A Quiet Corner

08.01.2023 • sunday

spent the day writing my reports. i was studying in my dorm but then my friend invited me to her place so we spent hours together baking, studying, talking and just chilling. it was very nice<3. she gave me my new year’s gift and i gave her hers!!

I think about coffee. I think about the perceived banality of it in a world where we carry our work wherever we go. I know the culture around it well. Sipping a cup of take away coffee bit by bit, in between paragraphs of an essay or throughout a video call meeting is something I used to live by.

This year, in the process of learning to decouple my passions from arbitrary notions of productivity, I began to feel that my daily cup of coffee represented something I’ve outgrown. And rather than a conscious choice I make everyday, it really was more of a tired chore I held onto for the sake of a ritual that no longer means anything to me. I wondered why I even bothered to make it. Nothing about it was pleasurable. I realised I never actually took taste into consideration when I drank coffee.

So then I was interested. I wanted to understand it.

I began my research and fell into a whole new world. It exhilarated me that there is a scientific approach to it. There’s so much to know, new skills to acquire, a whole new community. Something about it felt compatible with a slow and conscious way of living. I found myself falling in love with it.

A couple of months into this love story, I got myself an espresso machine. I delved into grind size, altitudes, single origins and tasting notes. I was coming to a new way of seeing the world, a new appreciation for the bounty of nature, the goodness that comes from working the land, and all the human connections that brings fresh beans to my doorstep. Coffee used to be a means to an end. Up until this year I never thought it could taste like anything other than “coffee.” It feels so silly having gotten to this age without knowing that coffee could taste of rose or lavender or nougat.

Hallig Habel, a farm in northern Germany on the North Sea, an area of low flatlands and mudflats. This photo was taken during an extreme high tide. From Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter

“I am a child with an old soul. I see magic in everything. But at the same time , everything tires me because I feel everything so very deeply.”