Notes from Café Tal

...that humbling moment comes along when you remember how much you are like the guy at the next table scribbling into his notebook.

Lately I have fallen into an oubliette of the mind where one casually interprets tremors from the outside world. Then I ordered a Hurricane tea at Café Tal and found myself staring at the mesh tea ball, thinking about last night...

Hugo and I ate the sugarcane I'd brought from a recent Posada. He showed me how to strip off the outer layer of cane with my teeth, the kind of delicate tearing movements that make a chimp look preternaturally clever. Chomping on the inside cane until it's just a lump of dry fiber in your mouth, then spitting that out and tearing into the next piece. We agreed that sugar taken in this way gives you an unlikely instant rush, something that clarifies whatever strength you have in your body and induces kid mentality for a few happy seconds. As a shared experience it outpaces even the most frantic game of tag.