A slow Saturday

A moment that lasts a little bit longer than just a moment.

How democracies die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is on an old wooden table right in front of me. I saw this pretty book at a bookstore the other day and felt intuitively connected. Its black-and-red letters screamed at me TAKE ME. As an obedient reader, I took it. Am I a victim of artful marketing? Maybe. It’s still a timely read for now when Russian “democracy” is getting undone by the hand of the autocrat.

The wooden table stands on its wooden legs in a coffee shop called Pattern. It’s Saturday morning. I’m here. I’ve just finished eating a crispy buttery croissant — it tasted like a crumbling heaven. I’ve just finished drinking a flat white with rice-almond milk in it — another heaven is gone. Two heavens in a row? Lucky me. There’s still one heaven left — 311 pages of words wrapped in a white cover. This one is going to last for a while.

I divert my attention from the book to the view in the huge glass window. The fringe that separates Pattern from the rest of the world. On the outside, the pavement is covered with dehydrated brown leaves; the skies are blue with torn shreds of white cotton clouds floating still in the air; the green blocks of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine look as beautiful and grand as ever.