I roasted my first batch of coffee today. I used a popcorn popper and some green coffee beans given to me for my recent wedding. Pleased with the practice and with the smell, though concerned that coffee may be taking over my life, I brewed a cup at work. Too tangy, not enough body, I thought, so I tried it iced. Delicious. Then we had an earthquake.
It had a disappointingly small impact on my life. I do not wish for collapsing buildings and widespread disaster, but I was at least hoping to be enlightened about the transitory nature of the earth we live on; the instability of all that we find most firm; etc. All of those things that the California folks (Ben Seretan, I'm thinking of conversations with you) tell me happen to their awareness of the world, living in a place where it so often shifts itself.
Instead, some tourists visiting the bookstore hollered down from the second floor "Hey, does the floor usually move up here?" Dumbfounded at the idiocy of this question, I could not respond. The news, trickling in via customers' smartphones and friends' arrivals, changed my assessment of the tourists' intelligence.
The espresso machine pulled a few shots too short, then. The liquid dripping from the machine shifted from a dark orange brown to a blond stream within 20 seconds, and the espresso tasted sour. Having just set the grinder to pull good shots at the beginning of my shift, I was perplexed. Then I realized that there had just been an earthquake. Thus, the only effect that the earthquake had on me only reconfirmed my fears that coffee is taking over my life: Because of the East Coast earthquake of 2011, I had to recalibrate the espresso machine.
1 comment:
"living in a place where it so often shifts itself"
I'm sorry, I first read that as "a place where it so often shits itself," and I had no idea what to think for a good thirty seconds.
That said, did you experience any "laughter shocks"?
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