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Cafe Notebook

novalis
2 min readJun 23, 2018

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Out of the corner of my eye, watching Germany and Sweden on a TV above the bar, where I’ve placed my laptop. I didn’t bring a charger and so I only have a little juice left to type up what I’ve written.

I lost a notebook at a bar last night — so I feel almost as if I’m living dangerously but continuing the habit of writing at bars and cafes. I lost fragments of the first act of a play — which someone, a stranger, presumably, is either reading or more likely, has thrown out.

Writing while other people are drinking and talking and flirting is a good way of placing one’s writing into its proper metaphysical context: contingency. You can’t be precious; you can’t concentrate — there’s too much sense-data coming in. You’ve just got to try to capture some of it in the net of language.

Germany, incidentally, is dominating possession in this match.

I don’t particularly like the German squad. I hope Mexico keeps advancing.

Sweden almost scored — the striker looked to be fouled, but the foul wasn’t called.

One book I would love to read ,that as far as I know hasn’t been written: a first hand account of being a referee on the world stage.

Being a referee, obviously, is analogous to being God — so I’m surprised no one has written that book.

I have the feeling that our world resembles the world of Europe 1913 in ways that we will only begin to understand with historical perspective — the perspective of the unknowable…

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