Long time ago when I was younger, and I was somewhere else, I liked to sit near by the window. I liked it especially when it was rainy, watching people passing by in a hurry. It was a place like a coffee shop, but not the one you can imagine. It was a tramway of our time, holding you up to stop your time for a while. And if you ever ask me what is the perfect place and the perfect time for me I will draw you this place: a table by the window, next to the front door, with a high seat and a view to the street. Sometimes I think I could just leave my life, only to come back there, with no looking back.
It was a part of a discussion during a creative writing course I attended, positively surprised afterall, describing the perfect place to write and create. For some reasons, most of the people claimed they needed silence. The absolute one, like early morning in their bed. ''Worst place- one guy wrote- probably a busy coffee shop during peak hours''. And then, my mind took me there. It took my heart back in time.
There is this specific kind of people in this world who like to stay near by the window. You can meet us in restaurants and bars as the ones who never go up neither downstairs, no matter how nice is there. We never seek silence. We enjoy the counter with a whole business of it's work and a company of random passengers. We breathe the noise of the street in and feed on it. Until we need it to live.
I used to come there often. That is why I see this place so clearly when I close my eyes. It was located in an old city centre about which you can read in the guides that is nowadays almost forgotten. It remains passed by and unnoticed, just like a cat on a courtyard. The entrance to the coffee shop was just a large glass wall and there were two tables located just next to the doorway, with high chairs. There were places for smokers, a bit away from the rest of those inside. Just around the corner there was a bakery run by two older ladies who were making fresh rolls with chocolate or mushrooms inside and a queue outside was long enough to mix up with the people on a bus stop by the next street. Apart from that, nothing. An old library, a second hand bookshop and a silly round building which used to be a symbol of the city- at that time empty, a home for the pigeons.
And then me, in love with that place, entering the coffee shop and watching the tramway through the window. Watching the people in the rain, drinking the same black coffee in the same cup, with the same ashtray by my side. I liked to wait to the lunch time when all of a sudden the place was becoming full. The office workers, always in a rush, were filling the space around me smoking their cigarettes. They didn't see me. I was just there, a silent company to cross their lives for a moment. Then they were leaving and I was staying there, alone in the city.
I was writing there about the love of my life. Since I was seven knew it was going to be a city. Huge and vibrant, the one you can watch through the window. You are free to love with all your open heart- it will never disappoint you. It is here to you, to listen. Always here, waiting for you, to breathe it in.
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