“Dame un café, unas tostadas, y dos vasitos de agua por favor”

“Un café descafeinado con leche de avena, y un bizcocho”

Una y otra vez.

El servicio y el trato con la gente es lo más importante. Es un poco difícil tratar con las personas porque yo, simplemente, no estoy acostumbrada. A lo que sí estoy acostumbrada, es a tener todo el tiempo del mundo para encontrar las palabras adecuadas para contarte las cosas a través de este medio, con el espacio de equivocarme, de corregir, de expresarme impecablemente con la escritura en mi ordenador.

Trabajar en un café es intenso, aunque he de decir que un buffet libre los fines de semana…, es lo más intenso que he vivido. Trabajé en uno un verano, y me fui de ahí llorando muchas veces, no se por qué. Me iba a costar muchos años más entender que cuando lloro y no entiendo la razón, es por puro cansancio.

Las reflexiones que tuve en un dia en el café: Una señora con la que me encontré en el metro por la mañana, llevaba un mochila grande negra, en ella ponía “fashion”, las manijas seguían en pie, pero se podía discernir que ya estaban muy gastadas y quizá llegaba el momento del cambio. Y pensé que en mi casa tenía mochilas que no estábamos usando y que le podía dar una. De alguna manera me detiene mi parte racional de no decir nada, continuar mi vida en la cajita en la que encajo, de ahorrarse las ternuras que se puedan por el bien financiero propio. Y me pregunto, ¿para qué sirve una pequeña ganancia financiera en comparación de perder mi propia sensibilidad a las personas, a esta comunidad en la que vivo, a volverme cínica y más una vieja cascarrabias cada año que pasa?

La vida en un café de especialidad es larga y hay muchos detalles de los que tienes que “just get right”. Desde los mililitros de leche, miligramos de café y cremas hasta la orientación de las cosas en el baño, o que el cristal de la puerta tiene que estar impecable para que las personas que pasan por ahí pueden claramente ver a través del cristal y vean el fengshui del café y les anime a entrar.

Y sobre estas cosas, el estándar es que tienes que “get it right” casi 100% de las veces. ¿Por qué? Y recuerdo las palabras que dijo Maya Angelou:

“La gente olvidará lo que dijiste , olvidará lo que hiciste, pero nunca olvidará cómo la hiciste sentir”

Y eso es lo que yo entiendo que el café intenta lograr, hacer sentir bienvenidos a todos y cada uno de sus clientes, a encontrar un rinconcito en madrid donde pueden tomar buen café en paz. Un pequeño espacio al que pueden venir a refugiarse del calor del verano y del frío en invierno.

El café, el feng shui de las mesas, la decoración, la leve música que se escucha de fondo, los libros de café para los solitarios que le gustan refugiarse en un libro, el brillo de las luces, la puerta del baño; todo, todo esto parece que está pensado, en el cliente. El cliente se siente cuidado por el café. ¿Cómo te hace sentir ser cuidado en todos los aspectos cuando vas a un sitio?

Nos gusta beber cosas de calidad, lavarnos las manos con buen jabón, y secarnos con un buen papel, sentirnos bien. ¿Cuántas veces has estado en un sitio y has tenido que ir al baño aunque no quisieras porque sabes que la calidad del baño no estaría a tu gusto? Ir a este café de especialidad, e ir al baño es otra experiencia porque cuidamos detalles, quizá tan banales, como mantener un baño en muy buenas condiciones a lo largo del día.

En el café me acordé mucho lo que dijo Paul Myburgh a dear Andy una vez,

“No es lo que haces lo que cuenta, sino cómo eres cuando lo haces”.

Hay algo tan profundo en esas palabras que no he logrado desentrañar pero aún así me hacen llorar.

Preparar una ensalada para compañeros de trabajo que probablemente no la apreciarán tanto como quisiera, pero aun así la hago con el máximo cariño y esmero. Creo que es hermoso, y apreciarme a mí misma y la belleza de la vida que hay en lo cotidiano. Entonces todo resulta ser un milagro.

Estar y no estar, los días míos últimamente se sienten un poco desestructurados en comparación a la vida que llevaba antes cuando tenía un trabajo. Algo se ha roto en mi, y ahora me quedo recogiendo las piezas sin saber que tipo de piezas son. En el suelo las miro, las contemplo y se ven extrañas, como si no me pertenecieran.

En casa de mi hermana estoy intentando encontrar cierto refugio, pero las sillas no se sienten cómodas, la mesa baila al ritmo de un leve vaivén y el espacio aunque conocido siento que me abraza cortésmente, carente de intimidad. Siento la incomodidad de estar en la casa de otro.

Siento todas las cosas gritando en mi cabeza, y ordenarlas requiere tanta energía mental, que las dejo estar todas. Las ganas de hacer las cosas cotidianas que hacía se van muchas veces, y luego vuelven momentáneamente.

It all leaves me wondering, what do I want? what do I want? These days, the things that I want seem so far off, like a dream from another world, they feel so….unattainable. What if I focus on more instant gratification items? I find myself during the day thinking, ohh perhaps I should buy a laptop stand, knowing full well that I don’t really need nor will use those items much.

Esta casa que es más grande que mi habitación se me hace pequeña. Me tengo que recordar una y otra vez, de tener perspectiva, de que no es una mala vida, si no un momento que va a testear mi carácter, y que la reacción va determinar los siguientes pasos del siguiente capítulo.

Releo las cosas que me traen un poco de calma, un poco de serenidad, como este poema de David Wagoner sobre estar perdida, esperando así, encontrarme.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=31968

New beginnings are hard, I think of the great human beings in this world and wonder how’ve then gone through those new beginnings.

Nuevos comienzos son difíciles, me pregunto qué han hecho los grande individuos de nuestros tiempos en esos momentos. Cómo habrá Ursula K LeGuin pasado por un momento difícil, cómo David Graeber habrá pasado de ser un profesor a ser uno de los escritores más consecuentes, o bien como decidió Carlos Ruiz Zafón dejar su trabajo en publicidad para dedicarse a escribir.

Es interesante que todos las grandes personas que admiro son escritores, personas que escriben palabra tras palabra y que de alguna manera al leer su forma de pensar evocan algo dentro de mi. Me pregunto si al final del día, solo los escritores son las personas que recordamos.

Ha sido una temporada en la que no he escrito mucho. He estado muy ocupada mentalmente. Una temporada que no he hecho ninguna reflexión con la excusa de no tener el espacio mental. Aunque siendo totalmente franca conmigo misma, no he querido hacer o tener esa reflexión.

Mi trabajo ya no es mi trabajo, y de alguna manera mi trabajo me ayudaba a definirme como persona. Porque aunque había muchos matices de el que no me gustaban, me definía como persona de una sociedad, persona que ayuda a su familia y a las personas que hay alrededor de uno de forma financiera.

Me pregunto qué depara mi futuro en este momento. Quizá desde la universidad he aprendido a ser una persona estructurada y organizada. Y así he llevado mi trabajo, vida y agenda personal. Creo que también ayuda que haya vivido la última década de mi vida en Holanda. A mis amigos holandeses les gusta mucho planear y planear las cosas.

La verdad es que no sé de qué va a tratar este espacio que estoy creando, te diría, please bear with me, he igual lo descubrimos colectivamente según pasa el tiempo.

Mi intención es escribir una vez a la semana. Empecemos pues..

Heading Out

Beyond here there’s no map.

How you get there is where

you’ll arrive; how, dawn by

dawn, you can see your way

clear: in ponds, sky, just as

woods you walk through give

to fields.  And rivers: beyond

all burning, you’ll cross on bridges

you’ve long lugged with you.

Whatever your route, go lightly,

toward light. Once you give away

all save necessity, all’s

mostly well: what you used to

believe you owned is nothing,

nothing beside how you’ve come

to feel. You’ve no need now

to give in or give out: the way

you’re going your body seems

willing. Slowly as it may

otherwise tell you, whatever

it comes to you’re bound to know.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=37416

[27 Mar 2020]

Now I admire other things people with rough edges
and their crooked wedges

Telling tales of who they are what they’ve seen so far
where they've gone in the journey alone

the path that lead them here in awe that I am their peer

In those imperfections and scars In the slight lumping and tiny twitches In the sides people seem rare I see the most human care

[18 Feb 2022]

After watching this film, I couldn’t help but notice the similar conflicts we face Today on Earth. How climate change is affecting planet Earth. How easily we’ve destroyed homes, killed people and dismissed indigenous population and wisdom in favor of greed, power and money. How, perhaps, unlike the dinosaurs, we won’t need asteroids to extinguish us, our own arrogance will be the very thing that undo us all. In the film there is one sentence that describes fittingly how I perceive our modern society:

“We have tried to teach other sky people (humans). It is hard to fill a cup which is already full” 

Our cup feels full and so there is no more space for anything but the modern way of knowledge and wisdom. We hold a certain pride in technological advances, which somehow gives us license to feel superior to others. That worth is measured by money, power and the things (we believe) we own. Yet we failed to see we’ve been owned this whole time, by this “big machine”, that tells us how to behave, we’ve been enslaved to and for the system.

And so, with all of that, I wanted to say that I have been thinking about climate change, indigenous wisdom, and pondering about the question on how to love people in spite of their beliefs, even when their beliefs might land me in jail or even mean my own perishment.

I had recorded myself doing some drills earlier, so I was eager to look back and check on my technique.

It was a cold day, those days that the weather app tells you that it’s 3 degrees but feels like -1 degrees. It is the kind of day that one doesn’t want to have any inch of flesh bear for the cold temperature to slowly pierce and tear the skin.

And so when the train arrived, I was eagerly running to the upper compartment to take refuge. Most of the seats near the exit were filled, so I took a seat near the middle of the cabin. It was one of those three seat cubicles, two seats facing one. A girl was sitting in the single seat, so I saw on opposite, whilst leaving my jacket and bag on the seat next to me. 

I pulled out my phone together with my headphones and started looking for the video footage I recorded earlier. And then I heard someone weeping, I didn’t look up but I knew it came from the girl that was sitting opposite to me, and from the corner of my eye I saw her wipe her tears. 

By that point I really hoped it was something temporary and that it would be over soon and so I kept analysing my footage. But unfortunately it wasn’t the case, while this girl was looking at her own phone she kept weeping, tears kept rolling down her eyes. I thought something someone sent her must have upset her. 

By that point I really felt for her, she couldn’t contain her sadness that she was crying in a very public space, without anywhere private to go and in a train full of passengers. 

All I wanted to do was to reach across, look into her eyes and ask, “are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”, and perhaps embrace her with the hope I could carry some of this hurt and sadness for her. 

Instead, I looked into my bag and handed her a pack of tissues. She looked at the pack and reached for them and said barely audible “thank you”. She pulled one tissue out of the pack and started handing me back the pack and I waved at her to let her know she could have it. She replied with a quiet thank you. 

And so I went back to looking at my phone, because I felt awkward.

Before she left, I looked at her and said “I hope everything will turn out fine”. And she, barely containing her tears, looked back at me and said, “yes, it will be fine”. And with those words she stood up and left. Somehow upon her departure, the cabin felt empty and still full of people. As if her energy was occupying so much space, and now all that energy was gone with her. 

I still wonder what made her so upset. I still wonder if she is better now. I hope she has loved ones around that can comfort her, so she isn’t carrying this sadness all alone. 

Last year around this time, one of my colleagues told me, “you’ll still a dreamer, and think you can conquer the world, try not to lose that”. I thought at the time, of course I am not going to lose that, what are you talking about? Now, looking back, it really makes me wonder, if I have already lost that childish part of me, that hopeful little girl, and that sense of wonder. 

People live their lives wondering in this world without sometimes ever finding a sense of purpose. I knew from when I was kid that table tennis was my passion, and that it made me happy. Of course, when I became a teenager, people kept insisting that I stop playing. I, as a good stereotypical teenager, refuse, revealed, and said that that wasn’t going to happen. Yet some tiny part of me felt guilty to be wasting my time with table tennis knowing that I would be able to have a career on it, while my family worked so hard to provide for me. 

Then, when I stopped being a teenager, I ceased playing table tennis. There were many factors that contribute to it, and one of those was that I genuinely thought that part of being an adult was to give in things that you really like for the greater good. In hindsight I really wish I could go back in that moment in time and really beat the shit out of the 19 year old me for such stupidity and made me get into my senses. What can I say….adults are just senseless and most of them, unhappy. Most adults, if not all, are wrong, they really don’t know what they are doing either, so you will be probably better off listening to yourself. By yourself, I mean your actual self, not the stupid self that all it wants is chill, get drunk, and go nightclubs. Though if that is your actual self, most probably, it will also be better than listening to adults. 

It’s really hard to hold on to your passions and to your wants, many people find it hard, including myself. And that is because the “shoulds” are way easier to do, but they are easier in the short term, but they suck in the long term. So now, whenever I find someone that seemingly crazy to the world that holds fast to their beliefs, I applaud that. 

Last weekend, a man was standing at one of the corners of “la plaza” Lille, with a sign that supporting the freedom of speech of the Catalonian people. My friend and I stopped to talk with the man and really understand why was he “protesting” in Lille. He said that he abides to French ideology of “Liberte, equalite et fraternite”. That a country with a monarchy is not really free because, we are implying that there are people better in this society (the royal family) against the common people. Or that men are better, because they should succeed the royal throne even if a daughter was born first. And maybe this is a direct infringement of the human rights lay out by the United Nations. 

And the thing is… that what sounds like such a reasonable thing for you, it would sound crazy for others. They will try to push you down every single step of the way, and there will be times you will doubting yourself, and that is also ok. Everyone will tell you that you are a fool, that you don’t know what you are doing, but if you believe in yourself, if you work your hardest, that opportunity will reveal itself to you, and perhaps one day, you could tell your story to inspire the future people that are doubting yourself. 

You have to define what is success for yourself? How does it look like? Whether is to be able to have financially support yourself, your family, or anyone else. Because we might only fail when we give up. No one remember those dreamers, because everyone told them they could not do it. 

[Written sometime in the past]