Marlow’s Coastal Empire
Near the transit center and just south of the Hostess City’s main park is the Sentient Bean coffee shop. Followers of advanced graphic design trades, doodlers in ink and pencil, addicts of over the counter and under the counter drugs, pushers of various socially advanced causes, grey marketers of cyber-stolen code, sellers of sensitivity training for small offices, chiropractors of the soul, retired state and federal bureaucrats from all government departments, non-uniformed members of the armed forces, officials of the local city and county police departments, assorted alt-lifestylists, poster hangers, coupon passers, EBay sellers of grandma’s stuff before she was done with it, stock brokers, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases no longer dormant in rising dust of urban renewed cities meet there daily for a mid-morning breaks.
When coffee was introduced into Europe in the early 17th century, its influence over daily life was instantaneous. So many coffee houses sprung up in major cities that religious and academic institutions took measures to decrease coffee and coffee culture’s influence on young minds. Despite these efforts, coffeehouses quickly became centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentat. Above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe’s coffeehouses functioned as the Internet during the Age of Reason.
Sentient Bean’s baristas bustle around humming tunes with many customers taking them up. These needy drinkers are so grey and anonymously connected that they don’t recognize that it is their own voices humming the tunes. There are some, who while waiting on line are antsy, jittery or just plain shaky like a junkie coming off of a high. These last ones seem to have a genuine medical need for coffee. Many of us in line view this morning coffee as a chance to relax. The Bean perhaps should consider triaging those in the serious throes of caffeine DTs.
For me, great coffee correctly made as it is at the Bean has an aroma as celestial as a flight of angels floating about on a light breeze. Some of us silently breathe the word coffee like a prayer when we first encounter its perfume. In the darkness of the morning, coffee’s dark elixir is the fifth stage of waking up. The others are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
The Bean is a place where multiple pasts and emergent futures meet in a vibrating hum. They are squirming agitated beings waiting for a hot shot in a mug. They are all dopers.
It is not exaggeration to say that we Americans are a nation of java junkies, wired from dawn to dusk, intent on running faster, getting richer, dancing harder, playing longer and getting higher than anybody else. It is funny to think that Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar or Socrates. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a sniff of caffeine. Nor was any of the great Roman or Greek literature and philosophy penned under its influence. The achievements of these ancients without caffeine’s primal influence make me bow in their honor.
We modern caffeine fiends are always in total need of our dope. Beyond a certain frequency, this need knows absolutely no limit or control. In response to the pusher man’s “Waddya have?” we say, “Yes. Please make it a trente macchiato.” If we were to lose our credit or prepaid debit cards, we would lie, cheat, inform on friends, or steal to satisfy the need.
How did we enter this state of total sickness, total possession, and be unable to act in any other way? Ubiquity of service. Quality of product. Low, low prices. High, high results. With all these things going their way, caffeine fiends are like rabid dogs who cannot choose but bite.
Have you ever see a hot shot hit a fiend? Sit quietly and watch. You will see it happen all around you at the Bean. Dopers never get the cup back down on the table before it hits them. Eyelids flutter, irises become pinheads, skins flush then pale, nostrils flare, then calmness descends. They don’t start talking again until they have had a second hit.
Coffee for me is the fuel that ignites my daily writing. When my first sip of coffee falls into my stomach, there is an immediate internal commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of great armies of the battlefield, and a battle ensues. Things remembered arrive at full gallop. Cavalry of comparisons deliver flanking charges, the artillery of logic hurries up with a barrage of brain energy. Similes arise, and my laptop computer screen is quickly covered with black flecks. Black water filled cups are to writers as black gunpowder and bullets are to warriors.
To most, the first sip and cup ritual is sacred, but our search for a permanence pf effect is always in vain. In an hour, but not more than three later, the need is back just as strong as before.
My writing connected caffeine addiction is serious but not yet cancerous. I have yet to succumb fully to this slow rolling dope shop war against my central nervous system.
In any event W and I sometimes go to the Bean to watch the intellectual hoity toity. You know what I am talking about — the young kids with piercings and dreadlocks who are reading well-worn paperbacks of Proust, the alt-lifestyle, well-made women going through photographs and proposed explanatory texts for a philosophy of art expo at Savannah’s College of Art and Design, and the red-headed dude who, while overweight, is more fashionable than I’ve ever been, is sketching something exquisite. To avoid being made, I fish my iPhone from my pocket to check for new emails. I hope to avoid their gaze since they might see my hoi polloi interest as somewhat creepy.
No matter your interest or reason, drop on by the Bean for a great cup with us sentient beans.
Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat
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