Friday, October 3, 2008
Second Post
This isn't just music that lends itself to introvert obsessions, it's a whole label about the transference of interpersonal relationships both into and onto pop music, about how right it is that thinking about your life makes it harder, about candid vulnerability as a serious alternative to ironic distance, maybe even an extended explication of one of my favorite hopeful theories, that songs don't replace people, they represent them, in which case our relationships with songs are, in fact, relationships with people, an evolution of communication rather than an avoidance of it.A week ago, Warren Buffett rescued Goldman Sachs by injecting $5 billion in capital. Did Buffett bargain for warrants that can be exchanged at an unknown later date for nonvoting shares? No: He is not a fool. Buffett gave Goldman Sachs $5 billion in return for senior preferred stock, the kind that votes and also is more valuable than ordinary shares. That is to say, he used his money to buy something. Goldman can now employ the cash to fix its liquidity problems. The United States Congress and the White House should use the public's $700 billion to buy something, namely senior preferred shares. Why are Congress and George W. Bush not simply following the road map laid out on this problem by the smartest investor of our era? Either Congress and the president are a bunch of blithering fools -- or what they actually want is to insure the public's money is never seen by the public again.
First Post. Test
I have an odd relationship with place. I have favorite places, but nothing that elicits the same type of response that other people have had. So, I was flummoxed on how to go about responding to this post. However, I think that I have solved this problem. Instead of writing about a place, I'm going to write about something that ties many, if not all, of my places together. What, you ask, could possibly tie place upon endless place together in one neat little package, a string leading you from a to b to c to infinity? What simple pleasure could allow me to jump in a Bergsonian way from memory to memory?
Oh.
The suspense is just killing you, isn't it?
Fine.
Coffee.
As some of you may have noticed, I drink a lot of coffee. A lot. And I used to drink twice as much up until a few years ago (more on that later). So, I always have a cup of coffee of some sort, from latte to cappuccino to americano to drop coffee to a doppio espresso. I'm drinking an americano right now, actually, 9:15 at night. Anyways, lets get down to business.
I had my first cup of coffee in San Jose, Costa Rica. I was in 8th grade. My family and I were down there for ten days visiting beaches and the city. The coffee tasted horrible; the bitterest, most horrible thing one could think dribble over taste buds. I sucked it down, complete with half a cup of sugar and a cup of milk. Then we went to a soccer match, where there was an eight foot moat dug around the field with a six foot fence on the inside of the moat with barbed wire sticking straight out, and watched fans jump across the moat and cling to the fence, climb the fence, cut themselves on the barbed wire and throw beer bottles and rocks onto the field, mostly at the referees. It was, at that point, one of the most surreal and interesting experiences I've had, which I think was heightened by the fact I was all doped up on caffeine and sugar (though at this point, I didn't really know what was meant by a caffeine high...oh how naive I was, and how I wish I could reclaim that feeling now).
The second cup of coffee I had, after a long hiatus, was in Seattle while I was visiting the University of Washington with my dad. My dad worked in the medical marketing field, so we were at the hospital there on campus. There is an espresso stand there, by the bank of elevators, and my dad and I had some coffees. I had a mocha, complete with whipped cream. My dad had a latte. I still remember the size (grande/16 ounce) and the cup (an odd pattern of burgundy shades flecked together with the word Panache on the side) and the white lid. It was delicious. There was nothing better I could think of. Then we went down to the OR and ER, I saw some trauma patients, thought I was going to vomit back up the mocha I inhaled, and then we went to tour the UW campus, which I feel in love with, and where I spent my undergraduate days frolicking about in the wonderful gray, rainy weather.
Eventually, I performed my shift of coffee shop work in Seattle (I'd worked for Starbucks before, but only in Colorado, before college), as any good Seattleite must do. Oddly enough, I got a job working at the University of Washington Hospital coffee shop, right there next to that bank of elevators. What a turn. By the time I was working there, though, I was on to drinking triple grande lattes and black coffee. Pretty hard core? Damn straight.
It is during this time in Seattle that my coffee habit and appreciation grew to elephantine proportions. For those of you who don't know, it rains all the time in Seattle. There's even this wonderful little book called "Rains All The Time" about the weather in Seattle. So, it is gray nine months a year. What most people don't know (and I may become excommunicated from Seattle if I spill this, but you're worth it) is that it doesn't really rain that much all the time. There are just lots of clouds and it sort of mists a lot. Sure, there are rainy days, and the streets run with water, the culverts overflow and people drive like crap (on a side note, how is that people drive like shit in Seattle when it rains, and it rains all the damn time? I never figured that one out) and Switters watches art school girls sail boats down the drains in Pike Place Market. And so, with all the rain, all the gray, all the insideness that exits, Seattle has embraced the coffee and bookshop culture more than any place I've been to.
From Verite coffee to Cafe Vita, Cafe Zoka to Espresso Vivace, all independent coffee shops and roasters, though there are dozens more, Seattle also boast that place, with the green and white? Starbucks? Right. Them. And Tully's. Oh, and Batdorf and Bronson, in Olympia, WA. And...never mind.
But coffee is important. Cafe Zoka was one of my favorites, as was Cafe Solstice, on the Ave in the U-District. I spent many a day with my friend Rachael at Cafe Solstice writing poetry, discussing fiction and reading Proust. And so for me, coffee is often rain is often writing is often Proust is often Seattle. And more. And the rain became ingrained in my desire for coffee. There is nothing more in life for me than a rainy day (or snowy, if you're in New England) and a cup (or four?) of coffee and a book or a blank page or good conversation.
To throw in a little quote for you, to get what I mean about the rain:
"And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the Sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and bridges. It fell on the head of John Paul Ziller. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissedon the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled on the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure."
-Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction
So now I have wandered. See what coffee, both drinking and thinking about it, does to me? It leads me to wander the paths of my brain, which may be a good thing, but this post drags.
All this coffee, and its myriad references, all flew apart the moment I landed in Rome and took a sip of a cappuccino (can you hear it, with the little Italian accent? You should try...). It was, to say the least, the nectar of gods. But that does no justice. It was better than anything else I had ever tasted. I allowed myself a certain amount of money on that first trip to Rome, and I spent most of it on cappuccinos. Probably five or six a day. I would stand at the bar (cheaper) and sit at tables (way more expensive), I would go by myself, or have one, then go with a friend to get another one. I would have sat in cafes all day long, writing and reading. Rome is nothing to me if not coffee. The best, the best and greatest cappuccino I have ever had I had in Rome, at Cafe Sant Eustachio in the Piazza Sant Eustachio, near the Pantheon. Here's a picture that I didn't take. Nope, it doesn't look like much, but good things never do (a common misconception, I'm sure). But this coffee, which, most recently and most memorably, I shared with my friend Kelsey in the summer of 2007, was the perfect cup of coffee, if a perfect of anything can exist. Kelsey and I went there on one our last days in Rome. I'd been telling her about it for five weeks, and every time we tried to go, something else came up. But this day, it was perfect. There was a table outside, which was unusual. The heat had not baked the cobbles and walls to an oven and we didn't bake like potato pizzas in late night eateries. We sat for over two hours, sipping cappuccinos (of course we had multiple, and paid with shallow pockets and lint) and water, discussing poetry and fiction and words and letters and the Pantheon and anything else. I also took photographs. So, to finish this post, I'm going to leave you with an image of Kelsey and an image of our coffee, because, while I'd like to keep going, I need to stop so you don't have to read any more of this caffeinated dribble common to so many coffee addicts.
Just know that coffee ties me, both physically and mentally to places around the world, people I still know and people I'll never speak to again. And through all of it, coffee has been there. There are many other stories, many other tangents each digression here could take, like other aspects of Rome or Costa Rica or France or Seattle or cross-country driving that are linked, loosely or otherwise, but I'll stop here. Perhaps more another day.
Besides, my americano is gone.
Oh.
The suspense is just killing you, isn't it?
Fine.
Coffee.
As some of you may have noticed, I drink a lot of coffee. A lot. And I used to drink twice as much up until a few years ago (more on that later). So, I always have a cup of coffee of some sort, from latte to cappuccino to americano to drop coffee to a doppio espresso. I'm drinking an americano right now, actually, 9:15 at night. Anyways, lets get down to business.
I had my first cup of coffee in San Jose, Costa Rica. I was in 8th grade. My family and I were down there for ten days visiting beaches and the city. The coffee tasted horrible; the bitterest, most horrible thing one could think dribble over taste buds. I sucked it down, complete with half a cup of sugar and a cup of milk. Then we went to a soccer match, where there was an eight foot moat dug around the field with a six foot fence on the inside of the moat with barbed wire sticking straight out, and watched fans jump across the moat and cling to the fence, climb the fence, cut themselves on the barbed wire and throw beer bottles and rocks onto the field, mostly at the referees. It was, at that point, one of the most surreal and interesting experiences I've had, which I think was heightened by the fact I was all doped up on caffeine and sugar (though at this point, I didn't really know what was meant by a caffeine high...oh how naive I was, and how I wish I could reclaim that feeling now).
The second cup of coffee I had, after a long hiatus, was in Seattle while I was visiting the University of Washington with my dad. My dad worked in the medical marketing field, so we were at the hospital there on campus. There is an espresso stand there, by the bank of elevators, and my dad and I had some coffees. I had a mocha, complete with whipped cream. My dad had a latte. I still remember the size (grande/16 ounce) and the cup (an odd pattern of burgundy shades flecked together with the word Panache on the side) and the white lid. It was delicious. There was nothing better I could think of. Then we went down to the OR and ER, I saw some trauma patients, thought I was going to vomit back up the mocha I inhaled, and then we went to tour the UW campus, which I feel in love with, and where I spent my undergraduate days frolicking about in the wonderful gray, rainy weather.
Eventually, I performed my shift of coffee shop work in Seattle (I'd worked for Starbucks before, but only in Colorado, before college), as any good Seattleite must do. Oddly enough, I got a job working at the University of Washington Hospital coffee shop, right there next to that bank of elevators. What a turn. By the time I was working there, though, I was on to drinking triple grande lattes and black coffee. Pretty hard core? Damn straight.
It is during this time in Seattle that my coffee habit and appreciation grew to elephantine proportions. For those of you who don't know, it rains all the time in Seattle. There's even this wonderful little book called "Rains All The Time" about the weather in Seattle. So, it is gray nine months a year. What most people don't know (and I may become excommunicated from Seattle if I spill this, but you're worth it) is that it doesn't really rain that much all the time. There are just lots of clouds and it sort of mists a lot. Sure, there are rainy days, and the streets run with water, the culverts overflow and people drive like crap (on a side note, how is that people drive like shit in Seattle when it rains, and it rains all the damn time? I never figured that one out) and Switters watches art school girls sail boats down the drains in Pike Place Market. And so, with all the rain, all the gray, all the insideness that exits, Seattle has embraced the coffee and bookshop culture more than any place I've been to.
From Verite coffee to Cafe Vita, Cafe Zoka to Espresso Vivace, all independent coffee shops and roasters, though there are dozens more, Seattle also boast that place, with the green and white? Starbucks? Right. Them. And Tully's. Oh, and Batdorf and Bronson, in Olympia, WA. And...never mind.
But coffee is important. Cafe Zoka was one of my favorites, as was Cafe Solstice, on the Ave in the U-District. I spent many a day with my friend Rachael at Cafe Solstice writing poetry, discussing fiction and reading Proust. And so for me, coffee is often rain is often writing is often Proust is often Seattle. And more. And the rain became ingrained in my desire for coffee. There is nothing more in life for me than a rainy day (or snowy, if you're in New England) and a cup (or four?) of coffee and a book or a blank page or good conversation.
To throw in a little quote for you, to get what I mean about the rain:
"And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the Sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and bridges. It fell on the head of John Paul Ziller. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissedon the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled on the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure."
-Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction
So now I have wandered. See what coffee, both drinking and thinking about it, does to me? It leads me to wander the paths of my brain, which may be a good thing, but this post drags.
All this coffee, and its myriad references, all flew apart the moment I landed in Rome and took a sip of a cappuccino (can you hear it, with the little Italian accent? You should try...). It was, to say the least, the nectar of gods. But that does no justice. It was better than anything else I had ever tasted. I allowed myself a certain amount of money on that first trip to Rome, and I spent most of it on cappuccinos. Probably five or six a day. I would stand at the bar (cheaper) and sit at tables (way more expensive), I would go by myself, or have one, then go with a friend to get another one. I would have sat in cafes all day long, writing and reading. Rome is nothing to me if not coffee. The best, the best and greatest cappuccino I have ever had I had in Rome, at Cafe Sant Eustachio in the Piazza Sant Eustachio, near the Pantheon. Here's a picture that I didn't take. Nope, it doesn't look like much, but good things never do (a common misconception, I'm sure). But this coffee, which, most recently and most memorably, I shared with my friend Kelsey in the summer of 2007, was the perfect cup of coffee, if a perfect of anything can exist. Kelsey and I went there on one our last days in Rome. I'd been telling her about it for five weeks, and every time we tried to go, something else came up. But this day, it was perfect. There was a table outside, which was unusual. The heat had not baked the cobbles and walls to an oven and we didn't bake like potato pizzas in late night eateries. We sat for over two hours, sipping cappuccinos (of course we had multiple, and paid with shallow pockets and lint) and water, discussing poetry and fiction and words and letters and the Pantheon and anything else. I also took photographs. So, to finish this post, I'm going to leave you with an image of Kelsey and an image of our coffee, because, while I'd like to keep going, I need to stop so you don't have to read any more of this caffeinated dribble common to so many coffee addicts.
Just know that coffee ties me, both physically and mentally to places around the world, people I still know and people I'll never speak to again. And through all of it, coffee has been there. There are many other stories, many other tangents each digression here could take, like other aspects of Rome or Costa Rica or France or Seattle or cross-country driving that are linked, loosely or otherwise, but I'll stop here. Perhaps more another day.
Besides, my americano is gone.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)