger from the 'gangster author.

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world. Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs. It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone. It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been. Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen? We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth. It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold.

Love is a joint experience between two persons—but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet in the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer.

The best sex takes us somewhere. Somewhere warm and expansive, a paradise of lust and happiness. Sex is and can be and should be but only very rarely is an act of communion with something bigger than ourselves. Men fuck and women make love, people say, but we men make love when we fuck a woman we adore: it’s the same thing to us. We mean it sincerely. I had places inside me only Cathy could fill with her body, and I made her happy with my body more than I ever thought I could.

Nothing belongs to itself anymore. These trees are yours because you once looked at them. These streets are yours because you once traversed them. These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you. They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume. You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you. You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair. The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak. Nothing belongs to itself anymore. You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours. He sits with us in darkness now to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.

They sat in the cafes with their fresh faces and long lovely legs and waited for something outrageous to happen.

The front of the cafe was all open glass, and the seating was arranged so that wherever you sat you faced the beach, as if you were there to watch the sea perform a show. As Jane looked around her, she felt that dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when she was somewhere new and lovely. She couldn't quite articulate it except with the words "If only I were here". This little beachside cafe was so exquisite, she longed to really be there -- except, of course, she was there, so it didn't make any sense.

You are a story worthy of being told, A person made to be loved, With a life meant to be lived.

How lovely to work at something you loved and knew you were great at, even if it was for a pittance and you occasionally got punched.

amusement in her eyes and had to grin. "How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice dropping to a low, intimate tone that excluded everyone else in the cafe and made several women draw in their breath. Her mouth quirked in that self-amusement that made him want to grab her to him. "This isn't one of my good days. The only thing holding me together is static cling." "Come home with me, and I'll take care of you." She looked him in the eye and said quietly, "Give me one good reason why I should." Right there in front of God and most of Crook, Montana, he drew in a deep breath and took the gamble of a lifetime, his words plain and heard by all, because no one was making even the pretense of not listening. "Because I love you." Maddie blinked, and to his surprise he saw her eyes glitter with tears. Before he could start forward, however, her smile broke through like sunshine through a cloud bank. She didn't take the time to go around the counter; she climbed on top of it and slid off on the other side. "It's about time," she said as she went into his arms.

There was something quite beautiful about finding such a profound connection with an absolute stranger. In a city as densely populated as New York, the ratio of oddballs and jerks often seems to outnumber the sane ones. But tonight, I had found that rare gem.

They either come back or they don’t. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s what you learn. As you go through mundane days with so much of pain beating in your chest that you feel it will explode. You strike days off your calendar, waiting, going for a run, picking up a new hobby, while trying to numb that part of your brain that refuses to forget the little details of your skin. Soon, you start sleeping in the middle of the bed, learn how to get through the evenings alone, go to cafes and cities alone, you learn how to cook enough dinner for yourself and just make do without the kisses on your neck. You learn…Adjust..Accept.. The tumor of pain already exploded one lonely night when you played his voice recording by mistake.. by mistake.. But you didn’t die.. Did you? They either come back.. or they don’t.. You survive..

I heard people say that when you lose someone you love, they keep thinking they see him. Like when a stranger walks by, they'll do a double take to make sure it's not him. They'll hear his voice in a cafe only to realize that what they heard was the sound of some baritone DJ on the radio.

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths. As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be. It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleasant to part, because this simply means preparing the way for the next meeting. One long continuous being-together, even in a love affair, might make the thing wilt. In an attachment it would surely kill the thing off altogether. But to meet, to part, then to meet again in a few days, keeps the thing going, encourages it to flower. And yet it requires a certain amount of vanity, as love does; a desire to please, to look one's best, to elicit compliments. It inspires a certain amount of flirtation, for the two are of opposite sex. A wink of understanding over the rim of a raised glass, a low-voiced confidential aside about something and the smile of intimacy that answers it, a small impromptu gift - a necktie on the one part because of an accidental spill on the one he was wearing, or of a small bunch of flowers on the other part because of the color of the dress she has on. So it goes. And suddenly they part, and suddenly there's a void, and suddenly they discover they have had an attachment. Rome passed into the past, and became New York. Now, if they had never come together again, or only after a long time and in different circumstances, then the attachment would have faded and died. But if they suddenly do come together again - while the sharp sting of missing one another is still smarting - then the attachment will revive full force, full strength. But never again as merely an attachment. It has to go on from there, it has to build, to pick up speed. And sometimes it is so glad to be brought back again that it makes the mistake of thinking it is love. ("For The Rest Of Her Life")

I'll Be Seeing You" I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day and through In that small cafe The park across the way The children's carousel The chestnut trees, the wishing well I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you

After the cafes of Paris with their exquisite wines and creamy fromages, crepes and steak tartare-- screaming Adore me!-- Madrid was these store-bought hunks of unyielding cheese and brick-hard baguettes, consumed in leafless Buen Retiro Park.ll Madrid, dressed as it was, tasting as it did, prideful as hell, didn't care what you thought about it on your junior-year backpacking trip. That was your problem.

Mama always used to say that love is never lost, even if it’s not returned in the way you hope or expect. “Put it on out there,” she said. “Lay your heart on the line, and don’t be afraid of getting it broken. Broken hearts heal. Guarded hearts just turn to stone.

Cats were my weakness. I’d never met one I didn’t love instantaneously.

I'd rather kill for love than kill for hate. Wouldn't you?

I loved you with the scientific excuse of the lonely.

A small café, that's love.

You shoulda married someone, a whole lot more like you-- drink coffee in the little cafes, and you could go out shopping too. I shoulda married someone, who likes to camp and fish, and make love for two days straight, And you say, "don't you wish". You drive me crazy, with all the things you do and do not do. Umm, I love you so much, I'm gonna drive you crazy too.

Control is an expression of superiority,” he says, “always using the power of position and title. That’s why you withhold permission from everyone. But protection is an expression of love.

Some people won't dog-ear the pages. Others won't place the book facedown, pages splayed. Some won't dare make a mark in the margin. Get over it. Books exist to impart their worlds to you, not to be beautiful objects to save for some other day. We implore you to fold, crack, and scribble on your books whenever the desire takes you. Underline the good bits, exclaim "YES!" and "NO!" in the margins. Invite others to inscribe and date the frontispiece. Draw pictures, jot down phone numbers and Web addresses, make journal entries, draft letters to friends or world leaders. Scribble down ideas for a novel of your own, sketch bridges you want to build, dresses you want to design. Stick postcards and pressed flowers between the pages. When next you open the book, you'll be able to find the bits that made you think, laugh, and cry the first time around. And you'll remember that you picked up that coffee stain in the cafe where you also picked up that handsome waiter. Favorite books should be naked, faded, torn, their pages spilling out. Love them like a friend, or at least a favorite toy. Let them wrinkle and age along with you.

on the continent I'm soft. I dream too. I let myself dream. I dream of being famous. I dream of walking the streets of London and Paris. I dream of sitting in cafes drinking fine wines and taking a taxi back to a good hotel. I dream of meeting beautiful ladies in the hall and turning them away because I have a sonnet in mind that I want to write before sunrise. at sunrise I will be asleep and there will be a strange cat curled up on the windowsill. I think we all feel like this now and then. I'd even like to visit Andernach, Germany, the place where I began, then I'd like to fly on to Moscow to check out their mass transit system so I'd have something faintly lewd to whisper into the ear of the mayor of Los Angeles upon to my return to this fucking place. it could happen. I'm ready. I've watched snails crawl over ten foot walls and vanish. you mustn't confuse this with ambition. I would be able to laugh at my good turn of the cards - and I won't forget you. I'll send postcards and snapshots, and the finished sonnet.

In that instant, your billboard careened ashore on a wall of water, cracking the back of my head. I reached for balance and touched what I thought was a puppy. Then you grabbed my finger. My God, I thought. It's a baby. I fainted dead away. That's how Macon found us the next day — me unconscious on half a billboard, you nestled in my arms, nursing on the pocket of my uniform. The half billboard said: "...Cafe...Proprietor." Our path seemed clear. I will always love your mother for letting you go, Soldier, and I will always love you for holding on. Love, the Colonel. PS: I apologize for naming you Moses. I didn't know you were a girl until it was too late.

At some time all cities have this feel: in London it's at five or six on a winer evening. Paris has it too, late, when the cafes are closing up. In New York it can happen anytime: early in the morning as the light climbs over the canyon streets and the avenues stretch so far into the distance that it seems the whole world is city; or now, as the chimes of midnight hang in the rain and all the city's longings acquire the clarity and certainty of sudden understanding. The day coming to an end and people unable to evade any longer the nagging sense of futility that has been growing stronger through the day, knowing that they will feel better when they wake up and it is daylight again but knowing also that each day leads to this sense of quiet isolation. Whether the plates have been stacked neatly away or the sink is cluttered with unwashed dishes makes no difference because all these details--the clothes hanging in the closet, the sheets on the bed--tell the same story--a story in which they walk to the window and look out at the rain-lit streets, wondering how many other people are looking out like this, people who look forward to Monday because the weekdays have a purpose which vanishes at the weekend when there is only the laundry and the papers. And knowing also that these thoughts do not represent any kind of revelation because by now they have themselves become part of the same routine of bearable despair, a summing up that is all the time dissolving into everyday. A time in the day when it is possible to regret everything and nothing in the same breath, when the only wish of all bachelors is that there was someone who loved them, who was thinking of them even if she was on the other side of the world. When a woman, feeling the city falling damp around her, hearing music from a radio somewhere, looks up and imagines the lives being led behind the yellow-lighted windows: a man at his sink, a family crowded together around a television, lovers drawing curtains, someone at his desk, hearing the same tune on the radio, writing these words.

As Jane looked around her, she felt that dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when she was somewhere new and lovely. She couldn't quite articulate it except with the words "if only I were here". This little beachside cafe was so exquisite, she longed to really be there—except, of course, she was there, so it didn't make sense.

Rome by her very nature has a particular intoxication that wipes out memory. She's not so much a city as a wild beast hidden in some secret part of you. There can be no half measures with her, either she's the love of your life or you have to leave her, because that's what the tender beast demands, to be loved. …If she's loved she'll give herself to you whichever way you want her, all you need to do is go with the flow and you'll be within reach of the happiness you deserve. You will have summer evenings glittering with lights, vibrant spring mornings, cafe tablecloths ruffled by the wind like girls’ skirts, keen winters, and endless autumns…Every now and again, someone did get the hell out.

The women we become after children, she typed, then stopped to adjust the angle of the paper....We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair, We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, persoective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live, We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above.' We give up smoking, we color our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming-pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.

There is no separation. There is no chasm between you and the heavens. There is no divider, no veil between you and God’s love.

Those who love cats have a special place in heaven,” he said, tipping his fedora at me.

La persona más mediocre puede ser objeto de un amor arrebatado, extravagante y bello como los lirios venenosos de las ciénagas

The Joy of a Loving God.

He assured them, with a great and mighty authority, that his God was not a vengeful God, but one of goodness…love…forgiveness…and joy.

I loved my coat and the cafe and my morning routine. It was the clearest and simplest expression of my solitary identity.

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection.

Though griffe literally translates as 'claw,' Parisians have redefined it to mean 'stamp,' 'label,' or 'signature.' It describes the pattern of favorite cafes, shops, walks, meeting places, which each of us imposes on the city and which makes it uniquely 'our Paris.' A griffe is no trivial thing. As surely as a passport, it identifies one as a bona fide resident, with loves, hates, tastes, and prejudices.

Tears comes to my eyes when I think about some of God's people I have had the privilege to meet in the past few years. These are people with families, with dreams, people who are made in God's image as much as you and I are. And these people are suffering. Many of them are sick, some even dying, as they live out their lives in dwellings that we would not consider good enough for our household pets. I am not exaggerating. Much of their daily hardship and suffering could be relieved with access to food, clean water, clothing, adequate shelter, or basic medical attention. I believe that God wants His people, His church, to meet these needs. The Scriptures are filled with commands and references about caring for the poor and for those who cannot help themselves. The crazy part about God's heart is that He doesn't just ask us to give; He desires that we love those in need as much as we love ourselves. That is the core of the second greatest command, to 'love your neighbor as yourself' (Matthew 22:39). He is asking that you love as you would want to be loved if it were your child who was blind from drinking contaminated water; to love the way you would want to be loved if you were the homeless woman sitting outside the cafe; to love as though it were your family living in the shack slapped together from cardboard and scrap metal...

I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere.

It's worth getting out of bed some mornings. And it's a pleasure, especially if the pale winter sun is out and shining, to delight with your lover in the urban gift of your favorite café. Fresh coffee, steaming croissants, and the Sunday papers. Ah! All the way to ours, Alice and I talked about love and how many people don't get any while others get a lot, and how that unfairness probably accounts for the federal deficit and crooked contracting practices, and so on.

These were the rains that drove people close to the walls, under the balconies, or sent them dashing madly through the squares, and drenched the fluttering ribbons and bright trappings of the horses so that their flanks were streaked with delicate watercolors. The storms washed the streets so that little streams of brown water went roaring along the gutters toward the sea, and thundered on the roofs of the cafés where people were crowded together laughing in the steam and half darkness. I loved those rains; they were of the sort that is welcomed by everyone, preceded by hot, oppressive hours of stillness; they came the way storms come in the islands but did not last as long, and often the sun came out when they had passed. I was happy whenever the rain caught me walking about in the streets, for then I would rush into the nearest café, along with all the others who were escaping from the weather, all of us crushing laughing through the doors. The rain allowed me to go anywhere, to form quick, casual friendships, forced to share one of the overcrowded tables, among the beaming waiters who pushed good-naturedly through the throngs carrying cups of steaming apple cider.

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe!...the impotent are bloated with ideas!...they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp!...and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas!...philosophies, if you prefer!...yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing!

How lovely the months, the years with him had been. At the moment I hadn’t understood their importance, and now here I was, growing sad. The rain the cold the snow the scents of Spring along the Arno and on the flowering streets of the city, the warmth we gave each other. Choosing a dress, glasses. His pleasure in changing me. And Paris, the exciting trip to a foreign country, the cafes, the politics, the literature, the revolution that would soon arrive, even though the working class was becoming integrated. And him. His room at night. His body. All finished. I tossed nervously in my bed unable to sleep. I’m lying to myself , I thought. Had it really been so wonderful ? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to rigorous examination

No, don't come out with me,' he says, laying his hand on my shoulder. 'Finish your coffee, then go back and tell Oscar you've found your wedding dress.' He leans down and kisses my cheek, and I catch hold of him, an awkward half-hug because I don't even know if I'll ever see him again. He doesn't push me away. He sighs, his hand gentle on the back of my head, and then he says, 'Love you, Lu,' as if he's exhausted. I watch him shoulder his way out through the cafe, and when he's gone I take the hat off and clutch it. 'Love you too,' I whisper. I sit there for a while, the hat in my hands, my wedding dress at my feet.

Sitting in the outdoor cafe, the sun finally set. The clouds grew darker. We ignored the rumbling of the night sky, and the parallel bar gymnastics of the lightning. Flashes of light in all directions. My heart began its own flip flops. An emotional gymnast. Even the rain could not put out my fire, as I watched your eyes undress me.

And now that Thanksgiving has passed, I will take a moonlight ramble through the woods – yes, the city has its culture and cafes, and the sea has its drama, but for now give me the fallen leaves and rolling hills and the smell of the earth after a rain! Give me that over all the operas on earth, so long as I can harpoon whales with my pen!

I need someone who knows to enjoy life. Someone who'll get high with me at the Pere - Lechaise cemetery. Someone who'll lose their breath running trough the Louvre. Someone who'll go to coffee with a good book ( Fyodor Dostoyevsky, L. Tolstoy, Voltaire, A. Camus, Oscar Wilde, Gustave Flaubert ). During the weekends to the cafe de Flore, and after that lunch at Ritz. Someone who'll get lost in Paris in the middle of the night. Someone who'll lay beside Seine, drink wine and listen to Florence and Machine, Banks, Borns, Hurts, Bjork, Tom Odelle... Someone who can sit in front of S.Dali's paintings for hours and not talk. Someone who wants to live. Someone who wants to travel and see the world. Someone who'll look at the stars for hours, talk about life, someone who is not afraid of death.

Paris is a sensuous woman every man has loved, even if only in his dreams. Once he has been deep inside her, walked her streets and tasted her delights, he can never forget her. Yet no matter how strong the memory of her remains, it cannot prepare him for the sheer beauty of her nakedness as he gazes upon her for the second time; the intoxicating fragrance of her hair as it brushes against him as it did when she let him love her; the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips as he strokes her breathtakingly graceful form; or the searing fire which courses through every fiber of his soul now that she is within reach. For every man blessed with a woman's love, she is a shrine to his happiness now that he need search no more. But for those who reside in obscurity within the lonely domicile of an empty heart, she is the hope of finding love. In his tortured heart, love waits for him at a corner cafe in the woman's smile two tables away; it lingers in the melodic laughter of a girl riding past him on a bicycle; and sometimes, when the woman is smiling at someone else, and the girl rides past him without notice, he finds love beneath the skirt of the darkly sensual woman waiting for him under a streetlamp.

Most of us do not like not being able to see what others see or make sense of something new. We do not like it when things do not come together and fit nicely for us. That is why most popular movies have Hollywood endings. The public prefers a tidy finale. And we especially do not like it when things are contradictory, because then it is much harder to reconcile them (this is particularly true for Westerners). This sense of confusion triggers in a us a feeling of noxious anxiety. It generates tension. So we feel compelled to reduce it, solve it, complete it, reconcile it, make it make sense. And when we do solve these puzzles, there's relief. It feels good. We REALLY like it when things come together. What I am describing is a very basic human psychological process, captured by the second Gestalt principle. It is what we call the 'press for coherence.' It has been called many different things in psychology: consonance, need for closure, congruity, harmony, need for meaning, the consistency principle. At its core it is the drive to reduce the tension, disorientation, and dissonance that come from complexity, incoherence, and contradiction. In the 1930s, Bluma Zeigarnik, a student of Lewin's in Berlin, designed a famous study to test the impact of this idea of tension and coherence. Lewin had noticed that waiters in his local cafe seemed to have better recollections of unpaid orders than of those already settled. A lab study was run to examine this phenomenon, and it showed that people tend to remember uncompleted tasks, like half-finished math or word problems, better than completed tasks. This is because the unfinished task triggers a feeling of tension, which gets associated with the task and keeps it lingering in our minds. The completed problems are, well, complete, so we forget them and move on. They later called this the 'Zeigarnik effect,' and it has influenced the study of many things, from advertising campaigns to coping with the suicide of loved ones to dysphoric rumination of past conflicts.

It was utter foolishness. But we are all foolish in our own little ways. And never luckier than when we can admit it to ourselves, and to the others around us. Never more loved, nor more loving, than when we come together in foolishness and say to one another, I love you all the same. There are many good times, but those are the best. And there isn't a better time for foolish love than during these dark days of winter.

Artichokes Until you had been the last ones sitting in the cafe on the corner and she has kissed the dark rum from the rim of your glass and schooled you in the art of eating artichokes until then, you are not yet a woman. Until you put soft leaf to lip touch tongue to flesh, bite the lobe, swallow the juice she says will purify you until you open it up, sigh at the color, see it’s very middle and learn what fingers are best at until you reach further still into that thick, hot heart life has not yet started. Before you had been promised. Before she is a liar. Before you are dismantled, fixed and broke again you are not yet a lover. Remember on the right night and under the right light any idea can seem like a good one and love love is mostly ill-advised but always brave. The most important thing to do is not to worry. The lines on your face will never stop the sun from coming up. Your tears cannot affect the weather. There are wars going on. The one in your body is the only one you can be sure of losing or winning, then losing again. You drink more water than rum these days, don’t you? But you drink to her memory, don’t you? And you only take artichokes in salad. Never whole. Not in a cafe on a dusky street at midnight. Not with her. Never with her, or anyone like her.

I have many wonderful memories of this days we had together. It would make me happy to know that at least a few of your memories of me are good ones. I wonder if you ever think about sitting under that oak tree, with the cicadas buzzing, and, at night, the crickets. Or how the ice used to cover the blueberry bushes in the winter, giving them that dreamy look. Or how we used to sell the pies for your mother at the roadside stand. I still think of you whenever I see blueberries.

Like a Small Cafi, That's Love" Like a small cafe on the street of strange.— that's love... its doors open to all. Like a cafe that expands and commas with the w.then if it pours with rain its customers increase, if the weather's fm, they are few and weary... I am here, stranger, sitting in the comer. (What color .e your eyes? What is your name? How shall I call to you as you pass hy, as I sit waiting for you?) A small caa, that's love. I order two glass. of wine and drink to my health and yours. I am carrying two caps and umbrella. It is raining now. It is raining more than ever, and you do not come hA I say to myself at last: Perhaps she who I was waiting for was waiting for me, or was waiting for some other ma, or was waiting for us, and did not find him/me. She would sap Here I am waiting for you. (What color are your eyes? What is your name? What kind of wine do you prefer? How shall I call to you when you pass hyl) A small that's love...

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike A girl could feel special on any such like Said James to Red Molly, my hat's off to you It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme And he pulled her on behind And down to Boxhill they did ride Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man I've fought with the law since I was seventeen I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22 And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you And if fate should break my stride Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left He was running out of road, he was running out of breath But he smiled to see her cry And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52 He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys He said I've got no further use for these I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome Swooping down from heaven to carry me home And he gave her one last kiss and died And he gave her his Vincent to ride

Khizar, can you see that star emitting bright yellow light?” She asked me while handing over the binocular she was using to see the stars. We were standing on the terrace of our university cafe. I looked through the very powerful lenses of the binocular and said “Yes, I can see. Looks like a star that must have died millions of years ago but we can still see the stardust it emitted while exploding” She took the binocular from my hands, looked into my eyes and said “Khizar, you know memories are like those particles of the stardust of a star which died millions of years ago but we can see them emitting lights now. I hope you won’t become a star that once existed in my universe”  I looked at her. Except for the tears floating in her eyes betraying the emotional turmoil she was suffering from, she was as calm as the sea is after a storm. They say that every atom in a human body is the grain of the stardust of the stars which exploded millions of years ago. Then I understood why her eyes used to sparkle when she was looking at me.

I inhale slowly, soaking it all in. I step forward and backward, my neck twisting and turning, memorizing every corner. I feel an instant connection to this place. Something about being here grabs me and infatuates me. I begin taking mental pictures of the narrow alleys decorated with rows of artists and vendors. I start imagining myself dining at the sidewalk cafes, sitting there with Chad during the summer, spring, winter, and fall. I get this strong desire to take off my shoes and walk barefooted on the cobblestones as if I have found my new home.

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it. There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it.

I walk out of the cafe on a high. I met a stranger, had coffee and a great conversation. My first friend-date. A roaring success. But I don’t know how to proceed at this point. Do I contact Abigail again? Wait for her? This is when my friendship mentor, Rachel B, steps in. ‘My biggest piece of advice is make the first move and also make the second move.’ I take out my phone and text Abigail: ‘I hereby promise to never send you a dick pic.’ Abigail texts me back to promise me the same thing. She says she’d love to meet up again, but for the next few weeks she’s very busy with book edits. We agree to get in touch in a month or so.

I walk out of the cafe on a high. I met a stranger, had coffee and a great conversation. My first friend-date. A roaring success. But I don’t know how to proceed at this point. Do I contact Abigail again? Wait for her? This is when my friendship mentor, Rachel B, steps in. ‘My biggest piece of advice is make the first move and also make the second move.’ I take out my phone and text Abigail: ‘I hereby promise to never send you a dick pic.’ Abigail texts me back to promise me the same thing. She says she’d love to meet up again, but for the next few weeks this she’s very busy with book edits. We agree to get in touch in a month or so.

Intimacy The woman in the cafe making my cappuccino — dark eyes, dyed red hair, sleeveless black turtleneck — used to be lovers with the man I’m seeing now. She doesn’t know me; we’re strangers, but still I can’t glance at her casually, as I used to, before I knew. She stands at the machine, sinking the nozzle into a froth of milk, staring at nothing — I don’t know what she’s thinking. For all I know she might be remembering my lover, remembering whatever happened between them — he’s never told me, except to say that it wasn’t important, and then he changed the subject quickly, too quickly now that I think about it; might he, after all, have been lying, didn’t an expression of pain cross his face for just and instant? I can’t be sure. And really it was nothing, I tell myself; there’s no reason for me to feel awkward standing here, or complicitous, as though there’s something significant between us. She could be thinking of anything; why, now, do I have the sudden suspicion that she knows, that she feels me studying her, trying to imagine them together?— her lipstick’s dark red, darker than her hair — trying to see him kissing her, turning her over in bed the way he likes to have me. I wonder if maybe there were things about her he preferred, things he misses now that we’re together; sometimes, when he and I are making love, there are moments I’m overwhelmed by sadness, and though I’m there with him I can’t help thinking of my ex-husband’s hands, which I especially loved, and I want to go back to that old intimacy, which often felt like the purest happiness I’d ever known, or would. But all that’s over; and besides, weren’t there other lovers who left no trace? When I see them now, I can barely remember what they looked like undressed, or how it felt to have them inside me. So what is it I feel as she pours the black espresso into the milk, and pushes the cup toward me, and I give her the money, and our eyes meet for just a second, and our fingers touch?

Was it as scary for you as it is for me? Falling for Sawyer?” “Not really, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m sure I had some of the same worries, everyone does. But I’m a leaper. You’re a thinker. We process things differently.” “You didn’t have a panic attack and run away?” I ask sarcastically. “No,” she muses. “Not even that time he refused to have sex with me.” “That was your first date, Everly. And you did have sex,” I remind her. I know, because I heard about it for a week. “Whew.” She blows out a breath. “It was a tough few hours though. How is Boyd’s POD by the way? Can we talk about that?” She leans forward on the couch, looking at me expectantly. “Um, no. I don’t think so.” She shrugs good-naturedly then changes the subject back to me. “Chloe, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling with your anxiety? You know I’m never too busy for you, no matter how many husbands or children I have.” “You have one husband, babe,” Sawyer says, walking into the room at that moment. “You’re still the one, baby.” “We’ve been married for three months, Everly. I sure as hell better still be the one.” “Sawyer,” she sighs. “I was trying to have a moment, okay? Work with me.” “Next time, try waiting more than a day after downloading Shania Twain’s greatest hits to your iPod. You do realize the receipts come to my email, don’t you?” “Um.” Everly looks away and scrunches her nose. “No?” “You’ve been on quite the 90’s love ballads kick this week. Which is weird, because you’re not old enough to have owned the CD’s those songs were originally released on.” He looks at her with amused interest. “What’s a CD?” She blinks at Sawyer dramatically. “Cute. Keep it up.” “Nineties music is all the rage with the millennials,” she tells him with a shrug. “I saw a blog post about it.” “Don’t worry, sweets. We’ll beat the odds together.” He winks and she scowls. “You’re still the only one I dream of,” he calls as he walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water. “See! I don’t even care that you lifted that from a song. It still gave me all the feels!

We're in her bedroom,and she's helping me write an essay about my guniea pig for French class. She's wearing soccer shorts with a cashmere sweater, and even though it's silly-looking, it's endearingly Meredith-appropriate. She's also doing crunches. For fun. "Good,but that's present tense," she says. "You aren't feeding Captain Jack carrot sticks right now." "Oh. Right." I jot something down, but I'm not thinking about verbs. I'm trying to figure out how to casually bring up Etienne. "Read it to me again. Ooo,and do your funny voice! That faux-French one your ordered cafe creme in the other day, at that new place with St. Clair." My bad French accent wasn't on purpose, but I jump on the opening. "You know, there's something,um,I've been wondering." I'm conscious of the illuminated sign above my head, flashing the obvious-I! LOVE! ETIENNE!-but push ahead anyway. "Why are he and Ellie still together? I mean they hardly see each other anymore. Right?" Mer pauses, mid-crunch,and...I'm caught. She knows I'm in love with him, too. But then I see her struggling to reply, and I realize she's as trapped in the drama as I am. She didn't even notice my odd tone of voice. "Yeah." She lowers herself slwoly back to the floor. "But it's not that simple. They've been together forever. They're practically an old married couple. And besides,they're both really...cautious." "Cautious?" "Yeah.You know.St. Clair doesn't rock the boat. And Ellie's the same way. It took her ages to choose a university, and then she still picked one that's only a few neighborhoods away. I mean, Parsons is a prestigious school and everything,but she chose it because it was familiar.And now with St. Clair's mom,I think he's afraid to lose anyone else.Meanwhile,she's not gonna break up with him,not while his mom has cancer. Even if it isn't a healthy relationship anymore." I click the clicky-button on top of my pen. Clickclickclickclick. "So you think they're unhappy?" She sighs. "Not unhappy,but...not happy either. Happy enough,I guess. Does that make sense?" And it does.Which I hate. Clickclickclickclick. It means I can't say anything to him, because I'd be risking our friendship. I have to keep acting like nothing has changed,that I don't feel anything ore for him than I feel for Josh.

You’re an idiot,” Preston says. “Excuse me?” “You’re an idiot, sir?” he tries again. “Just tell me how much she likes Dave, Preston. I don’t have time for this girly bullshit.” Jesus fuck, am I going to have to resort to getting girl advice from my gay assistant? What the hell has my life come to? Sandra has turned everything upside down. “She doesn’t like Dave. She likes you. She’s had a crush on you forever and I’m totally breaking girl code telling you any of this.” “Then why the hell is she spending the weekend with Dave?” I ask, ignoring his girl code. “But you know Sandy’s a nice girl. She doesn’t know what to make of a guy who fucks her in his office but never asks her to dinner,” Preston continues. Apparently girl code is over. “Women are complex creatures, Gabe. They think it means something when a man takes his sweet-ass time asking her on a date. They think it means you’re just interested in the sex.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Obviously that’s not the case here, as based on the way you look at that girl it’s clear you’re already half in love with her.” I really am getting girl advice from my gay assistant “Since you know everything, care to tell me where she went with Dave?” “Marissa’s wedding.” “Who the hell is Marissa?” “Hello? She works here? In sales?” I shrug. Still no idea who he’s talking about. “You know, if you’d taken me up on my suggestion about briefing you on company gossip during Whisper Wednesdays you wouldn’t be so behind right now.” I’m going to kill him before this conversation is over

As I stand here before you, looking into your gorgeous blue eyes, I see all of the reasons I fell in love with you. I find myself a bit lost for the right words to say... but I know this... that above all, as I stand here, your wedding ring in my hand, that this moment in time makes me remember how very complete you make my life... It’s in every smile, all the laughter, every touch, every tear you've wiped from my face and everything you mean to me. Right now I remember how blessed I really am, how I can't ever be thankful enough, that I have you in my life. As I stand with you I remember every joy we've shared and every hard time we made it through together, and because of this I know that together we will enjoy and hold close to each other in all the moments there are to come.

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop of women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds? I never once bought Rosie flowers—too hard for her to explain at home—and I never once wondered whether her ankles looked exactly the way they were supposed to. I wanted her, all mine, and I believed she wanted me. Till the day Holly was born, nothing in my life has ever been so simple.

For Delta blueman Robert Johnson and his contemporaries, the train was the eternal metaphor for the travelling life, and it still holds true today. There is no travel like it. Train lines carve through all facets of a nation. While buses stick to major highways and planes reduce the unfolding of lives to a bird's eye view, trains putter through the domains of the rich and the poor, the desperate and the idle, rural and urban, isolated and cluttered. Through train windows you see realities rarely visible in the landscaped tourist areas. Those frames hold the untended jungle of a nation's truth. Despite my shredded emotions, there was still no feeling like dragging all your worldly possessions onto a carriage, alone and anonymous, to set off into the unknown; where any and all varieties of adventures await, where you might meet a new best friend, where the love of your life could be hiding in a dingy cafe. The clatter of the tracks is the sound of liberation.

I didn’t get the time to tell you, or to hold you, or get there to holding you without any awkwardness. It breaks my heart, not a little but a lot, to see how things have turned out and once upon a time i would try to set them right, but now i know there is no point, in trying or in hoping, because it is how it is, and not much can be done, or should be done, but i still wanted to tell you, maybe one of these days I will, maybe I won’t but I wanted to tell you that I wanted those things with you. Meeting you for coffee on a rainy day, in a cafe somewhere between our homes. Spending the evening sitting by the sea, looking at the waves, listening to the noise and chaos of the city around us. Talking a walk with you in that park where we met the second time. Watching a movie with you. Having you over, coming over to yours. Going out to bars, birthday celebrations. Fighting sometimes, crazy loving the next. I wanted these things, and a few more. Oh god, i really wanted them with you.

Dear Lily Don't think me silly, but I forget what time you said. Are we meeting at two thirty? It's gone right from my head. Did you say Monday or Thursday? I have quite forgotten what day. Was it late lunch, or afternoon tea? Tell me, what did you say? I think I would like to do Tuesday. Let's go for a lovely lunch. Or, if you prefer we could even go early, and settle for brunch. A lovely Bistro or Cafe Bar, or maybe a country pub. I don't really mind that much, as long as we get some grub. Dear Maisie, Are you going crazy? We didn't set a date. You needed to check your diary. I think you are losing it, mate. But since you are free on Tuesday, and that day suits me fine. Could we meet, about twelve…ish? Its early I like to dine. You mentioned the pub, or Bistro, or some fancy Cafe Bar. Not sure I like the sound of that, and I'm not coming in the car. If the weather is bright and sunny, we could always dine al fresco. Failing that, we could just go get a cake and a cuppa in Tesco.

Suggested Reading Atkinson, Kate. Behind the Scenes at the Museum; Binchy, Maeve. Tara Road, The Copper Beech, and Evening Class; Bloom, Amy. Come to Me; Edwards, Kim. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter; Ferris, Joshua. The Unnamed; Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl; Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections; Ganesan, Indira. Inheritance; Hanilton, Jane. Disobedience; Jonasson, Jonas. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared; Joyce, Rachel. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees; Mapson, Jo-Ann, The Owl & Moon Cafe; McEwan, Ian. Atonement; Miller, Arthur. All My Sons; Morrison, Toni. Love; O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night; Pekkanen, Sarah. The Opposite of Me; Porter, Andrew. In Between Days; Quindlen, Anna. Blessings and One True Thing; Rosenfeld, Lucinda. The Pretty One; Sittenfeld, Curtis. Sisterland; Smith, Ali. There But For The; Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club; Tyler, Anne. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant; White, Karen. The Time Between; Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway; Yates, Richard. The Easter Parade.

DICK’S DESIRE Dick's eyes- Soft, cold, and blue- Meet Devonshire's- Dark, sexy, and yearning. Turning away- Dick grabs two packets of sugar- While Devonshire's eyes- Are still upon him- Pondering his every move. Is Dick a playboy, A ladies' man, A mans' man, Or a killer? Does his sex long for, Something hard- Or something soft? Does he need cream in his coffee- The screaming splash of a man, Or the sweet flow of a woman? Finishing up at the bar- Dick turns to leave- Meets Devonshire's gaze again- Hot, thirsty, and longing- But full of trepidation. Following the flow of etiquette- Dick shoots out of the cafe, Past Devonshire, And into a world of dashed hopes, And regrets. But Devonshire- No longer of two worlds- Rises in pursuit- Goes after Dick, And taps him on the shoulder. Dick gives a turn, Raises his shoulders, And smiles with interest- Taking Devonshire's hand, And asking his name. Devonshire answers- Desire. Dick invites Devonshire to dinner, Where he eats everything, Swallowing Dick's life stories, And devouring his misgivings. For dessert, Devonshire takes Dick home, Into his bed, Against his flesh, And gives Dick all of him- His deepest desires, The love in his eyes, And the fire in his soul.

With the heady scent of yeast in the air, it quickly becomes clear that Langer's hasn't changed at all. The black-and-white-checked linoleum floor, the tin ceiling, the heavy brass cash register, all still here. The curved-front glass cases with their wood counter, filled with the same offerings: the butter cookies of various shapes and toppings, four kinds of rugelach, mandel bread, black-and-white cookies, and brilliant-yellow smiley face cookies. Cupcakes, chocolate or vanilla, with either chocolate or vanilla frosting piled on thick. Brownies, with or without nuts. Cheesecake squares. Coconut macaroons. Four kinds of Danish. The foil loaf pans of the bread pudding made from the day-old challahs. And on the glass shelves behind the counter, the breads. Challahs, round with raisins and braided either plain or with sesame. Rye, with and without caraway seeds. Onion kuchen, sort of strange almost-pizza-like bread that my dad loves, and the smaller, puffier onion rolls that I prefer. Cloverleaf rolls. Babkas. The wood-topped cafe tables with their white chairs, still filled with the little gossipy ladies from the neighborhood, who come in for their mandel bread and rugelach, for their Friday challah and Sunday babka, and take a moment to share a Danish or apple dumpling and brag about grandchildren.

they had never been apart, and there was nothing Evelyn could do about it but unwrap her Almond Joy candy bar and sit there for the duration. “The front yard had a great big old chinaberry tree. I remember, we’d pick those little chinaberries all year long, and at Christmas, we’d string them and wrap them all around the tree from top to bottom. Momma was always warning us not to put chinaberries up our nose, and of course the first thing Idgie did, as soon as she learned to walk, was to go out in the yard and put chinaberries up her nose and in her ears as well. To the point that Dr. Hadley had to be called! He told Momma, ‘Mrs. Threadgoode, it looks like you’ve got yourself a little scalawag on your hands.’ “Well, of course Buddy just loved to hear that. He encouraged her every step of the way. But that’s how it is in big families. Everybody has their favorite. Her real name was Imogene, but Buddy started calling her Idgie. Buddy was eight when she was born, and he used to carry her all over town, just like she was a doll. When she got old enough to walk, she’d paddle around after him like a little duck, dragging that little wooden rooster behind her. “That Buddy had a million-dollar personality, with those dark eyes and those white teeth…he could charm you within an inch of your life. I don’t know of a girl in Whistle

In fact, I am generally proud of having had so many adventures. But today, I had barely pronounced the words than I was seized with contrition; it seems as though I am lying, that I have never had the slightest adventure in my life, or rather, that I don't even know what the word means any more. [...] Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn't a question of words; I am beginning to understand. [...] There is nothing brilliant about my life now: but from time to time, for example, for example, when they play music in the cafes, I look back and tell myself: in old days, in London, Meknes, Tokyo, I have known great moments, I have had adventures. Now I am deprived of this. I have suddenly learned, without apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. [...] ... adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makese sense when dead. [...] Each instant appears only as a part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplacable-and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. [...] I shall never rediscover either this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn on early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass. All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept-even if I had to risk death, lost a fortune, a friend-to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged." (p.56-57) "... Perhaps there is nothing in the world I cling to as much as this feeling of adventure; but it comes when it pleases; it is gone so quickly and how empty I am once it has left. Does it, ironically, pay me these short visits in order to show me that I have wasted my life? [...] This feeling of adventure definitely does not come from events: I have proved it. It's rather they way in which the moments are linked together. I think this is what happens: you suddenly feel that time is passing, that each instant leads to another, this one to another one, and so on; that each instant is annihilated, and that it isn't worth while to hold it back, etc., etc. And then you attribute this property to events which appear to you *in* the instants; what belongs to the form you carry over to the content. You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. You see a woman, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you *see* her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure. If I remember correctly, they call that the irreversibility of time. The feeling of advanture would simply be that of the irreversibility of time. But why don't we always have it? Is it that time is not always irreversible? There are moments when you have the impression that you can do what you want, go forward or backward, that it has no importance; and then other times when you might say that the links have been tightened and, in that case, it's not a questino of missing your turn because you could never start again.