: 11 March 2002 :

One of the posters in the bookshop café said TOFFEE RHYMES WITH COFFEE. I was thinking about this – obviously it rhymes, but I was wondering if there was some special significance to it, like “fell / hell”. Then I saw another poster: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? This made me laugh. And it made me think of someone special, too. A happy coincidence.

When I sat down there was a little cardboard stand on the table with an advert on:

TASTY CHUNKY THICK SOUP
Prepared specially for Coffee Republic by PRIMAL SOUP

“Primordial Soup” would have been better.

The rhythm of the words “The Man with the Blue Guitar” keeps reminding me of “The Sound of the Big Babou.” And then that reminds me of “The Man with the Red Face,” which takes us in a little circle, because that’s like the blue guitar. I wonder if the buzzing of the blue guitar sounded anything like Laurent Garnier. It probably didn't. I wonder if Laurent Garnier’s ever read Wallace Stevens.

Two girls were sitting opposite me in the café, and I noticed they had matching New Balance trainers on. One pair with blue trim and one with orange. The girl on the right poured a smoothie from a bottle into a glass. It looked like a Bloody Mary.

“c’est toujours la vie qui me regarde”...

I couldn’t sit still while I was reading Stevens. I kept wanting to find someone I could read the lines out to, or failing that, yell them in the street.

“We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns
That fall upon it out of the wind”...