candlelight

So the skies are white, the rooves are grey, the buildings brown and cream… the either dreary or soothing winter pallet of Germany is restful to the imagination. In every cafe, candles flicker. Little pots of gold.

Accidentally went into a restaurant for dinner in which I realized too late all the men were wearing suits. I tore off my two layers of wool, hot from walking, and sat there in very shabby jumper with a t-shirt over it which I sleep in, pressing slices of bread into a bowl of olive […]

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I know an eighty-year-old cafe where the day passes smooth and coiling as molasses poured out of a dented tin. I sit in the smokers’ room, not because I smoke but because of the candlelight and conversation. Today I stopped at an antiquarian bookshop that has trestle tables out front. A recent conversation reminded me […]

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In an unpretentious Italian restaurant where all the pasta had been made by hand, the chatting-family atmosphere fell into something much deeper and richer and darker. A cellist had walked in and in his overcoat sat down on a backless chair in front of the servery and began to play. Something, I don’t know what. […]

København magical, sunken in the deep, dark water like a turtle from the undersea land, and all of these strangers (to me) riding the waves on its back. The water stretches away into the dark, black and pulsing with lights. Candles in the windows, restaurants which opened in 1694, boats creaking in the wind which […]