William Burroughs would have loved where I was last night.
Sitting on 14th & T Street at Cafe Saint-Ex last night, I was inspired. Maybe it was the ambiance of honking, irritated drivers, the disheveled, swaying Happy Hour participants or the amount of Jim Beam in my “Kentucky ice tea,” but the evening felt like the end of a Washingtonian summer. Like it was supposed to. Which is no small thing in DC, since nothing ever feels like what it is here. Solipsism at its finest.
The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I was in a dream.
What made it great, were the people. The people that were out with their dogs, cell phones, iPods, cigarettes, drinks, friends, and companions. In that order. It was an impromptu convention on life.
One that made me feel as if Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs would come around the corner any minute. They would’ve liked a restaurant named after author-pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery that serves up some seriously creative drinks. The boys would’ve ranted that it was the people that were out and about though that made the place hum.
A lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills…
And they would be right. Because it’s the people that make the difference, that give life its soft edges, cracked walls, and broken tiles. As I sat there last night, I felt the corporate perfection of downtown DC dissolve in the lines of faces, sounds of laughter, and heaviness of sighs that conveyed the fragility, reality, and intensity of human existence. It was beautiful to step out of the rat race for a moment to see people working to live, not living to work.
Paying the tab, I left. Kerouac’s words accompanied me. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself. All I could think to write was this. And a note to the world: watch out for Saint Ex’s Kentucky iced tea. It’ll make a sentimental fool out of a neurotic attorney.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jarod // Sep 26, 2007 at 12:49 pm
With all the Solipsism about, it’s a good thing you weren’t drinking a mind-eraser (wacka wacka).
Great imagery. I now want to lounge in some hushed cafe - feet up, face relaxed….very likely snapping my fingers.
2 Sarah Moffett // Sep 26, 2007 at 4:16 pm
It was probably a matter of innate self-preservation that I wasn’t asking for vodka, kahlua, and tonic water, but next time, I might have to bite.
Snap away. The downstairs DJ at this place would like your 40’s attitude.
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