Balcony Seat

When I first began to live in cities in the late 1960’s, the heady feeling of intellectual freedom I found there was very much associated with coffee shops. Coffee was delicious, especially dosed with lots of cream and sugar, and the accompanying toasted bagel or pastry was inexpensive, my love of sweet buttery wheat a tie to home. Most of all, I was purchasing a seat at the endless street carnival of the city while connecting it to the extravagant life I lived in my head and put down in the notebook in front of me.

Caffe Mediterraneum, Berkeley, CA

I usually had a favorite cafe, associated with the places and times I worked, though they often changed. If it disappeared it was like losing a friend. For writing, one of the best was on Sutter Street in San Francisco, on the second floor above an art supply store. The tables were not so close together that you couldn’t overhear others if you wanted to, but far enough apart that you could hear yourself think. Best of all, you could sit at a window and look down into Sutter Street, watching people. The light at a particular time of day, the shape of the room, the demeanor of the server, all made up the atmosphere which acquired an almost religious significance. The mystique had to do with the brioche they served, the people I had seen from the windows walking up the street, the friends I met there.

Not least, were the words I read and sometimes wrote in these hallowed spaces. Writing was an evocation of the senses. As in drawing, the more detail you noticed, the more evocative the piece became. I was addicted to writing, to putting on paper words connecting mind and world. Not so much as a letter written to the world, but to my growing self. It turned out I wasn’t alone!

By the time Natalie Goldberg made writing in restaurants almost a cliché, I was done. Not with journaling, of course, but with sitting in public places to do it. These days, while bookstores close, Moleskine, whose revived notebooks are world-famous, is opening its own stores! In their words, they represent, “around the world, a symbol of contemporary nomadism.” It turns out your notebook can tie your whole, roaming life together!

For Marty, the middle sister who has always loved books and whose horizons widen to California in about 1967, coffee shops are thrilling. She lives with a Jewish family, the members of which enlighten her about politics. She is homesick, but family life eases the difficulty of crossing yet another cultural divide.

Having found a life I love and no longer so much in need of intellectual refuge, I nevertheless still enjoy the balcony seat at a wonderful coffee shop on occasion. No laptop sits in front of me, separating me from the world. The cup of coffee, the buttery croissant, my pen rather connect me to it, my hands moving between them with delight.