Mastering the Art of Doing Nothing

Pavementism

It has been said that the Greeks have mastered the art of doing nothing purposefully. The wiser older Greeks spend most of their time on pavements and side-walk cafe's discussing their favourite topics, soccer, politics, food, women, philosophy or whatever else grabs their fancy. It’s an ancient tradition that has its origins in the Agora or open place of assembly of Athens. The younger more ambitious Greeks are busy scheming how to take short cuts and swindle their partners, their employers, the government or their relatives for short term gain. They pay no heed to the words of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew which warns us: “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.” Similarly the ancient Greeks believed that great riches would be despised but glory never.

The Greeks are otherwise a nation of restless passengers and spectators with great expertise in social commentary. They sit uneasily on the laurels and achievements of their illustrious forefathers, the ancient Greeks. But even the ancient Greeks had slaves to do the chores and lots of time on their hands to develop new theories for the betterment of humanity. The modern Greeks are unlikely to improve the lot of mankind with new theories or by inventing a space shuttle or vacuum cleaner but at least by passing their time debating at their favourite pavement cafes they cause the least harm to society.

My friend and fellow pavement philosopher, Quinten Knox has recently coined a phrase called "Pavementism."* Pavementism is a spontaneous movement which encourages people to slow down and smell the coffee. Its adherents are called pavementistas. Pavementistas are a special breed of very sociable people who happily spend their time on the pavement with absolutely no idea about what they are going to do next. If you are someone who likes drawing up lengthy to-do lists or lives with diaries, deadlines and schedules, then chances are you’re not a pavementista. You’re a stone cold sober realista. Similarly if you’re a devoted fashionista or someone who has children at a private school, you are unlikely to be a pavementista. You are more than likely a reluctant payista.

Pavementistas believe that when they are on the pavement, they are in the midst of life. Enjoying coffee on a pavement somewhere, watching the passing daily parade of people and cars go by and lots of free, unallocated time, is the ultimate ambition of a true pavementista or the summum bonum, the greatest good. Baristas make the coffee and pavementistas drink the coffee. And coffee shops in shopping malls don’t count as worthy destinations for pavementista purists. The coffee shop must have a real pavement and face a public street, square or piazza and be family owned not part of some branded franchise. There are not many original side-walk cafes left and they deserve to be supported and preserved because of the worthy role they play in the social fabric of a neighbourhood.

Diogenes the Cynic was one of the earliest intentional pavementistas and pavement philosophers. He was a 4th century BC philosopher who lived with his faithful hound in a tub on the pavements and side-walk gutters of ancient Athens and Corinth. He walked the streets during daytime with his lantern and staff in search of an honest man and a real human being. But none was to be found. He found only rascals and scoundrels. Diogenes shunned the corrupt practices, earthly pleasures, the vanity, artificialities, pretension and luxuries of Athenian society while extolling the virtues of self-sufficiency, austerity and a simple lifestyle. Alexander the Great went to visit Diogenes and as he stood over the philosopher, who was lying relaxing at the side of the road, the young king asked him whether there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes looked up at Alexander and asked him to stop blocking his sunlight. Alexander was so impressed with this reply that he told his assembled courtiers and generals that if he was not Alexander, he would be Diogenes.

Deliberate and enlightened pavementism is the very antithesis of mindless busyness, haste and multi-tasking. It requires long periods of reflection, observation and contemplation. A pavementista has the rare ability to spend 3 to 4 stress free hours on a pavement everyday, drinking coffee alone or with friends without feeling guilty. Certain nations are better at producing pavementistas than others. The leading countries in the field at the moment are Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Italy, France and Portugal. In many of the rural villages of Greece and Turkey, the men hang out at the coffee shop, smoking and drinking small cups of dark strong coffee. It’s Greek coffee if you’re in Greece and Turkish coffee if you’re in Turkey, but it tastes and looks the same and is brewed the same way. The women are prepared to work the fields for the sake of peace in the home and to keep the men happy. They deem it a better compromise than sending them off to war or to some distant factory or mine. Japan has not produced any noteworthy pavementistas but it has produced many legendary train gropers and frotteurs. Unfortunately the Protestant work ethic and misguided Nazi inspired notions that work shall set you free has killed pavementism as a movement in many countries. Guilt, fear and ego are currently recognized as the three main obstacles to becoming a successful pavementista. Pavementistas find their inspiration on the pavement. They are usually sensitive creative types like poets, artists, day-dreamers, layabouts, writers and pavement philosophers. But they can also be plumbers, electricians, hashish smokers, voyeurs, pimps, drug-dealers, cigarette vendors, arms dealers, car salesmen, unemployed stock brokers and commodities traders.

I have bumped into many retired bankers, civil servants and former CEO’s, mostly in Greece. They still have a manic, harassed look on their faces like they’re being hunted or chasing some elusive prize. They don’t get it. They clutch small leather strap pouches and are always in a rush, continuously running around town, doing errands for their wives, buying stamps, dog food and paying utility bills. They cannot relax and find it very difficult to become pavementistas. They are fatally addicted to their own busyness and self-importance. They are busy merely for the sake of being busy.

Admittedly many who aspire to join the movement are trapped by their present circumstances. Many might ask how does one become a pavementista when you have a full-time job, mortgage, car payments, overdrafts, kids at school, and a disgruntled mother- in- law. Zorbas full catastrophe in other words. You’re a highly paid professional who works 18 hour days. You work to pay an ever growing list of bills and your clients make huge demands on your time and headspace. You get home shattered, with energy levels depleted and spend very little quality time with your family. Your spouse is stuck with you either out of economic necessity, dependence or habit. Your children are distant and aloof. How can you ever become a pavementista? It’s fine for a while if you really love what you do but otherwise it’s a tough situation for most people on the relentless daily treadmill with clients and corporates making ever increasing demands on exhausted, burnt-out people. Life becomes an endurance test. You’re a zombie on weekends, feeling like you’ve just done 15 rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson.

The words of American writer Henry Thoreau come to mind when he said: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." If you’re chained to your desk and find yourself like I once did staring out the window of your corner office, desperate to escape and longing for freedom and a simpler life, you start by becoming a frequent escapista, the first rung on the ladder before graduating with eventual pavementista status. You run out for a quick cup of coffee. Once a week is not enough. You gradually build up your fitness, tolerance and exposure levels until you can spend more time out of the office without feeling remorse or guilt. You may however need to opt for a pared down lifestyle, give up the big house, crippling payments and the shiny BMW that’s killing you every month and trade down for a Toyota Yaris and a small apartment. Are you prepared to trade your illusory status and fleeting possessions for more freedom and less money?

Some critics condemn the lifestyle of committed pavementistas as being non-productive and irresponsible. These critics are usually corporate raiders who specialize in gambling with other peoples money and pension fund fraud. Pavementistas have also been accused of being "social Velcro" and "pavement sluts" who live on the fringes and margins of society eating the crumbs that fall off the corporate dining tables. This is simply false. It is true however that genuine pavementistas have simple tastes and needs usually satisfied with a quick shot of the finest Arabica but otherwise they are non-conformists with little time for the conventions, norms and demands of polite and organized society. As a rule however, pavementistas are peace loving, mild-mannered, non-competitive and very tolerant phlegmatic types. They only become militant when they are forced to attend formal functions, wait in queues or renew their driver’s license.

Some commentators refer to dedicated pavementistas as “pavement specials.” This description is usually reserved to describe dogs lacking some form of pedigree. This analogy is completely understandable but while pavementistas share many common traits with mans best friend, they are not dogs. Dogs will eat anything then lick their balls and relieve themselves in public. Dogs however have their virtues. They are companionable, honest and faithful. Like dogs pavementistas can happily sit outside for hours sunning themselves, content to live in the present without anxiety, without dwelling on the past or worrying about the unfathomable and unpredictable future.

Pavementistas believe that speed; busyness, cocktail parties, social climbing and corporate networking are extremely dangerous to your health. Research shows that health is linked to higher levels of education and status. PhD’s and respectable members of the community who contribute their time and energy to society are supposed to be healthier. Scientific studies also confirm however that people who meet and socialize every day with friends over coffee on the pavement tend to be happier and live longer. The pavement is egalitarian and democratic. It is the modern Agora. It is the great leveler among men, the forum and marketplace of ideas. In ancient Rome, the forum served as the central public meeting place where people gathered to air their views, to seek justice and to restore their faith and hope. The pavement revives this ancient custom.

Senior pavementistas of many years service and experience become the doyens and ambassadors of the Pavementista movement. They then become elevated to "boulevardier" status on account of their peripatetic lifestyle and the numerous pavement cafes that they have visited all over the world. This is the same as being a "Chevalier" or knight of the pavement. This gives them the right to hold court, to join in on any pavement discussion and offer their views and counsel without invitation. They also mediate in disputes between feuding pavementistas, but this is very rare.

When pavementistas look back on their life, they never regret the happy hours spent with friends and loved ones drinking coffee on the pavement. They are comforted by the immortal lines of T.S.Eliot:

“For I have known them all already, known them all -,
Have known the evenings, mornings and afternoons,
I have measured my life with coffee spoons.”


Costas Ayiotis
25 October 2008
Waterkloof, Pretoria.

Aspiring pavementistas should also read “For the Love of Coffee & Diogenes the Cynic” posted in the archive of this blog. *For a description and definition of Pavementism, also go to http://www.quintenknox.blogspot.com/

Coffee on the Pavement

The bankers, financial wizards and other "masters of the universe" have brought great suffering and losses to the world with their insatiable greed and monumental stupidity. In money terms the losses will run into trillions of dollars. In human terms, millions of working people globally will lose their jobs and pensioners will lose their retirement savings.

In these troubling and uncertain times, I seek solace, comfort and companionship at my local pavement cafe. I don't aspire to own a Ferrari or a yacht. I don't want to be a "master of the universe." I seek simplicity and peace of mind. Coffee on the pavement is my everyday luxury and I consider myself very fortunate to be able to it enjoy it. As my friend and fellow pavement philosopher, Quinten Knox puts it, the time spent on the pavement offers periods of reflection, contemplation, observation and opportunities for intellectual pursuit. This is also where we laugh, joke, relate, read, write, learn, inspire, comfort, support, teach, listen, tease, flirt, speculate, plot and shoot the breeze with friends.

Anais Nin said:

"My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living."

When I'm on the pavement, I am in the midst of living.

Costas Ayiotis

Quote of the Day

The Secret

“No it is not enough to despise the world. It is not enough to live ones life as though riches and power were nothing. They are not.

But to grasp the world, to grasp and feel it grow great in ones grasp is likewise not enough. The secret is to grasp it and let it go.”

Wang Wei, Chinese Sage
1300 years ago

Thomas Jefferson on the Banks

Quote of the Week: Thomas Jefferson 1802

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'

The Lure of the Siren’s Song

The sirens were fabulous winged creatures in Greek mythology, half woman, half bird, who lived on a flower filled island protected by very high cliffs and a dangerous rocky shoreline. Ancient accounts are not clear whether the sirens could fly but because they never left their island it is assumed that were incapable of flight. They were said to be the daughters of the storm god Achelous. They played the lyre and sang songs so irresistible and enchanting that ancient mariners who sailed past their island would lose their minds and were either lured to jump into the turbulent waters of the sea and try and swim towards them or they would steer their ships towards the sirens and in so doing smash their ships to pieces on the rocky shores of their island. Either way drowning or destruction was inevitable. Those few souls who safely made it ashore would eventually starve to death because the sirens were unable to provide food and sustenance for them.

Homer the epic Greek poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey writes about the ordeals Odysseus faces trying to return home to his wife and son living on the island of Ithaca. After fighting for ten years in the Trojan War, Odysseus sails home with his men. He has heard about the deadly charm and power of the siren’s songs and voices. Odysseus instructs his men to plug their ears with beeswax and to tie him firmly to the mast of the ship so that he can hear the sirens’ song and live to tell the tale. He instructs his men to leave him tied to the mast no matter how much he begs and curses them to release him.

The ship sails past the island and Odysseus hears the lyrical song of the sirens. The words are even more enticing than the melody. The sirens promise to grant him infinite knowledge, great wisdom and a quickening of the spirit if he goes to them. He goes mad with longing and desire. His heart aches and the great warrior is ready to sacrifice everything he holds dear. He is ready to accept their false promise of eternal truth and then die if he must. His comrade Achilles faced a similar choice. Live to a ripe old age and be forgotten or die a young hero’s death and be remembered and immortalized for thousands of years.

Odysseus curses his men, he screams at them. He threatens them. He orders them to untie him immediately! The sailors see his agitation and anguish but with ears blocked they do not hear his pleas. The ship quickly passes the treacherous shores and sails to calmer, safer and less turbulent waters. Eventually Odysseus is untied by his men. He emerges from this heartbreaking and harrowing experience enriched; sadder but infinitely wiser.

Homer’s Odysseus is a timeless and very human character, unquestionably brave yet deeply flawed. He is at times a conflicted wanderer of dubious morals rather than a boring moral saint, who wants to experience the temptations of the world yet somehow still manage to eventually emerge virtuous from his many ordeals. As some have suggested we find Odysseus attractive because of his vitality and adaptability. He exercises his freedom of choice and seeks out possibilities for action. He desires engagement with the world and all it holds or promises. This touches our humanity and draws us to him.

The genius of Homer is that he creates such wonderful and complex characters. The poet also makes the sirens more alluring by making them appeal to the spirit and not the flesh. For the sirens like the sphinx were mantic creatures, knowing both the past and the future. Homer writes: “Once he hears to his hearts content, sails on, a wiser man.”

In more recent times Franz Kafka wrote The Silence of the Sirens in 1917. He says the following about our modern affliction:

“Now the sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. It is still conceivable that someone (like our hero Odysseus) might have escaped from their singing, but from their silence, certainly never.”

To the artist silence and indifference are infinitely crueler than the engagement that criticism brings.

So the sirens have passed down the ages as symbols of temptation. But they have also been redeemed in modern times as more positive symbols signifying warning and caution, the twin-tailed mermaid-like siren of Greek mythology even appearing on the Starbucks Coffee company logo.

On a final note, the Greeks never content to grant such awful powers to any creature let alone these winged nymphs and forever aware of hubris and nemesis, created some worthy rivals and antagonists to claim our favour and ultimately our allegiance. Hera the jealous and vindictive Queen of the Gods and wife of the promiscuous Zeus, God of Kings and King of Gods, decides she’s had enough of the femme fatale sirens. Hera spent much of her considerable energy and power pursuing, punishing and persecuting any potential rivals and especially the many mistresses and bastard offspring of her husband.

Hera also had a flair for reinvention. She would immerse herself in a magical spring near Argos to restore and renew her virginity. It appears she visited the spring often. Hera goes on a charm offensive and persuades the reluctant and reclusive sirens to enter a singing contest against their more fancied and less deadly sisters, the muses. The delightful muses immediately take up Hera’s challenge to eclipse the sirens. Blessed by the gods with great flamboyance and enormous talent, they sing and dance like never before with wild abandon and carefree exuberance. They win the contest, silence the sirens and capture our hearts forever!

Costas Ayiotis
Pretoria

In Praise of Skinny Women

The popular saying states that you can never be too thin or too rich. Well, I’ve never much liked or agreed with the too thin part.

When it comes to the sexual prowess of women however, I have been labouring all these years under a grave misconception. I mistakenly believed that thin women were somehow inferior in the sack to their fleshier sisters. I’ve always felt pity for those unsmiling, emaciated and anorexic looking waifs on the modelling ramps of the world pouncing around like ungainly giraffes. Real women in my world are big and beautiful. I have always preferred that healthy profile of alluring curves and crevasses. Women with full voluptuous figures and robust appetites just like my beloved wife.

Being a fellow of ample proportions myself, I subscribed to the old Afrikaans adage: “soort soek soort,” which basically means “birds of feather flock together.” Put differently, most men with a 40 inch waist and above seemingly go for women with more Rubenesque proportions. In other words pear-shaped women built for comfort, with ample pendulant bosoms, plump rosy cheeks, soft-full lips and well padded bottoms. Though generally it seems most men regardless of their size prefer their women to be soft, feminine and more well-rounded as opposed to the hard, flat-chested androgynous athleticism of an Olympic female sprinter or hurdler.

As the old Greek saying claims: “the fat chicken has the juice!” But then a wizened old Greek presumably exasperated with his well-fed, lard-arsed wife, upon hearing this expression retorted: “Are we going to fuck or make soup?”

These men however could be missing out by overlooking skinny women and lusting after bigger busty babes. I have it on good authority that skinny women are to put it delicately, more well –endowed where it really counts. My source is very reliable and has impeccable credentials. He is a scholar, an officer and a gentleman. An army General, who appreciates the finer things in life, like women, wine, food, cigars and corporal punishment. He reminded me of the Afrikaans expression which says: “Aan die dunste takkie, hang die rypste vy.” Translated it means: “the ripest figs hang on the thinnest branches.” Another version of this expression goes: “agter die dunste riete skuil die grootste padda’s” Which means that the biggest frogs lurk among the thinnest reeds.

Now the Afrikaners are usually sensible, no-nonsense, solid farming folk who are far more dangerous and adventurous than their dour Dutch cousins and they presumably know a thing or two about their women, guns, animal husbandry in general and the virtues of fruit and its relation to intimate parts of the female anatomy. I fail to see however how by any stretch of the imagination, this home-spun logic can equate a frog to a vagina!

In any event I decided that I needed some empirical proof. I could not rely purely on hearsay and farming folklore as reliable evidence. Being a married male in his forties, which is the equivalent of an indentured serf, I feared losing my quarterly sexual privileges. One romp in each season; spring, summer, autumn and winter and naturally on my birthday which unfortunately falls in summer so it conveniently does not count anymore making the once obligatory birthday bonk sadly obsolete.

Unable to inspect the vaginas of real skinny women and stay married, I did what most married men do as a hobby nowadays to compensate for their looming or impending dotage. I went virtual. I turned to that infinite source of wisdom and learning, that modern oracle of knowledge, possessing answers to many of the mysteries of the world. I clicked on Google for guidance to point me in the right direction. Going purely on memory, I figured that professional ballerina’s have lean gazelle like bodies, so that would qualify them as skinny females. Unable to contain myself, I feverishly typed in “naked ballerina’s” bursting as I was with anticipation.

I am delighted to say that a whole new unexplored world opened up before me. I discovered that a group of highly talented, enterprising and uninhibited Japanese ballerina’s have discarded their tutus and decided to stage naked ballet performances. For example, they perform the Dance of the Seven Veils wearing nothing but their veils and their ballet pumps. What a wonderful and novel way to combine high-brow culture and artistic expression with good old-fashioned smut. This will certainly get more males like myself with a slight artistic bent to venture forth and go to the ballet to enjoy Swan Lake and other such classics. It may even persuade an entire generation of ardent Japanese train gropers to give up frottage, panty pulling and group wanking sessions in favour of more enlightened voyeuristic pursuits.

I poured over numerous dirty pictures and video clips of naked ballerinas practising their movements and stretching their willowy limbs on the cross-bar with carefree and brazen insouciance. The Nutcracker Suite took on a whole new meaning. This stretched more than just my imagination. It also confirmed what the General has been telling me for a long time. Skinny women and especially ballerinas may be slight of build but they make up for this seeming physical deficiency by having very generous triangles of desire. In some cases their libidinous nether regions are so abundant and prominent; they positively pout and protrude proudly with beckoning ripeness. After watching the precision of their movements, their effortless grace and lightness, I was mesmerised. In my near delirious state I imagined one such sprightly and butt naked nymph pirouetting over my prostate body. Imagine how they could spin effortlessly around your……….! One such “porno prima ballerina” a 21 year old veteran with fifteen years experience admitted with youthful exuberance: “I’d really like people to take a really close look when I do my jumps and pirouettes.” How welcoming! How utterly engaging!

I instantly berated myself for being such a cultural philistine. For too long I had dismissed these lithesome creatures of the stage as unworthy of serious sexual advances. Mea culpa! I was wrong! How can one even begin to compare the big, broad, blonde brashness of uber-bimbo Pamela Anderson to the delicate suppleness of a classically trained dancer? Suddenly I had a new found interest in Pas de Deuxs and Grande Jete, (which for the uninitiated is the polite term for spreading of the legs) and other such previously unfathomable intricacies.

So if you feel uncomfortable in sleazy strip bars where fleshy, curvaceous women do strange things with beer bottles and you like your nudity more refined, then naked ballet is definitely for you. It is understandable that freshly weaned teenagers and men in their twenties are still fixated with large breasts and Jennifer Lopez derrieres. With advancing age however ones tastes evolve and hopefully become more sophisticated. I no longer automatically seek out those impressive looking Amazons with the big hair, thick thighs and heaving chests. I now gaze upon slightly built women with a new-found appreciation and a knowing glint in my eye.

And remember: if you want to be happy for the rest of your life; make a skinny woman your wife! Preferably a ballerina.

Costa Ayiotis
Pretoria

One Woman’s Flesh is Another Mans Chocolate

All is well on the southern tip of Africa. It must have something to do with the early onset of spring in Cape Town. Something is definitely up and I can feel faint stirrings in my loins as we slowly emerge from our self-imposed exile and involuntary hibernation. It’s time again to gird ones loins and go out and do battle at the sidewalk cafes of Cape Town. Yes, our ancient forefathers did exactly that. They tied leather straps around their balls and went out to look for trouble.

In winter we swathe ourselves in the protective bandage of dullness, but as summer approaches, its time to consider the virtues of being reckless again. If you want to feel truly alive nothing beats the lascivious nasty side of human existence. With the rising temperature and lengthening days, it was this nasty side that reared its ugly but fascinating head in Hout Bay recently in the form of that all too common human frailty, jealousy, but in this instance of the murderous kind. As the whales frolicked in the bay, a crime of passion was committed here in Hicksville, in our very midst, under our sunglasses so to speak, to shake us out of our winter slumber and herald the arrival of the new season.

The facts are plain: On a gloriously sunny day in a home high above the harbour an afternoon tryst ended in a bloody murder. The perpetrator of the heinous deed returned home unexpectedly and caught the two secret lovers in bed in what the police report described as a very compromising position (read having oral sex). The enraged jilted lover attacked the long-standing live-in lover, plunging a common bread knife into the victim’s neck. During the ensuing scuffle, the third party fled the scene of the crime, slipping out of the front door and speeding away to safety. Safety in this instance being the illicit lover’s home base in Camps Bay, that fertile breeding ground of deviant behaviour. As the saying goes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Yes, dear reader you guessed correctly, the protagonists in this deadly lovers triangle were all "womyn".

While the unfaithful lover lay on the floor expiring, the muted beige lounge carpet changed colour becoming a whimsical irregular pattern of gently spreading crimson. An aura of tormented stillness and studied concentration consumed the jilted partner as the reality of her deed began to sink in. She gathered all the strength left in her whitened knuckles and rage depleted fingers to dial her attorney's number and summons his assistance. The attorney escorted his client to the local police station where she duly handed herself over to the bemused policeman on duty.

Police later found the victims body on the lounge floor and next to it the blunt and bloodied kitchen knife. On the glass coffee table next to the body they found a copy of a book called "The Powerless Penis", written by a Dutch psychoanalyst called Kees Miereneuker, “The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories”, several magazines called "WOMYN" dedicated to the joys of lesbianism, a publication called Crazy for Chocolate and an Australian Women's Weekly magazine containing Finger Food recipes.

In between pondering about Freud's vexing interpretation of sexual ambivalence being primal, I continued my relentless pursuit for the perfect cup of coffee. My diligence was soon rewarded. I discovered a new coffee shop concept called Vida e Caffe. Located next to the eTV studios and the Cape Town Film and Television School, the place is so hip, you could never imagine it to have its origins in humble Portugal, the land of Fado and the flaming chourico. A junk shop in its former incarnation, the converted space is long and narrow, its walls clad in an interesting combination of cream coloured marble and brown mosaic. An extremely wide, framed black and white photograph of some Latin looking soccer team is the only decoration that adorns the otherwise empty walls.

It is a brilliantly simple concept. A self-service counter runs along its entire length, with three tables inside, counters and barstools lining the floor to ceiling windows which face onto busy Kloof street, aluminium and plastic chairs and tables scattered on the crowded sidewalk outside. They play Frank Sinatra, jazz, big band, swing and the blues. But more importantly they serve coffee in all its glorious permutations. Freshly squeezed orange juice is also on offer from a wonderful transparent contraption that looks like an automated tennis-ball serving machine. Monster muffins which are called "bolinhos" in Portuguese and "pasteis de nata" or custard pastries, are if you exclude the customers, the only edibles.

I sat on a barstool at the window multi-tasking. While casually glancing at the new UK men's magazine called "Jack", which was opened on the counter before me on the page featuring the buttock dance, I munched on a sesame-coated sweet red pepper and feta bolinho, sipped a tall black iced Americano to wash it all down and happily contemplated the light-hearted frothiness of life. "Jack" is a great read. I highly recommend it to all genders. It is chock a block full of crass commercial goodness, that all too tasty cocktail of sterile hedonism that we so often condemn yet secretly covet. It features an orgy of war, animals, humour, fashion, girls, guns, mountains, killer whales and motel sex.

I was eyeing the clientele - a heady mixture of bored Camps Bay housewives, vegetarians but with a carnivorous look in their eyes and gays, both attracted by the Adonis serving types in their tight T-shirts and full aprons, waif like models with flat bottoms, denim clad students, studio execs, advertising moguls, lawyers, ageing lotharios and ordinary lechers like me.

My first view of her was from behind. I was unobserved and therefore safe to appraise her wares undisturbed. In a world obsessed with speed and thinness, she was a welcome exception. She had the full type of voluptuous body that Levantine men find immensely satisfying. Her movements were slow and deliberate. As she sashayed across the room, she swayed her hips with the practiced ease of a professional belly-dancer. If she had lived in another age, place and time, she would have flourished in this noble calling and been greatly admired for her skill. She wore a dove grey dress that not only adhered to but also perfectly followed the contours of her generous body. Her cleft round protuberances were on the whole mostly constricted by her underwear. But gently spreading on either side of the V-shaped lines, that rampant bulging pear of unconfined flesh made contact with the soft cotton of her dress. A thin gold chain dangled around her waist at a rakish angle to further entice the unmistakable Arab intent in my hungry eyes.

Only after more bolinho and coffee could I bear to look again at that tantalising outline of desire. Here before me was full-blooded womanhood in motion. Here before me was proof that a fully clothed woman is infinitely more alluring than a naked one. I mused if she were mine; I'd resolve to have good manners even in the bedroom. Greek style, Arab style, Turkish style, call it what you will would definitely be out of the question. I would be clean; I would never slap her on the bottom. I'd keep my socks on, I'd say please and thank you. In short I would be a perfect gentleman and like every good gentleman knows, I would use my elbows as the other critical points in the libidinous triangle.

That's the strange thing about bounteous bottoms and women who wear stockings. The top is always nearest to the bottom. It struck me that so many women are best viewed from behind. As the great author Philip Roth discovered with Irish girls, they have too many repressed feelings and are not used to being openly admired. If you want to eyeball women in a blatant direct way, it seems you have to go all the way to Brazil. No, here at home there's too much pussy-footing. Furtive, stolen glances are all that today's emasculated male can offer and all that today’s liberated woman can handle. Notice how when you ogle them directly, how they reflexively raise the ramparts and fold their arms to hide their breasts.

Then as fate would have it, I spotted a young uninhibited lass with short copper- coloured hair that proved me hopelessly wrong. She had poured herself into a red T-shirt all pointed and pert that exposed her belly and pierced navel. She wore a long faded denim hipster skirt, slung incredibly low even by my increasingly lax standards. This was not a skirt. This was a weapon worn like a gunslingers belt and with the same brazen insouciance. Adorned across her mid-riff, snaking and spiralling its way around was clearly tattooed a message of "Love". Written in a distinctive cursive longhand style and addressed to the world at large, it followed the outline of where her panties should have been, plunging downwards, with words unknown, a hidden message perhaps, to end we don't know where, but we can only hope at the lips of her shaven mound of Venus or at the very least at the tip of her Brazilian, again that mysterious triangle of desire.

While Europe flooded, I was in a trance. My midday reverie was then abruptly shattered by two well-coifed attractive young women sitting next to me sipping tall Latte's and dressed like no-nonsense professional types, dark slacks, white blouses, tailored jackets. The conversation I overheard invaded my thoughts and left me mildly perplexed. They were discussing the merits of the Indian squat position as a remedy for constipation. There are many women out there it seems that are afflicted with blockaded guts. This was a sad fact that I did not need to be reminded of, certainly not on a sunny afternoon surrounded by so much beauty. You see in my perfect world, women only have highly desirable and purely decorative bums but no functioning anuses.The two women had tried every remedy known to man to no avail: liquorice, papaya, prunes, bran, beetroot, olive oil, five rams suppositories from China, hydro-colonic irrigation, Brooklax, Agiolax, marimba jam, Senokot, seeds and such. No joy. One of the women had gone to India to find herself by losing herself in the second most populous nation on this earth. A journey of "spiritual re-awakening" she called it. She returned home several months later with a cure for her constipation and a new found respect for nice new shiny things like chrome toasters and BMW's.

At this stage an unwelcome internal debate was raging inside my head. Did I have anything significant to add to their conversation? Was continuing and all-knowing silence my best recourse? I wanted to tell them that the Indian-style squat had been perfected if not invented by the great Ghandijee as a non-violent way to defy the British. They would not have believed me. I wanted to tell them that as a young boy my father had taught me how to execute this potentially dangerous manoeuvre, while perched precariously on the slippery rim of a porcelain toilet bowl. They would not have cared to listen. On our country trips he taught me to gingerly lift the toilet seat with the tip of my shoe. Then you had to remove your jockeys and trousers, while keeping your shoes on, a task a whole lot easier to accomplish in the bell-bottom era and then squat on the rim. Keeping your shoes on was always advisable. I once tried the elevated squat wearing only my socks and a short-sleeved shirt. With superhuman effort I tried desperately to stay balanced on the treacherous rim, as all hell exploded beneath me. My foot slipped and I narrowly missed crushing my testicles into a pulp. I wanted to challenge them to attempt this position in their Manolo Blahnik stilettos but I remained silent. Constipation was not my problem, and at home I had in any event rendered the plastic seat redundant, preferring the cold comfort of sitting directly on the porcelain rim, this having the added advantage of providing more dangling room for my male paraphernalia.

Murder most foul, buttocks, bolinhos, tattooed bimbettes, lavatory etiquette, breasts and Brazilians. All in the space of a week. What next? After all this a fitting finale that could have featured the title:"Crazy Things to do with Chocolate." I read the disquieting news from Durban that an enterprising young artist called Nicola Deane shaved her body from head to toe, donned a schoolgirls uniform, sans the knickers, sat down on a chair in front of a live audience, opened her legs and under the harsh glare of the stage lights above made chocolate moulds of her vagina. This was an unusual performance of Home Economics at its best at the NSA Gallery. The performance was followed by polite applause, the audience visibly relieved that no-one was offered any chocolates to eat on the night. The chocolates are however on sale at the gallery at R250 for a gold box? of eight. A fellow conceptual artist, named Peet Pienaar not to be outdone grabbed his penis, pointed it at the the audience and waved it around in a slow circular motion.

You may ask: art, pornography or simply acts of liberating life? I don't know. What I do know is what I want for Christmas; Peace and goodwill among men and a gold box of chocolates, preferably dark.

Best regards
Costa
Cape Town, 28 November 2002.