In which, here on Hirchenplatz, all's right with the world

I am sitting outside in the autumn sun, at a Mexican restaurant on Hirchenplatz in Zurich. I have had one margarita, one caipirinha, red snapper in mango sauce and Mexican rice. I have bummed a cigarette off the stunning blonde woman at the next table. I used to be a ten-a-day smoker, sending Everest fumes to the sky above the Law Faculty at the University of Zimbabwe, to the horror and consternation of the angry university gardeners who thought my smoking most unAfrican, most unwomanly. I am a social smoker now, smoking only when the moment feels right.

And this moment feels right.

A little girl with glorious russet brown hair falls on the cobblestones. She stands up and laughs at herself. The man right in front of me looks lost and English. The building behind him is bright yellow against the cerulean sky. It is unseasonal weather, everyone says.

I love Europe in the autumn.

A few moments ago, a band of kids came by, all Goth black and nose rings, full of energy and spirit. They are protesting antifeminismus with angry eloquence. My heart goes out to them and I take a flyer.

Two hours ago, I bought two beautiful Iranian kelims, worn and frayed, from two men who explained their history to me in elaborate terms. They spoke over each other, one in German, the other in English.

As I sit here smoking and taking in everything on Hirchenplatz, I think suddenly of Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Coleridge who reportedly composed part of Kubla Khan under the influence of opium, the poem going from him as soon as the opium did.

It seems to me very funny, that.

But it is Browning who comes to me next, Browning who stays with me as Pippa passes, because the lark may not be on the wing, or the snail on the thorn, God may not be in his heaven, but it seems to me that right now, right this minute, here on Hirchenplatz, all is right with the world.

Or maybe, just perhaps, it is the margarita talking.