I-We and some bitter coffee (for fff)

One of your favourite articles is by Jonathan Jones (Wild Ones) and there's a nice and small piece in today's Guardian which pointed you to this painting.

Last week you read a page on Steffi Graf. So wonderful to see a person so deeply in love and so at home in the world. The great balancing act: is it possible without love and friendship? Actually, the best thing in the whole paper is usually the one page quick-fire interview or the one page called 'experience'. The obituaries are very rarely well written. If it's death you want, then turn to the Telegraph.

A good kitchen table where everyone eats together is my version of the wonderful (must get Gopnik's book).  Deep fried courgette flowers stuffed with ricotta cheese. Yes, a book on a table. What was that line by Plato again...twice removed?

The great combinations in the world: chocolate and coffee; chocolate and orange; chocolate and cherries. Some things by nature like to combine with other things (a bit of mysticism there for you!).

Coffee, pluralism, distinctions, religion. Recent threads.

Coffee and tea are a great civilizing force in the history of humankind (yeah, doesn't say much for humankind, I guess). You don't quite trust people who drink neither (and are completely sceptical about funny Europeans and Turks who drink the latter without milk..God forgive them, for...)

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You make your way out down Shaftesbury Avenue against an unusually boisterous Saturday crowd. It's only when you see people in S&M gear, gold wings, wigs, and school uniforms do you realize you're moving against a mass of humanity sauntering towards Soho for the Gay Pride ..what is it..a protest/march/celebration? It must be awful to be just a normal gay person and see all this theatricality.

In any case, you finally get to the National and find your Titian, Rembrandt, and the clear and calm interior spaces of  Da Hooch..and then 'the Allegory of Asia' which is stunningly beautiful. You look closely at Turner's Steam and Speed for the first time and see Venice again.

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A distinction: large parts of modernity are about erasing distinctions. You can't but help feel that this is a wonderful thing, a significant achievement of the Enlightenment and socialism-to use two old and unfashionable words: the differences between men and women, between races, between religions or even the distinction between the feelings and thoughts of religious and non-religious people now count for less and less. Class inequalities remain a profound problem, of course. On the other hand, the erasing of the boundaries between the private and the public, between markets and ethics is all deeply problematic. At another level, the notion that there is an "up" and a "down" (Milosz) also seems to be on its way out. Is that true, is that really true, b?

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Coffee, latest research shows, inhibits the mind from wandering and is, therefore, no friend of creativity. You find things when you're not looking for them.

Helen, the Greek girl with long flowing black hair, thick luscious lips and deep, timeless eyes asked me if I wanted some coffee. It was the muddy Turkish stuff which is cooked on an open flame in a long-handled copper pot. On drinking it my mind suddenly freed up, as if I'd opened the door of a very old house and found a bright empty room I'd never seen before. Everything I read became immediately understandable. My attention was concentrated, focused, and it soaked up whatever it was fed. More than that, my mind felt like a sparkling stream, pure, clear, able to race along free from any feelings.

Of course, the next day I went back for more, hooked to that fleeting experience, the kick of a few minutes of life being untangled. Perhaps that's what we all do in our lives anyway, try and recreate some magical moment, or look down the same street where we once saw something that piqued our interest. The glance, sideways, at something strangely familiar, some higher truth half-guessed at, a vague shamanistic belief that there was 'oneness', or at least a connection. The belief  that chance was just a word for the shortness of our horizons. There are reminders, intuitions, of other times; a time when distinctions simply don't enter the equation.