Settling For Bread & Burnt Coffee

Posted by parkejladd on Mar 22, 2010 in Featured {Article}, Slider | 3 comments

The Land of Java

Procedural elimination and implementation, like an undefiled, virgin coffee drinker attempting interpretation of cafe lingo in order to decide upon something actually worth consuming within the confines of airy Americanos, frothy lattes, and tempting double shot, caramel macchiatos. Words here, words there–colorful, chalk hieroglyphics strewn about on an archaic yet serene and sufficiently large enough blackboard. Never mind the noise, the roller coaster grinding of fresh beans being dropped into machines, blended, and rendered granulated, ready for brewing, and customer satisfaction. Decision making made drastically more difficult in lieu of smudged chalk, false ambiance, tired baristas, sharp grinding, and an impatient line of people anxiously awaiting their turn to get out of the coffee-line-tributary and back into the real world river of folks all dressed in suits and shiny shoes with clean hair cuts and well manicured cell phone covers in attempt to find some sort of individualism in the midst of thousands of smart-phone replicas, mass-produced by the same Chinese company on the other side of the world. Different is in the cell phone protector. Different is where you buy your coffee, and what you choose to hold it in. Streams of coffee drinkers–some with mugs, some with disposable cups, some with thermostats–all drifting into the current that is the work day, the business of making money and helping everyone get exactly what they want. The busy coffee consumers are beautiful people. They move so adeptly, with such purpose and precision. They handle so many different things at once as though they were designed to communicate with ten people at the same time and do it in such a manner in which everyone is satisfied. Watching people who are good at what they do, all while actually enjoying their $5 lattes, is equal part fascinating and entrancing like a good movie, impossible to know exactly what’s going to happen next or who’s going to enter the stream during the next frame.

Authentically You

Insert exclamation marks where needed, adjust spacing properly, correct spelling accordingly, and bend sentence structure artistically because authenticity is what we want–it’s what we’re all we’re searching for. To be genuine disgraces the discriminator, humbles the haughty, and baffles the star struck. We see reality, untarnished by airbrushed sands of time or rocky layers of small talk, politics, and deeply embedded coffee stains. You stand in front of me, and I recognize you with your heart wide open–stereotypical, designer, hyper-secure identity unraveled–your mask, long ago left behind in a closet you don’t remember owning. You’re passions quickly balding for all to see, your flesh showing through more and more as the strands of hair wilt and fall away. No wigs or toupees–you’re unconcealed. There’s nothing to hide, so I can’t care what you look like. I can’t judge what you’ve done. I can’t hate you for what you’re doing. I can’t be fearful, because you are exactly who you claim to be. You are who I see in front of me. You are what you say you are, and you do what you say you’re going to do. You’ve been stripped naked, torn apart from fashion and hipster lingo, ripped from the top down, the veil no longer hides you. You are set apart, yet intertwined. You are in, yet not of. You long for nothing other than for others to see you for who you are and empower them to go and do likewise. You are not a liar. You know the truth. You know the way. You know the path to real life.

Faith Like A Child

Longing for humility–like a little child innocent of the struggle for self–yet hiding behind my computer screen, blending in with cheap, trendy shoes, making the grit of swampy coffee easy to digest for this addict who needs only to satisfy his next fix and think only of his own self. The childlike dream falls apart in the midst of busy work, burning joe, and the noise of beans screaming down the grinder shoot, not yet having accepted their fate. Dark coffee made palatable by chemical inductions, creams made in factories, and sugars derived in a laboratory. There’s no taste left here, only fixes. Only fatuous needs fulfilled, addictions satisfied, and painful headaches erased by the soothing flow of dark, seedy, roasted beans, cascading down my throat, curing my morning hangover otherwise known as “the real world” where it doesn’t matter what my coffee tastes like or who I drink it with, only that it wakes me up, opens my eyes for a few hours, and wears off so I can eventually go back to bed. Caffeinated nation. Caffeinated world. Wake up with a sip, ignore the sunrise. Wake up with a $5 mocha, ignore the beggar on the street. Wake up with green aprons, ignore those around us. Wake up with corporate America, ignore our neighbors. Pour the cream–the textured, hydrogenated fat–into my coffee and head off into the world. Grab my liquid energy, get on my treadmill, and run from the raging bulls chasing me between cubicles for the next 8-10 hours of my life. Toro. Toro. Cafe is a constant. It’s always there for me, always working, always opening my eyes for just long enough, in just the nick of time. It’s a temporary fix used to wash away our sleepiness for a set period of time, never genuinely relieving us of our zombie-like trek about this place as we sleep walk from one stage of life to the next. Sleep walking from one corner of our lives to the next, never really experiencing anything, never really doing anything besides drinking the coffee and catching a few energy jolted moments along the way. Wake up O you sleeper for a new day is dawning; arise from your underlying slumber and move with freedom for what this day holds!

Settling For Bread

I ride the streams and tributaries of crowds into the river full of suits, but I prefer a boat, handling and stabilizing my coffee as the waves ebb and flow, guarding it from salt water spray as we cut through the morning fog with simultaneous fervor and reluctance. I got on the boat but somehow forgot the bread. I’ll be hungry in a few hours and so will the others with me. You say something about yeast, and I know you’re angry that I forgot the food. It was my responsibility, and I forgot the sustenance. You whisper something about bread, and I know, once again, I am the mistake, the forgetful reason for why we will go without today. Things easily slip through my mind. My head is focused on food, your heart is focused on loving people. Yesterday I saw you feed five thousands with five loaves, and the day before that, four thousand with seven, but today I’m convinced we’ll starve because I forgot the bread. One day to the next I suppose. This transition is easy to forget, easy to push to the side, easy to ignore, easy to fall asleep on. My focus is easily deterred. Onto the next miracle, onto the next creative task, onto the next sentence. Paragraph break, insert period, wrap it up, press enter. Next. Procedural elimination and implementation. O you of little faith how quickly you  forget the power of the One you’re with, the abilities of the One you follow. O you of little faith, you left the bread behind and dared to think I wouldn’t provide. Put down your coffee, forget your longing to sleep, arise from your slumber, trust me to provide your bread, and follow me to freedom against the flow of the river’s current you float down. Arise.