Capricious

1 - Coffee Shop Thoughts

"All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and something transitory, something absolute and something particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction skimmed from the common surface of different sorts of beauty. The particular element of each beauty comes from the emotions, and as we each have our own particular emotions, so we have our beauty."
- Charles Baudelaire

We always want what we can't have. If we capture it, the desire fades, it was never all you thought it would be, you can do better. To want something is to have purpose, it makes us want to be better, it is the reason we live, to continuously do what we dislike. If we didn't we'd just fade away, a life not worth living. Desire, it is how we evolve, evolution to perfection.

The only times I've come close to happiness is when I leave the world behind. All my cares, all my worries, all my weaknesses. In another world, I enter alone, but there are others like me, others who leave everything behind. In that world, that temporary split from reality and from all else, is where people are their most true. There is little care for consequence, for judgement, for regret. We live in the now. There is nothing else. Just instinct, experiences, love.

For a moment all my day dreams were becoming real, and everything seemed so simple. The future was a series of steps, and I could climb without ever looking back. But it's a lie, and before I know it I have missed a step. The illusion passes, and there are no steps, and my dreams are no longer becoming real, and I am falling.

It's odd how the little things, those little sparks of beauty, can change our outlook on the world, make everything that much brighter. The exquisite detail of the carved wood ceiling with its delicate incantations. The infinite range of books, stacked side by side, over and under, wheeling round and round; each another view of how things truly are, each seaming colour into the world, all small samples of beauty, too much for me to take in. And these things of beauty seem to melt the world at the edges of my gaze, even when my eyes are shut, and things do not seem complicated, not now, not when we are reminded that there is so much beauty, that we need not be obsessed with just one piece, however intense it may seem. Beauty is everywhere. It is perceived differently by everyone, we give it different names, but in the end it is the same. Life is a game. If we ever want to win, if we ever want to grasp that beauty within the palm of our hand, we need to completely let go. Let go of everything that holds us down. Let go of fear, of mistrust, of our ego. Absolve ourselves in pure beauty. Only then will we be free.

There are certain places we enjoy, just to be alone, where it is easier to think, easier to breathe. For me it is coffee shops, long train rides, walks along the river. To find that comfortable nook and melt into it with a warm, brightening coffee, an almost forgotten book, and my ever-jumping thoughts. You see people you do not know, live some part of their mysterious lives. You find inspiration in things that to others seem so ordinary, so instantly forgettable. You form attachments, almost live another life, within conscious thought or not. I stick to coffee shops as I stick to trains and walks because I feel that belonging, that freedom, that inspiration, that which I will rarely find anywhere else.

Where before I hid, now I seek.