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.

…..................................................

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Metaphoric Horseback Riding

cheval: horse

a cheval sur/entre: astride; straddling; straddled between; spanning

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.

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

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.”

Impulse

Have you ever woken up with the driving need to do something besides going pee? This morning, I woke up and felt the need to photograph...everything. I quickly brushed my teeth, put on sunblock and warm clothing (I know, contradiction), and rushed out the door with my third eye. I didn't know in which direction I wanted to go, and just went with my guts-- when in doubt, chase the sunlight. So I chased, and everything, everything was beautiful and photo-worthy. A junky abandoned lot, the texture of a wall, bricks scattered across a muddy yard, these weird phallic plants whose fur was illuminated gorgeously by the rising sun's rays. The moon was still out, and that was gorgeous...when is the moon ever not gorgeous, though?

Goodmorning, Moon

The perception of beauty is fickle. It's definitely not just a lunarscape I see here, but a lunarscape colored by my own imagination and current mood. What we assume to be perceptions of reality are really just derivatives of the real thing. There are days when everything looks so dreadfully ordinary, and then there are days like today when I have no choice, but am moved by an impulse to photograph all these worldly objects, scenes and people which suddenly appear so vibrant.

That's What She Said

Brilliance Through Wrought Iron

Violin Arm

Before the Workday Begins

Street Coat of Arms

Tropical Bird

Banner Waves of Plastic

I stopped by Whole Foods on the return trip home and bought food unnecessarily. I saw cheese and suddenly had a hankering for cheese. I saw bread, and suddenly, nothing sounded better than a carby, glutinous chunk of bread. The raisin challah was such a perfect balance of sweet and savory-- only hints of each, unlike the raisin danishes we sell at the shop, but sometimes, subtle flavoring is so much more delicious than a gobsmacking dosage of butter and sugar.

You Are Here

I'm considered an "asset"! They want me to "grow with the company"! They like me. These official-sounding terms were tossed at me in the most nonchalant, unstuffy manner in the little office where we count up the register every night. I gotta say, it's really strange how life creeps up on you. I spent years wondering if I'd ever fit in anywhere ever, and then today I realized I'm already knee-deep in something more substantial than a job-in-passing. I'm slightly hesitant to voice this aloud, but 9 months into it, my gut says that I've found a sort of home with LC.

I confess, when I was headed to college 9 years ago, and while I was pulling all-nighters at Penn studying for math exams and writing bullshit papers, and when I left school with not a clue as to where my future "career" lay, I never once imagined that I'd end up working for a roasting company and dancing ballet. I'm excited about the opportunities that lay ahead-- involvement with projects in Haiti and Africa, learning about sourcing and roasting and visiting actual coffee farms, and of course serving hundreds and hundreds of drinks every week. Shit...thanks Penn: it was worth racking up a $70K debt if that's what it took to bring me to my present life. Worth every penny.

Footwear, Optimism, & March Madness

Will I ever be too old to wear bubblegum pink knee-high socks sprinkled with hearts and flowers?

It occurred to me today while staring down at my lurid pink socks that there will come a time when I won't be able to wear the rather childish getups that I sometimes put together for myself in the morning.

This thought made me get all defensive for all of one minute before I decided now was now and later was later, and that I was going to milk my youth for all it was worth.

I then spent the afternoon singing showtunes.

I dreamed a dream in days gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

~Les Miserables. Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of reading Candide, which may as well also be called "Les Miserables", for it is essentially the detailing of one miserable event after another to illustrate the idiocy of the philosophical doctrine of Optimism. With it's humorously euphemistic and/or explicit mention of syphilis, sex, fingers being inserted into orifices "usually reserved for an enema syringe", and other X-rated topics, I had to check the publishing year: 1759! I guess that makes me the ignorant prude.

One day, about a month ago, we had a rather insane afternoon at the coffeeshop. "Wow, today was a madhouse!" I exclaimed at the end of the day. The next day, it was a madhouse once again. As the month went on, I realized the insanity of that first day was no exceptional occurrence: it was merely the beginning of the spring season at L.C. March madness indeed! Now that the schedule has changed, I've been working with different people every time, and it's taken some getting used to. I've learned that my abundance of energy is not suitable for everyone, so sometimes it's necessary to tame it. While learning to tame it, I've been putting greater emphasis on good customer service and good drinks to as many individuals as possible, which is a challenge with the increase in volume of customers that the warm weather has brought on.

It's been brought to my-- and everyone else's attention that each drink matters a hell of a lot. One bad drink that you let slip could boomerang back at you, whether in the form of a yelp review or a review by the city's premier food critic. People are harsh. Critics are a beast. First they'll attack you from the side with some witty insult about the way you dress, which has nothing to do with your work, and then they'll cut you directly from the front with a written, public reminder of that one bad drink you made on an otherwise good night. This latest review had its intended side-effect, I suppose. The Weekender was on top of his game yesterday and would barely let me help him the way I'm used to helping him. I learned later that it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him proving to himself that he could handle the job and handle it well. He even made a marijuana leaf in one of his practice lattes. Nice. Not on purpose of course.

Yesterday marked the end of my 9th month at the shop-- my LC pregnancy, as I've been calling it (mostly to myself). I've just given birth to a beautiful baby...bean. We happened to get on the subject of names during our evening cleaning routine, and I discovered that as much as girls have a tendency to have an easy time picking out favorite girl names and bother themselves much less about boy names, boys have the opposite tendency. It seems like an obvious complementary tendency, but I always assumed picking out future baby names of any gender was a girly thing and that boys didn't bother with it much. According to my sample size of two, this isn't entirely true. My two male co-workers have boy names readily picked out, but girl names? They prefer to assume they won't have girls, period. Hah. Good luck against nature, guys.

I like Isabelle and Summer.

Hipster Bazaar

Women in headscarves riffling through a disorderly pile of clothes on the ground-- what a throwback to my Iraq days. Hipsters color my world...especially my photo world. The rest of the world walks past in noir blurs, while hipsters gather in their crazy colorful patchwork outfits with spaceships on their skirts and stars on their shirts trying on old blue sneakers and shaking the dust off a secondhand carnation pink coat. These days, the term 'hipster' is automatically accompanied by a disdainful eye-roll and a mention of PBR. Whatever their quirks, whatever their intentions, I appreciate them for bringing color and the unexpected into the city. They give me pause; they make me wonder.

What Appears to Be

"Go fast...but go slow." It's an adage I learned at work, which I had forgotten on Saturday, but remembered on Sunday. When you're working mindlessly for six hours straight nonstop, it's crucial to have moments of pause even while the line of customers continues to grow. Yesterday, I kept watering myself like a plant throughout the shift and used the time it took for bags of coffee to grind to forget about the customers and have those 30 seconds to still my body and my mind, and to be alone. Also took a lot more occasions to clean up and re-stock. I realized yesterday that these breaks serve two purposes: first, the more practical purpose of stalling the line, giving your co-worker time to bust out the drinks before dumping more orders on him; and second, it's a wonder what those tiny breaks can do for your peace-of-mind. They afford you moments of respite from the act of projecting yourself outwardly to the people on the other side of the bar, which can be rather draining on busy days.

Working behind the bar at LC is a study in consciousness. You're there with the customer, but you're not always there...when the lines are long, you turn into a scarily-efficient automaton, but part of you remains human-- the part that interacts with the people on the other side of the register. However, the degree to which your mind is with your customer, with your co-worker, or with yourself varies throughout the shift. Sometimes, I don't think I am even aware of myself. My body is simply in motion: one hand is pouring coffee, the other is counting cash, while one ear is listening for the grinder to finish and one eye is looking to see who is next in line, while the other eye is checking on the progress of the drinks being made and trying to retain the last few orders in a very short term memory bank. It's a very disjointed feeling, like your brain is in five different places at once. This job is quintessential multitasking. If one were to make an image of it, it would look like a Dali painting with an ear here an eye there, an arm here, an arm there, and a third arm sticking out of the head. Frightful.

And of course the face is smiling and the lips are moving in conversation. When the lines are long, the conversations tend to become automaton phrases because what's primarily on your mind is to get the line moving. However, I realized yesterday that these autopilot modes have to be punctuated by constant reminders to focus on the customers in front of you and to forget that there is a long line behind that is only growing longer. Whenever I remind myself like this to come out of autopilot mode and into the present, it feels like waking from a sort of sleep; I can actually feel this seismic shift taking place from one mental state to the other. Undoubtedly, these moments are when I'm doing the best at my job, which is to give the customer the full espresso bar experience: introduce them to the different sorts of drinks if need be, service them with beautiful custom-made ceramics from Italy, joke with them, be present with them and not with the next customers in line, and if things slow down, have a decent conversation.

As a barista at LC, the conversations you hold with your customers range from trifling small talk to funny quips to genuine to meaningful requiring thought to truly profound. Most of the interactions cluster around the first category (especially on a day of unceasing lines), and of the latter two, there may be as few as one or two a day. Truth be told, I welcome the trifles and quips as much as the more meaningful, genuine conversations. It's an interesting experience getting to know people through small talk. A question here and there about how their day is going, what they do for a living, what task they hope to accomplish at the shop that day while they're sipping on their usual Americano, and before you know it, he's telling you that he's about to become a father, or that he just got engaged that day. Meaning, through a series of small talks over the course of a few months, he's grown comfortable enough with you to tell you these details about his personal life...and I'm perfectly comfortable receiving such personal information, despite the fact that we've never sat down at a table together, never hung out outside of the shop, never interacted beyond the boundaries of a barista-customer relationship. Which is to say, the barista-customer relationship is not a trivial one.

It is equally as interesting to get to know the person who is stuck behind the bar with you in that 3-foot-wide space for 6 hours at a time. In this tiny space, one has no choice but to start learning about the person who is sharing that space with you. It is practically forced upon you, and the process is sped up because of the size of the space and the fact that you're working together as a team. Such a situation I think can bring out the best and the worst in each of us. Undoubtedly, there are moments of tension and awkward bumbling, as well as moments of perfect play. There are a lot of moments of the first type when you first begin working with a particular person, and it remains so until you figure out how the other person works and vice versa, and how to work together. I'll be the first to admit that the first two or three months with my regular weekend co-worker were not easy for either of us. It got downright torturous before it got better, and now...it couldn't be better. We've got our game down to a science now, and even on the busiest of days, we hit our stride with ease.

Everyone I've worked with has his or her own style of working, and this is first and foremost how I got to know my co-workers as people. Their personalities come out in the way they work. And as I discovered during our company bowling party, their personalities also come out in the way they bowl. In brief, they bowl like they make lattes: cool and confident with a practiced, professional looking stride; OCD down to wiping the ball before each roll and crouching at a particular angle; and the class clown who shakes his ass and throws himself onto the floor, and somehow manages to knock the pins down anyway.

And I'm willing to bet that it isn't just making drinks or bowling, but that a person's personality is revealed in whatever activity he engages in. With practice, one could probably learn a lot about a person just by watching them bowl, cook, dance, or simply walk. Even between Sarah and I, Kip has only confused us exactly twice in the year-and-a-half he's known us. According to his own explanation, he has an easy time telling us apart because we dance so differently, I having more and faster movement in my upper body, and Sarah being a lot calmer up there. Interestingly, the word "calm" has been used on numerous independent occasions to describe the difference between me and my twin.

What I find most interesting in this whole exploration of brain, behavior, and personality is that although what one projects to the outside world is often hardly relevant or reflective of one's inner state of mind, it somehow is a good indicator of personality, which involuntarily, unconsciously colors everything we do.

Poetry

Reading is therapeutic. I came home quite exhausted from the madhouse that was work today. It was a night when I could really have used someone to lean on. Instead of succumbing to my fancies, however, I began reading poetry and wikipedia articles-- aloud at first, then eventually falling into silent reading. I'm spending this year reading poetry because I don't understand it, or understand it very little. Why do I bother? I am convinced that there must be something to it, these fanciful words that either rhyme or don't rhyme at all, all these murky allusions, and the worship of Shelley, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Rilke, Ginsberg...to me, poetry is like a secret, incomprehensible world to which I lack the key, but on the other side of which there is something marvelous. For now, I read it for pure sound like the way I hear French sometimes nowadays. Sometimes the rhythm of a line (or of several lines) or a particular string of words strikes me as really lovely. What I do understand is that every little thing that you read or see or hear affects your brain in often imperceptible ways, and so I do not consider reading poetry with such little understanding of it a waste of my time.

The first book of poetry I ever read was Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the whole of which I read on the 11-hour plane ride from Istanbul to the States in June 2009. The book was passed on to me by a great friend, Jess. The second was Rilke's Duino Elegies, lent to me by my free-spirited roommate Holly, and which I read last year. The third was Gibran's The Prophet, which was given to me by a regular customer at the shop. I enjoyed reading this one particularly because my copy was in French; reading books in French is like a great jigsaw puzzle for me. Had I read The Prophet in my native English, I think I would have found it rather cliche overall.

The fourth, which I am currently reading was lent to me by a girl called Kata, whom I met one night at Capogiro's and never saw again. She is 24 and her best friend is a 77-year-old man-- another regular customer at the shop. The book is Ginsberg's Kaddish, and I find it to be the most accessible book of poetry I've read yet. It is largely autobiographical, the first section devoted to writings about his mentally ill mother, which I found heartbreaking-- for him a hell of a lot more than for her. As is usually the case with mentally ill folks and their loved ones. Tonight, I found myself reading Ginsberg's Wikipedia page and was intrigued to discover just how progressive, humanist, and pacificist a man he had been.

Rumi, T.S. Eliot, and Baudelaire are on the agenda, as are non-poetry books. This year will be a year of books. I will find solace, beauty, rhythm, secrets, ideas, voices, and wisdom between the pages.

Aside from reading poetry visually, I found this gem online.

Floral Pattern

During a walk down South Street this evening, a young mother of some Asian descent walked in my direction on the same side of the street. In her left hand, she held a bouquet of red roses, and in her right, she held the hand of her little girl. The little girl was purposefully not walking straight, leaning her entire weight lazily to the side and putting great strain on her mother. The mother was resigned to the weight and didn't force her child upright. Her face showed quiet fatigue that contrasted remarkably with the joyful bloom of flowers that she carried.

A couple blocks later, a gang of punks on bicycles too small for them rode by in a line down the street, purposely screeching their tires and laughing raucously at their own gall and coolness. A middle-aged black man in a ragged hoodie walking in my direction-- again on the same side of the street-- glared at them and cursed their youthful stupidity under his breath. He also carried a bouquet of flowers under his arm, though these were multi-colored, not all roses, and not all red. Also, his other hand was without child, and he walked with a loping gait.

Another couple blocks later, a young white man perhaps in his thirties, tall, lean, with square glasses rushed passed me in the opposite direction-- and still on the same side of the street. He was in a great hurry and walked with stiff legs, unable to take the time to bend them between steps. He also carried a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

It occurred to me suddenly that I had just walked by three individuals within the span of 4 city blocks carrying bouquets of flowers and in various states of rush and mood. It only took about another half-second for it to register in my brain that tonight was the eve of St. Valentine's Day.

A few hours later, on my own way back home, guess what I carried in my hand?

A bag of green grapes. Patterns are meant to be broken.

Non-temporality of Life

"Yesterday is but the memory of today; tomorrow is its dream." --Gibran

Considering time in terms of human cognitive activities (memory and dreaming) rather than as discrete, impersonal units...I like that. This statement is predicated on the assumption that time is subjective, a man-made concept, its own existence dependent on the existence of humans-- or at least a human. It predicates an observer, a thinking organism.

So, as for linguistic implications, instead of "What did you do yesterday?" and "What are you doing tomorrow?", we would be bound to ask "What do you remember today?" and "What do you dream of today?"; it always being Today. And different tenses being marked by "remembering" and "dreaming" rather than by inflection of the verb "to do". Not very practical, but very poetic.

A Kinship with Fish

The longer I look at these moon shots, the more I think that we are like fish in the deep sea. The branches are floating strands of seaweed, the air is our water, and the moon the light in the distant surface of the ocean hinting at an entirely separate stratus of existence.

The Deep Air

What to do when it's 2:30 in the morning and you just don't feel like taking out the trash:

Step 1: Visualize taking out the trash. Step 2: Eat Godiva milk chocolate creme brulee deliciousness. Step 3: Turn on music suitable for taking out trash. Step 4: Take out trash. Step 5: Have a dance party. Step 6: Build a Fruit Pyramid.

Fruit Pyramid: Pommelo, cantaloupe, tangerine, grape

Extraordinary-Ordinary Dichotomy

Bye Bye Birdies

Ever since I took this picture of pigeons taking off from telephone wires on South Street, I've developed a minor obsession with birds in flight. They are amazing to watch and their behaviors-- especially their innate predilection for formation flying-- are strange. A few days after I caught this shot, I was walking through Rittenhouse Park, and a few pigeons flew down and waddled around my feet. I was amazed that the very same creatures that appeared so magnificent in the air could look so unexceptional and vulgar at ground-level. I wondered if this dichotomy existed in all creatures including us human beings.

Inheritance

Home from another day of work. Feeling fairly exhausted and strangely accomplished. You would think I was conquering the world, but actually I was just making and serving coffee all day long. Today, however, marks an important day in my training as a barista at LC: I am definitely, indubitably, without a shade of a doubt no longer in training. In fact, since plans for the new shop were announced, a handful of new people have joined the crew, and I, along with my other co-workers, have been doing my share of teaching them the works.

That flip happened a couple weeks ago. It has been fun so far to show the newbies the secrets of the trade: the essential play of teamwork, the need for speed and efficiency, the tricks for making the perfect milk, and of course, our colorful clientele. So far there are three new hires, all very different, and all likable in their own way. I've noticed that we've broken the unintentional tradition of hiring only tall, dark, and...lean males. The new ones are of short to average height. Their backgrounds vary-- a French-speaking Berber/Moroccan, a Canadian, and one all-American boy. One tradition carries on, however-- so far they are all male.

It is a strange fact about this place that both the crew and the clientele are very male-dominated. Whereas women are usually the objectified sex in any given situation, LC is known for its "disarmingly friendly", handsome male baristas. Which is totally fine with me. Moreover, the other day, Sarah made the keen observation that about 70% of the customers that walked through the door were male. Initially she made this observation of gender disparity by simply taking a look around, but then we designed an impromptu experiment by keeping a Male vs. Female tally on my coffee cup of all the customers that walked through the door for the next quarter-of-an-hour. Boy, was she onto something. What was it about this place that made it a male magnet?

With regards to the male-dominated crew, I don't understand the gender bend myself, but in my short time at the shop, I've always felt a dependency on the guys-- not because they were guys, but simply because they've been here for 2, 3, 13 years and are so impressively good at their job. I would watch my co-workers either from the sidelines (in the back kitchen) or at the register while I'm handling the business side of the job, and be in awe of their ability to remember so many drink orders in one go, their speed at making the drinks often even before the orders are placed, and above all their ability to keep cool and even hold conversations with the customers under the chaos of long lines that at times go out the door and don't ever end throughout the entire 6-hour shift. It occurs to me now that it's not the guys themselves that are impressive, but rather the job that makes them impressive.

Today, however, for the first time there was no guy behind the bar. It was just Amy and I. Well, one of the new trainees was there, but the main team was made up of two girls who had worked at LC for not even a year. By now, I've had some practice holding my own under the machines, but when the line got too long and I started forgetting and mixing up orders, I would just toss the job back to my co-worker and he would expertly kill the line. This time, though, I had no one to toss the job to in case it got too chaotic. In fact, the job was tossed to me and Amy. The Berber was put on the register for the day. As our manager put it, Amy and I "have been here a longer time and are next in line to inherit the machines." Inherit the machines. I liked the sound of that.

We transitioned into the afternoon shift and it was like someone pressed the power button on a machine, setting it in motion, and never came back to turn it off. I felt like I barely looked up from the machines and pitchers for the first four hours of my 6-hour shift. At one point, I found myself wishing for some face time with the customers, so I put the Berber on the machines for practice and went back to my old comfortable position at the register. Eventually, however, the line got too long so we had to switch back. Later, the Berber came back from a break in the kitchen sidelines.

"I don't know how you guys stay so calm," said he. I had to smile at that because I understood exactly what it must look like to him, this two-man machine. I replied with a truth I had discovered on the job: "You have no choice but to stay calm. If you go crazy on top of all this craziness, than it wouldn't work. It would be an impossibility."
 
Despite my growing comfort with the job, I've still yet to figure out the multitasking art of talking to people while I'm on the machines. I assume that once you've been doing the machines for a couple years, it become second nature and you can then put your mind on other things like the people in front of you waiting for their drinks. A trick that I learned from Sticks this past Saturday is that a shot takes about the same time to pull as the milk takes to pour and steam, so instead of constantly peering over to see if the shot is finished while you're stuck at the steaming wand, you can assume that it will be finished pulling around the same time or just after the milk is finished steaming. Thus, the best order of action at the machines would be the following: pull the shots, steam the milk, and there, while your steaming is where you can look out into your audience of caffeine-craving customers and either hold a conversation or take the next order. That can happen once you don't need to think to steam good milk. Hmmm, so much to do...

Toward evening, the loud buzz of conversation finally caught my ears. There are times when the cafe can become really quiet, but those times are rare, and today was not one of those days. This evening, the cafe was humming with life and connection that was not wifi, but human. As much as our customers are annoyed by the fact that we refuse to carry wifi, and as much as I understand their annoyance, I also realize that it is a gift. It is one of the not-so-secret ingredients that helped to create this cafe wonder and continues to define it. While cleaning, I suddenly became aware of the medley of human voices that rose quite above the monotonous bass notes of the cafe music. I peered between the display case and giant vase of flowers and the sight gave me pause: every seat was filled, and everyone was engaged. I saw a couple with fingers interlaced, elbows propped on the wooden table; another couple, he was tenderly stroking her hair. I saw two regulars holding some sort of debate that looked pretty serious. Others were engaged in lighter conversation, in groups of 2, 3, 4. Part of me wondered what they were all talking about, but the other part of me didn't care. It was an exotically beautiful sight to behold.

Passageways

Monday evening, I stepped into the stairwell leading to the studio and sighed with happiness. Too many days had passed since I'd seen these dirty khaki-colored stairs and bare walls. I began the ritualistic climb up the stairs, and happily rid myself of the delusion that I had a life and purpose outside of ballet-- a lie I've been telling myself for the past ten days. Piano music drifted down from the studio. I noted that the painting of the T-rex exhilaratingly riding a bike against a purple background was still propped against the wall on the second landing. The tree we had used for the Nutcracker production stood nearby unornamented. After the second set of stairs, I followed the cranes the rest of the way into the studio, a world of its own. Passageways, doors and frames create the feeling of going on a journey, or leaving one world and entering another.

What We Do

If music could speak, would it ask, "What is the meaning of life?" Then why do we? If a star-strewn sky could speak, would it ask, "What is my purpose?" Then why do we? Because we are human, and that is what we do until we lose our bodies to the earth and our souls to the stars...if such things as souls exist, that is.

Annual State of the Self Address

It is December, and I've been working at LC for almost half a year now. Today, for the first time ever, I heard the Penniless Picasso laughing...It was the funniest laugh I've ever heard. It sounded like someone pretending to cry-- like an actor's mock-crying--, and it went on and on and on. It took me a minute to look over the register to see who was making such a racket and find out it was dear old B. I wondered what he was laughing at, and whether it merited such a laugh. I wondered what in the world could merit such a laugh. Last week, he gave me a 9th painting. I hung it up on my "Bartwork Wall" when I got home this evening, and lay on my floor studying it and the others, searching for cohesive elements and hints to his unusual inner world. It is nice to have meaningful artwork coloring my walls. I've been told it's a bad idea to write on the paintings and put holes in them because they might be worth something in the future, but I've done both, as I have no plans to sell them ever.

Once again, it is December, which means the year is almost out. I had some grand plans for 2010 back in January, and of course, most of them have not panned out. Some have though! More than anything, this past year has been defined by ballet (an understatement!). Now ballet defines me. This art form has brought such joys, pains, purpose, and multitudinous other dimensions to my life, none of which I could have predicted when I first stepped into the old studio on Sansom Street last October. A year later, I am transformed both outwardly and inwardly. A year later, I will be dancing the role of Clara in The Nutcracker in front of an audience of 4-to-9-year-olds at a nearby elementary school. A year later, I have come to know what it means to feel passionate about something, and driven. I have never felt either of those before all throughout college or ever in my entire life until this past year of ballet. For that and everything else that ballet has given me, I am eternally, utterly grateful.

The one problem that ballet has brought me is the conflict between staying and leaving. Virtually this entire year was spent in daily agony over the loss of my travel plans. After my year in the Mideast, I had a desperate need to see the rest of the world, but then ballet came along and tied me down to Philly of all places and annihilated all my plans to satisfy my wanderlust. Enter perpetual inner conflict. Now I have many things to stay for (mainly ballet and my job), and in the past couple months, the choices I'd made so haphazardly finally feel "right"-- like actual choices, not random draws due to indecision, ambiguous feelings, and impulsiveness. A couple days ago, however, I had a sudden realization that there are interesting places to visit in my own backyard-- places which I can actually afford to go to, for which I would not have to shell out a grand for the plane ticket alone. This evening, as I sat on the couch researching this idea, a memory came to me of an article I had read months ago about Nicaraguan Sign Language. And thus, an idea was born, of a pilgrimage...an awesome, nerdy, linguistic pilgrimage that will shape the coming year, and perhaps the years following. Who know what discoveries will come of this pilgrimage!

Between my colorful workplace and ballet-- and the mouse that lives in our house and my imaginative roommates-- I feel as if I am living a story (not storybook, mind). Work is more than just work, the studio is more than just a place to dance. Life has become organic and meaningful.

Mission 11/17/2010

Make dinner for roomies + my new friend Naama.

-Acorn squash is delicious. Peel the rind off though. Thanks for the advice, Sarah!
-I forgot to squeeze the lime juice into the chili-lime vinaigrette. So it was just chili-...vinaigrette.
-There IS a difference between les haricots verts (French green beans) and regular green beans. The latter is more beany; the former is more leafy.
-If the recipe says use ice water, do not substitute "very cold tap water". The ice makes for a flakier crust for your Alsatian onion tart.
-However long you think it will take to cook a big dinner, double that time (at least). We ended up eating at 10pm instead of the appointed start time of 8pm.
-Cheez-its make a great dessert. I drew a mouse on my emptied plate with sriracha sauce and fed it a crumbled up square of Cheez-it. The real Hamouse, our newest house pet, never showed up, though he had been invited. His prolonged absence is disconcerting. It is likely that he is busying himself with building more cheese bombs. Also, there is a fish in the house, and no one knew except for Kathleen because it is in her room. 
-I love our house and the residents of our house and my new friend.
-Opened with Goosebumps today. Made a double leaf! Aw yeah...right in front of the Master Barista, too! Happiness abounds. A tiny baby boy with a tiny bald head came in for a coffee. His pajamas matched my socks. We were green-&-blue stripe buddies!

Babies

Once you are out of school, you have to give yourself assignments.

Walking home from ballet with a female classmate much older than I. She was going home to a husband of 37 years of marriage this December.

"Wow, congratulations!" I meant it. "I wish that upon myself."

"Oh, it'll happen! You've got to marry your best friend."

The simplicity of the advice is striking. And so sensible, too...I do hope my best friend is not a dog. Sometimes I think it might be a baby. I spent an hour in the children's section at the bookstore "studying", which is Arabic for "playing with babies". Being a baby is so exciting. You get to throw fistfuls of autumn leaves into the air for the first time. You get to alternatively give and take contents of your mother's wallet to a stranger over and over again, with increasing delight. You get to explore everything from books to feet with your teeth...even if you don't have any yet. Everything is amazing and new, and you are adorable just because you are so small and alien-looking and acting and because you walk funny...if you can even walk yet. Hah! Babies...

New Perfume

I smell like work..."caramel, nutty, and fragrant". Or is it "uncommon, rich, and full"? Whatever the particular coffee smell, it's in my hair, in my clothes, on my hands, and in my very skin. The grounds are stuck under my nails, too. Every time I grind a bag of beans, and shake it down to settle the grounds in the bag, I like to imagine the tiny brown particles flying all over my face and in the air like an earthy, organic pixie dust. It's no wonder I come home smelling like I do. Today, my co-worker and I took turns being latte-making machines. The line of customers did not clear until three hours into our shift, and only for a minute then before the next wave began. Wow...as a newbie, I'm still wowed by this.

"How do you say 'factory' in French?"
"Usine."
"Je suis une usine!"