I decided to walk around campus after dark tonight while I talked on the phone with Kristen. The weather was just warm enough so that all you'd have to do was to keep walking to stave off the cold. After I got off the phone with her, I walked back towards the dorm past Botany Pond. I've been hearing that the entire family of ducks that took up residence in the little artificial pond died last week, and their bodies have been floating in the water the whole weekend. The surface of the water was covered in lilipads that reflected something like moonlight (really a pale blue-white wash from the flood lights on the buildings) and made the surface of the water look lumpy and opaque. I couldn't help but imagine the posterior of a duck protruding from those lilpads or seeing a webbed foot or two rising from the surface. And I did think I saw them, and of course I stopped and walked to the very edge of the pond to get a closer look. They weren't duck-bodies I saw, just lilipads that the wind had caught and shaped into little white cups. As the wind stirred, though, I didn't like the looks of the lilicups, either; they looked like the heads of Venus fly-traps, the breeze flapping them to make it seem like they were gnashing tiny jaws. I wonder: when was the last time they'd been fed?
Then I went through Cobb Gate on to 57th, and to totally spoil the mood was a guy in an SUV blasting "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits. How can you feel morbid when that song is playing? Thomas knows.
This morning, I totally failed in my attempt at making my ritual morning cup of coffee. This is the first time in this whole academic year that I've screwed up making coffee in my little Brookstone one-cupper, and considering that I've had coffee virtually every single morning, this marks quite a milestone in incompetency. See, I was so distracted by having to open a new can of Folger's that I put the 2 scoops of grounds in the filter, closed the hatch, and pushed ON... completely forgetting to add water OR the mug. I realized it when my little coffeemaker started dry heaving, and I leapt to fill a cup of water and get it in the hatch so I might still salvage the cup. As soon as I poured the water in, though, it must've struck the hot plate that heats the water, because the top layer of grounds were instantaneously blown all over the inside surfaces of the machine by a slight steam explosion-- like a thermodynamic sneeze-- in the hatch. I slammed the lid shut, and when it finished its business, I tasted the coffee. Not totally ruined, but it had a horrible taste of burnt grounds and I only took three more sips, enough to get the caffeine into my blood. The mug, quite full, is still sitting next to me. Like a black cup o' corpse.
As long as I've got this little story, I might as well use it for metaphor.
Imagine that every one of us is given, from birth, something akin to a small heap of coffee grounds. There's enough energy and potential for flavor and body and bite all in what amounts to a few scoops: enough for one perfect cup of coffee. But even all the crucial elements for coffee are present in the grounds, the grounds by themselves are latent... you can't do a thing with them. So you have to add water. The water is only water, of course, but it's a vessel: it reacts with the heap of grounds and infuses it, the water organizes and directs it, tapping into the flavor and making something out of the rich coffee-dust. But how many of us know how to add the correct amount of water, and how many of us aren't even really sure how to operate the damn thing? How many heaps of coffee are left unsown? I think everyone's got good stuff-- Maxwell House, Columbian, Folger's, finely ground, home-brew Starbucks-- but not everybody knows where to put the water in. Or maybe they forget to. Or maybe they sit all their lives chewing on the grinds, or pressing them in their hands and hope they get a drop or two. I see this as a great way of looking at creative potential, but maybe I'm pressing this image too hard-- is anything coming out? But don't you like that image of the water giving coffee corporeal form? It makes it drinkable. Usable.
I have two awesome zits above my lip. Sigh.
Then I went through Cobb Gate on to 57th, and to totally spoil the mood was a guy in an SUV blasting "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits. How can you feel morbid when that song is playing? Thomas knows.
This morning, I totally failed in my attempt at making my ritual morning cup of coffee. This is the first time in this whole academic year that I've screwed up making coffee in my little Brookstone one-cupper, and considering that I've had coffee virtually every single morning, this marks quite a milestone in incompetency. See, I was so distracted by having to open a new can of Folger's that I put the 2 scoops of grounds in the filter, closed the hatch, and pushed ON... completely forgetting to add water OR the mug. I realized it when my little coffeemaker started dry heaving, and I leapt to fill a cup of water and get it in the hatch so I might still salvage the cup. As soon as I poured the water in, though, it must've struck the hot plate that heats the water, because the top layer of grounds were instantaneously blown all over the inside surfaces of the machine by a slight steam explosion-- like a thermodynamic sneeze-- in the hatch. I slammed the lid shut, and when it finished its business, I tasted the coffee. Not totally ruined, but it had a horrible taste of burnt grounds and I only took three more sips, enough to get the caffeine into my blood. The mug, quite full, is still sitting next to me. Like a black cup o' corpse.
As long as I've got this little story, I might as well use it for metaphor.
Imagine that every one of us is given, from birth, something akin to a small heap of coffee grounds. There's enough energy and potential for flavor and body and bite all in what amounts to a few scoops: enough for one perfect cup of coffee. But even all the crucial elements for coffee are present in the grounds, the grounds by themselves are latent... you can't do a thing with them. So you have to add water. The water is only water, of course, but it's a vessel: it reacts with the heap of grounds and infuses it, the water organizes and directs it, tapping into the flavor and making something out of the rich coffee-dust. But how many of us know how to add the correct amount of water, and how many of us aren't even really sure how to operate the damn thing? How many heaps of coffee are left unsown? I think everyone's got good stuff-- Maxwell House, Columbian, Folger's, finely ground, home-brew Starbucks-- but not everybody knows where to put the water in. Or maybe they forget to. Or maybe they sit all their lives chewing on the grinds, or pressing them in their hands and hope they get a drop or two. I see this as a great way of looking at creative potential, but maybe I'm pressing this image too hard-- is anything coming out? But don't you like that image of the water giving coffee corporeal form? It makes it drinkable. Usable.
I have two awesome zits above my lip. Sigh.
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