I started the coffee hours ago
Then went back to bed
Letting it steep
A little too long
The grind a little too fine
Hot and waiting in the press

I never got so distracted
During mornings waiting for coffee
Until you came into my life
Hands tracing paths
Fingers finding souls
Mouths speaking without words

Hours later curled up and satiated
Our coffee is going to get cold
“The coffee is cooling
We might consider moving”
“There is something to be said for that”
And then fingers start tracing souls again
The coffee cooling on the counter

I know someone who spends over a hundred, maybe two a month on coffee. She showed me her stats once on the Starbucks app, which tracks that and displays it for some reason (maybe to depress you?). I also know someone who spends maybe ten bucks for a big thing of Folgers coffee that lasts him months. Personally, I'm a centrist; I'll spend more money on flavored coffee grounds, but I won't go out and buy coffee drinks every week, much less every day. Hazelnut coffee is where it’s at. I can't taste well at all, and I can’t tell the difference between hazelnut and French Vanilla, but somehow I like the hazelnut more. It doesn’t wake me up, not anymore (if it ever did), but I still drink it for the caffeine. Just in case. I drink it black, usually I’ll get the light roast and make it strong.

Coffee is good for the soul. I used to drink a pot and a half of coffee and a couple of sodas a day, but I cut back on the sodas (and the coffee a tiny, tiny bit because I started getting what my psychiatrist calls “panic attacks”). I just find, though, that I’m so much happier when I have coffee to sip on. I don’t know if it’s a strictly psychological thing or if there’s some biological hormone thingamajig that goes on biologically. What I do know is that if I am sipping on some good, strong coffee I can get through the day much more easily.

Unfortunately, I take so long to drink my coffee that by the time I’m halfway through my mug it’s cooled down. I’ve been wanting to get one of those desktop mug warmers, maybe a USB one that I can take with me?

Try it. Try slowly sipping on some strong coffee on a day you're feeling rather bad. You might find that it does more than wake you up.

Okay. I lied. I don't drink coffee. I am pretty sensitive to stimulants, and the first time I really drank coffee I ended up going for a 15 mile walk, in the middle of the night, barefoot. So I mostly drink tea. Lots of tea. The first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is making my first cup of tea. And then I make it and return to my bedroom, and propped up on my bed, I open my laptop and start chasing the crumbs.

I am still numb in the morning, if not actively depressed. I wake up and don't want to do things, and feel daunted by the day ahead. And then I might open up the news and feel even worse. So then I go out to my task of seeing how many internet points I accumulated while sleeping. Has anyone e-Mailed me? Have any observations on inaturalist.org got identifications? Has my YouTube channel gotten any views, any spikes shown up on the graph of whether people are paying attention to me? If I am using reddit, are there any replies or upvotes, including to bog standard observations or jokes that managed to sneak in early? And what about old reliable e2? Has someone given a comment on something I wrote 15 years ago and can't remember? Are people, in the world, noticing me? Like Pac-Man, I chase little approval pellets on the internet. And like Pac-Man, my exits from this maze also just warp around. Every once in a while I hope that something will give me a flash, spark a new connection, take me to another level, that one of my thousand off-hand observations or projects will engender strategic transcendence. But, of course, the game of internet points stays the same.

And at some point during this, I get up, go back to the kitchen, and drink my tea. Sometimes I come too early, and it is still hot, and I sip it. Sometimes I have gotten lost chasing bread crumbs and it is room temperature. Sometimes it is hot and I give in, throwing in a host of ice cubes, splashing tea over the counter will it will stay, staining the countertop until I remember to sponge it up. And then I gulp my tea up. And my soul is warm, maybe not electric, but warm and limber enough to function. I let the tea wake me up, and take out my big ball of string, with cables running all over the world, and proceed to tug and pull on the cables, seeing what, if anything, they will pull in. A fisher of information. A sailor on the seas of fate. And so there I am, reaching a happy medium, warm tea glow and limber soul, combing along the world's ebb and flow of information, even if I don't get anywhere in particular.

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