the cup

Something about coffee. Something about it that makes even bad coffee better than no coffee. “Caffeine”, some would say, but it’s not that, really. I’m lying in my bed at midnight, sipping coffee in spite of the caffeine – certainly not because of it. I’m not sure what it is. I could say “flavor”, and I think that’s closer, but not exactly it. It’s the flavor that brings to mind so many things. Its taste brings to mind a shape – roundness, I think, or close to it. Somehow in that smokey bitterness, there is also … not the sum of … but, i don’t know, the memory of all things that have happened since I became a “drinker”. And then, of course, there is the smell which is so akin to the flavor. And there is also the feel of the freshly roasted beans, slick with oil. And what is coffee, anyway? Perhaps you could call it drink… but no one could ever call it food, as you might could call most other drinks.

It is a perfect lesson in cultural presuppositions, over here. You know, those things which are so perfectly natural to us that they are invisible? Most people over here drink coffee in the Arabic fashion – quite strong, with plenty of sugar and sometimes cardamom and ginger. I have a certain comedy routine here. A well-worn shtick, by now.

“I drink a lot of coffee,” I say, “but I drink American coffee,” by which I mean that I drink it black and often stretched relatively thin with water as is true of drip-coffee.

“Yes, yes,” they say, agreeing, but without the foggiest notion of what is meant by “American coffee”, as if I had told them that I drink “American milk”.

I say, “American coffee doesn’t have anything in it.”

“Ah, yes,” they reply. They still don’t understand. They think they do, but they don’t.

Then I say, “No ginger, no cardamum, not even any sugar.”

This is when they say “What? No sugar?!”

And some laughter ensues. Usually I am told that I am insane.

You see, sugar is as presupposed to be in coffee as water is. As a matter of fact, they sweeten fruit juices with sugar, here. I have tried, on multiple occasions, to explain why this is utterly unnecessary, utterly unhealthy, and utterly ridiculous. My pleas are usually met with laughter – surely I can’t be serious. Apple juice is far tastier with a heap of sugar added to it.

“Bllleugghhehshgshgahlllkh!” This is the sound that I make at the thought of Apple juice with a heap of sugar added to it.

But, back to coffee. Well, actually, I don’t have much else to say about it. I’m drinking it, though. Right now. With no sugar in it. It tastes like America. Like dearest friends that I feel like I am only always saying goodbye to. Or, like hanging out with girls and feeling possibility hovering in the air. It is early-morning reverence and it is also staying up too late. It is celebrating, but it is also coping, and lately it is more of the latter. But, perhaps I have no palate for sweeter things.

Captain

Waiting for Manot

There’s a sound on my cell phone called “Notify”, and it sounds like this:

be-be-be-beeeep, be-be-be-beeeep, be-be-be-beeeep

and so on.

It’s the sound I hear when my phone alarm goes off. I hear it this morning at 6:00AM. And then I hear it again at 6:08. And again at 6:15. I know those aren’t equidistant times, but my phone alarm runs on a series of incredibly complex algorithms that I can’t take the time to explain right now.

If you’re wondering, does he usually wake up at a 6- time?, the answer is no, and this explains to some extent why, upon rising, I stand as still as a statue for about 85 seconds, staring at the wad of linen which was my bedsheet. Near the end of that period, it dawns on me first that I exist, and then a bit later that I am awake, and then a bit later that I am standing up and staring at my bed. That is when I finally move.

I walk to the kitchen counter and proceed to pour whole coffee beans into my french press. I look, blinking, at the press in my hand, realizing that whole beans don’t go in there but not quite remembering where I should have put them. Of course, the grinder.

Speeding ahead, a shower and pot of coffee later, I pull the wooden stool in my bedroom up to my computer and wait on my Skype appointment. There’s ever so much dot-dot-dotting in life. It’s that time between the last thing that was noteworthy and the next thing that you think will be. I spend this time staring out the window. Well, actually, first I stare at the window. The glass is so dirty that in my mind I begin planning a stunt where halfway through my Skype chat I will turn my computer around so that my audience can see how dirty my window is and then more fully appreciate how difficult my life is. “You’re lucky that in America you have such clean windows,” I’ll say, my eyebrows raised and my head nodding instructively.

I can see people passing on the road, although the wall that encloses my yard obscures all but their shoulders and heads. Pedestrians are few in number, this time of day. A white woman shuffles along, struggling with a leash and lifting it up as high as her head, which is tilted backwards – the apical manifestation of a fight for leverage against a struggling pet. She lurches along. I laugh at the mental picture of her pedigreed hound striving to break loose and run free with the pack of vagrant street dogs that occasionally loiters in the neighborhood. I wonder what the nationals here must think of a pet dog on a leash. I try to imagine someone in Arkansas walking a pet raccoon on a leash. Something like that, I think: conceivable, but odd.

My skype appointment never happens. I can’t say for sure why, but what I do know is that America is very far away, and I think that has something to do with it.

meditations

i’ve added a new section to the site, meditations. i hope it will be a prolific endeavor, but i also know my penchant for phases.

that oddity about my mind which connects holiness with order has made me inclined to exclude these new entries from this main stream of my blog so that they may be kept together and set apart. i hope that perhaps you will feel it worth your time, once in a while, to make the pilgrimage all the way over here from your RSS readers.

also, you may notice that i’ve given the design a modest revision. just trying to spice things up for you 3 people who read my site!

love,
captain s.