NOTICE / Coffee in the Afternoon

There isn’t a subject more written about than coffee. Love? Love and coffee and cigarettes. It’s romantic, it’s dangerous and possibly bad for you. You drink it when you think, when you’re busy, when you’re waking up, when you’re staying up all night worrying, when you’re waiting for the doctor to call.  

 

But also every morning. It’s a ritual to signal awakeness. It means the day has started. Even on vacation I need it to act as my lantern in the darkness. In Marojca we drank it overlooking the Mediterranean. Seated on the cool stones that made up our balcony, on the shaded side of the cove, the sun had not warmed or illuminated us yet. The sea below still dark and shadowy as the night rolled back at a gentle creep. The coffee we drank signaled it was morning.  

Drinking it at work is a small escape from work. It is special and fun and no one can argue with you that you “need” it. So I walk downstairs and spend the ten-ish minutes to make it. No one can question me, even though I’m really just escaping my desk and the yawning maw of boredom and repetition. The sleeping needlessness of the work that pays the bills.