May 24, 2005

until the end of the night

please send all your loving thoughts to my wonderful chomi cat, who i love beyond words. she is undergoing surgery tomorrow, and will be saved.

Posted by nathalie at 09:35 PM | Comments (3)

December 18, 2004

the great indoors

The pharmacie Esperanza is an ancient drugstore which have been reconverted into a cozy little cafe, it is a short walk from here, just enough to freeze our faces off. But this only augments the joy of walking inside and throwing ourselves in the mellowest of couches, in a pile of coats and scarfs and mittens and to gather around candles, bottles and ashtray stands all tangled up in christmas lights, just as winter is supposed to be. The best is to go there and meet up with an old friend, with a lot of catching up to do, little presents to trade, and to not move for at least 6 hours.

There was a concert going on in the back of the room; someone had plugged a bicycle wheel into their laptop and generated an awful racket, we loved the sight, but our ears bleeded. It didn’t keep us from talking our mouths off though. My friend told me about her little dada meowmix son’s adventures in kindergarten, he’s probably my favourite kid ever and I bought a gingerbread man for him, should we eat it? Why shouldn’t we? We pressed on, fueled on warm drinks, and badmouthing bad books, read or not, bad movies, whether we’ve seen them or not, lazy coworkers, stressed-out supervisors, oh their incompetency! and laughable jealousy! We will keep what we have and never be dispossessed. Believe me. And so on…

And by then the workweek has been entirely washed down, and it feels so nice we have cake again. As the terrible concrete music stops, people start making timid entry from the other room, with sighs of relief, and it soon fills up again. Just like the first time I visited this cafe, and this amuses me a lot, there are overdressed Scrabble players assembling at tables, and struggling against sleep, nodding off on their chairs, their head like ripe fruits about to drop from branches. And there is also a little poster on the wall, of some sort of gladiator saying, “Life would be better if only I had a kitten!” To make a long story short, this evening really warmed my heart and I hope your holidays provide you plenty of such warmth too.

ps - (this was my first try at dynamic publishing and i think i need to wind down a little now! if anything breaks, just let me know.)

Posted by nathalie at 02:45 PM