man of the crowd

I have been sick for the past week, and the weather has been terrible. Today, after working for part of the morning, I just had to get out, so I came here--to Starbucks...coffee too strong and food too greasy and pasty. But I just needed to sit here, even if I am just looking out the window at the rain, even if I am still not fully recovered. Suddenly, I had a flash of recognition...

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the large bow window of the D -- -- Coffee House in London. For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui -- moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs -- the _____ -- and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its everyday condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in everything. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. "The Man of the Crowd" Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

But, this is not London and the crowds passing are mostly cars in the rain.