The thing about coffee—besides being a drug—is this: At its best, coffee gives you margin. It gives you transition time from asleep to awake, from private to public life.
Some of us have just as vivid of a life when somnolent as when waking. I, for one, have been busy all this night, doing and thinking new thoughts and actions that my awakened life neglected or didn’t have time for. Coffee gives me the moment to detach from that reality to this one.
I also used to wake up most days feeling quite ill. Headaches, uterine pain. Because I am a teacher, it’s not unusual for me to be actually ill with a head cold, and morning is the most acute time of the scratchy throat, the stuffy nose. Coffee would alleviate the headaches and soothe the scratchy throat. I’m feeling fine right now, though. Thanks for asking.
And—besides being a drug—coffee is delicious. When I was young, I used to drink coffee black. I liked the bitter taste. Because I started drinking coffee at the age of three, sipping the dregs of my parent’s cold cups, it was not just bitter (although not verybitter, my parents were ones for weak coffee. So am I, honestly.), it also had a staleness about it that I loved! There’s a stale flavor that you like, or you don’t. It’s most easily discerned in chamomile tea. I like it… I always have. Thus the beginning of my life with coffee, earlier in years than anyone might have imagined.
Nowadays, coffee is delicious in a way that the 1980s could have never imagined: Coffee is a template on which to create infinitely varied flavors and experiences. You can be as creative in preparations with coffee as you can with the good ol’ standby chicken breast. In this way, coffee appeals to those with the capability of creative expression.
I certainly don’t have that capability. Especially not as I am transitioning from asleep to awake, private to public life. But I enjoy the talents of those who do.
Another thing coffee gives is a gathering point, an occasion for community with others. Almost anyone except my husband will enjoy the offer of going to get coffee, and it’s less expensive than protein, veg, and carbs; you can linger over it as much as with any meal. Those people who don’t like coffee? They’re just being rude. Throwing a wrench in the social fabric of the universe that binds us all together. Consigning the other to caffeine-less loneliness. At least, that’s what I think.
And when you run short on time for all these social, delicious, margin-giving functions, coffee is, after all, a drug.
Isn’t your life insanely busy? Don’t you hardly have time for reflection, much less the beginning of any true leisure? (Not confusing entertainment for leisure; they couldn’t be less kin.) We need drugs to get us through this inflexible, hardened, exhausting world we created. Coffee does that for us.
So, when I pause to enumerate the benefits of coffee, I become disgruntled with myself, the busy life I have made, and society that aids and abets that blinding run for us all. Regardless of my feelings toward myself or others, coffee is there for us, smoothing the path as we blearily shamble through the world.
Wait. Maybe this isn’t a good thing. Maybe it is coffee that has brought us to this. Coffee, and electric light in homes. Without those two things, I am sure we’d get to bed at a much more decent hour, and then we wouldn’t have a drug to hep us up, to pull out of our beds, our fatigue.
I take it back! I take it all back. Coffee is a great evil in this world. Without it, I would have to realize the limits of my humanity and just stay home. I’d probably lose that home, come to utter ruin, but at least I’d be well rested.
And that’s that.
I need to check into tea.
(Originally posted 10.18.18)
No comments:
Post a Comment