Ground up

Desperate for a metaphor, I seized on my having ground the coffee too fine. The problem here - inwardly I gave a knowing look - comes from excessive refining, leading to bitterness. And aren’t we all - I nod, with a weary and knowing cocked head - overground, in the crazy mixed up kitchen of the world? Midway through I became beset with the urge to use the term “human bean” and also to wonder if perhaps there is a problem of shoddy equipment and low grade raw materials - apparently one should use a burr grinder, and who knows how old these beans are - and maybe as well operator error in the application of the hot water to the grounds. I made a second cup, letting the water stand a while before pouring it into the cone. This one was better, a little less back of the mouth bitterness and I noticed more flavors elsewhere on my tongue. With diligent attention maybe we can all become an improved second cup, etc etc. Joan Didion said that small disciplines matter only when they express larger ones. I’m unsure I know what it means but it feels true and sounds very serious, so if I leave it here steeping amid my lukewarm prose perhaps some truth and color of tone might infuse the rest of these words - not unlike the milk and honey I stirred into that first lackluster mug of coffee, but also not particularly like them either, and the jumbled comparisons are bitter tannins. Writing’s a mug’s game - one played, like the men in the final scene of Coffee and Cigarettes, pretending to hear Mahler and fantasizing their coffee is champagne (“to celebrate life, like the rich, elegant people do”) - in an effort to beatify.