Nocturnal Caffeine

Wandering the globe looking for rituals to become obsessed with while caffeine pumps through the veins.

Why can't I have a good old fashioned coming of age ceremony and wander the desert for a week while the men dance the nights away vibrating this earth in my honor? Instead I've got an Ipod chock full of turn table riffs and a Yashica medium format camera and a pencil and paper. Nice paper, top shelf: 100% rag cotton from age old paper mills like Rives and Fabriano. The pencil is typical duo: mechanical, 2h and 2b. Oh, right, there's water color and a good sable brush. 1 brush cause it's all about simplification.

My coming of age ritual is obsession with repetition. I would have been the one that kept walking for a few too many weeks just to keep repeating the good ole one foot in front of the other schtick.

If I drink a coffee at 6pm I'm good till 3am. I don't do that much any more mind you, but, rocket fuel when pressed. (Nocturnal Caffeine.)

So, what's the point (you ask, reading, pondering why).

We've got a time piece--the moon--arguably our most valuable time piece (ocean tides, et al). I'm gonna go so far as to say the moon is really about all you need to tell time cause: someone else always knows what day it is when you are in a situation which requires one to know the day.

Time moves forward with sickening consistency, a mathematical sterile bliss in which we know the day the moon could have fallen into the earth, had the sun not eaten us (earth) first. I wonder if the ancients knew the sun would eat us?

Then there is coffee and coffee buys us more time.

Coffee is such an easy thing to fetishize. It's low hanging fruit on the gamut of things to become obsessed with and just begs to be surrounded by ritual. Instead of the harvest moon ceremony we've got the parcel courier bringing the next coffee machine to out door step. We've got exotic beans, a rainbow of roasts, filtered water, organic heirloom cotton filters. We've got timers and temperature probes. We all make our own daily ritual out of this black water. We all find solace in the smell, we all get up the courage to go forth into the sun and accomplish the tasks laid before us.

And that's the point, the ritual which gives us strength to face the terror of time. So we aren't that far from the ancients, we are just loners where as they were communal.

My good friend has his morning process - french press, fresh ground, boil water, 3 minutes steep, push it down, pour it off, enjoy. Every day. Perfect. It's an offering to the new dawn, a response to the reclaimed conscious of the awakened state a farewell toast to the dream state and it don't hurt that it gets you high.

Me: I'm pushing the Aeropress these days. I roast my own beans, grind them in a fancy Japanese ceramic grinder moments before I scoop them with the designated coffee scoop. Heat water to 175 degrees cause boiling water burns the coffee and brings forward that acidic beast which starbucks peddles. Stir - three times clockwise, always clockwise (thanks Tibet) let steep for 90 seconds with a 30 second press. Immediately clean the Aeropress and put away, turn around, grab my cup and feel the heart race.