I suppose I’m somewhat to blame. Good coffee is difficult. You have to search the world for the right beans, import them in a way that sustains the farmer, and transport them to your door without going broke. Coffee berries are particular, and must be roasted correctly in a process that marries science and art– which seemingly no one knows how to do other than a few people in Chicago, North Carolina, Alabama, and Washington state. Then– and this might be the hardest step– you’ve got to ship this rare and delicious treat to your omniscient customer, who for years has been trained to tolerate, and even enjoy, over-roasted, badly-brewed coffee that furthers a tenuous business plan by encouraging customers to buy add ons in place of quality coffee. So when people say that they like good coffee, what they mean is that they like some cheap ass shit coffee, which was abused when it was roasted and then poorly brewed, mediated by inane amounts of milk and sugar and other godless flavorings.

The saddest part to me is that when people have the rare chance to purchase good coffee beans, they do not realize the responsibility that comes therein. No one takes into account that they are, in fact, pouring gross amounts of chlorine over their coffee beans; no one considers that the temperature of the water, or the coolness of the carafe, or the thinness of the mug might have some small part to play in brewing a good cup of coffee.

So when, by some miraculous chance, the right factors combine to allow someone to make a craft brew at home (I leave out the possibility of work, because we all know that never happens), they immediately destroy it by not even tasting the black stuff solo, but by immediately covering the delicious but delicate flavor with toxins and ultra pasteurized dairy products. What happens more often in the pursuit of good coffee is that people assume that purchasing expensive or locally roasted beans are enough, then go on to mass produce this supposed high quality coffee in cheap electric coffee makers. They are the ones who would buy the angus burger at McDonalds and be surprised that they taste like McDonalds.

Is there any hope of respite from bad coffee or poor taste? Perhaps. But it’s gonna take work, and care, and patience. Taste buds are difficult beasts to retrain.

“The vast majority of problems are caused by the nut that connects the handlebars to the seat.” via Z

Farewell, Wil Mills. You were a beautiful man whose poetry saw far and cut deep and ran true.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” excerpt from Walden

…or Solanum eclipse.