Coffee

Fixing my coffee feels like preparing a baby's bottle.  Sugar, lots of cream, get a spoon from the drawer or a thin wood strip from the bin and stir until it's toffee tan.  Don't skip a step.  Can't drink it if it's too hot -- I like to take big, bitter gulps to get it through the oblong hole and into my bloodstream as quickly as possible.

When someone tells me they don't drink coffee because they don't like the taste, I always say "tastes bad, feels good."  I get my personality from a bean. It makes my words flow, unsticks them from the tired places.  It makes my heart go and my pee smell.  Always keep my bag stocked with Listerine strips to wipe off the tongue filth it leaves behind, so I can speak to the bus driver or the man at Borders without broadcasting my preferences or my afternoon whereabouts.

I used to call bad days at work "40-ouncers." Two Starbucks ventis from the Senate Chef: morning and afternoon.  They were days I couldn't afford to go without the fight-or-flight feeling to carry me through the news cycle and into the night. 

Sitting in the coffee shop, music piped in and a cup on my table, I feel like an artist, a visionary.  It drags me out of my own brain.  It feels like a reason to live.