The Perfect Chocolate

A quest far greater than the search for the holy grail, the search for the perfect chocolate has been a concern of mine for a very long time now.

If you’re chocolate fans, you all know by now that there are not only different types of filling, but also different percentages of cocoa in every chocolate bar.

Now most often, chocolate comes at about 36% cocoa, which means everything else is milk and sugar. The cheaper a chocolate bar is, the more sugar it contains, because it is the cheapest ingredient in chocolate. Also, if a chocolate bar has a higher percentage of cocoa, it will be more expensive.

The fact is that most people enjoy simple, milky sweet chocolate, and don’t look far beyond a few fillings and a couple of crisps. However, a real chocoholic will apreciate the more intense flavor of higher cocoa content. The most bitter chocolate i’ve seen so far, is Lindt’s 99% cocoa, which is mostly cocoa mix boiled down to almost pure cocoa. It sounds exciting, but the fact is you can only take very small bits at a time, with a glass of water or milk on hand, and even so ONLY IF you have some bitter chocolate experience. Beginners will find this sort disgusting.

On the other hand, the more you get accustomed to high quality chocolate, the more disgusted you are by sugary cheap replicas of quality products. I’ve found out, by experimenting, that the best chocolate to eat on a regular basis is somewhere around 64%, as it has a good and filling cocoa taste but isn’t either too bitter to have much of or to sweet to enjoy.

Enjoy!

Pablo

It was love at first sight.

Believe me, i’d never touched one of his kind before. Never even thought about it. The nerve… me? a respectable young woman, involved in such deeds? Nonsensical. But then again…

That colour did look great on him. The smoothness, the way he opposed my every touch… call me crazy, I think i’m in love. Course, he’s already taken. I could get one of my own, but they don’t come easy, and i hear maintenance is quite difficult. Might be worth it tho, intercourse is great…

No silly. I don’t mean sex. No, of course i wasn’t talking about a man! They’re whimsical, fussy and you can never rely on them. Pablo’s kind, however, only requires a little attention and he’s yours for life. And trust me, it takes just as much nerve to learn how to ‘use’ a man as it does a guitar.

Yes, yes, that’s right, Pablo is a guitar. A cheap one, i hear, but oh boy does he have a personality… There’s no pushing down on him. He likes to be all over the place… hehe, come to think about it, he ain’t that different from most men i know.

He did give me a couple of bruises… my fingers will never be the same again, and my wrist… well, i should get it back in a day or two. But oh was it grand. Course, the neighbors complained about the noise. They always do.

On the other hand, how many times can you listen to bad ’smoke on the water’ without getting a bit… edgy? If the answer is more than three, give me a call, we’ll work something out.

Hell knows, i might even get one of my own. Friends, neighbor, local authorities, beware. No park shall be safe. No hour of the night shall go unviolated. But know this: I’ll be having one hell of a time. Safe.

The Bartender

It’s only fit that i open this blog with him.

I saw.
There were coffee stains, bikers and tight leather jackets. The girl had a tatoo, the man with the vacant eyes had to greet six people before sitting down, but i bet none of them really knew him.
I didn’t greet anyone but that was allright, since no one knew me either.
Couldn’t really help but think: dull weather. dull people. dull me.

The only things i felt were how bad the coffee was. how cold i was. how empty i, and everyone else were.
But that’s another kind of feeling.
We were all empty because we weren’t all really there.
Fake little robots, with conditioned brains, pre-determined actions, and complete ignorance, that’s what we were.
Awful little creatures, which strive to be unique. All of them are just as unique as everyone else.

And only one of us wasn’t blind.
Everyone else, the girl with the exhuberant smiles, the men talking about a silly old football match, the old man with the portraits, were fake.
I thought ‘you can’t take a portrait of someone and not notice them, now, can you?’… Wrong. He could. He did.
The drawing is smiling at me, in cheap charcoal lines. I don’t know that person… that couldn’t be me, i wasn’t even attempting a smile.
That lot was rotten blind from one end to the other.

One of us, however, was different.
At first, i only saw the way he moved, it seemed odd. It didn’t look rewinded. Then, i saw him smiling.
I remember wondering why the bartender was coming my way, though i hadn’t asked for anything. I found out.
He came my way because he saw a girl and a tear or two. And he braught along a box of chocolates.
No phone-numbers were exchanged, no idle romance, not many words. But it was, oh, so different.
I saw him there, and couldn’t believe it: not blind, not ignoring me. not only wanting to help, but there. A real person, really there. He wasn’t there because i asked him, he wasn’t there because he was scared i’d kill myself and spill blood all over the floors, he was just there.

Suddenly, i woke up in a real place. It was the same, only real. I didn’t feel like a shadow, i didn’t feel like i could pass through the floor,
it actually held up against my pushes. And i stopped thinking about the 50 pairs of eyes that ignored me, because of the one pair that didn’t.

I don’t know how to change things, i’m not as good as he. For all i know, that may have been the epitome of his existence. He may be dull, bland, a psychopath or a killer, he may be a real pessimist, or just as depressed and lonely as me, but he was my unlikely, unworthy, unexpected knight in shining armor.
And i’m thankful for every little detail of him.

Sergiu, this is to you, the only thanks i know how to give.

‘ Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
Its not warm when she away
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
This house just ain’t no home
Anytime she goes away’