How Life Comes Today – A series of some of my more obsessive traits and observations.
The Caffeinated Oasis
Maybe I have an 8AM meeting, maybe I am lucky enough that it is a weekend and we are rounding on noon. Perhaps I have skipped past my alarm, snoring loudly like a logger with an old toothed saw. Either way I wake eventually, in some contorted position that was comfy while my subconscious played, the light hits me in the face as I am birthed into the day. It is more pleasant than the alarm but each day it’s always the same.
No matter where I live I always, if able, try to position my bed so that I am greeted by Sol. I know some people prefer their beds to always face north or what not, but for me it’s towards whatever window let’s in the sun. Be it behind my bed, cascading across the tapestry of twisted blankets, or smashing through the blinds to lift my heavy lids. I am glad I am not the only one with the affinity for the Sun. It has appeared as a central figure in nearly every strain of humanity during our early development. The ancient Greeks believed that the sun was a Titan named Helios. Ancient Egyptians believed it was the sacred seat of Ra, the king of the gods. In Hinduism, the sun is considered a visible form of a god so that we can bask in their glory and be reminded every day. Even the Roman’s had a celebration for ‘The Birth of the Undefeated Sun’ which was held on the 25th of every December. No wonder I like to wake to its licking tendrils.
Waking up is always a tedious affair. My mattress is ancient. The mattress itself has been owned by me for at least 12 years and it was a few years old when I got it. It divots in the center so when I sleep I naturally puddle in the middle. You would think this is horrible but when I sleep by myself I do not have to worry about rolling off the bed and when I have another sharing, we naturally roll together. Despite these wonderful things, my positioning is always wrong. Maybe my dog decided he wanted half the bed, or maybe the sheets got rolled up around my appendages or I decided to kick out a pillow instead of using it and now I am rewarded with a cruel wrinkle in my back or neck. One day it was so bad that I actually felt and looked off balance. So that is the scene, a 170lbs dog using one of my blanket twisted appendages as a pillow, in the center of my bed with the sun blasting me in the face.
Arise Ryan, arise. I kick my dog from me and assess the situation. The situation is different every day as I am not a consistent person. What will it be today and did I wake up before my alarm? Did I wake with an hour to spare before work or will I be running out the door as fast as possible? Do I even have to work today? Was there something important I was supposed to do? These are the things that are racing through my head as I try to part the fog of dawn.
I shower in the morning, it’s essential if I am going to be productive. I will spare you the details on that endeavor. I used to have a bad habit of falling asleep in the shower, but that was back when we used to game into the late hours of the night and I was running on fumes for work the next day. That ended after I came crashing through the curtain a few times. Pain is always a good way to fix bad habits.
After the shower it is time for me to get dressed and figure out what I need to do to be productive. An essential part of that productiveness is coffee. I prefer to call it the ambrosia of the gods. Whether I brew it at home or spend my $2.35 on a cup to go, it does not matter as long as I put it in my body. Coffee, which was thought to have been discovered around the 15th century is a dark brewed beverage with an acidic flavor, is brewed from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. Unroasted coffee beans are one of the largest traded commodities in the world and Brazil holds that title with 2,249,010 tons a year. Why you say? Caffeine.
“A beverage as black as ink, useful against numerous illnesses, particularly those of the stomach. Its consumers take it in the morning, quite frankly, in a porcelain cup that is passed around and from which each one drinks a cupful. It is composed of water and the fruit from a bush called bunnu.”
—Léonard Rauwolf, Reise in die Morgenländer
I first started drinking coffee regularly when I was sixteen, but have been a constant in a coffee shop since I was four when my parents would meet with friends in an assortment of shops and waste away the day after some athletic stimulation. Back then there where coffee shops everywhere and I don’t mean the Starbuck monopoly that we see today. Sadly, the rise of Starbucks has really mainstreamed what a coffee shop was. The ideals of a shop used to be to present a very quiet interment space where people could escape. The shop often had local art for sale and bookshelves of books you could “borrow” and board games. My particular favorite was a small coffee shop in Redmond where the Matador now resides, and before that Big Time Pizza. Although I do not remember its name anymore I do remember that it spanned the entirety of the old brick building. Inside you were greeted with the baristas, cash register, coffee machine, and the treat case. This is still something you see in all Starbucks across the land and has been very successful. In the main area of this particular shop there were a standard assortment of chairs and tables where students and groups of people could be seen enduring the noise and working on whatever. It wasn’t infrequent to see tutors with pupils in this area. From there you could go up a steep staircase to an enclosed loft that had a large table on one end and bean bags at the other. At the time, this was my favorite place. I could go up and play with my Legos, draw or anything else my young mind could conceive of doing. I would often be left alone up there while the adults played down below and there was rarely anyone up there. If you opted to not go up the steep steps and turned right you could traverse through an archway into a room that was bursting with book shelves and windows. The shelves where full of books of varying genres and the room was complete with comfortable couches that many patrons would use to sleep or discuss politics, poetry, philosophy, or anything else. This is often where my parents were with their rather robust group of friends. The place closed down before I could ever call myself a patron and even longer before I could navigate around an automobile, but this one establishment has always been a pinnacle of what a coffee shop was supposed to be and was until the success of Starbucks.
I still frequent coffee shops; I am a patron known by name and order at most of the shops in my area. I still love to park down in a chair with a book or my laptop and waste away the day. It’s my vacation in a world when I get next to no time off.
Over the years coffee has become as important to me as waking to Sol. Sol and coffee have become an integral part of my day, my life, and my routine. Much like the Wonderful Ritual, not a day goes by without its acidic brown happiness goes down my throat. I will take it as a shot, mixed with sugary syrups, or have it in my favorite way straight with half and half. It does not really matter, I have my preferred methods, but it’s the drink and more importantly the caffeine I want.
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