It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry, put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.
- Ernest Hemingway
There are very few places as busy and as quiet as cafes. Often times, I sit and stare at the table, noticing the intricate wood patterns, listening to the sounds of coffee being poured, phrases like “the usual”, and “to go please”, drifting through the air, and settling down, quite magnificently, almost as if they were never said.
The true beauty of cafes isn’t in the melange of voices, clinking cups or jingling doors; it is in our ability to use this noise as inspiration. To be in the midst of so many ideas and ideators, yet forgetting our whereabouts and conjuring up a dreamland; a beautiful world beyond our means but within our imagination.
Its true beauty lies in the colors so painted, of words and of faces, provoking the passive mind, calming the impatient one bringing together a feeling of togetherness, so often missing in today’s technological world.
That is why, when I am longing for inspiration, I go sit in cafes. For when my name is called and I take a sip of the bitter, roasted beverage, my mind lifts itself beyond what is possible and takes me to a wonderful new world.
