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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.