imagined-community

Cafe Rustica, Somerville

Six weeks till I board a plane for a 3-week trip to France. It’s been four years since I last visited Europe and I am definitely starting to feel joy. Earlier this evening I was reading “Almost French.” As I read the author’s description of her daily morning ritual at a Paris café, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own love of French cafes. There are plenty of good cafes in the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville area (my favorite is probable 1369 in Inman Square ), yet nothing in the States is quite the same as a café in France. They are just plain different. The last time I was in France I was living in Aix-en-Provence, where I immediately developed my own morning café ritual. Each morning I would walk three blocks to the city center, buy a copy of Libération from a kiosque, and then meander across the street to “my” café by the fountain, usually sitting outdoors at a small metal table. Then I would slowly drink two espressos (well, I AM an American coffee addict) close to peoples of various sizes, sexes, and ages, who were also leisurely greeting the whole being awake / doing the day thing. There is something about a French café, je ne sais quoi, that is at once intimate, social, inclusive, and respectful of the existential solitude (how French of me) of the individual. I can’t wait to go to France!