Le Chat Noir – Defamiliarisation

I had dug it out from one of the many half opened boxes in my search for something else. I was looking for items to fill the blank emptiness of the wall, something to make my new room less like a strangers whilst I unpacked. The large rectangular poster was a perfect fit. The combination of red, yellow and back went surprisingly well with the faded cream flower patterned wallpaper.
The longer I stood there looking at it the more I could feel the black cat, sitting right in the middle of the poster, staring back into my eyes. I was instantly taken back to Paris. The memories of my holiday flowed into my mind like a dream I had just woken up from and was trying to remember. I was taken back to the quirky shops we had discovered in hidden alleys, how we had wanted to be daring and adventurous and had gone exploring down random, winding cobbled roads and gotten horribly lost. How since none of us spoke french we had attempted using makeshift sign language with some people and ended up looking like babbling monkeys at the zoo. How they had then chased after us thinking we were insulting them and I had fallen catastrophically  down a few steps and broken my leg. I had spent the end of our trip hospitalised to come home with a lovely pair of crutches as my only souvenir. And all this for a simple cup of coffee.