Le Saint-André in Rue Danton

America deals in extremes. In America, one is either Amish or glued to a cell phone to devour the latest in goods, services, and political fashions.

Paris projects the third way. Its denizens are neither too fat nor too fit. They neither give up nor breathe just to compete. Other people aren't a nuisance for them but the reason to exist. They don't punish the past and won't hasten the future. They get a glimpse into both by sitting down at a cafe with a tea and a pain au chocolat and watching the world being carried away into the future against the scenery that has stayed put for generations.

Is that world that one observes from a corner cafe more real, more compelling, or more engaging than a social-media feed? There's that thrill of a chance that the world in the street will scroll back at you. It is this thrill that makes it worthwhile to engage with that world, which is not trying to hide from you behind the gorilla glass and that trusts you to look, to judge, to interject, and to neglect.

The Bell Tower Bar at La Fonda and Starbucks, in San Francisco St

Sunset. Fellow travellers spill onto the deck, watch the sun go down, sip their drinks, chat. Strangers talk as if they know each other so well as not to know each other. Everyone is coming from somewhere and going somewhere else. The patrons are rich one way or another, confident, and relaxed. Those who are lost look for themselves by simultaneously abandoning themselves in two or three ventures.

Nature speaks here, so one learns how to listen. After having accentuated each landmark and highlighted the patrons’ faces, the lights are dimmed. The night breeze takes over from the sun, now screened off by the mountains. The breeze clears the tables of plastic menus by sending them four floors down in an impromptu slice-your-face marketing campaign, which preys on wandering terrestrials. The patrons dissipate soon thereafter, to prepare for the next scene.

As Jacqueline pours steamed milk into a short paper cup, her exposed biceps reads: "Maybe it’s not about the happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.” She is an instantiation of the concept of beauty as a whole that exceeds the sum of its components: oversized mouth, uneven teeth, squinting eyes. Yet the hair is done impeccably, and, framed by it, all the seemingly imperfect components are revealed as intentional, inevitable, and in fine taste.

There is nothing happy about an ending. Endings are not inevitable, however, and can often be replaced by breaks and bridges. The story need not end as long as one is not possessive about it.

The customers share their travel notes, exchange encouragements, learn from, and are inspired by, each other. While the branch may subsidise the homeless and the itinerant, the brand soaks in the magic that delights globally.

Chez Mamou in East Palace Ave

America looks forward, unapologetically. There is no long past to contemplate (though the past that exists is rich). The past imported from overseas is often the past one sought to escape. The present may be scant. By contrast, the future is so much richer than the past. There is also more of it.

The American focus on future is also due to the ethos of novelty seeking. The country is comprised of immigrants, who have had driven by novelty tolerance, if not seeking. Competitive markets promote novelty. One must distinguish oneself from others by innovating or perish. The American forward looking tendency is also a way to cultivate social cohesion. Each has his own past. The future is the same for all (possibly, also for the non-yet-Americans).

French culture preserves and promises continuity (as does much of European culture). French culture cherishes beauty, which ages slowly, and joie de vivre, which ages not. Frenchness, by birth or imitation, is a club of sophisticates, one among many. One believes one shares in something rich even if one owns nothing. One contributes simply by being complicit in the act of beauty. 

In America, perhaps because tastes are disparate, and new Americans arrive with well-formed tastes, art is often regarded as elitist and beauty as luxury. Few bond over beauty, except natural beauty, whose language is universal. Similarly, Americans do not bond over humour, which excludes those who are not fluent in the shared culture---the late arrivals, the disadvantaged, or those who refuse to recognise the shared culture and prefer to invent a culture of their own.

"Chez Mamou" recognises that one need not derive all one's life's pleasure from sugar. So Paul's pastries are designed to complement other pleasures: the morning breeze, the perfect music, the conversations in quiet voices. In Paris, of the Southwest.

Sheldon in Honduras

The music is just a bit too loud. The cigarette smoke is just a bit too thick. The place is just a bit too perfect. One can think in silence, in shorthand, and breathe the pure oxygen of civilisation.

Enveloped in the bossa nova rhythm, the girls kiss, audibly, with a cigarette tucked between two fingers. The lighting is cinematic, the smoke natural, the red deep and soft, the blue distant, the soundtrack muted orange. The patrons traverse; ever polite, the waiters manoeuvre, assist, never serve.

The American Bar at Savoy

The American Bar is a lounge for fellow world travellers. It is as inclusive as America is: once you have got in, it is assumed that you deserve to belong there. The treatment is chatty, friendly, informal, with a touch of London class.

Strada in Trinity St

The ambient noise rises. She touches her hair. Red wine is consumed. She touches her thighs. She sits on her palms. She fidgets. Her face is animated. Her voice is low; it must be low, or else it would have failed to blend with the ambient noise.

The patrons do not rely on the restaurant to make their night special; they arrive confident in their own ability to succeed at the task. Each patron's confidence confers dignity on the restaurant and inspires others.

The town does not change, not outwardly. The undergraduates remain works of art, even when they speak. One measures oneself against what one used to be by gauging the changes in one's reactions to the unchanged environment. The town's lack of outward change invites one to seek changes elsewhere and signals the confidence that such changes will be found. At the same time, the lack of outward change may breed timidity and conformism also in the domains beyond the outward.

The diverse traffic of Strada inoculates against the stasis.

"One can contribute to the society only if one is sufficiently different from everyone else, n'est-ce pas? But one feels more comfortable where one is more like others. There is a trade-off."

Paper or Plastik at Pico Blvd

A sole supple soul seeks thought; treads, trusts, twists, propelled by the purpose to probe the plurality of potentialities, to contact, connect, commune, contemplate, condense, cancel, fall free, flex, fudge the future.

Motion rouses reality; reality flees, exposing the traces of liberty.

Starbucks on the Third Street

A waiting room. A check-in counter into a world dignified, inclusive, relaxed. A wormhole.

Traversed, it opens onto the Third Street, dignified, inclusive, relaxed; foggy, fluid, forthcoming; carrying and caring for the world's Parisless Parisians, angelless Angelinos, sanctified by the ocean breeze Santa Monicans, wrapped into or flaunting ideals, eyeing the stars, from the gutter or laterally, by stroke of good fortune and taste, to the mingling of voices and guitar tunes, bouncing off the soaped pavement, the lit-up storefronts, spilling into the side-streets, lulling the alleys, taming the night.

Driven by a maxim and the promise of sun, a barista attends to the journey of the civilisation.

Campus Starbucks

The music is sourced from someone in touch with the right kind of reality. Students commune with MacBooks or each other. The flux of avocational baristas promises structures of inviting complexity.

The patrons are selected on taste or parental income, conducive to indulging one's taste. Those whose indulgences displease are amended by the décor and generally have a point to make.

Some recurring characters look twenty-first-century scholarly, multitasking and consuming ambient noise. Others are refugees from all scholarly.

The queuing customers converse orally with each other or tactilely with iPhones. One wonders how, in a few years, one shall distinguish a wired customer from an alert one. Perhaps, the wired shall be alert, queues shall parish, and entire campuses shall have the ambiance of a Starbucks.

Wounded when engaged at half capacity; enveloped into the ether of potentiality when nearly empty. A self-effacing host bringing out the best in his guests.

Java's at Gibbs St

Unframed, uncut, absent but duly made up, conversant unshaven, shaven and missing, slouching and diving and surfing distracted, attractive no more or never attractive, tuned in absent-mindedly, lacking a story.

The high cheekbones and the sharp chin balance the broad jaws, partially veiled by the waves of hair, long and fair. The expansive face, when inanimate, suggests that much of it shall remain unemployed or be abused when expression is attempted. Not so.

The forehead elevates the eyebrows in wonder. The cheeks are plump; the mouth is delicate; both conspire into a smile that compliments. The face lights up, tentatively, not unconditionally. In a conversation, each feature is attended by emotion. Youth accommodated, happiness unexamined, intelligence spontaneous, sincerity. Naïveté?

Sipping from a plastic cup and listening to a jazz band; typing an essay with one and adjusting the spectacles with the other hand; knitting out of defiance or habit, and chatting, to the syncopated beat (with elements of truth in it).

Some bellied and suited—mostly at lunch. Some tarnished and hooded—few such. Some human, some trying.