“Hi, are you guys law students?”
“He is, I’m not” my friend responds while pointing at the law student.

I move my head, spotting an eager-looking, blue-eyed person. His gaze on our splattered pages and laptops, empty glass tea holders, highlighters.

“Oh, where do you go to school?”
“UCLA.”
“Oh, I’m at UCLA too!” Its nice to have a conversation with a stranger, I think to myself.
“What’s your major?” my friend asks.
“History – what kind of law do you want to do?”
“Immigration – or at least something in that general area.”
“Cool – so did you go to law school immediately after school?”
“No no no, I’m old – I’ve been out of school for five years.”
“Oh.”

After we end this semi-awkward conversation, we return to our highlighting sticks and typing machines.

We two brown people in a Persian cafe that serves Brazilian coffee. A good place. There are some women sitting on the side, not far from us. No one is really far in this small place, where there are backgammon boards and wonderful-looking cheesecakes under shiny bright glass. There is hookah outside and Persian music inside.

Next thing I hear is Farsi coming from this eager person’s mouth. He has conversations with the workers at the restaurant, he talks to the women. They are astounded that he can speak and comprehend their language. His chair slowly moves towards them as the two tables warm up to each other.

It turns out that he is studying Farsi and as he speaks more and more of it, asking the women questions as he studies, they are oohing and aahing at his language mastery. He is humble and I’m not so sure it is genuine or not. He constantly asks every few minutes “don’t mean to bother you, but…” He is trying hard to seem the oblivious eager language learner.

Of course, I am always wondering. Is he really oblivious to it all, to the appropriation of someone’s else’s language, going to a cafe to try and talk it up with women who are impressed by his abilities? Are his language abilities indicative of a larger kind of respect of culture that people with immense amounts of privilege often don’t have? Or is it straight up appropriation?

Of course, he could simply be trying to learn – and what better place than a Persian cafe? Right?

Right.

I’m talking about most of my days, the ways time runs throughout, a fervent arbiter, peeking its way into my world through my clocks: my watch, my computer, my phone. It dictates me and my physical and mental movements more than I would have ever hoped.

Sectioned, cordoned, walled, cut off. Everything in its box and time keeps it there. Classes, studying, friends, neighbors, family, lovers, objects, sidewalks, roads, mouth movements, head nods, surface tensions, deep gut feelings, books, cleaning, plant watering. All have their respective theories of time and all are tunneled through something that can be made instantaneous, a flick of the wrist and I know how to rank those things with respect to the AM or the PM, the colon and the hands.

It has its way about me, this time. It can know how I’m feeling and give me another few seconds or it can rip hours out of me. It can falter at times and I can zealously swindle it for more. I can take a gamble and usually lose. I can spend hours phone calling and realize time got lazy and made itself known to me with a fearless vengeance moments later when I fall asleep on my case books, drool and all. I wake hours later, realizing I was done in once again.

There is, however, one peculiarity in this varied mix. Its kind of a secret weapon. Its those moments when I pay no mind to the exacting nature of it all, the compression of experiences that demeans every piece compressed juxtaposed with the slicing and dicing of my daily travels. The varied artificial ways we experience everything is rendered unique and approaches something feeling tangible and real, even a kind of natural. Its the most beautiful thing, gleaned from a sordid past, and it makes things slow down. The swirling of things loses its ferociousness and they turn into mild eddies, ones you just want to sit next to and enjoy, at least for a little bit.

This secret weapon, this delay in dissection, is when I have my tea.

These days, I’m into Moroccan Mint. Anyone else?