drink – Live & Learn

Consider the beer can. It was beautiful – as beautiful as the clothespin, as inevitable as the wine bottle, as dignified and reassuring as the fire hydrant. A tranquil cylinder of delightfully resonant metal, it could be opened in an instant, requiring only the application of a handy gadget freely dispensed by every grocer. Who can forget the small, symmetrical thrill of those two triangular punctures, the dainty pfff, the little crest of suds that foamed eagerly in the exultation of release?

– John Updike, from “Beer Can” in Assorted Prose

Notes: Photo – vinepair. Quote: via Swiss Miss

People can’t agree on where coffee’s secret lies: opinions range from the smell, the color, the taste, the consistency, the blend, the cardamom, the roast, to the shape of the cup and a number of other things. For me, it’s the timing. The great thing about a perfectly timed cup of coffee is that it’s in your hand the instant you crave it. One of life’s most exquisite moments is that in which a small luxury becomes a necessity.

—Mourid Barghouti, from I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

Credits: Photo from Your Eyes Blaze Out. Poem via The Journey of Words

Awakening

How heavy it is, this bucket
drawn out of the lake of sleep
with a dream slipping over,
so heavy that on some mornings
you can’t quite pull it free
so let it slip back under,
back into the darkness where
the water is warm, even warmer,
but the dream, like a minnow,
has swum away and is merely
a flash in the murky distance,
and the weight of waking up
seems even heavier. But somehow
you lift it again, its handle
biting into your fingers,
and haul it out and set it down
still rippling, a weighty thing
like life itself, in which you dip
the leaky cup of your hands
and drink.