Another Moment in Time

The grey-haired man lingers on - with his guitar, his cigarettes, and his girlfriend. He doesn’t even bother to take position. Men and women let time pass in café chairs with their beer - or cerveza, as they like to call it here. The Carlos Franco murals look on indifferently from the walls. The slowness of the place, the sunshine, the absolute lack of hurry kind of gets into everyone.

After a while, the girlfriend takes the centrestage - kissing first the guitar and then the man. The old man sitting right across the table lights a cigar with a sigh, and continues to scribble in his notebook – God knows what. A sparrow comes from nowhere and sits on my glass of Mahou, the local beer which fortunately, doesn’t taste too bad. I look at the sparrow and feel - quite naively - that it’s an important moment. I try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind though.

After I take a few more sips, the guitar comes to life; the girlfriend turns out to be a dancer, giving one impromptu performance after another as the man strings on. The middle-aged man on my left, with a professional looking camera, now suddenly finds something to do. He starts to click on, making a futile attempt to capture the spontaneity of the girl as she turns round and round and round in a musical ecstasy.

My glass gets empty. I look around to ask for one more. An old lady with a drawing board comes to me and asks if I’d like to have my cartoon drawn. I smile apologetically at her, feeling, somewhat ironically, a bit cartoonish myself. I thought telling the man with the camera it’s no use mate. Instead, I look for the sparrow, now most certainly gone somewhere else.

                                                                     - Documented in Plaza Mayor, Madrid (6 February, 2010)