THERE IS A TOWN in Central Europe where I have spent some time. For many years I enjoyed strolling down to a café nestled under a large willow tree. I especially liked the old wooden furniture which I imagined must have been perhaps 200 years old. The walls were painted a dark green and lighting was dim. The corners of the tables had been worn down, so that they were somewhat rounded. The legs on the chairs were not quite uniform. There were the familiar antlers on the wall, as well as paintings of rural life, covered with a patina of dust. The café was frequented by people of all ages, but especially people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, who would sit around and talk about literature, art, music, and the problems with modern life. Sometimes I visited the café with a friend but usually I came alone and, while sipping my espresso, enjoyed eavesdropping on the conversations closest to where I was sitting. I remember once overhearing a conversation between two customers arguing about the meaning of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness: did Sartre really believe that people were fundamentally free or did he intend to suggest that people’s freedom was limited, let us say, to whether to order an espresso or a cappuccino to accompany one’s cake? Sitting in the café, I always felt at peace, even content.
I was away from that town for a year or two but, upon my return to the town and to the location of my favorite café, I found that the café I had loved was no more. The building was still there and there was still coffee served. But the ancient furniture I had loved had been removed, as had the antlers and the old paintings of rural scenes. The walls had been painted a bright yellow, bright halogen lights were at full blast, and, replacing the ancient tables, I found long formica tables with chairs with Kelly green padding. There were no paintings on the walls, and I did not see anyone older than about 40. Although I found the new atmosphere alienating, I took a seat and listened. What I heard was conversations about shopping, about local restaurants, about traffic, about having no time for anything. I stayed for more than an hour, hoping that someone would say something about art or about the latest novel she, or he, had read. But there was nothing of the sort.
I was deeply despondent as I left the café and headed over to a local bookshop. I had no need to buy a book but I wanted to be around books, my old friends. As I walked slowly to the bookshop, I asked myself how this could have happened that, after an absence of less than two years, I found the atmosphere entirely transformed? I could not imagine the old wooden tables and chairs placed in the new coffeehouse, as it now was called, with its yellow walls and bright lights. Nor could I imagine these vapid pieces of formica furniture installed in the old café as I remembered it, with antlers fixed on the wall. Yet, of all the parts that had constituted the old café, it seemed to me that the furniture was the most important, that it was the tables and chairs above all that inspired conversations about Dostoyevsky and Picasso, Balzac and Dali. Can furniture really affect the soul? I think so. The time had come to find a new café.
— SABRINA RAMET
Sabrina Ramet was born in London, England, and earned her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Stanford University, and her Ph.D. in Political Science at UCLA. She has published 16 books of history. She has also published six collections of absurdist verse, and two absurdist novellas. Her short play, “The Day before Stiklestad” was published in Bewildering Stories in March 2026.