The smell and aura of the restaurant have possessed me. The candles are lit, it’s dark and everything is in harmony; there is a balance between the diners and the restaurant. There is a special elegance about this place that I’m madly in love with.
A man smokes and I watch the smoke disappear into the air. He is enjoying his cigarette and wine. I’m enjoying his enjoyment, though I have nothing of my own except a sentence in my head.
The Moroccan waiter passes by a couple of times and we make eye contact. He cajoles with a couple and asks the woman, “you’re not getting drunk tonight?” and the woman laughs and says, “No, not tonight.”
He smokes and I like to sit with him and take a puff. I hate the smell of cigarettes, but I love to watch people hold them in their hands like they’re candy, or a sweet companion. It’s a temporary, evanescent escape, but so is everything else.
Everything, like this restaurant, the feeling I have, the things I see, and the thoughts I have are all momentary…like falling in and out of love, like being kissed, like drinking wine, like every day that passes by.
We live in impermanency, in moments that cease to last, in déjà vu…The pleasure of the wine, the cigarette, the kiss, the hello and good-bye lasts for a second or two, and then it’s gone.
It’s raining outside by the time I leave and I suddenly like it…temporarily…