my first lemonade stand
i fell in love with the english language because it holds the promise of living a life in just 26 letters. anywhere you could ever go, anything you could ever experience, anybody you could ever meet—all in 26 letters.
coffee has this ability too, but anchored in the senses that language knows least. there is no flavor you cannot taste and no sensation you cannot feel with just two well attended to ingredients.
last sunday, i started my public exploration of how these disparate art forms interplay. i brewed three coffees that, of course, had the clarity, flavor separation, and balance we expect of well-dialed hand brews. but more than how they taste, i’m interested in how they feel. like the song that, when you hear it, makes you feel how you did when she belted it out your passenger window at 16.
coffees remind us.
when i read shelley, blake, or any of the romantic poets, i think of bozeman in july. of makeshift sleeping arrangements and charred food. not simplicity—clarity. everything that matters is in front of you. you can see it. you can taste it. and if this is all that there is, how sublime.
when i tasted this delicate, floral coffee with a hint of sweetness and remarkable clarity, i could see again the fireworks that went off that night in bozeman, montana. my norton anthology of romantic poetry on the dash.
and so, shelley’s poetical works.
i first encountered the book arts movement three years ago on the fourth floor of the marriott library. i "read" books that you can only physically interact if you want to experience them. my favorite character study i've ever encountered came in the form of a shoebox. filled with letters and trinkets the man had collected over a life and then stuffed into a closet for safekeeping.
in response to the digitization of literature, these artists argue that the medium through which we tell stories matters. the form is just as revelatory as the content.
that day taught me that the way an object feels changes how we feel. the physical relationship means as much as the things themselves. especially when one of them is us.
i used che’s motorcycle diaries as one of the menu options for this first pop-up. in this story, che, at 23, travels through latin america with the complicated joy of unearned freedom in an unfree world. but i didn't just use any version of that book. a price tag for 280 baht still sticks to this cover.
at 23, my best friend and i had just spent a few weeks eating all of the street food we could in southern thailand. we stopped in bangkok for a taste of the city—there were some cafes i needed to try. but before we left, we re-upped on our literature at a small bookstand. a fair price of 280 baht. i read that book during our long, radicalizing trek through cambodia and vietnam.
that physical experience will forever be tied to the object. so, too, will this one.
because of its positionality, and the history of its positionality, it takes on a meaning that the kindle e-book version cannot. we are not reading words. we are reading stories.
we are not tasting coffees. we are tasting stories.
