I shared a carafe of coffee with a stranger. It was great and I always adore these passing connections with strangers. She was a vegetarian from down south who is currently residing in Vermont and just returned from 9 months in Sri Lanka. It was a great conversation about culture, adventure and life abroad. Of course she was a vegetarian. I would be as well if I didn’t adore the texture and fullness of meat. My father is fully a vegetarian now and everyone reading this knows how much I look up to him. Sigh.
The cafe is Vergennes Laundry. It reminds me so much of San Francisco. Mazzer Burr Grinders, a small but commercial espresso machine, Intelligentsia coffee beans and a $6 Chemex Carafe for 2 of Single Origin Ethiopian beans that I couldn’t pass up. I should be half-way home by now but I’m sipping deliciously sweet coffee from a small cup because I just couldn’t pass it up. I have a Chemex at home and Ethiopian Harrar beans ready to place in the grinder but this just tastes better. It tastes so perfect. Maybe what I love about cafes is that they smell like coffee. My home smells like coffee or 15 minutes at the start of each day but I can stay in this cafe for hours and it will still smell of freshly ground beans.
The woman I met was my age with maybe 5 years on me. She was less than 100 kilometers from the coast of India while spending 9 months in Sri Lanka but she never made it there. “I hear it’s pretty dirty compared to Sri Lanka.” I nodded but told her of the adventures I had there for 2 weeks in February. We swapped stories, talked about health and how bad vitamins are for you or that vitamins don’t truly contribute much to us as long as you have a healthy diet. My only critique to her time in the East is she spent it with her boyfriend. You can’t truly take it all in when attached to your lover but some relationships are different so I kept my mouth shut. Then again, it’s still not advisable to travel East as a female alone so I don’t blame her. She went and that’s what matters.
When talking to my friend Lee this week, I made a statement that is both sad but real and that’s to leave America and go somewhere unknown, to finish a book or to see a play or visit a museum and you are already far ahead of your fellow citizens. It’s not just America but there are many of the citizens of Earth who because of laziness or just not having the opportunity will opt for TV over a great book. Reading a book and visiting a museum puts you in a shrinking group of people who try to better themselves beyond the classroom. Once we receive a piece of paper, we stop learning or at least stop our pursuit of learning. What a sad thing. We miss opportunities to chat with a stranger and shrink ourselves because being dumb helps you fit in with everyone around you.
I know so little and I’m so ignorant to so many aspects of my universe but, just to talk about aging beer or travel or things that fill my heart with joy will make other uncomfortable. I alienate friends not by bragging but by sharing things I’ve learned that I fell in love with. “Did you know you can age Chimay blue label for 20+ years and still drink it?” The usual response is, “You’re pretty stuck up about beer. What’s wrong with Bud Light.” That’s not the right approach. Let’s learn something from each other and move forward changing the world.
I’ve written about this before but it’s worth repeating. I am obsessive about new things. Followers of my blog know that I write obsessively about IT support (2005-2008) and then I write in a crazy way about San Francisco, vegetarianism and coffee shops. Then, I go into 6 month blog series about cooking and food and the art of cooking at home and how it truly can help our obesity and diabetic epidemic in our country. Just home cooked meals and I rail against fast food and high-calorie restaurant diets. From there, I obsessed over tea and coffee and fitness and now I write about beer and my Twitter account is full of talks about beer and trying new things. You’ll notice I don’t write too much about cooking anymore or coffee or photography. The reason is that I follow the Eastern philosophy passed down to me from Dad.
Learn everything you can about an art, subject, trade or practice and then only keep what you need, internalize it, make it a part of you and then throw away everything that’s not necessary. You have to unlearn more than you learn because the value of a glass is its emptiness. I obsess over tea trade, types, styles and brewing and then I just do it daily at home and at my desk and I stop talking about it because it’s no longer a thing I’m obsessing over for hours each day in books and online.
This is the way to happiness. Constantly research to grow your mind. I followed the 2012 Republican election for 6 weeks and when the talk shifted away from policies and ideas to scandal and bullshit, I tuned out. I’ll do my research on the candidate who receives the GOP nomination for candidacy. I’ll research him or her and decide who I’ll be voting for in 2012 between that person or Obama. To spend the next 12 months obsessing over who smoked weed in college is time wasted just as its a waste of time to rail against McDonalds for making high calorie foods. We all know that and I know that. Don’t go there and you’ll have a better life.
You don’t have to master carpentry or any trade to be successful in life. You just have to learn enough to repair a broken feature of your future home or to build shelter for your pet. Just pick up things here and there and you’ll be a more worldly person who is happier and confident and fulfilled. However, you have to keep in mind that you’ll lose friends, you’ll have to compartmentalize who you spend your time with. You’ll have your drinking buddies and you’ll have to drink Miller Light and bum a cigarette and you’ll have your educated friends who you’ll quote Shakespeare and discuss European history and discuss economical shifts and globalization and then you’ll have your foodie friends who think politics and Miller Light are both a fast track to inducing Vomit and all that matters is comparing cheeses and discussing coffee preparation methods. Prepare to compartmentalize your friends because finding someone in your life who can discuss all of these things that you pick up month to month is hard. At 25, I’m no genius, I’m no smarty pants and, as I said, I’m ignorant to everything around me but just knowing the difference between Lager and Ale is something that people don’t like. I wish we all could pursue knowledge but, these days, I just keep my mouth shut and hope to meet people like the stranger from the south. She was in Sri Lanka and had so much to share.
I want to go to Sri Lanka now. That would be a lot of fun.
