Tag: coffee

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Happiness is getting up and going downstairs in the morning, opening all the doors and petting the dogs, walking around the garden and along the wooden pier in the cool morning air and listening to the crows and the chirping of all the other birds as you wait for the water for your tea to boil in the kitchen.

— Orhan Pamuk, “Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.” Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, November 26, 2024)

Notes:

  • Amazon: “For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.“
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Thank God. People who take their coffee black are always so smug about it, you know? Marla this morning was like, Oh no, no, I don’t need things in my coffee. I like it just black, thanks. And it’s like, Well, I’m sorry, excuse me, but I happen to be a human being and I like sugar.

― Alison Espach, The Wedding People: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co., July 30, 2024)

Photo: Brigitte Tohm

Saturday Morning

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I’ve noticed that people love to hurry. Meals are always quick, coffees are never savoured, glances are fleeting, conversations brief and it feels like this is becoming normal, that people only expect surface level and they only strive for surface level in all aspects of life. Mediocre coffee. Luke-warm love. Convenience. Because life is scary and when you sit with it long enough, and really listen to the silence, you notice what you’re missing, and some of what we miss, we know we will never be able to find again.

—  Seyda Noir (seydanoirwords @ Instagram, April 28, 2022) (via balancedhuman)

Photo: Pixaby

T.G.I.F.: Perhaps this is the time to take an extra slow sip from a piping mug of coffee

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From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.

Perhaps this is the time to take an extra slow sip from a piping mug of coffee, to let the steam melt into the waiting face and to savor the way that dark substance can invigorate the body. Perhaps this is the time to gaze at squirrels in the yard, those lucky rodents who don’t seem to realize—or care—that we’ve changed, those chipper squirrels whose routines continue with full gusto despite everything else. Perhaps this is the time to sit with someone you’ve grown accustomed to seeing each day, to stare at their familiar face under familiar light and look for the unfamiliar things that made you love them in the first place.

This is a time when one of the few things we’re certain about is how little certainty there is. We can scramble to find answers and do what we can to act in the midst of these swirling questions and trials, but this can also be a time to pause. Somehow, in the middle of all these current messes, there are still pleasant—even delightful—mysteries to be found. There are friends to check in on (from a distance), there’s astonishment to be shared. There are poems to be read. There is hope to be found, embraced, passed along.

The heavy blanket of fog in the yard has lightened so that it’s no more than a sheet. The baby maple, still alone, stretches up from its cast. Next year, it may be crowned with leaves, and someday, it will give us shade, like the ones who came before it. Somehow, in the midst of everything, it grows stronger each day.

—  Angela Hugunin, from “The Comfort Of A Poem: Reflections on Mary Oliver’s “Mysteries, Yes. ” (cvwritersguild.org, April 7, 2020)

Photo by Nathan Dumlao

Monday Morning Wake Up Call

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She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside, the air hung swagged and the clouds sat in piles of couch stuffing, and in the south of the sky there was a tender spot, where a rainbow wanted to happen.

Then three sips of coffee, and a window opened.

— Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This: A Novel (Riverhead Books, February 16, 2021)

Portrait via Esquire: “In the Face of Tragedy, Patricia Lockwood Found the Real World Again. In her first novel, No One Is Talking About This, the poet laureate of Twitter engulfs readers in “internet poisoning”—and memorializes someone she loved and lost.” Lockwood is the author of the acclaimed 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy.