listening to: sigur ros and rain-stippling
not yet late for: latin american literature
1. It was a morning that held the full possibility of the day, a day I had already segmented into pie-sized pieces (you know the sort: quince for J, apple-rhubarb for H, cherry for A & C) and visualized eating. In other words, it was a day that was perfectly planned out & that I was ready for. Coffee dates, brunch dates, looking at a two-room apartment! However, the surrealist-bacchanal couch party of the night before, with too much (never too much!) Indian food & not enough (never enough!) cuddling resulted in a missing mobile phone. Plans dissolved despite my best intentions, & I found myself running five minutes late for the world that I had created with no way of apologizing. How can one be late for a world that one creates; it doesn’t exist until you open your eyes! An apology assumes self-importance.
2. “A café au late, s’il vous plate,” the girl (or perhaps young woman would be a more suitable description) asked of the waiter, her fragile voice innocently sticking to the silent Ts and enunciating the fact that she was terribly late. It was late evening, later than it should have been of course, and the streetlamps were starting to turn on; the streets were shiny from the late-afternoon rains. It was unusually cold for the end of March. Although the décor of the café was, for the most part, polished wood tones, the colour red seemed to overwhelm the girl – young woman’s – senses: the glow of the streetlamps; the shiny mahogany; the umbrella propped against the table next to her; the wrapper of the cigar being smoked by the man at the table over, the smoke eddying around his wrists. She spread her textbooks on archeology and primitive cave painting on the small table, layering them economically. Her fingers were trembling.
2. “A café au late, s’il vous plate,” the girl (or perhaps young woman would be a more suitable description) asked of the waiter, her fragile voice innocently sticking to the silent Ts and enunciating the fact that she was terribly late. It was late evening, later than it should have been of course, and the streetlamps were starting to turn on; the streets were shiny from the late-afternoon rains. It was unusually cold for the end of March. Although the décor of the café was, for the most part, polished wood tones, the colour red seemed to overwhelm the girl – young woman’s – senses: the glow of the streetlamps; the shiny mahogany; the umbrella propped against the table next to her; the wrapper of the cigar being smoked by the man at the table over, the smoke eddying around his wrists. She spread her textbooks on archeology and primitive cave painting on the small table, layering them economically. Her fingers were trembling.
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