XXXV - Find Your Words, Find Yourself

When Leonardo finally entered inside the Starbucks café, he noticed straight away that it looked just like every other Starbucks he’d been to in his life. That sense of familiarity, for some reason, made him feel comfortable. In this particular case, the café was carved into an elegant old building. The historical building was also home to a few other enterprises: clothing stores, fashionable, foreign and over-priced, very popular stores of course. I mean, how could people possibly not want to pay way too much in order to attain the dubious privilege of sporting an over-priced brand name or icon?

            Leonardo walked up to the counter and ordered a Frapuccino and a chocolate Muffin before heading towards the most isolated table he could find.

Before seating down, he looks around, slowly and thoroughly, his head moving almost mechanically, like the periscope of an old German submarine surveying the Atlantic dark waters for enemies. He makes sure that there aren’t any noisy neighbors nearby. 

Sitting on top of the table there’s a flier, containing one of those fast-food-like customer questionnaires, very American-like as the whole place itself.

‘How do you rate our drinks and/or food products?’ - Leonardo circles the option that says “Good”.

            ‘How do you rate our staff?’ – “good” again.

            ‘How do you rate the diversity of our menu?’ – “good”

            ‘How do you rate the level o comfort provided by our facilities?’ – “very good” this time around.

            ‘How do you rate our location?’ – In that last question Leonardo writes “it’s so freekin difficult to find it that I ended up having to ask directions to a small-time-drug-dealer-that-probably-wont-live-past-thirty”. He draws a smile next ho his answer, and then takes the flier to the counter where he places it inside a transparent container, a mischievous smile sketched on his face. 

He goes back to his table at the end of the restaurant and sits down, his disposition now considerably improved. He takes his black Moleskine out of his pocket. He opens it, and reads some of the entries he wrote during his time travelling. “What can you do with these things, these tales of travelling and adventure, these thoughts and ambitions?” he asks himself.

The Frapuccino is ready so he walks to the counter again to pick it up. When he sits down at his table again, the words in his moleskine smile at him provokingly. 

When Leonardo had woken up that same morning, three or four hours before that, he had felt a strange feeling growing inside him.

The feeling had him wake up early on a weekend day, it was that powerful! He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but there he was now, at that table in Starbucks, before noon, with a Frappucino, a chocolate Muffin and a black moleskine in front of him.

Although “the feeling” had practically come out of nowhere, “it” was not exactly a stranger. “It” had in fact been there from the beginning, his whole life, and had grown stronger over the years. Every time “it” manifested itself, Leonardo felt an urge to go somewhere quiet, and to take a notebook along the ride. It was not until that morning however, that Leonardo totally understood what “it” was.

Before that, he did not yet have the experience or the tools to fully understand “it”. Before that, it was just too soon. Now, however, as he dove into the moleskin, armed with pen and wits and memories, “it” manifested itself in its true form. He had been fighting “it” his whole life, but now it had overcome him. “It” was in fact his true being trying to come out. The feeling in his stomach, as if something needed to come out of him, as if he had to expel something from inside him, was in fact the need, the absolute necessity of manifesting himself. As the words formed, he started writing what he knew, was to become his memoir, his chronicle, his book.

All that time, he had missed it, but now it was clear. He wasn’t supposed to be writing for any newspaper, he was supposed to be writing for himself. His soul demanded it from him, like a Tiger demands flesh from the zoo keeper. It was a necessity beyond doubt. To eat or to die. To write or to fade away. So he decided to write. During the week he was a slave to society, to his job, to his fate. On a Sunday morning like such as that one however, he had no master but himself and his compulsion to write. He words come to him frenetically, filling the pages of the moleskin at a steady pace with dreams and hopes and stories. This is his life he is writing about, and writing makes him feel more alive. Writing gives him freedom and meaning. He finds his words without difficulty and, on a Sunday morning in a Starbucks in Lisbon’s downtown, he finds himself again. 

* written in cooperation with my good friend Goncalo "Gonzo Bean" Barbossa