Good morning, world! The world is clear. Smooth wine red and sky blue frames circle the cuts of glass through which I see you now.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Clearance
After nearly two months of attempting to understand, accommodate, and excuse our neighbors across the street from the Dilworth cafe, the three of us who were working this morning stood outside the shop just before opening, as the sky grew light. B. held a cigarette in his hand, A. a mug of drip coffee, and I a single espresso. We stared at the empty cement plaza across the street which, up until one o'clock this morning, had held dozens and dozens of tents occupied by a peculiar, hygienically-challenged alien race.
As I had rounded the corner to Dilworth Plaza this morning, I had been greeted by an incredible sight of what appeared to be the entire Philadelphia police force surrounding this former tent city. Police cars lined up ass to nose, buses filled with riot police, a helicopter in the sky, workers (surprisingly not dressed in hazmat suits) clearing up the last scraps of tent and the last bit of the 27 tons of trash that had accumulated since October 6th. But not a single one of those smelly squatters remained.
The pastry man, along with the first two of our customers of the day showed up, so I headed in first. The other two followed suit soon after. A. did a quick bathroom check, dusted off his hands, and declared optimistically, "Yo! From now on, bathroom gonna be OK!" (Translation: No more clogged toilets, blood on the floor, overflowing trash, extreme BO, or lines that run longer than the line for coffee!)
What have I to say at the end of all this? I have learned that whoever you are, your politics means nothing to me. It says nothing to me automatically about what kind of person you are, or how you treat others. Politics is so superficial. It's so easy to hold up a set of political beliefs on a sandwich board and pretend that it defines you in any way, but now I know better. Don't bother telling me whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, investment banker or starving artist, of the 99% or the 1%. In my shop, I will see for myself whether your are courteous and kind and know how to flush a toilet.
As I had rounded the corner to Dilworth Plaza this morning, I had been greeted by an incredible sight of what appeared to be the entire Philadelphia police force surrounding this former tent city. Police cars lined up ass to nose, buses filled with riot police, a helicopter in the sky, workers (surprisingly not dressed in hazmat suits) clearing up the last scraps of tent and the last bit of the 27 tons of trash that had accumulated since October 6th. But not a single one of those smelly squatters remained.
The pastry man, along with the first two of our customers of the day showed up, so I headed in first. The other two followed suit soon after. A. did a quick bathroom check, dusted off his hands, and declared optimistically, "Yo! From now on, bathroom gonna be OK!" (Translation: No more clogged toilets, blood on the floor, overflowing trash, extreme BO, or lines that run longer than the line for coffee!)
What have I to say at the end of all this? I have learned that whoever you are, your politics means nothing to me. It says nothing to me automatically about what kind of person you are, or how you treat others. Politics is so superficial. It's so easy to hold up a set of political beliefs on a sandwich board and pretend that it defines you in any way, but now I know better. Don't bother telling me whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, investment banker or starving artist, of the 99% or the 1%. In my shop, I will see for myself whether your are courteous and kind and know how to flush a toilet.
Cafe Scenes
Mila came in today with a crown of flowers in her hair. I miss her coming into the shop in her pajamas and dangling from her tummy over the chair, experimenting with flight. Later, Gilda came in with her daughter to drop off biscotti.Who was cuter-- the mother or the daughter? I bought butterfly stickers after work for these girls and all the other adorables that come into the shop. Too many to count; too cute for words.
In the evening, I put on my alter ego attire-- a leotard, tights, and ballet slippers-- and headed over to ballet class. Along the way, I ran into the Red-Eye Winker (his drink is a red-eye, and he gives a friendly wink every time he orders). We both stood under our giant black umbrellas and doffed our imaginary hats at each other. He's just as silly as I am!
In the evening, I put on my alter ego attire-- a leotard, tights, and ballet slippers-- and headed over to ballet class. Along the way, I ran into the Red-Eye Winker (his drink is a red-eye, and he gives a friendly wink every time he orders). We both stood under our giant black umbrellas and doffed our imaginary hats at each other. He's just as silly as I am!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
As a La Colombe barista, I have a front row view of the tents occupying Dilworth Plaza, 6 hours a day, 4 days a week. It is interesting to be caught in in the middle of this movement physically and ideologically. Our second shop being located in the city's financial and government district, many of my "clients"-- the people to whom I serve their daily coffee-- are the very people whom the protesters are fighting against. I can't say whether they are part of the top wealthy 1%, but for sure they are not what I would call "middle class". Of course, our clientele is not limited to those who make banks, but they do make up a noteworthy portion.
Lately, however, we have had a great influx of clientele from the tents. In the beginning, they came in primarily to clean themselves up and piss in a proper toilet, but upon realizing that this was our livelihood, they started checking out our coffee as well. The exchange is often rather strange and awkward-- they come in already apologetic, perhaps holding up a cup they had purchased earlier in the day, head toward the bathroom asking in expression more than words if it's okay to use it. Some just head directly to the bathroom without making eye contact. Some act like normal customers and human beings, which is a welcome relief.
Yesterday, a mother took her daughter into the bathroom. I heard water running, then the hand dryer blowing, then suddenly a scream that carried throughout the cafe. For a millisecond, I was extremely worried, then realized the little girl was screaming with delight at how funny the air felt as it blow-dried her hair. I wondered if she was one of the children caught up in this movement unwittingly, forced to live in a plastic playhouse among the tents while their parents alternately stand proudly with their signs and ideologies, then turn around and break up tearful fights among one another's babies.
This evening, 5 minutes before closing time, an occupier gave a purposeful start when I offered her plastic cups for the water she had requested. She then proceeded to give an unsolicited explanation for why she "made a face" when I offered her the cups. "You see, I'm a person who recycles all the time..." I didn't need to hear this, and I can't say that I took it with grace. I have no patience for self-righteous, condescending, holier-than-thou attitudes, and it made me want to take a bulldozer over all those tents out there. It took me a few minutes in the back kitchen to remember that neither she, nor the mother with the screaming child, nor the awkward sidlers wholly represented the population of Occupy Philly.
For the most part, from poor students to the multimillionaires, our regular customers appear to acknowledge the occupation, but not bother themselves much over it. They have their own lives to lead which is to study, work, take care of their children, and other such responsibilities. As for me, as an American citizen officially categorized as being below the poverty line, I am caught between wanting to support a movement that fights against the injustices of Corporate America, and being wholly unable to identify with the type of people who are actually involved in the movement at the grassroots level.
Lately, however, we have had a great influx of clientele from the tents. In the beginning, they came in primarily to clean themselves up and piss in a proper toilet, but upon realizing that this was our livelihood, they started checking out our coffee as well. The exchange is often rather strange and awkward-- they come in already apologetic, perhaps holding up a cup they had purchased earlier in the day, head toward the bathroom asking in expression more than words if it's okay to use it. Some just head directly to the bathroom without making eye contact. Some act like normal customers and human beings, which is a welcome relief.
Yesterday, a mother took her daughter into the bathroom. I heard water running, then the hand dryer blowing, then suddenly a scream that carried throughout the cafe. For a millisecond, I was extremely worried, then realized the little girl was screaming with delight at how funny the air felt as it blow-dried her hair. I wondered if she was one of the children caught up in this movement unwittingly, forced to live in a plastic playhouse among the tents while their parents alternately stand proudly with their signs and ideologies, then turn around and break up tearful fights among one another's babies.
This evening, 5 minutes before closing time, an occupier gave a purposeful start when I offered her plastic cups for the water she had requested. She then proceeded to give an unsolicited explanation for why she "made a face" when I offered her the cups. "You see, I'm a person who recycles all the time..." I didn't need to hear this, and I can't say that I took it with grace. I have no patience for self-righteous, condescending, holier-than-thou attitudes, and it made me want to take a bulldozer over all those tents out there. It took me a few minutes in the back kitchen to remember that neither she, nor the mother with the screaming child, nor the awkward sidlers wholly represented the population of Occupy Philly.
For the most part, from poor students to the multimillionaires, our regular customers appear to acknowledge the occupation, but not bother themselves much over it. They have their own lives to lead which is to study, work, take care of their children, and other such responsibilities. As for me, as an American citizen officially categorized as being below the poverty line, I am caught between wanting to support a movement that fights against the injustices of Corporate America, and being wholly unable to identify with the type of people who are actually involved in the movement at the grassroots level.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Big Picture
Life is bigger than a Netflix price-hike. It is bigger,
even, than the biggest argument or most long-standing grudge. Every
problem comes with a choice: to care or not to care. It is a hazard to
care too much, as much as it is a hazard to care too little. There is no
right or wrong approach; just choice and consequence. Impressions are
far from immutable: given enough time, most things are forgotten, fade
into unimportance, are altered, or replaced. Evolution is inevitable for
anything that is not trapped in some literal or figurative amber. The
blue of a blue sky is never felt with such intensity as when change is
imminent-- a move, a voyage, or on a dramatic scale, a death. Clouds are
a beautiful, amazing planetary phenomena-- acres and acres of crimped
and wispy shapes scattered across that incredible blue, reflected in the
glass of the tallest city buildings, soaring out from between drab and
dingy abandoned structures, and illuminated gold by the rising morning sun.
To think of clouds and stars is a good and faithful reminder of the
briefness of one's time on this planet, a reminder of the relative
unimportance of most things we consider to be important. Answers, explanations, curiosities, the beautiful, the strange and the wondrous are readily discovered
when the mind is fully present and ready to receive: be still, look,
listen, consider the stars, and suddenly, the blue sky will leave you
breathless.
Monday, September 12, 2011
A Motivation for Making Images
“For Caravaggio, making images is a way of focusing the mind. To paint
something is to isolate it for the purposes of contemplation.” ~Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred & Profane
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Whimsical Meandering
Carter is tiny, and bald, with the most expressive eyebrows; she must be the happiest baby in the world. Does she know this? Her and her mother's daily visit to the coffeeshop makes my day. What else makes my day? Working with G makes me realize that you can never run out of things to say about poop and farts. This is amazing.
Ballet today: Every class at Symmetry is a craft. The Lakme Flower Duet beckons me into class from the foyer. I try my best to commit each exercise to memory. It is surprisingly doable this second time. I think that I don't like to smile in ballet class. To me, ballet is a noble and stoic art form and it seems incongruous and not genuine to paste on a smile for an imagine audience. Did the Spartan soldiers smile in warfare, rigid training and weary marches?
After class, I skip out on pointe class in order to write out each exercise from memory into my sketchbook. I feel very much like a student, a very serious student. I am driven by the knowledge that nothing good lasts forever; I am in a rush to become an independent ballerina. As I write out my notes, I suddenly consider trying to become a real ballerina. Later I wonder what does this mean, to be a "real" ballerina? Is performance what separates the student from the professional? But I already perform in the streets. Perhaps I am already a ballerina, and I have made the world my stage. Ooh! An idea blooms...A long terms project...every year a new stage...this year Russia...next year...
There is hope yet for my studio.
After ballet, I stop by the bookstore on the way home and read Harold and the Purple Crayon at the low wooden table. Oh Harold! He reminds me of Carter, so bald and whimsical. He creates his own world just like I create mine.
Ballet today: Every class at Symmetry is a craft. The Lakme Flower Duet beckons me into class from the foyer. I try my best to commit each exercise to memory. It is surprisingly doable this second time. I think that I don't like to smile in ballet class. To me, ballet is a noble and stoic art form and it seems incongruous and not genuine to paste on a smile for an imagine audience. Did the Spartan soldiers smile in warfare, rigid training and weary marches?
After class, I skip out on pointe class in order to write out each exercise from memory into my sketchbook. I feel very much like a student, a very serious student. I am driven by the knowledge that nothing good lasts forever; I am in a rush to become an independent ballerina. As I write out my notes, I suddenly consider trying to become a real ballerina. Later I wonder what does this mean, to be a "real" ballerina? Is performance what separates the student from the professional? But I already perform in the streets. Perhaps I am already a ballerina, and I have made the world my stage. Ooh! An idea blooms...A long terms project...every year a new stage...this year Russia...next year...
There is hope yet for my studio.
After ballet, I stop by the bookstore on the way home and read Harold and the Purple Crayon at the low wooden table. Oh Harold! He reminds me of Carter, so bald and whimsical. He creates his own world just like I create mine.
Monday, August 22, 2011
A Forgotten Feat
Ha! On this day last year, I made my first latte leaf. Thanks for the reminder, facebook. What I have learned since then is that:
--there is more than one pouring technique that works
--the way a barista pours his latte art is somewhat reflective of his personality
--the push that urges the foam out is the same physical mechanism as when the car comes to a sudden, abrupt halt and your body continues, or is thrown forward
An amazing occurrence at work today: I inherited a turtle ring from a stranger. "Can you write me into your will for that ring?" I joked. A few more jokes and comments about the ring's origin, then a slight hesitation, and suddenly she was taking it off and giving it to me. The last time I experienced this sort of generosity from strangers was many times over in Kurdistan, when mothers and grandmothers would give me the scarf off their heads, and their little girls would give me cheap jewelry they'd bought at the bazaar.
This time, the gift is not so cheap-- an original from the Urban Outfitter headquarters, given to her by her ex, and now passed on to her barista. The particulars: Its silver head and legs wobble, and its back is studded with emeralds. It fits too loosely on all the fingers of my left hand, but once squeezed past my freakishly large right thumb knuckle, it remains snug and safe. Dr. Gashu saw the entire scene while he waited to order his daily cappuccino. "Did you guys really just meet?" Yup...yes indeed.
A funny occurrence at work today: I wore my new newsgirl hat with a sidelong bow, which I picked up at a Payless in New York City on Saturday, and it drew several independent comments about Chairman Mao. I tell them I am getting into the spirit of the Communist Era, in preparation for my trip to Russia. I realize I know next to nothing about Chairman Mao. So much to learn, so much to read, so little time to do it all.
The dynamic at the cafe today was strange: eerily quiet for the first hour or two, despite the gorgeous, perfect 80-degree weather outside, then finally the buzz of conversation began as a couple of regulars congregated in front of the bar. Behind the bar, I experienced one of the smoothest operations yet as I worked the register and John manned the machines for the first three hours.
--there is more than one pouring technique that works
--the way a barista pours his latte art is somewhat reflective of his personality
--the push that urges the foam out is the same physical mechanism as when the car comes to a sudden, abrupt halt and your body continues, or is thrown forward
An amazing occurrence at work today: I inherited a turtle ring from a stranger. "Can you write me into your will for that ring?" I joked. A few more jokes and comments about the ring's origin, then a slight hesitation, and suddenly she was taking it off and giving it to me. The last time I experienced this sort of generosity from strangers was many times over in Kurdistan, when mothers and grandmothers would give me the scarf off their heads, and their little girls would give me cheap jewelry they'd bought at the bazaar.
This time, the gift is not so cheap-- an original from the Urban Outfitter headquarters, given to her by her ex, and now passed on to her barista. The particulars: Its silver head and legs wobble, and its back is studded with emeralds. It fits too loosely on all the fingers of my left hand, but once squeezed past my freakishly large right thumb knuckle, it remains snug and safe. Dr. Gashu saw the entire scene while he waited to order his daily cappuccino. "Did you guys really just meet?" Yup...yes indeed.
A funny occurrence at work today: I wore my new newsgirl hat with a sidelong bow, which I picked up at a Payless in New York City on Saturday, and it drew several independent comments about Chairman Mao. I tell them I am getting into the spirit of the Communist Era, in preparation for my trip to Russia. I realize I know next to nothing about Chairman Mao. So much to learn, so much to read, so little time to do it all.
The dynamic at the cafe today was strange: eerily quiet for the first hour or two, despite the gorgeous, perfect 80-degree weather outside, then finally the buzz of conversation began as a couple of regulars congregated in front of the bar. Behind the bar, I experienced one of the smoothest operations yet as I worked the register and John manned the machines for the first three hours.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Jeremiad: A Debbie Downer On Steroids, in Writing
A jeremiad is a "long, literary work which bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and moreover prophesies its imminent downfall."
Assignment #6: Write a jeremiad. Preliminary exercise to this assignment: get seriously pissed off.
Assignment #6: Write a jeremiad. Preliminary exercise to this assignment: get seriously pissed off.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Pesto Roots
I'm making OG pesto tonight! Ingredients for OG pesto:
(a) pistillum (Latin)=>pestel (Old French)=>pestle (English).
(b) pistillum (Latin)=>pestare(Italian)=>pesto (Italian/English).
(c) Originally, a mortar and pestle was used to make pesto.
Note: The word pestle came before pesto since the former had to exist to make the latter. But they originate from the same Latin root.
Update from the kitchen:
The smell wafting out of the mortar is divinely basil-ic. The smashed basil swimming in its own juices looks like a home-made facial. I would like to slather it all over my face, but I shall resist.
(a) pistillum (Latin)=>pestel (Old French)=>pestle (English).
(b) pistillum (Latin)=>pestare(Italian)=>pesto (Italian/English).
(c) Originally, a mortar and pestle was used to make pesto.
Note: The word pestle came before pesto since the former had to exist to make the latter. But they originate from the same Latin root.
Update from the kitchen:
The smell wafting out of the mortar is divinely basil-ic. The smashed basil swimming in its own juices looks like a home-made facial. I would like to slather it all over my face, but I shall resist.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Slow Sundays
Sundays at the new cafe are like a La Colombe playgroup for kids 3 and under. Today I caught an origami bird for one of them (the one that comes in every morning barefoot, hair disheveled, and still in her pajamas). Her mother loved it more than she did. Sparrows are deceptively sweet looking; in reality very vicious creatures who attack butterflies and damage their wings. Sundays at the new cafe is also like watching the Nature Channel through the huge ceiling to floor windows. As much as I love to work mindlessly making and serving coffee, I enjoy the slow Sundays for now. The new cafe is an airy haven of peace for families and visitors from out of town, here for conferences and weddings. Also notes of worth from this morning's shift: a chair sitting instead of being sat on, a wounded spider who came into the air-conditioned cafe to pass the last hour of its life, and the dear Ethiopian doctor who had been on my mind lately for the lack of his presence.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Confession
Sometimes at the new shop, I get so bored that I forget why I love my job. For six hours, I alternate between (a) fighting the urge to quit and (b) giving meaningful, top-notch customer service to the few who do come in. C'mon Angie, stay with it! It's good, very good, that I get a couple shifts every week at the old place to remind myself of the magic of actually laboring behind the bar. I look forward to the end of summer when business is sure to pick up and I get to lose myself once again in mindless multitasking. I'm going to start attending morning ballet again for some fulfillment to my days. For now, I sit with Harry Potter yeah...
Monday, July 18, 2011
Morning Pep Talk
I am unapologetically ANGIE. I embrace my imperfections. I rise above pettiness; pettiness is for small, blind people. If my life becomes fraught with issues the way it has been the last couple weeks, I will try my best to handle them with grace and composure-- the way I was taught to in the ballet studio. I will come out the winner.
Addendum: The only thing I need from you are care, kindness, respect, and loyalty. Show me these things, and I will not forget you. My loyalty extends far, really really far.
Addendum: The only thing I need from you are care, kindness, respect, and loyalty. Show me these things, and I will not forget you. My loyalty extends far, really really far.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Cold-Brew Coffee
A couple weeks ago, I decided to jump on the toddy bandwagon and
experiment with cold-brewed coffee. I soaked coarsely ground Haitian
Blue Forest beans in my French Press overnight, then pressed it twice
and poured the resulting liquid into a pitcher. I let it sit in my
fridge for the next few days mostly because I forgot about it. Too many
things going on.
Now that I am moving house, I re-discovered it while in "throw-away mode" and finally tasted it-- straight up, without diluting it with water. I caught a whiff of it just before the first sip, and frowned-- not because it smelled bad, but because it smelled oddly familiar. After a couple more sips, I realized why, and here's my initial verdict on cold-brewed coffee concentrate:
It tastes like a mild form of the Korean/Chinese herbal medicine called hanyak. I used to hate that stuff growing up. They really shouldn't tell kids that what they're drinking contains deer antlers, tortoise shells, and dried up insects. I much prefer this milder coffee variety, though it might not contain the same healing powers.
Now that I am moving house, I re-discovered it while in "throw-away mode" and finally tasted it-- straight up, without diluting it with water. I caught a whiff of it just before the first sip, and frowned-- not because it smelled bad, but because it smelled oddly familiar. After a couple more sips, I realized why, and here's my initial verdict on cold-brewed coffee concentrate:
It tastes like a mild form of the Korean/Chinese herbal medicine called hanyak. I used to hate that stuff growing up. They really shouldn't tell kids that what they're drinking contains deer antlers, tortoise shells, and dried up insects. I much prefer this milder coffee variety, though it might not contain the same healing powers.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Baked Ziti on the Fly
What is "Baked Ziti On The Fly"? It is the taking of the technique used in making traditional baked ziti, and adapting it to whatever ingredients you have on hand. One must not plan to make Baked Ziti on the Fly; one must become inspired to make it On The Fly, preferably at 7 in the am when the house is still quiet.
-sauce: Leonardo e Roberto's garlic basic parmesan dipping oil, which your roommate bought at a flower show over a year ago and left in the house when she moved to Nashville; LeR's sundried tomato dipping oil; half cup of milk for some semblance of 'sauciness'; minced garlic; salt; onion powder; crushed dried chili pepper from Indian grocery; an egg. Saute garlic and oils first; cool mixture with cold milk before tossing in the egg; toss in extra garlic if you are of Korean descent
-penne (meaning 'feather' or 'quill') pasta leftover from previous pasta cooking endeavor (vodka penne), cooked less than al dente
-frozen broccoli for extra nutrition; toss in with boiling penne
-old pancetta wrapped in foil that you scrutinize and end up tossing into the bin because old meat is a health risk
-fresh rosemary; forget to put this in
-order in the pan: cooking spray, pasta, sauce, extra onion powder; parm cheese to heart's content, bread crumbs; bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until it looks and tastes good to you; forget to cover with aluminum foil
-use other baked ziti cheeses (mozzarella, ricotta, etc.) and spaghetti sauce only if you have them on hand
-mourn the lack of sriracha sauce
-sauce: Leonardo e Roberto's garlic basic parmesan dipping oil, which your roommate bought at a flower show over a year ago and left in the house when she moved to Nashville; LeR's sundried tomato dipping oil; half cup of milk for some semblance of 'sauciness'; minced garlic; salt; onion powder; crushed dried chili pepper from Indian grocery; an egg. Saute garlic and oils first; cool mixture with cold milk before tossing in the egg; toss in extra garlic if you are of Korean descent
-penne (meaning 'feather' or 'quill') pasta leftover from previous pasta cooking endeavor (vodka penne), cooked less than al dente
-frozen broccoli for extra nutrition; toss in with boiling penne
-old pancetta wrapped in foil that you scrutinize and end up tossing into the bin because old meat is a health risk
-fresh rosemary; forget to put this in
-order in the pan: cooking spray, pasta, sauce, extra onion powder; parm cheese to heart's content, bread crumbs; bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until it looks and tastes good to you; forget to cover with aluminum foil
-use other baked ziti cheeses (mozzarella, ricotta, etc.) and spaghetti sauce only if you have them on hand
-mourn the lack of sriracha sauce
Friday, July 08, 2011
Counting My Blessings
Today was a good day. It thundered. It rained; it poured. I got to work
with my barista mentor and we actually got to hustle a few times, though
the line was never anywhere near what it is at the old shop...yet. I
bantered with an SNL comedian. I got to make lovely latte leaves and
nerdy math jokes to the young professionals who walked in wearing
graph-shirts. I fell asleep in mid-afternoon to the sound of thunder
clapping and rain dripping down to my bathroom floor. I slipped of
course, but did not fall. I got to wear my purple rain boots. I got to
pay my toddler friend a visit in her carseat. The car door opened.
"Elsa, look what daddy found! Who is this Elsa?" The toddler spoke my
name and kicked her feet excitedly in the air. I'm honored to be part of
her relatively vast, yet limited vocabulary. I got to go to a Friday
afternoon ballet class and have a real talk with my ballet mentor.
Half-price sandwiches and a funny book at Capogiro's. And still the rain
comes down hard, pelting and rushing. I get to be inside on a night
like this. The scar on my right eyelid is healing nicely; I no longer
look like a character out of Starship Enterprise, or whatever that show
was called. I was never a tried-and-true trekky.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Parnassus on Wheels
"But books aren't a substantial world after all, and every now and then we get hungry for some closer, more human relationships." ~Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
One could replace the word "books" with "ballet" and that sentence would neatly encapsulate the conclusion I arrived at after months of being in love with ballet. There was a time when I believed adamantly that I needed nothing else. After a time, however, I found I was using it as a means to fill the void left by my solitary ways. As I came to realize, one type of love cannot replace another. There is love of objects, love of ideals, and then there is love of other beings like myself, and only one of these three can reciprocate.
Happiness: When I am working, I am brimming with energy. When I'm lying in bed, I am restless. When little Elsa comes for her daily visit, my day brightens. When I am practicing Russian, my day feels less wasted. I could migrate to a remote region of the Himalayas and meditate on a mountainside for the next five years, but it is incomprehensible to me that such a distance from the world and its inhabitants would bring me internal peace, but perhaps this is so because I am un-Enlightened. On the other hand, when I am in the ballet studio, sweating and working the muscles, I feel happier and more centered and focused. I feel we are born to work and sweat. I get excited when I'm making big plans for the future. I live for the presumably greater future. Happiness is associated with peace, yet all the striving that brings me these good feelings is rife with hard work and fatigue. And good feelings never last forever. I can't lie in bed forever. Sometimes not even for a normal period of sleep. But after days and days of restlessness and striving, all that weight will come down on me and I can finally sleep and sleep and sleep. Who decided that a normal day cycle would last 24 hours? Neither my brain nor my body functions at such regular intervals.
However, regularity may be exactly the medicine I need. It occurs to me that the rhythm achieved behind the bar by automated, repetitive, coordinated action could be achieved on a larger scale and bring me a similar sense of happiness outside of work. Getting into the swing of things on a larger scale. I think this is the idea behind ritual: repetitive actions that bring about a certain dynamic and meaning to daily life. Yet, I think the greatest happiness comes from when that dynamic is shared with another human being. Ballet is not enough, a career is not enough, books are not enough because as stated above, none of these activities, no matter how much they are driven by ideals and passion, can reciprocate basic human emotions. I am, without a doubt, a social animal. Not everyone is.
One could replace the word "books" with "ballet" and that sentence would neatly encapsulate the conclusion I arrived at after months of being in love with ballet. There was a time when I believed adamantly that I needed nothing else. After a time, however, I found I was using it as a means to fill the void left by my solitary ways. As I came to realize, one type of love cannot replace another. There is love of objects, love of ideals, and then there is love of other beings like myself, and only one of these three can reciprocate.
Happiness: When I am working, I am brimming with energy. When I'm lying in bed, I am restless. When little Elsa comes for her daily visit, my day brightens. When I am practicing Russian, my day feels less wasted. I could migrate to a remote region of the Himalayas and meditate on a mountainside for the next five years, but it is incomprehensible to me that such a distance from the world and its inhabitants would bring me internal peace, but perhaps this is so because I am un-Enlightened. On the other hand, when I am in the ballet studio, sweating and working the muscles, I feel happier and more centered and focused. I feel we are born to work and sweat. I get excited when I'm making big plans for the future. I live for the presumably greater future. Happiness is associated with peace, yet all the striving that brings me these good feelings is rife with hard work and fatigue. And good feelings never last forever. I can't lie in bed forever. Sometimes not even for a normal period of sleep. But after days and days of restlessness and striving, all that weight will come down on me and I can finally sleep and sleep and sleep. Who decided that a normal day cycle would last 24 hours? Neither my brain nor my body functions at such regular intervals.
However, regularity may be exactly the medicine I need. It occurs to me that the rhythm achieved behind the bar by automated, repetitive, coordinated action could be achieved on a larger scale and bring me a similar sense of happiness outside of work. Getting into the swing of things on a larger scale. I think this is the idea behind ritual: repetitive actions that bring about a certain dynamic and meaning to daily life. Yet, I think the greatest happiness comes from when that dynamic is shared with another human being. Ballet is not enough, a career is not enough, books are not enough because as stated above, none of these activities, no matter how much they are driven by ideals and passion, can reciprocate basic human emotions. I am, without a doubt, a social animal. Not everyone is.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Musings of a Barista
I got six shifts this week! Time to rest up so I can be present with my customers. A year later, I still have to remind myself to take it easy, take it slow. I'm too much like a tornado...too many crazy weekend shifts that made me think that that was the norm. Watching the new hires who work so slowly and methodically, I realize that this is where I can get better, where I can develop an eye for detail.
A year into the coffee business, I find myself wondering how much of my views on the politics and philosophies surrounding the coffee industry are my own, and how much are those of my beloved company. Most of the coffee philosophy that I hear from my bosses seem utterly sensible. They are of the old world of coffee: when it was just a cup of joe, not the Holy Grail of Josephus; when an espresso was an elegant affair, not a cosmic explosion; when options were available, but not overwhelming. There is such a thing as too many choices.
As well, I don't believe in putting on airs where airs don't belong. Coffee enhanced my life a thousand-fold when it was introduced to me through this barista job. It gave me ritual-- an act that develops meaning through repetition--, it gave me an appreciation for the complexities of taste, and it attuned me to the possibilities of beauty contained in ingestible products-- beauty contained in a cup. Yet, as much as coffee has given me this past year, to me, it is still a product of the Earth and not a nectar of the gods, and for me to treat and serve it as such would be pure hyperbole and downright pretentious.
As a barista, I have made espresso a regular part of my daily life. I take a shot before almost every shift, partly so I can know my product and develop a palate over time, and partly for the sake of ritual. This is to say that I do believe the nuances exist, but number one: they are detectable by the human senses only to an extent, and that extent varies with each individual, can be developed, but takes time to develop, and number two: the ability to detect the nuances and describe them with flair has become a great big show of (mostly false) intellect, which I don't particularly care for. I did not leave the stuffy, recondite world of academia only to enter another high-brow, elitist coffee-stained ivory tower. Making coffee is a craft full of aesthetics and nuances. What it is not: a high art that is comprehensible only to the very learn-ed and designed to alienate the masses. As a barista at La Colombe, I am happy to work for a company that does its best to tamp down such high-brow inclinations. What I hear from my boss-- in his albeit brash and theatrical way-- aligns with my own internal inclination towards simplicity and down-to-earthiness.
What else, what else? Coffee gave me a rich history to study, a field for the observation of human nature in a most interesting setting, and best of all, it gave me great co-workers. Of all the people I have met through this job, I have found the ones on my side of the bar to be the most interesting to study, perhaps because I have the privilege of working alongside them in such close quarters. If you are stuck in a tiny room with one other person for 6 hours at a time, and moreover are working in concert with them, it is difficult not to pick up on the deepest aspects of their character. But these are stories for a private audience.
As I stepped behind the register for the first time last June, I experienced for the first time rapid-fire service that put me in varying mental states from automaton to "there, but not really there". I experienced what it felt like to work as a team and fall into a rhythm that required less words and more eye contact and intuition to make it swing. I learned the importance of confidence and pride in one's work. I learned from the best-- by watching my colleagues-- the ones I call the "Classic Crew"-- and picking out the best aspects of each of their work-habits and trying to make them my own. I've learned that even behind this bar, we are not immune to disagreement, tension, competition, and the usual bullshit that surrounds work settings, and it doesn't matter whether it is mostly guys or mostly gals. Each gender has his or her own way of manifesting irritating behaviors and creating "drama". However, if the proper measures are taken, this job has the most uncanny ability to mask the negatives and bring out the greatest aspects of a barista's personality. I think I believe this anyway. I have faith.
Going back to the issue of coffee philosophy, what is coffee to me, a server of this prized and ubiquitous substance? It is in its spirit of communion, a drink that brings people together for conversation with ease, efficiency, and elegance; in its spirit of solitude, a drink that brings comfort to cold, sleepy mornings, or even to hot afternoons and evenings.
A year into the coffee business, I find myself wondering how much of my views on the politics and philosophies surrounding the coffee industry are my own, and how much are those of my beloved company. Most of the coffee philosophy that I hear from my bosses seem utterly sensible. They are of the old world of coffee: when it was just a cup of joe, not the Holy Grail of Josephus; when an espresso was an elegant affair, not a cosmic explosion; when options were available, but not overwhelming. There is such a thing as too many choices.
As well, I don't believe in putting on airs where airs don't belong. Coffee enhanced my life a thousand-fold when it was introduced to me through this barista job. It gave me ritual-- an act that develops meaning through repetition--, it gave me an appreciation for the complexities of taste, and it attuned me to the possibilities of beauty contained in ingestible products-- beauty contained in a cup. Yet, as much as coffee has given me this past year, to me, it is still a product of the Earth and not a nectar of the gods, and for me to treat and serve it as such would be pure hyperbole and downright pretentious.
As a barista, I have made espresso a regular part of my daily life. I take a shot before almost every shift, partly so I can know my product and develop a palate over time, and partly for the sake of ritual. This is to say that I do believe the nuances exist, but number one: they are detectable by the human senses only to an extent, and that extent varies with each individual, can be developed, but takes time to develop, and number two: the ability to detect the nuances and describe them with flair has become a great big show of (mostly false) intellect, which I don't particularly care for. I did not leave the stuffy, recondite world of academia only to enter another high-brow, elitist coffee-stained ivory tower. Making coffee is a craft full of aesthetics and nuances. What it is not: a high art that is comprehensible only to the very learn-ed and designed to alienate the masses. As a barista at La Colombe, I am happy to work for a company that does its best to tamp down such high-brow inclinations. What I hear from my boss-- in his albeit brash and theatrical way-- aligns with my own internal inclination towards simplicity and down-to-earthiness.
What else, what else? Coffee gave me a rich history to study, a field for the observation of human nature in a most interesting setting, and best of all, it gave me great co-workers. Of all the people I have met through this job, I have found the ones on my side of the bar to be the most interesting to study, perhaps because I have the privilege of working alongside them in such close quarters. If you are stuck in a tiny room with one other person for 6 hours at a time, and moreover are working in concert with them, it is difficult not to pick up on the deepest aspects of their character. But these are stories for a private audience.
As I stepped behind the register for the first time last June, I experienced for the first time rapid-fire service that put me in varying mental states from automaton to "there, but not really there". I experienced what it felt like to work as a team and fall into a rhythm that required less words and more eye contact and intuition to make it swing. I learned the importance of confidence and pride in one's work. I learned from the best-- by watching my colleagues-- the ones I call the "Classic Crew"-- and picking out the best aspects of each of their work-habits and trying to make them my own. I've learned that even behind this bar, we are not immune to disagreement, tension, competition, and the usual bullshit that surrounds work settings, and it doesn't matter whether it is mostly guys or mostly gals. Each gender has his or her own way of manifesting irritating behaviors and creating "drama". However, if the proper measures are taken, this job has the most uncanny ability to mask the negatives and bring out the greatest aspects of a barista's personality. I think I believe this anyway. I have faith.
Going back to the issue of coffee philosophy, what is coffee to me, a server of this prized and ubiquitous substance? It is in its spirit of communion, a drink that brings people together for conversation with ease, efficiency, and elegance; in its spirit of solitude, a drink that brings comfort to cold, sleepy mornings, or even to hot afternoons and evenings.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
What Kinds of People Do You Enjoy Meeting?
I like to meet people who know things that I don't know.
I also like to meet people who know things that I know.
As well, I like to meet people who want to know things that I know.
And lastly, I like to meet people who want to know things that I want to know.
Know what I mean?
I also like to meet people who know things that I know.
As well, I like to meet people who want to know things that I know.
And lastly, I like to meet people who want to know things that I want to know.
Know what I mean?
Monday, June 20, 2011
The Expectations of Youth
I learned yesterday that once you stop caring, that is when you have grown up. The reasons why you stop caring are very good-- to protect yourself from disappointment, or worse; to come to terms with a grim reality that repeatedly fails to live up to your expectations.
It is probably a smart move in terms of Darwinian fitness-- a defense mechanism similar to the turtle donning its shell over the course of evolution.
Apathy is a very grown up state of mind. Acceptance of "reality" and the "inevitable" is a grown up skill to acquire. On the other hand, trying again and again to make reality accept your own ideal-- that is youth. It is naive, and touching, and unfortunately a paradise lost for many...a paradise regained for some.
I learned this yesterday from watching a movie called Submarine.
It is probably a smart move in terms of Darwinian fitness-- a defense mechanism similar to the turtle donning its shell over the course of evolution.
Apathy is a very grown up state of mind. Acceptance of "reality" and the "inevitable" is a grown up skill to acquire. On the other hand, trying again and again to make reality accept your own ideal-- that is youth. It is naive, and touching, and unfortunately a paradise lost for many...a paradise regained for some.
I learned this yesterday from watching a movie called Submarine.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
New Story
Being part of a new venture is both exciting and concerning. I am anxious for it to be a great success right off the bat, but the development of a cafe culture takes time. As well, while updating is important, I want this cafe to retain the elements that imparted a great sense of soul to its mother shop. It's almost sacrilege to try to recreate something so unique, so I'm glad that the new shops don't pretend to do so. The ones in New York and the newest one in Philly are sleek, streamlined, and modern, yet they retain elements of the old-- the assembly line, the Deruta ceramics, the hallmark mirror behind the bar, the lack of wifi, sizes, and soy. The discussion of what defines the soul of the place is an interesting one. It is, on the surface, the above-listed characteristics. Below the surface, it is the people on either side of the bar, the connections made, the human spirit. In any novel, it is the people that give it story, and La Colombe, above all is a great 17-year-old story with a most interesting array of characters on set. From day one, I felt this sense of story about the place.
I spent the greater part of my first 6-hour shift at the new shop trying to figure out the best way to maintain the flow of the espresso bar. I kept thinking "when it gets busy", "once we start getting swamped", etc. because I was planning for the future and assumed the future was going to be a success. For now, especially just after Memorial Day weekend when people from the Residencies and the office buildings around City Hall are returning from vacationing in the Hamptons and wherever else rich people go to relax, it is so very slow. However, day by day, I am witness to its growth, and am amazed by it. I feel lucky to be part and parcel of this new story from its infancy, to be a part of the crew that gets to make the first connections with the new customers, some who will be customers for life, and thus a part of the next great story.
I spent the greater part of my first 6-hour shift at the new shop trying to figure out the best way to maintain the flow of the espresso bar. I kept thinking "when it gets busy", "once we start getting swamped", etc. because I was planning for the future and assumed the future was going to be a success. For now, especially just after Memorial Day weekend when people from the Residencies and the office buildings around City Hall are returning from vacationing in the Hamptons and wherever else rich people go to relax, it is so very slow. However, day by day, I am witness to its growth, and am amazed by it. I feel lucky to be part and parcel of this new story from its infancy, to be a part of the crew that gets to make the first connections with the new customers, some who will be customers for life, and thus a part of the next great story.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Schedule Change
Tonight marks the end of the Serbian-Korean weekend team at LC, for another major shift in scheduling is impending. I'm excited about the long-awaited opening of the new cafe, and the notion of fresh beginnings. However, sudden schedule shifts are always a bittersweet affair because one has to say goodbye to the camaraderie that has grown over the months of working side by side behind the bar. Will I be able to find the same sweet rhythm with the next person I end up working with? I wonder. I respond to myself in true "yes and no" fashion: I usually do find a sweet rhythm, but it is never the same one.
Russian "moy" versus "menya"
Dear Angie,
Both "moy" and "menya" are translated as "my" in English. Here are two ways to think of how they are different:
(1) moy receives a noun (ie: it is an adjective), while menya receives a verb
(2) moy is a possessive pronoun (which can be further classified as either nominative or accusative), while menya is a personal pronoun (which can be further classified as either accusative or genitive).
Regards,
Angie
Both "moy" and "menya" are translated as "my" in English. Here are two ways to think of how they are different:
(1) moy receives a noun (ie: it is an adjective), while menya receives a verb
(2) moy is a possessive pronoun (which can be further classified as either nominative or accusative), while menya is a personal pronoun (which can be further classified as either accusative or genitive).
Regards,
Angie
Sweet & Sour Encounter
I woke up thinking about the baby that spit up on me yesterday. That's good luck, you know, to be spitted up on by a baby, especially one named after President Kennedy. I am destined for great things. Or a great thing. She had the teeniest nails and a toothless mouth that opened wide into a gaping, black triangle shape with soft corners. She could do amazing acrobatics with her tongue-- the tongue seems to be the easiest part of your body to control in the beginning.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
The Tongue of the Enemy
Today, I met an Italian-Albanian who knew 5 languages including Serbian. Learn the language of your enemy, is what his father had taught him, literally. But how likely is it that the enemy of the son will be the same as the enemy of his father? A lot can happen politically in a single generation. However, I've always wanted a reason to learn Japanese.
Two Days Before Opening
I just pulled my first
shot of espresso at the new cafe at 15th between Chestnut and Market
Streets. We'll be doing a slow un-grand opening Saturday morning at 8
am. Until then, last minute tweaks are being made. The health inspector
came by today and made her rounds. I watched as Andrew the Handrewman
sanded down a rough edge, made measurements for extra metal linings, and
installed shelves in the kitchen/office (strangely, the same space).
Half of Andrew was Serbian, I learned. Coincidentally, I'd just read
that morning of Mladic's arrest, and so upon mentioning this breaking bit of news, I got to hear a personal account
of murder, nationlessness, religious schisms and the like in the south
Slavic region.
"Serbians are rednecks," said Andrew. I could thoroughly believe that. I thought of my Serbian co-worker's untamed nature, and rapt accounts of his hunting expeditions like the time he got *this* close to a litter of baby foxes. The other half of Andrew was Mexican, which showed up in his dark wavy hair and tanned skin. In fact, the only hint in his features of his European ancestry was the color of his eyes-- a clear sea green like the color of the ceramics that will be served at the soon-to-open Chicago location. I thought it would be marvelous if the walls of the Chicago shop-- with the ostensible reason of matching the ceramics-- were painted the color of his eyes, and I told him so.
"The only problem with the green," he returned, "is that the wood floors pick up on the color of the walls." That was when I first noticed the slight orange glow of the blonde wood floor of our new cafe. Wow...I wondered how many times our future customers would cross these floors and never pick up on this subtle detail. I certainly would not have. Details...I needed to get better at noticing them.
I watched Doug from New York make some masterful cappuccinos on the new Marzocco espresso machine. It was time to get my ass to New York to get some training from him. I've gotten too complacent about making drinks I think. There is a difference between good and excellent in drink-making. When people talk about you in the following fashion: "I've had great cappuccinos from other baristas, but there's something about the way you make it..."; when people can't quite put their finger on why yours is so amazing, but they just know it when they drink it; when the quality of your drink is so good that it is elusive, that's when you've reached excellence as a barista. Until then, one is still in training.
"I can't wait to pick out the Table where we're going to sit every morning drinking our coffee." That was Gus.
"'The table'?" I asked. "Ohhhh, the Table!"
It hadn't even occurred to me that the Table at the Rittenhouse cafe had been chosen. I'd never questioned how we had come to sit there every morning before opening, in the dark with only the kitchen light on, enjoying our cups of coffee and the last 15 minutes of peace before the onslaught. From my first morning shift, I'd always felt that those 15 minutes were the best part of the entire day. No matter how the day went, you were never going to reclaim the experience-- the same quiet, the same intimacy, and the same freshness felt from 6:45 to 7 am. By the time your shift ends, 6 hours later, you will feel like a completely different person-- ragged, spent, perhaps out of sync or angry at something or another, shirt stained with coffee, hair reeking of its aroma-- and that golden quarter hour will be as if it had never happened, as if it had been a lifetime away, even though it was only 6 hours ago.
"Yeah, don't choose the Table without me!" I reminded him as we parted ways, "I want to be there and help you choose!"
"Serbians are rednecks," said Andrew. I could thoroughly believe that. I thought of my Serbian co-worker's untamed nature, and rapt accounts of his hunting expeditions like the time he got *this* close to a litter of baby foxes. The other half of Andrew was Mexican, which showed up in his dark wavy hair and tanned skin. In fact, the only hint in his features of his European ancestry was the color of his eyes-- a clear sea green like the color of the ceramics that will be served at the soon-to-open Chicago location. I thought it would be marvelous if the walls of the Chicago shop-- with the ostensible reason of matching the ceramics-- were painted the color of his eyes, and I told him so.
"The only problem with the green," he returned, "is that the wood floors pick up on the color of the walls." That was when I first noticed the slight orange glow of the blonde wood floor of our new cafe. Wow...I wondered how many times our future customers would cross these floors and never pick up on this subtle detail. I certainly would not have. Details...I needed to get better at noticing them.
I watched Doug from New York make some masterful cappuccinos on the new Marzocco espresso machine. It was time to get my ass to New York to get some training from him. I've gotten too complacent about making drinks I think. There is a difference between good and excellent in drink-making. When people talk about you in the following fashion: "I've had great cappuccinos from other baristas, but there's something about the way you make it..."; when people can't quite put their finger on why yours is so amazing, but they just know it when they drink it; when the quality of your drink is so good that it is elusive, that's when you've reached excellence as a barista. Until then, one is still in training.
"I can't wait to pick out the Table where we're going to sit every morning drinking our coffee." That was Gus.
"'The table'?" I asked. "Ohhhh, the Table!"
It hadn't even occurred to me that the Table at the Rittenhouse cafe had been chosen. I'd never questioned how we had come to sit there every morning before opening, in the dark with only the kitchen light on, enjoying our cups of coffee and the last 15 minutes of peace before the onslaught. From my first morning shift, I'd always felt that those 15 minutes were the best part of the entire day. No matter how the day went, you were never going to reclaim the experience-- the same quiet, the same intimacy, and the same freshness felt from 6:45 to 7 am. By the time your shift ends, 6 hours later, you will feel like a completely different person-- ragged, spent, perhaps out of sync or angry at something or another, shirt stained with coffee, hair reeking of its aroma-- and that golden quarter hour will be as if it had never happened, as if it had been a lifetime away, even though it was only 6 hours ago.
"Yeah, don't choose the Table without me!" I reminded him as we parted ways, "I want to be there and help you choose!"
End of the School Year
Caffeine is magical. A double shot espresso will bring me out of a morass of lethargy and pessimism to a rejuvenated bundle of optimism-- from a near-catatonic state of lassitude to a state of mental clarity and drive!...in a matter of minutes. Nothing short of black magic.
While working behind the bar, I often think of my kindergarteners. That is, the task of taking care of my grown up customers to their satisfaction often reminds me of taking care of my 5-year-olds (who will be going into grade 2 this fall-- oh my...and my grade 2's will be huge 5th graders--oh my...). Especially in the way some of them interrupt without consideration, feel wounded to the core when I accidentally skip past them in line (my bad!), and seek special attention of which I can only give so much at a time-- especially then I think of my kindergarteners. Sometimes, I see very little difference between those to whom I served an education, and those to whom I serve coffee. In both age groups, this sort of behavior is at once endearing and maddening.
Akin to the feeling I had at the end of the teaching year in Iraq, though to a lesser degree, is this feeling I have now that I will miss many of the faces I have come to know since last June when I served my first coffee at the flagship store at Rittenhouse Square. Though I will be working a mere 5 blocks away at our new Ritz-Carlton location, I know that 5 blocks in the city can be a great distance especially to the heavily habitual folks who frequent my coffeeshop. "People are creatures of habit," to quote my Serbian co-worker. They get the same drink every day for years. You can work there for years and memorize everyone's drinks, then leave for 2 years, come back, and that list of drinks will have undergone little alteration. Miss Julia will still get her cappuccino (and dress like Mrs. Peacock in the Billiard Room with the Candlestick), Miss Susanna her half-milk-half-coffee au lait, Fancy Nancy her mostly milk au lait, Mr. Koresh his red-eye, the three dark-haired men who get Americanos for "here" every day and linger for hours in solitude over their work, the silver-haired, suited gentleman who looks extraordinarily like Sean Connery and stands at the side of the bar every day drinking his espresso and giving off heady waves of his customized cologne from Paris, the younger man who also takes an espresso every day (and takes a regular drip coffee to-go as well), who aims to emulate the classiness of the Sean Connery espresso drinker, sexy Natasha who gets a cappuccino in a paper cup every day between hairstyling sessions, the spinal surgery man who gets a double-cupped black coffee and a decaf for his pregnant wife, the parents of Elsa...and so on. The penniless artist will still be there laughing one minute and weeping the next, and you still won't be able to tell which is which because they will both still sound the same; old Bill will still come up to the bar and share with you random facts about high art and the same 4 phrases in Greek that he knows. The scraggly old woman will still sit alone in her corner scribbling code in the margins of her little notebook for hours on end. The other day, she was sitting right over the edge of the side of the bar, and so while pretending to clean, I leaned over and tried to see exactly what she was scribbling, but I couldn't make out anything sensible-- or perhaps I mean to say "sane". Christ...sometimes, I don't know how to feel about this time capsule nature of the shop-- whether to feel suffocated by its unflagging invariance, or adore it for its timelessness.
Yesterday after work, I bought groceries for my big cooking endeavor (vodka penne) and had to rest my arms on the way home. While sitting on a brick ledge in the hot sun, I saw one of my customers coming my way-- Joel, the very sweet Rittenhouse Market grocer who gets a cup to-go every day. We were neighbors, it turned out; he lived a mere two blocks away from my house. A short while later, he was giving me a tour of his very narrow and tall abode that was more like a treehouse than a house in the city. It had three stories with a narrow spiraling staircase that led to each one. The rooms were of modest size and the entire place had the air of an era gone by, nearly vanished or at most pushed into the peripheries and dusty, aging, slowly forgotten corners of this world, in this age of wireless and constant bombardment of high-tech noise. There was no wifi, no internet at all, no computer, no cell phone. What he did have was books and paintings. He was a local painter. On his walls hung huge canvases of industrial scenes around Philadelphia, some which no longer even exist. On the third floor was his work space and the walls in here were lined from top to bottom and side to side with hundreds of magazines-- the canary yellow spines of National Geographic filling one entire wall, another half of a wall filled by the thinner, taller ivory-colored spines of Life Magazine, some of which dated back to WWII, another half of a wall dedicated to art books and the other half of that wall stacked with the classics he had read in college-- Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, Steinbeck, Tolstoy. If you know me at all...
He had a cat and he arranged his food like a grocery store. On top of his fridge was a very orderly pyramid of canned soups. Next to this pyramid was a very orderly stack of Kashi brand cereal. He opened his freezer and I burst out laughing. The inside was packed with frozen tv dinners, all of the same brand-- the one with the bright orange colored box. His great (great-great?) grandfather had been in the grocery business. His uncle and several others in his family had also been painters. He was a man who faithfully carried on his family's traditions.
I walked out of his house with my groceries, a host of new impressions, and a new book called "The Road", by Cormac McCarthy. I walked the two blocks home and thought how curious it all was. I walked one block toward my house and waved to a a blue-eyed, cherub-haired man waiting at the wheels of his black car with his window rolled down. He was my next-door neighbor and another regular at my shop-- a connection I discovered 10 months after I had been serving him his double cappuccino every morning.
While working behind the bar, I often think of my kindergarteners. That is, the task of taking care of my grown up customers to their satisfaction often reminds me of taking care of my 5-year-olds (who will be going into grade 2 this fall-- oh my...and my grade 2's will be huge 5th graders--oh my...). Especially in the way some of them interrupt without consideration, feel wounded to the core when I accidentally skip past them in line (my bad!), and seek special attention of which I can only give so much at a time-- especially then I think of my kindergarteners. Sometimes, I see very little difference between those to whom I served an education, and those to whom I serve coffee. In both age groups, this sort of behavior is at once endearing and maddening.
Akin to the feeling I had at the end of the teaching year in Iraq, though to a lesser degree, is this feeling I have now that I will miss many of the faces I have come to know since last June when I served my first coffee at the flagship store at Rittenhouse Square. Though I will be working a mere 5 blocks away at our new Ritz-Carlton location, I know that 5 blocks in the city can be a great distance especially to the heavily habitual folks who frequent my coffeeshop. "People are creatures of habit," to quote my Serbian co-worker. They get the same drink every day for years. You can work there for years and memorize everyone's drinks, then leave for 2 years, come back, and that list of drinks will have undergone little alteration. Miss Julia will still get her cappuccino (and dress like Mrs. Peacock in the Billiard Room with the Candlestick), Miss Susanna her half-milk-half-coffee au lait, Fancy Nancy her mostly milk au lait, Mr. Koresh his red-eye, the three dark-haired men who get Americanos for "here" every day and linger for hours in solitude over their work, the silver-haired, suited gentleman who looks extraordinarily like Sean Connery and stands at the side of the bar every day drinking his espresso and giving off heady waves of his customized cologne from Paris, the younger man who also takes an espresso every day (and takes a regular drip coffee to-go as well), who aims to emulate the classiness of the Sean Connery espresso drinker, sexy Natasha who gets a cappuccino in a paper cup every day between hairstyling sessions, the spinal surgery man who gets a double-cupped black coffee and a decaf for his pregnant wife, the parents of Elsa...and so on. The penniless artist will still be there laughing one minute and weeping the next, and you still won't be able to tell which is which because they will both still sound the same; old Bill will still come up to the bar and share with you random facts about high art and the same 4 phrases in Greek that he knows. The scraggly old woman will still sit alone in her corner scribbling code in the margins of her little notebook for hours on end. The other day, she was sitting right over the edge of the side of the bar, and so while pretending to clean, I leaned over and tried to see exactly what she was scribbling, but I couldn't make out anything sensible-- or perhaps I mean to say "sane". Christ...sometimes, I don't know how to feel about this time capsule nature of the shop-- whether to feel suffocated by its unflagging invariance, or adore it for its timelessness.
Yesterday after work, I bought groceries for my big cooking endeavor (vodka penne) and had to rest my arms on the way home. While sitting on a brick ledge in the hot sun, I saw one of my customers coming my way-- Joel, the very sweet Rittenhouse Market grocer who gets a cup to-go every day. We were neighbors, it turned out; he lived a mere two blocks away from my house. A short while later, he was giving me a tour of his very narrow and tall abode that was more like a treehouse than a house in the city. It had three stories with a narrow spiraling staircase that led to each one. The rooms were of modest size and the entire place had the air of an era gone by, nearly vanished or at most pushed into the peripheries and dusty, aging, slowly forgotten corners of this world, in this age of wireless and constant bombardment of high-tech noise. There was no wifi, no internet at all, no computer, no cell phone. What he did have was books and paintings. He was a local painter. On his walls hung huge canvases of industrial scenes around Philadelphia, some which no longer even exist. On the third floor was his work space and the walls in here were lined from top to bottom and side to side with hundreds of magazines-- the canary yellow spines of National Geographic filling one entire wall, another half of a wall filled by the thinner, taller ivory-colored spines of Life Magazine, some of which dated back to WWII, another half of a wall dedicated to art books and the other half of that wall stacked with the classics he had read in college-- Solzhenitsyn, Sartre, Steinbeck, Tolstoy. If you know me at all...
He had a cat and he arranged his food like a grocery store. On top of his fridge was a very orderly pyramid of canned soups. Next to this pyramid was a very orderly stack of Kashi brand cereal. He opened his freezer and I burst out laughing. The inside was packed with frozen tv dinners, all of the same brand-- the one with the bright orange colored box. His great (great-great?) grandfather had been in the grocery business. His uncle and several others in his family had also been painters. He was a man who faithfully carried on his family's traditions.
I walked out of his house with my groceries, a host of new impressions, and a new book called "The Road", by Cormac McCarthy. I walked the two blocks home and thought how curious it all was. I walked one block toward my house and waved to a a blue-eyed, cherub-haired man waiting at the wheels of his black car with his window rolled down. He was my next-door neighbor and another regular at my shop-- a connection I discovered 10 months after I had been serving him his double cappuccino every morning.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Free Books
I'm giving away my books from now on after I read them
(exceptions for reference-like books, epic tomes, and books with pretty
pictures). Why? I do not like amassing too many things, so less than a
month ago, I resolved to stop spending money on books, and to just read
the ones I already own or ones lent to me. Well! Today, I just broke
(read: shattered) that rule. So now I get to buy them, but must give
them away after the reading.
It makes very little sense financially-- then again, I never claimed to have a good head for business. Quite the opposite, really. Existentially speaking (?), it makes me feel free...free from the bondage of money. When you do things for free, it means you can afford to. Although I am not rich, I am not dirt poor, and I can afford to do things here and there without worrying about how to get something green out of it. And besides, I like the idea of sharing/distributing my experiences in this way.
It makes very little sense financially-- then again, I never claimed to have a good head for business. Quite the opposite, really. Existentially speaking (?), it makes me feel free...free from the bondage of money. When you do things for free, it means you can afford to. Although I am not rich, I am not dirt poor, and I can afford to do things here and there without worrying about how to get something green out of it. And besides, I like the idea of sharing/distributing my experiences in this way.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
The Best Piss of My Waking Life
It is May 21st and the sinners are still as alive as the saints!
Since I am alive to tell the story, here it is:
Have you ever sat on a toilet and thought, I wonder if this is a dream...? Well...let me backtrack. Yesterday, I came home from ballet and was so hungry that I ate an entire pineapple. A real one, not canned, that I had experimentally sliced up in the Vietnamese tradition before leaving for class. That baby was so ready ripe that it was starting to mold on the bottom, was as yellow as jaundice, and tasted sugary sweet.
The consumption of an entire pineapple left me immobilized on the couch. I'd had plans to go to a birthday party, and that plan was nixed. My roommates invited me to join them at a bar called Public House, but I had to say no thanks. All I could do was lie on the couch and watch a Flight of the Conchords video and imagine an entire pineapple sitting in my stomach.
Eventually, I went upstairs to hit the shower and go to mattress (for those of you who don't know it, I don't have a bed-- just a twin-sized mattress, and just recently acquired bedsheets), fell asleep to an open book, and dreamed of pissing pineapple juice. A second after this dream, I had to go again, so I woke up, stumbled sleepily to the toilet, and had the best piss of my waking life.
So, in a condensed step-by-step list format,
How to have the best piss of your waking life:
(1) purchase a pineapple
(2) wait until it is ready ripe (signs of ready ripeness are a fresh, tangy island aroma every time you walk by the fruit, mold growing on the bottom, and the yellowness of jaundice)
(3) gut the pineapple in the Vietnamese tradition, creating a series of nice spiral formations where the eyelets were sliced away; use a super-sharp stainless steel showtime knife if you happen to have one on hand-- or something equally as sharp
(4) go to ballet
(5) come back from ballet starving
(6) eat the entire pineapple with a fork
(7) enter state of immobility; cancel all plans to move off the couch
(8) go to mattress
(9) dream of pissing pineapple juice
(10) wake up and stumble sleepily to the toilet
(11) make sure it is a real toilet, and not a dream one
(12) have the best piss of your waking life
Since I am alive to tell the story, here it is:
Have you ever sat on a toilet and thought, I wonder if this is a dream...? Well...let me backtrack. Yesterday, I came home from ballet and was so hungry that I ate an entire pineapple. A real one, not canned, that I had experimentally sliced up in the Vietnamese tradition before leaving for class. That baby was so ready ripe that it was starting to mold on the bottom, was as yellow as jaundice, and tasted sugary sweet.
The consumption of an entire pineapple left me immobilized on the couch. I'd had plans to go to a birthday party, and that plan was nixed. My roommates invited me to join them at a bar called Public House, but I had to say no thanks. All I could do was lie on the couch and watch a Flight of the Conchords video and imagine an entire pineapple sitting in my stomach.
Eventually, I went upstairs to hit the shower and go to mattress (for those of you who don't know it, I don't have a bed-- just a twin-sized mattress, and just recently acquired bedsheets), fell asleep to an open book, and dreamed of pissing pineapple juice. A second after this dream, I had to go again, so I woke up, stumbled sleepily to the toilet, and had the best piss of my waking life.
So, in a condensed step-by-step list format,
How to have the best piss of your waking life:
(1) purchase a pineapple
(2) wait until it is ready ripe (signs of ready ripeness are a fresh, tangy island aroma every time you walk by the fruit, mold growing on the bottom, and the yellowness of jaundice)
(3) gut the pineapple in the Vietnamese tradition, creating a series of nice spiral formations where the eyelets were sliced away; use a super-sharp stainless steel showtime knife if you happen to have one on hand-- or something equally as sharp
(4) go to ballet
(5) come back from ballet starving
(6) eat the entire pineapple with a fork
(7) enter state of immobility; cancel all plans to move off the couch
(8) go to mattress
(9) dream of pissing pineapple juice
(10) wake up and stumble sleepily to the toilet
(11) make sure it is a real toilet, and not a dream one
(12) have the best piss of your waking life
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Charting motivation level (ML) would be an interesting self-study. ML is at a dangerously low level after a nap, and yet the nap is needed. ML never fails to surge after ballet-- whether in the form of a class or a warm-up en solitude. Today, I took my warm-up to the rooftop and while stretching on the splintery rails, spied on my neighbors below playing basketball. In fact, I couldn't see them-- only their hologramic reflections in the glass windows of the houses across the street. Will be sad to leave this house come August. ML at a steady high rate behind the bar, but during morning shifts, surges to an excessive rate around noon.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Little Bucket Update #4
Walking
home from ballet, I nearly tread on a mass of gray lint. Something
about the form of the mass drew me back up the sidewalk. Peering more
closely, I discovered that the mass of gray lint was actually a dead
sparrow, flattened out into two dimensions, one of its stick legs and
claws sticking crookedly out one way, and its beak the other way.
Ah...sadness...
A
few steps later down the walk, another sight made me pause: An open egg
carton, empty save for 3 eggshells that had been decorated presumably
for the past Easter holiday. But these were the fanciest, most
intricately-decorated Easter eggs I’d ever seen. One had a detailed
portrait of a woman’s face in black and white with shading even, another
was a more abstract floral black and white design. The third one was
severely cracked. My mind crossed back to the pancaked sparrow, and for a
moment, I had this fleeting, Hermes-like thought that the bird had come
from these eggs. Juxtaposition of experiences gives rise to
preposterous thoughts. I took the eggshells with me and dropped them--
with care-- into my bucket of whims.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Notes from my 3rd Warehouse Visit
-wake to the sound of the garbage truck; run bags of trash out the door barefoot
-make a third voyage to the Warehouse by lightrail; practice releves and tendus in my new split-sole dance sneakers while waiting for the el
-meet a coffee farmer ambassador from Haiti who seems a bit lost when he's not following around his new business partners
-watch preparations for a mural painting; the artist sports paint-splattered shorts; he stands on the ladder and sketches lines on the canvas; in two weeks, the mural will be melted onto the wall of the new shop, an image of the Duomo of Milan reflecting off Philadelphia's City Hall; this symbolic mirror will hang adjacent to the actual mirror behind the bar; mirror mirror on the wall!
-glance through a book on Faema, the newest addition to my vocabulary after "collating", "aromatics", "gospodeen", "tovareesch", and "palimpsest"
-drink (coffee, of course) from a rust-colored La Colombe cappuccino cup-- the first one out of the boxes; Dilworth Plaza, here we come!
-baby carriages: as baneful as tupperware, but gotta roll with the times
-step foot into the new cafe still under construction; pretend to pull an espresso at the semicircling bar ("the island"); windowseats, black marble counters, bench seats, lamp shades shaped like ice cream cones, muted green bathroom tiles, large windows, and orange walls that transform into more translucent shades of orange as the sun alights on them; across the street, plans to transform the concrete into grass
-the word is anticipation; these are exciting times to be a barista at LC
-make a third voyage to the Warehouse by lightrail; practice releves and tendus in my new split-sole dance sneakers while waiting for the el
-meet a coffee farmer ambassador from Haiti who seems a bit lost when he's not following around his new business partners
-watch preparations for a mural painting; the artist sports paint-splattered shorts; he stands on the ladder and sketches lines on the canvas; in two weeks, the mural will be melted onto the wall of the new shop, an image of the Duomo of Milan reflecting off Philadelphia's City Hall; this symbolic mirror will hang adjacent to the actual mirror behind the bar; mirror mirror on the wall!
-glance through a book on Faema, the newest addition to my vocabulary after "collating", "aromatics", "gospodeen", "tovareesch", and "palimpsest"
-drink (coffee, of course) from a rust-colored La Colombe cappuccino cup-- the first one out of the boxes; Dilworth Plaza, here we come!
-baby carriages: as baneful as tupperware, but gotta roll with the times
-step foot into the new cafe still under construction; pretend to pull an espresso at the semicircling bar ("the island"); windowseats, black marble counters, bench seats, lamp shades shaped like ice cream cones, muted green bathroom tiles, large windows, and orange walls that transform into more translucent shades of orange as the sun alights on them; across the street, plans to transform the concrete into grass
-the word is anticipation; these are exciting times to be a barista at LC
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Pineapple
I gutted my first pineapple this morning.
It's not earth-shattering news, but it was a milestone for me.
And now, I know that the best way to peel a pineapple is in the Vietnamese tradition.
Some are born pineapple peelers.
I have this ridiculous dream of having a baby at the age of 37 and taking her (yes, a she) with me to Bali, Mozambique, Vietnam and other exotic places so that she can learn from the world, rather than from youtube.
This dream takes place after my current dream of being a ballerina-barista-bookworm.
It's not earth-shattering news, but it was a milestone for me.
And now, I know that the best way to peel a pineapple is in the Vietnamese tradition.
Some are born pineapple peelers.
I have this ridiculous dream of having a baby at the age of 37 and taking her (yes, a she) with me to Bali, Mozambique, Vietnam and other exotic places so that she can learn from the world, rather than from youtube.
This dream takes place after my current dream of being a ballerina-barista-bookworm.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
I'm Going To
I'm going to serve coffee with white azaleas in my hair and sparkling water in my blood.
I'm going to learn that one of my customers is an entomologist, and then I'm going to ask him for advice on how to not be scared of bugs.
I'm going to push sales of the almond croissants by telling customers they have less calories than a Whopper. I think I'd rather have a Whopper.
I'm going to spill coffee in front of my boss and then recover because the line is growing ceaselessly and affords me little time to dwell on my ill-timed clumsiness.
I'm going to wear a shirt with Bambi and Thumper on it and work at dizzying speeds, literally.
I'm going to say I'm going to watch a Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer game, and then not do it because I'm too beat after work.
Instead, I'm going to walk home with a tall and trusty friend.
I'm going to read and think about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I'm going to keep quiet; there is already an overabundance of opinions, most of them are loud and meaningless.
I'm going to post a picture on flickr and facebook.
I'm going to nap with pink azaleas in my hair.
babies! I love them to bits, and I also feel a great weight for them.
I'm going to coo at a baby and tickle its tiny little feet.
I'm going to learn that one of my customers is an entomologist, and then I'm going to ask him for advice on how to not be scared of bugs.
I'm going to push sales of the almond croissants by telling customers they have less calories than a Whopper. I think I'd rather have a Whopper.
I'm going to spill coffee in front of my boss and then recover because the line is growing ceaselessly and affords me little time to dwell on my ill-timed clumsiness.
I'm going to wear a shirt with Bambi and Thumper on it and work at dizzying speeds, literally.
I'm going to say I'm going to watch a Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer game, and then not do it because I'm too beat after work.
Instead, I'm going to walk home with a tall and trusty friend.
I'm going to read and think about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I'm going to keep quiet; there is already an overabundance of opinions, most of them are loud and meaningless.
I'm going to post a picture on flickr and facebook.
I'm going to nap with pink azaleas in my hair.
babies! I love them to bits, and I also feel a great weight for them.
I'm going to coo at a baby and tickle its tiny little feet.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Little Bucket Update #3
The Serbian plucked a bouquet of bold pink azalea clusters from its parent shrub and handed it to me.
“There you go, happy birthday!”
I stuck it in my hair and we walked on home in evening shadows, skirting the perimeter of the park to avoid the poopy stench of freshly applied mulch, and speaking of pizza and things. We always talk about food on the walk home because we’re always starving after work. On the other hand, we’re always too fatigued to cook anything exotic, and so we just dream of exotic dinners, then go home and eat convenience store food or worse.
This time, however, I stir-fried spears of asparagus. The azaleas went into the bucket of whims. Birthdays are wonderful. Everyone made me feel so strangely special. As much as I want to say that I don’t need that...
“There you go, happy birthday!”
I stuck it in my hair and we walked on home in evening shadows, skirting the perimeter of the park to avoid the poopy stench of freshly applied mulch, and speaking of pizza and things. We always talk about food on the walk home because we’re always starving after work. On the other hand, we’re always too fatigued to cook anything exotic, and so we just dream of exotic dinners, then go home and eat convenience store food or worse.
This time, however, I stir-fried spears of asparagus. The azaleas went into the bucket of whims. Birthdays are wonderful. Everyone made me feel so strangely special. As much as I want to say that I don’t need that...
Friday, April 29, 2011
Dear Year 27
What is a year in the twenties without drive and dreams? A set of guidelines for the 3^3 year of this individual's life:
-read more; don't buy any books
-cook more
-become a better spy (keep this one secret)
-invest in a sewing machine for my apron & bow tie biz
-build a dollhouse
-buy a ticket to Moscow (round trip)
-draw more unicorns
-play more music
-call umma more
-be a ballerina 24/7
-be proud and don't feel stupid
-live outside the box
-read more; don't buy any books
-cook more
-become a better spy (keep this one secret)
-invest in a sewing machine for my apron & bow tie biz
-build a dollhouse
-buy a ticket to Moscow (round trip)
-draw more unicorns
-play more music
-call umma more
-be a ballerina 24/7
-be proud and don't feel stupid
-live outside the box
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Little Bucket of Whims
Candide
is the story of the failures of Optimism (the philosophy, not the
attitude). It is the detailing of one character’s miseries after another
to demonstrate the invalidity of the claim that everything is for the
best, and that this world is the best of all possible worlds. In the
end, the posse of main characters happen upon a Turk farmer who is
unlike all the other personalities they have thus far encountered in the
story in that he is not royalty, not of the noble cast, and not a
distinguished member of the Church. The farmer does not lead a lavish
life, he is not a man of means-- but he does have enough means. He has
some acreage of land, and he has a wife and children who work with him
to maintain this “garden”. This plot he sees as his lot in life-- not
riches and gold, nor titles nor fame, nor a quest for answers to the
great philosophical questions of morality and the existence of evil, of
the existence and purpose of God; only to keep at bay the three known
evils-- boredom, vice, and necessity- by spending his days cultivating his garden.
The last line of Candide (spoken by Candide),
“All that is well and good, but we must go and cultivate our garden.”
may be interpreted from either an optimistic point-of-view or a pessimistic one. Perhaps tilling the earth in the literal fashion, leading an organic life and maintaining our attachment to the earth that begets life is truly the way to happiness, satisfaction, or purpose. Or perhaps the last line can be viewed as an extremely banal and trite conclusion to a sweeping exploration of an influential philosophical paradigm. In this pessimistic interpretation, the banality of the last line mirrors the banality of life itself, that after all this searching and questing for truth, for purpose, for meaning, it turns out that the joke is on us for (a) thinking there was more to life than survival or (b) thinking that even if there was a grand design or purpose, that we were part of the elite, privileged crowd who could or would be allowed to comprehend such a design or purpose, when in truth, we are no better than mice on a ship, for whom the captain doesn’t give a damn.
All this talk of purpose and design and gardening brings me to a bar in West Philadelphia, where one night I went with some friends for a breast cancer awareness benefit (or something). I ordered sweet potato fries from the menu and it came in this cheap silver tin bucket along with a ramekin of sweet and spicy mustard and another ramekin filled with barbeque sauce. As the dinner coursed on, gardening came up and I chatted on to my friends for a while about the book Candide as I did above. As time ticked on and the sweet potato fries dwindled, a strange attachment began to form between me and the cheap tin bucket. Suddenly, I found that I wanted nothing more than to take that bucket home and plant a little garden in it of my own. Would that be stealing?
“You can get the same thing from Target for under a dollar!”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be my bucket. It didn’t hold my sweet potato fries.”
Sure I was being irrational and saying stupid things just to say things-- as I often do-- but as also often happens, my words began to take hold, and by the end of the dinner, I really did love that little bucket more than anything. I dreamed at the table of what sort of flora I could plant into it-- flowers or herbs? I took a sheet of “Where the Wild Things Are” stickers that my friend had on hand for the event and plastered my bucket with childish images of monsters on swings and children pretending to be monsters. Already, it was like a child to me. How quickly and easily meaning and attachments are formed!
I stashed my tin baby in a plastic sack along with my leftovers and brought it home with me that night. It spent the night on the kitchen counter unwashed, still reeking of the oils from the deep-fried potato cuts.
Two days later, I gave my bucket its first cleaning with orange-scented Dawn dish soap. It maintained its tarnished image and its stickers, but was relieved of the grease. I set it upside down on a paper towel to dry.
Two nights later, as I ambled through the city streets, on my way home from work, I felt myself seized by the balmy night air so unusual for the month of April, and by the beautiful blooms that hung heavily from the branches that not a month ago and for months before that had stood stripped of life, barren, skinny and wanting. I passed under the eaves of a large cherry blossom tree bursting with miniature pale pink bouquets and thought of my bucket. Half a block later, I doubled back to the tree, reached up and plucked one of the miniature bouquets from one of the thick stems branching out of the mother trunk.
“Don’t kill the flowers!”
I whipped my head around and caught a glimpse of the soothsayer in the dark as he flashed by on his bike. His words trailed behind him. I looked down at the flowers I had just plucked. Already a flurry of petals had been shaken from their fragile attachments and laid a-scattered on the sidewalk.
What remained of the bouquet ended up in my bucket shortly thereafter. I decided the following that evening as I stood back and admired my bucket now dressed to the nines in princess pink: the contents of my little bucket would change perpetually and unexpectedly, depending on nothing in particular and with no particular timeline. It would be a bucket of whims; it would not be your average potted plant.
…..................................................
The last line of Candide (spoken by Candide),
“All that is well and good, but we must go and cultivate our garden.”
may be interpreted from either an optimistic point-of-view or a pessimistic one. Perhaps tilling the earth in the literal fashion, leading an organic life and maintaining our attachment to the earth that begets life is truly the way to happiness, satisfaction, or purpose. Or perhaps the last line can be viewed as an extremely banal and trite conclusion to a sweeping exploration of an influential philosophical paradigm. In this pessimistic interpretation, the banality of the last line mirrors the banality of life itself, that after all this searching and questing for truth, for purpose, for meaning, it turns out that the joke is on us for (a) thinking there was more to life than survival or (b) thinking that even if there was a grand design or purpose, that we were part of the elite, privileged crowd who could or would be allowed to comprehend such a design or purpose, when in truth, we are no better than mice on a ship, for whom the captain doesn’t give a damn.
All this talk of purpose and design and gardening brings me to a bar in West Philadelphia, where one night I went with some friends for a breast cancer awareness benefit (or something). I ordered sweet potato fries from the menu and it came in this cheap silver tin bucket along with a ramekin of sweet and spicy mustard and another ramekin filled with barbeque sauce. As the dinner coursed on, gardening came up and I chatted on to my friends for a while about the book Candide as I did above. As time ticked on and the sweet potato fries dwindled, a strange attachment began to form between me and the cheap tin bucket. Suddenly, I found that I wanted nothing more than to take that bucket home and plant a little garden in it of my own. Would that be stealing?
“You can get the same thing from Target for under a dollar!”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be my bucket. It didn’t hold my sweet potato fries.”
Sure I was being irrational and saying stupid things just to say things-- as I often do-- but as also often happens, my words began to take hold, and by the end of the dinner, I really did love that little bucket more than anything. I dreamed at the table of what sort of flora I could plant into it-- flowers or herbs? I took a sheet of “Where the Wild Things Are” stickers that my friend had on hand for the event and plastered my bucket with childish images of monsters on swings and children pretending to be monsters. Already, it was like a child to me. How quickly and easily meaning and attachments are formed!
I stashed my tin baby in a plastic sack along with my leftovers and brought it home with me that night. It spent the night on the kitchen counter unwashed, still reeking of the oils from the deep-fried potato cuts.
Two days later, I gave my bucket its first cleaning with orange-scented Dawn dish soap. It maintained its tarnished image and its stickers, but was relieved of the grease. I set it upside down on a paper towel to dry.
Two nights later, as I ambled through the city streets, on my way home from work, I felt myself seized by the balmy night air so unusual for the month of April, and by the beautiful blooms that hung heavily from the branches that not a month ago and for months before that had stood stripped of life, barren, skinny and wanting. I passed under the eaves of a large cherry blossom tree bursting with miniature pale pink bouquets and thought of my bucket. Half a block later, I doubled back to the tree, reached up and plucked one of the miniature bouquets from one of the thick stems branching out of the mother trunk.
“Don’t kill the flowers!”
I whipped my head around and caught a glimpse of the soothsayer in the dark as he flashed by on his bike. His words trailed behind him. I looked down at the flowers I had just plucked. Already a flurry of petals had been shaken from their fragile attachments and laid a-scattered on the sidewalk.
What remained of the bouquet ended up in my bucket shortly thereafter. I decided the following that evening as I stood back and admired my bucket now dressed to the nines in princess pink: the contents of my little bucket would change perpetually and unexpectedly, depending on nothing in particular and with no particular timeline. It would be a bucket of whims; it would not be your average potted plant.
…..................................................
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Gazpacho!
I made the most interesting gazpacho today. Truth be told, it was less a gazpacho and more a hybrid of gazpacho, pico de gallo, and chickpea salad. To further elaborate, it was
(a) like gazpacho, but more spiced like a pico de gallo salsa due to an overdose of onion and peppers, and chunkier due to the addition of chickpeas into both the blended and unblended parts
(b) like pico de gallo, but soupier like gazpacho due to the partial blending, and chunkier/more mediterranean salad-like due to the addition of chickpeas
(c) like chickpea salad, but soupier like gazpacho due to the partial blending, and more spiced like salsa due to the overdose of onion and peppers
-as is, it would taste best as a dip
-next time, I would chop in less onion and peppers to make it less dippy and more edible as a main dish
-I <3 chickpeas very much; gonna make more chickpea dishes in the future
(a) like gazpacho, but more spiced like a pico de gallo salsa due to an overdose of onion and peppers, and chunkier due to the addition of chickpeas into both the blended and unblended parts
(b) like pico de gallo, but soupier like gazpacho due to the partial blending, and chunkier/more mediterranean salad-like due to the addition of chickpeas
(c) like chickpea salad, but soupier like gazpacho due to the partial blending, and more spiced like salsa due to the overdose of onion and peppers
-as is, it would taste best as a dip
-next time, I would chop in less onion and peppers to make it less dippy and more edible as a main dish
-I <3 chickpeas very much; gonna make more chickpea dishes in the future
To Did List 4/26/11
-ballet warm-up focusing on slow, exact tendus
-wish Jess a Happy Royal Wedding Eve Eve Eve
-pick up a huge dying beetle, thinking that it is a dead flower; keep 70% of the resulting scream inside so as not to scare away the customers
-make a curving leaf + heart in a cappuccino cup
-learn that the woman who gets the slightly short extra dry double skim cappuccino to-go has a beautiful name-- Lubov (Любовь), meaning "love" in Russian; see her in a new light
-plan a dill gazpacho dinner to mark the end of a beautiful summery day
-wish Jess a Happy Royal Wedding Eve Eve Eve
-pick up a huge dying beetle, thinking that it is a dead flower; keep 70% of the resulting scream inside so as not to scare away the customers
-make a curving leaf + heart in a cappuccino cup
-learn that the woman who gets the slightly short extra dry double skim cappuccino to-go has a beautiful name-- Lubov (Любовь), meaning "love" in Russian; see her in a new light
-plan a dill gazpacho dinner to mark the end of a beautiful summery day
Friday, April 22, 2011
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Last night, I watched an episode of "Glee" featuring a grilled cheese sandwich. Suddenly I had a serious craving for a real grilled cheese sandwich. This morning I woke up at 6:55 am and the first thing I thought about was a grilled cheese sandwich. I went downstairs, fired up the gas stove, threw together a couple slices of seeded rye bread, muenster cheese, and sriracha sauce, and grilled until the fire alarm went off. This note is really for my roommates, as an apology for disrupting their sleep this morning, all for the sake of satisfying a stupid craving for a stupid grilled cheese sandwich. I'm sure you understand. And the grilled cheese sandwich was to die for...just like our house.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
4/20 2011
The first 80-degree day since last summer. I took my current read, Candide, up to the rooftop, but after I set up the blanket and lay down to read, all I could do for a while was stare up at the blue sky. I thought about my favorite passage in War & Peace-- the passage about the infinite blue sky that made me fall deeply in love with the book (luckily it was relatively early on in the tome). The warmth and slight humidity swept me away into days gone by. Summers spent in dirty frat houses. Those five days on the beach in Florida. My old college friends. Those five days in Oman. Good times occur in sets of five days. Birds sang and bees the size of dragonflies buzzed around me, but far enough not to scare me. I felt a world away. Eventually I picked up the book and read until near-conclusion, but a few pages before the end, I put my head down and drifted off. Woke up just in time for ballet.
Friday, April 15, 2011
To Did List 4/15/2010
-wash ballet clothes. Check.
-go to ballet. Check.
-go on a hot dog hunt after all the food carts have shut down for the day. Check.
-embarrass Hoa at the Apple Store by bringing her a birthday hot dog and wishing her an extremely loud happy birthday; make her turn an ungodly shade of red. Check.
"You do realize that up until now, no one here knew it was my birthday right?"
Of course, Hoa, that's why we came!
I might regret that last task in exactly two weeks. Will have to make sure I don't get scheduled for work that day.
-go to ballet. Check.
-go on a hot dog hunt after all the food carts have shut down for the day. Check.
-embarrass Hoa at the Apple Store by bringing her a birthday hot dog and wishing her an extremely loud happy birthday; make her turn an ungodly shade of red. Check.
"You do realize that up until now, no one here knew it was my birthday right?"
Of course, Hoa, that's why we came!
I might regret that last task in exactly two weeks. Will have to make sure I don't get scheduled for work that day.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
To Did List
-share an Amish club sandwich at Reading Terminal
-play 20 (x10) questions with the old man from Home Alone who appears evil but turns out to be really nice and heroic
-pet an inanimate puppy statue
-get dark chocolate and toasted almond gelato with a Canadian friend
-play with a baby; she wore a furry brown hood with bear ears on her darling little head; Little Bear and I played "Up"; we went up and down the fountain step over and over again; we fell down and picked ourselves up; she dropped and picked up my Vitamin water; I hugged Little Bear goodbye and disappeared
-have a stoop chat; Radical Asteroids Never Dance On Me
-play 20 (x10) questions with the old man from Home Alone who appears evil but turns out to be really nice and heroic
-pet an inanimate puppy statue
-get dark chocolate and toasted almond gelato with a Canadian friend
-play with a baby; she wore a furry brown hood with bear ears on her darling little head; Little Bear and I played "Up"; we went up and down the fountain step over and over again; we fell down and picked ourselves up; she dropped and picked up my Vitamin water; I hugged Little Bear goodbye and disappeared
-have a stoop chat; Radical Asteroids Never Dance On Me
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Metaphoric Horseback Riding
cheval: horse
a cheval sur/entre: astride; straddling; straddled between; spanning
a cheval sur/entre: astride; straddling; straddled between; spanning
Monday, April 04, 2011
Tie-rrific Day
This morning, a man walked into the shop wearing a chartreuse green bow tie with tiny recycling symbols scattered all over it. It had been a gift; he worked for an environmental organization. Later, another man walked in sporting a lavender bow tie adorned with tiny white cranes in mid-flight. Yet later, another man walked in wearing a full-length burgundy red tie playfully decorated with wind and brass instruments and musical notes. By this time, I was of the opinion that the tie has became the predominant-- often the sole means of personal expression for the male professional. Someday, I decided, I too will wear a crazy tie to work. What sort of tie will I wear? I could go for irony, the abstract, the poetic, or fun and Ms. Frizzle-esque. The possibilities are endless.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Carpe Mane
Good morning world! It is 4 in the morning, and I cannot sleep so I shall be awake and do wake-y things.
Wake-y things:
-eat cheez-its to soothe gnawing guts
-read Candide and laugh at faux-logic
-listen to Chopin; hear the birds
-make a list
Wake-y things:
-eat cheez-its to soothe gnawing guts
-read Candide and laugh at faux-logic
-listen to Chopin; hear the birds
-make a list
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Case of the Disfigured Coin
I
finally made it out to the Warehouse after hearing all about what a
great, fun place it was from everyone, and they certainly were not
lying! The place is a giant playground. Even getting there was an
adventure, thanks to my own stupidity. I took the Light Rail in exactly
the wrong direction and ended up at the very spot I had started at 1.5
hours ago. Sigh. I had to call and admit my stupidity so that they
wouldn’t wonder why I was more than an hour late for my appointment.
Sigh. As a consolation, I reminded myself that I was never “lost”; I was
“exploring”.
And indeed, North Philadelphia is a very different place from Center City/South Philly. There were times when I wish I had a million dollars to give the entire region a facelift, full-body tuck, and a sex change operation; there were other times when I found the disintegrated buildings and surroundings very beautiful. (And yes, there were many “times” because I was on that trolley for a long fucking time).
One of the most interesting moments of that trolley ride was when we entered the area populated by Islamic Philadelphians. I forget sometimes of that aspect of Philadelphia that I found so strange when I first arrived as a fresh-faced college-bound kid. Soon after we entered this area, my ears perked up as I picked up words of a conversation taking place between the two women sitting behind me. “Allah”, “the Prophet”, “Insha’llah”. It has been a while since I’ve heard these words, and I was hearing them now on an eternal trolley ride through ghetto Philadelphia.
At last, the trolley pulled up to my stop, a few blocks away from the roastery.
“Thought you’d never arrive huh?” said the bus driver.
Yes thank you. I ran out of there and didn’t stop running. (I hate being late.) I ran all the way instead of bothering to wait for Renee to pick me up. The cold air did a number on my lungs; I couldn’t stop coughing for the first half-hour or so after my arrival. The amazing thing is, I smelled the roastery even before I saw it. That smell of coffee that is now so familiar to me, that clings to my clothes and hair, and permeates my very skin, and remains there until my next shower; which then fills up the curtained-off shower as soon as I run myself under the hot water (an alternative form of hotboxing). I followed that smell the rest of the way to the Warehouse.
Giant sea-green sorting machine, pipes running every which way carrying beans, gases; bright red monster roasting machine; tank of liquid nitrogen harvested from the surrounding air; heavy sacks of beans from Brazil and elsewhere, waiting to be tested, sorted, and roasted. Bins full of roasted beans degassing or waiting to be bagged, labeled with the familiar names of our blends (Nizza, Corsica,...). Bins full of ground bean that feels almost as soft as flour as I run my fingers through the dark brown meal. A computer system with a readout screen that displays the analyses of the beans being roasted, and several attached dials like video game controls with which one can single-handedly control how the beans are roasted with respect to flavor, aroma, darkness, etc. Drums-- solid versus perforated. Perforated wins, but solid prevails in the current state of roasting. The destoning process, like column chromatography except separated by weight. More later. A spectrometer used to test samples of the roasted beans every 15 minutes.
In the other room, antique roasting machines refurbished to a shiny vintage state, or else in the process of being refurbished like the one destined for the new Chicago shop. Large skids piled high with boxes of beans. One man winds clear tape around and around before rolling the skid out for shipment. Lots of Frenchies. Bagging Lionhearted. Overall, for such a large operation, it’s a surprisingly small crowd that handles everything from sourcing the beans, sales and promoting, all the way down to serving them in beverage form at our three current locations in NYC and Philly. About 100 people to make it all happen.
A few times while Todd was treating me to a one-on-one tour during one of his rare free hours, I felt very much like a certain character from a certain book penned by Roald Dahl; like a very special child being given a very special tour of a very special chocolate factory. In fact, I had my own “gold ticket” moment of sorts. It happened when Todd opened up the destoning tray. From among the usual impurities like stones and kernels of corn, he pulled out a shiny gold-colored coin.
“Well now, this is amazing.”
In the 20-some odd years that he’s been roasting, explained Todd, this was only the second time he’s ever pulled out a coin from the destoning tray. Wow, what were the chances? I felt like I had just inherited a million dollars-- or a great secret. Now for a thorough description of this archaeological find: it is gold-toned, and has a raised edge with a distinct border. It is folded in half and there are two roasted coffee beans trapped in this space. The only legible inscriptions are a zero on one side and parts of two words that run along the curved border. It reads something like:
...MONOA... BLANC...
Where the bold indicates certainty in the identification of the letter. Other than those above inscriptions, nothing else can be made out. Everywhere else, the coin is pock-marked with dents from going through that monster roasting machine.
My benefactor peered at the coin for a few seconds before handing it to me for keeps. “It looks like it could be from Indonesia,” he said offhandedly, “but I can’t see anything without my reading glasses. With his glasses, my globetrotter boss could probably easily have identified the coin’s origin. However,...Upon my own inspection, I found a zero engraved off to one side of the heavily-damaged coin, but otherwise, just dents. It wasn’t until I got home later that night and studied it under better lighting that I found the words.
For the time being, I simply pocketed the find and followed my guide as he continued his tour of this great playground, giving super-animated descriptions of the rest of the process, explaining the difference between roasting with solid versus perforated drums, explaining why he was going to bring the old pre-Strada espresso machine back into the shop for pure espresso shots, and sharing stories about back in the day when they were young twenty-something-year-olds skateboarding around the then one-room warehouse, roasting beans on a much much smaller scale.
After the tour of the pipes and machines, we went upstairs to his and J.P’s office, which is another amazing infusion of all kinds of smells-- but mostly tobacco. The smell hits you like a wall when you first walk in, and on the one hand, it smells good; on the other hand, it smells like a hamster’s nest. Two large desks sprawled with papers, books on trade, architectural blueprints, and other important clutter. The two desks face a large blackboard and I sat back on one of the leather chairs and watched and listened as Todd took a piece of chalk and started writing and sketching all over this blackboard, giving me a visual speed-tutorial on coffee origin and its harvesting process. Arabica versus Robusta. Typica. Region, varietal, size. Like coffee bloodtype: A, AB, AA, AA+, or 10-18+. Altitude. Natural versus wet processing. Brought me back to my college days.
“What else, what else?” he kept saying to himself throughout the tour. There was so much that he could show and tell me that it boggled my mind every time he said this. He showed me a room, a spare-looking room with two long tables and benches made of wood that was polished to a sheen but so “raw” that you could see the particular tree from which it was made. Along the white walls were hung large-scale framed photos of coffee farmers and landscapes-- the very ones that used to hang on the walls of the Rittenhouse shop before they were replaced by a rotating array of artwork by local artists. Hum, I’d wondered what had happened to these images. Another small secret discovered.
At the front of this room, facing these tables, was a faux-barista station equipped with some ceramics just like the ones we used at the shop. I learned that this room was going to be used for training purposes-- a place for trainers to train trainers because it was so impossible to interrupt the flow of business at the shops for this purpose. Sitting at the edge of the table nearest the door were two portable hand crank antique roasters. The one on the left had given birth to La Colombe’s Nizza blend and belonged to J.P.; the other one, which belonged to Todd, had given birth to our Afrique blend. The latter roaster dated back to 1927, a year that had special significance for Todd and so he had jumped on the opportunity to purchase this particular toy. Significance...is not something that exists inherently in anything or anyone. One imparts significance upon things and people...and dates. It is not a sign from God; it is rather a sign from you who perceives and receives the sign and gives it special meaning.
A coin is a coin, and when it’s found deformed and disfigured in a destoning tray at a coffee roastery thousands of miles away, it’s a coin that accidentally fell out of a harvester’s pocket and got mixed up with the beans along with stones and kernels of corn. Yet, I couldn’t help being pulled by the mystery surrounding this coin’s identity. When I got home later that night, I googled all possible iterations of the words I could think of, along with images of coins from the countries we source from, but found nothing. A couple days later, I showed my co-workers, who also tried to figure out its origin in between making drinks and doing dishes. They were equally stumped.
On Monday morning, I woke up and determined that I would find the origin of this coin even if I had to painstakingly go through every nation on this planet and study their money. As daunting as such a project sounds, the fact of the matter is the number of nations on this planet is finite, and so the answer was there, somewhere. I made a second attempt at google: I visited the World Coin Gallery website and drafted the following list as I checked each nation:
Countries checked (blends that source from this country):
Indonesia (Monte Carlo)
Brazil (all)
Rwanda (Afrique)
Ethiopia (Afrique, Nizza, Monaco, Phocea, Savoia)
Tanzania (Afrique, Savoia)
Haiti (the Haitian)
El Salvador (Phocea)
Guatemala (none). End mystery.
And boy was I lucky that the list ended here and not 200 countries later. As it turns out, the full inscription reads: “MONJA BLANCA FLOR NACIONAL”
The Monja Blanca, or “White Nun” is the national flower of Guatemala symbolizing peace, beauty, and art. It’s also known by the scientific crowd as Lycaste Skinneri Alba, (belonging to the Lycaste genus of orchids, species discovered by an Englishman named Skinner in the 1800s), and grows in the moderate altitudes (1200-1800 feet) of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador in their moist montane forests and pine-oak-liquidambar forests. An image of the virile-looking trefoil-like monja blanca is impressed into the center space. To its right reads the denomination, 50 centavos (a Spanish/Portuguese word meaning ‘one-hundredth’, from Latin centum + suffix -avo).
On the flip (“observe” as the numismatists would say) side, the inscription “Republica de Guatemala [date]” circumscribes the central figure of the Guatemalan coat of arms: two Bay Laurels branches forming a wreath around a pair of crossed rifles fitted with bayonets; a pair of daggers crossed underneath the rifles; overlaid in the center by a scroll inscribed with the date of Central America’s independence from Spain (“Libertad 15 de septiembre de 1821”). Sitting atop the right-hand corner of this scroll is a Resplendent Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, which bears a great presence in Mesoamerican mythology.
It is made of brass.
But Guatemala? A mystery in itself! None of our blends sourced from this Central American nation, so what was one of its coins doing amongst our beans? I sent the following email to my boss:
Hey Todd, do you source from Guatemala? And if so, for which blend?
About an hour later, I received the following response:
Yes we do - Guatemala is an important component in our new upcoming blend Louisiane.
QED. Case Closed.
Following the discovery/revelation, a dialogue between Sarah and I:
“You know what this means right?”
“What?”
“I have to go to Guatemala.”
“Why?”
“It’s a sign! From the coffee god.”
And indeed, North Philadelphia is a very different place from Center City/South Philly. There were times when I wish I had a million dollars to give the entire region a facelift, full-body tuck, and a sex change operation; there were other times when I found the disintegrated buildings and surroundings very beautiful. (And yes, there were many “times” because I was on that trolley for a long fucking time).
One of the most interesting moments of that trolley ride was when we entered the area populated by Islamic Philadelphians. I forget sometimes of that aspect of Philadelphia that I found so strange when I first arrived as a fresh-faced college-bound kid. Soon after we entered this area, my ears perked up as I picked up words of a conversation taking place between the two women sitting behind me. “Allah”, “the Prophet”, “Insha’llah”. It has been a while since I’ve heard these words, and I was hearing them now on an eternal trolley ride through ghetto Philadelphia.
At last, the trolley pulled up to my stop, a few blocks away from the roastery.
“Thought you’d never arrive huh?” said the bus driver.
Yes thank you. I ran out of there and didn’t stop running. (I hate being late.) I ran all the way instead of bothering to wait for Renee to pick me up. The cold air did a number on my lungs; I couldn’t stop coughing for the first half-hour or so after my arrival. The amazing thing is, I smelled the roastery even before I saw it. That smell of coffee that is now so familiar to me, that clings to my clothes and hair, and permeates my very skin, and remains there until my next shower; which then fills up the curtained-off shower as soon as I run myself under the hot water (an alternative form of hotboxing). I followed that smell the rest of the way to the Warehouse.
Giant sea-green sorting machine, pipes running every which way carrying beans, gases; bright red monster roasting machine; tank of liquid nitrogen harvested from the surrounding air; heavy sacks of beans from Brazil and elsewhere, waiting to be tested, sorted, and roasted. Bins full of roasted beans degassing or waiting to be bagged, labeled with the familiar names of our blends (Nizza, Corsica,...). Bins full of ground bean that feels almost as soft as flour as I run my fingers through the dark brown meal. A computer system with a readout screen that displays the analyses of the beans being roasted, and several attached dials like video game controls with which one can single-handedly control how the beans are roasted with respect to flavor, aroma, darkness, etc. Drums-- solid versus perforated. Perforated wins, but solid prevails in the current state of roasting. The destoning process, like column chromatography except separated by weight. More later. A spectrometer used to test samples of the roasted beans every 15 minutes.
In the other room, antique roasting machines refurbished to a shiny vintage state, or else in the process of being refurbished like the one destined for the new Chicago shop. Large skids piled high with boxes of beans. One man winds clear tape around and around before rolling the skid out for shipment. Lots of Frenchies. Bagging Lionhearted. Overall, for such a large operation, it’s a surprisingly small crowd that handles everything from sourcing the beans, sales and promoting, all the way down to serving them in beverage form at our three current locations in NYC and Philly. About 100 people to make it all happen.
A few times while Todd was treating me to a one-on-one tour during one of his rare free hours, I felt very much like a certain character from a certain book penned by Roald Dahl; like a very special child being given a very special tour of a very special chocolate factory. In fact, I had my own “gold ticket” moment of sorts. It happened when Todd opened up the destoning tray. From among the usual impurities like stones and kernels of corn, he pulled out a shiny gold-colored coin.
“Well now, this is amazing.”
In the 20-some odd years that he’s been roasting, explained Todd, this was only the second time he’s ever pulled out a coin from the destoning tray. Wow, what were the chances? I felt like I had just inherited a million dollars-- or a great secret. Now for a thorough description of this archaeological find: it is gold-toned, and has a raised edge with a distinct border. It is folded in half and there are two roasted coffee beans trapped in this space. The only legible inscriptions are a zero on one side and parts of two words that run along the curved border. It reads something like:
...MONOA... BLANC...
Where the bold indicates certainty in the identification of the letter. Other than those above inscriptions, nothing else can be made out. Everywhere else, the coin is pock-marked with dents from going through that monster roasting machine.
My benefactor peered at the coin for a few seconds before handing it to me for keeps. “It looks like it could be from Indonesia,” he said offhandedly, “but I can’t see anything without my reading glasses. With his glasses, my globetrotter boss could probably easily have identified the coin’s origin. However,...Upon my own inspection, I found a zero engraved off to one side of the heavily-damaged coin, but otherwise, just dents. It wasn’t until I got home later that night and studied it under better lighting that I found the words.
For the time being, I simply pocketed the find and followed my guide as he continued his tour of this great playground, giving super-animated descriptions of the rest of the process, explaining the difference between roasting with solid versus perforated drums, explaining why he was going to bring the old pre-Strada espresso machine back into the shop for pure espresso shots, and sharing stories about back in the day when they were young twenty-something-year-olds skateboarding around the then one-room warehouse, roasting beans on a much much smaller scale.
After the tour of the pipes and machines, we went upstairs to his and J.P’s office, which is another amazing infusion of all kinds of smells-- but mostly tobacco. The smell hits you like a wall when you first walk in, and on the one hand, it smells good; on the other hand, it smells like a hamster’s nest. Two large desks sprawled with papers, books on trade, architectural blueprints, and other important clutter. The two desks face a large blackboard and I sat back on one of the leather chairs and watched and listened as Todd took a piece of chalk and started writing and sketching all over this blackboard, giving me a visual speed-tutorial on coffee origin and its harvesting process. Arabica versus Robusta. Typica. Region, varietal, size. Like coffee bloodtype: A, AB, AA, AA+, or 10-18+. Altitude. Natural versus wet processing. Brought me back to my college days.
“What else, what else?” he kept saying to himself throughout the tour. There was so much that he could show and tell me that it boggled my mind every time he said this. He showed me a room, a spare-looking room with two long tables and benches made of wood that was polished to a sheen but so “raw” that you could see the particular tree from which it was made. Along the white walls were hung large-scale framed photos of coffee farmers and landscapes-- the very ones that used to hang on the walls of the Rittenhouse shop before they were replaced by a rotating array of artwork by local artists. Hum, I’d wondered what had happened to these images. Another small secret discovered.
At the front of this room, facing these tables, was a faux-barista station equipped with some ceramics just like the ones we used at the shop. I learned that this room was going to be used for training purposes-- a place for trainers to train trainers because it was so impossible to interrupt the flow of business at the shops for this purpose. Sitting at the edge of the table nearest the door were two portable hand crank antique roasters. The one on the left had given birth to La Colombe’s Nizza blend and belonged to J.P.; the other one, which belonged to Todd, had given birth to our Afrique blend. The latter roaster dated back to 1927, a year that had special significance for Todd and so he had jumped on the opportunity to purchase this particular toy. Significance...is not something that exists inherently in anything or anyone. One imparts significance upon things and people...and dates. It is not a sign from God; it is rather a sign from you who perceives and receives the sign and gives it special meaning.
A coin is a coin, and when it’s found deformed and disfigured in a destoning tray at a coffee roastery thousands of miles away, it’s a coin that accidentally fell out of a harvester’s pocket and got mixed up with the beans along with stones and kernels of corn. Yet, I couldn’t help being pulled by the mystery surrounding this coin’s identity. When I got home later that night, I googled all possible iterations of the words I could think of, along with images of coins from the countries we source from, but found nothing. A couple days later, I showed my co-workers, who also tried to figure out its origin in between making drinks and doing dishes. They were equally stumped.
On Monday morning, I woke up and determined that I would find the origin of this coin even if I had to painstakingly go through every nation on this planet and study their money. As daunting as such a project sounds, the fact of the matter is the number of nations on this planet is finite, and so the answer was there, somewhere. I made a second attempt at google: I visited the World Coin Gallery website and drafted the following list as I checked each nation:
Countries checked (blends that source from this country):
Indonesia (Monte Carlo)
Brazil (all)
Rwanda (Afrique)
Ethiopia (Afrique, Nizza, Monaco, Phocea, Savoia)
Tanzania (Afrique, Savoia)
Haiti (the Haitian)
El Salvador (Phocea)
Guatemala (none). End mystery.
And boy was I lucky that the list ended here and not 200 countries later. As it turns out, the full inscription reads: “MONJA BLANCA FLOR NACIONAL”
The Monja Blanca, or “White Nun” is the national flower of Guatemala symbolizing peace, beauty, and art. It’s also known by the scientific crowd as Lycaste Skinneri Alba, (belonging to the Lycaste genus of orchids, species discovered by an Englishman named Skinner in the 1800s), and grows in the moderate altitudes (1200-1800 feet) of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador in their moist montane forests and pine-oak-liquidambar forests. An image of the virile-looking trefoil-like monja blanca is impressed into the center space. To its right reads the denomination, 50 centavos (a Spanish/Portuguese word meaning ‘one-hundredth’, from Latin centum + suffix -avo).
On the flip (“observe” as the numismatists would say) side, the inscription “Republica de Guatemala [date]” circumscribes the central figure of the Guatemalan coat of arms: two Bay Laurels branches forming a wreath around a pair of crossed rifles fitted with bayonets; a pair of daggers crossed underneath the rifles; overlaid in the center by a scroll inscribed with the date of Central America’s independence from Spain (“Libertad 15 de septiembre de 1821”). Sitting atop the right-hand corner of this scroll is a Resplendent Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, which bears a great presence in Mesoamerican mythology.
It is made of brass.
But Guatemala? A mystery in itself! None of our blends sourced from this Central American nation, so what was one of its coins doing amongst our beans? I sent the following email to my boss:
Hey Todd, do you source from Guatemala? And if so, for which blend?
About an hour later, I received the following response:
Yes we do - Guatemala is an important component in our new upcoming blend Louisiane.
QED. Case Closed.
Following the discovery/revelation, a dialogue between Sarah and I:
“You know what this means right?”
“What?”
“I have to go to Guatemala.”
“Why?”
“It’s a sign! From the coffee god.”
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