I once told my gastroenterologist:
let's do everything possible so that I don't have to stop drinking coffee
.
He looked at me like we mothers of several children usually look at millennials who complain because they don't have time, he continued writing his instructions, while I continued mumbling inwardly: no one is going to take my coffee away.
Afterwards, we said goodbye with a mutual smile and each one went back to his own thing.
Mine, coffee
.
I couldn't tell him that I drink coffee when I'm tired, when I'm angry, when I want to celebrate, when I finish a text, when I decide to start it, when I can't find a word, when I disperse myself with social networks and I tell myself that now I'm going to writing, when I don't know how to continue, after caring for a patient, while caring, between one patient and another, before going to sleep, to endure a boring job, when I'm looking to talk to someone, when I don't know what's wrong with me, when I want to leave of the world, when I am forced to return.
How could I explain to him that coffee, for me, is a place and that - as such - it is never safe.
That is to say, it often happens that even in the beautiful café around the corner from my studio, in the light of the best twilight, I don't get the oasis.
Because it's not about the coffee, but about the idea.
So, I order another coffee.
To understand it, just look at Van Gogh's painting “Coffee Terrace at Night”.
You need to stay there for a while, let the colors do their magic.
Coffee lovers will understand that the summer night will soon vibrate beneath the palate, which will urgently seek that coffee.
Once again,
it is not the painting, but the atmosphere that Van Gogh managed to convey.
In a letter to his sister Wil, he describes the painting and says, among other things: “I know that it is normal to make a sketch at night and then paint it during the day, but I like to do it in the moment… the bad thing is "That by working like this, with how dark it is, I can confuse the tones of the colors... but it is the only way to put an end to the conventional night scenes with their poor and sallow whitish lights."
The essence of coffee lies precisely in what allows you to confuse color tones, forget things and chase words.
The magic of coffee is something that my gastroenterologist could understand in the corner coffee shop, but not in his office, and it
consists of looking for the wrong path to find the right one, your own.
As Pompeyo Audivert says about theater, in his one-man adaptation of Macbeth, it is about losing one's name and taking the wrong path.
I think Van Gogh would agree.
About “Night Coffee,” he wrote: “Coffee is a place where one can go crazy and even commit a crime.”
My gastroenterologist would be close to thinking that it could be my own crime, but how could I explain to him that those who are not capable of losing themselves in the magic of a cafe in Buenos Aires die sooner.