Meditation for May 3rd, 2016
Coffee Creamer
Nothing beats a nice hot cup of freshly brewed coffee. Seeing the steam waft off the black obsidian surface and the aroma drowning the nose in nostalgia and pure comfort makes the cup of coffee the best thing in the world, even before a sip. The sip, or slurp, gives the tongue a tour through nuts, berries, chocolates, and some citruses. That first sip opens the mind to a vast world of color and hope.
When you add cream to coffee, you say that because coffee is perfect and you are not worthy, you will destroy it with fatty cow cream, or even worse, some nut milk. Why would you destroy perfection? Would you finger paint color on Michelangelo’s David?
Putting cream in your coffee is a luxury. Putting cream in your coffee is a fake luxury. It isn’t that expensive to add a little cream, and it is given complimentary at most coffee shops, so that added dollop of milk is putting one over on the shop. While others waste money on lattes and mochas, one can buy and customize the coffee at the creamer table, keeping those who need a lid tapping their feet.
Sometimes, places advertise themselves as coffee shops but don’t serve coffee. Dutch Brothers Coffee and Black Star Coffee don’t, and most drive-thrus don’t. They serve Americanos. An Americano is shots of espresso added to hot water. It is called an Americano because the G.I.s in Europe during World War 2 wanted brewed coffee but only found espresso, so they would add water to lessen the intensity of the taste and have it last longer.
There are two reasons drip coffee is better than Americanos. One is taste. A nice short double Americano is excellent, but coffee is so whole and multi-dimensional in its taste. Secondly, coffee has much more caffeine than espresso, so why waste your time with watery espresso when you can have a nice punch to the brain cup of coffee?
People want dark roasts. This is another habit formed in World War 2. The G.I.s coming home from the European theatre wanted stronger tasting coffee like the Americanos they were getting in Italy and France, so they started roasting coffee darker to capture that taste. Hence, the French and Italian roasts are so dark. Starbucks came along and kept burning the beans because people are so easily swayed to believe that something should be the way they are and not the way they want it. Lighter roasts taste better and have more caffeine. This proves that good marketing can con a person into believing something is good when it’s not.
The other problem with these drive-through “coffee” stands is that they aren’t serving coffee, they are serving sugar milks. The espresso is just a carrier for frothy milk, sugary syrups and more sugary shit to make the coffee drinkable and the sugar high shaky and anxious.
Coffee should be served black. Cream, sugar, and syrups belong at an ice cream shop, not a café.
Prayer
Queen Sheba,
You brought the berries to King Solomon,
Who drank it and decided to cut a baby in half as part of mediation.
It worked.
Coffee helped him build a temple,
And built it fast.
Because coffee.
Coffee shops sprung up and started revolutions.
Coffee shops started and ended philosophies.
Coffee has helped writers finish masterpieces.
Coffee has helped make that last brush stroke happen,
That final line in a poem,
The last stroke of chisel on stone.
Coffee is why everything.
Coffee is heaven in a cup.
Don’t put milk in heaven,
Just because Carly Simon dreamt that there were clouds in her coffee,
Clouds in her coffee,
You’re so vain,
You probably think this meditation is about you.
Don’t you?
Don’t you?
May there never be a world without coffee.
Amen.
Craft
Drink your coffee black. Enjoy what all the Gods and Goddesses intended for you to enjoy.
Cream and sugar were introduced to Man by a serpent.
Goal
Coffee.
I like the taste of creamed nuts.