Coffee and life

沢山の思いが溢れてくる

If asked to choose, I’m definitely a tea person rather than a coffee person.

There’s a connection here i have no words for.

We live in a web of intricately, beautifully woven serendipities.

But after reading Bear Pond Espresso’s LIFE IS ESPRESSO book...I am reminded of how it is coffee, not tea, that has woven together so many of the beautiful relationships I have in life.

Sometimes connected by coffee

The tea world that I have touched was mostly fraught with drama and pettiness. There’s a distance, between tea people.

I’m sure this is also true for tea.

Snobbishness rather than community. Competition and drama. I’m sure these exists in the coffee world, and are even more intense. But somehow I’ve been fortunate enough to be spared it.

It turns out every café, or every coffee, is like a work of art. From sourcing to roasting to brewing. The owner, the barista, is trying to say something. The cup you are drinking stands for something. A highly individualistic self expression.

The connections I’ve forged through coffee...

If i say I’m not a coffee person, I know a few people who will roll their eyes and or freak out, yet that remains true. Coffee is not a pleasurable flavor in and of itself for me

Compared to tea which is more “flexible” in its brewing and is usually brewed to the drinker’s taste.

There’s also something curious about coffee. Or the coffees produced by a cafe as it expands.

The owner decides on an expression... like a song writer who writes a song. But it’s prepared by someone else, the barista on duty. Who may not feel, embody,or even know the story behind that cup.

But it’s led me to amazing friendships.

(Is this why my people pleaser self feels more alignment with tea?)

Sure i have a tea mom,and i make my art primarily with tea. but I have less beautiful tea relationships than coffee ones.

I’m friends with my colleague at the bottle shop because of coffee.

I made friends with the founders of Bootleg coffee over coffee...

I had coffee tasting nights that led to delicious soy sauces in my fridge from sake sommeliers...

Like a musician who plays the music but may not stand or embody its lived expression.

And what about the farmers and roasters? Like the craftsmen who make instrument, they don’t decide what message that coffee is going to stand for. They merely prepare the canvas, avail the opportunities....

The owners of Double Up coffee, whose coffee accompanied me to New York, and tide-ed me through the drought of finding cozy Pourover spots...

Today i learned about espresso, and New York coffee. It may not be my style of beauty and aesthetics, but I understand now. and that affords me appreciation, as well as the ability to indulge.

Espresso is the intensity of expression, it reminds me of my taste story about angels...

An intense, dense experience that you need time to process in the background as you go about your day.

And the relationship I do hear about in tea involve so much... pretension, commercialism...where’s the romance Ii wonder. This quieter medium somehow is fraught with more drama and uncomfortable people..

Tea is (and maybe Pourover) is about stretching the moment to infinity,

while espresso is about compressing infinity into a moment.

Both beautiful in their own ways.