Today's prompting has been slow for me. Mornings like these, I really miss coffee; strong dark coffee with good cream. I had to give it up but I'll miss it forever. It used to be a huge part of my life. I woke up with coffee, had it on my work breaks, in between jobs when I had more than one and sometimes when my insomniac brain just gave up on sleep at three in the morning. Those were good writing mornings, hot coffee in my hand, the world still asleep and my pen ready for the page or my fingers itching for the typewriter keys that would decimate the silence.
Over the years I've had automatic coffee machines, a beautiful glass and wood Chemex coffee maker and a french press. I made coffee with paper towels when I ran out of filters, and with a small little red plastic filter holder when I ran out of machines. I still have a one cup, silver stove top, espresso maker that was a gift from a woman who once took me on a four day road trip, in a yellow mustang convertible, to a tiny beautiful little cottage right on private beach, with a hot tub on the deck. It was my first vacation as an adult, at forty something, and I'll never forget how it felt to be in that car headed up highway 101, top down, music playing and that moment when we were driving through a highway that was so full of trees it was like a canopy when I looked up. I remember kneeling on the seat, my hands stretched up to the sky as if to touch those trees as we drove through the underneath. I remember driving way too fast and not caring, I remember stopping at a little store and the rainbow bandanna she got me for my long hair that was flying everywhere in the wind we made as we sped up the highway.
Our mornings began with her coffee ritual. She brought her own beans from Seattle, and made espresso, using a little silver pot on the stove. I never did understand why it took so long, but she was like a zen master about her coffee. She didn't like any chatter. She liked to focus completely on the grinding of the beans, the careful tamping down, the water, the wait for the boil and then there was still more waiting while the aroma of the espresso, got thick and rich in the air. Then she would pour it with agonizing slowness and then swirl a little bit of heavy cream in. The cups were tiny and the color of the coffee beans on the outside and creamy white on the inside. She handed me that cup as if it were a fragile piece of spun glass. That was the best tiny cup of coffee I've ever had. That intricate process was so slow it changed the quality of the morning. Time seemed to slow with the waiting, the quiet and the sipping. I remember her grin as she watched my face as I took the first sip. I've never managed to replicate that coffee. I've never had better. I don't know if it was just her skill and focused process or the fact that while waiting, I could hear the waves hitting the beach, see the ocean stretched out and out and feel the quiet of her concentration. She would insist that it was the Seattle coffee beans and her skill. She was smug about both.
How can you not fall in love with a woman who makes you the perfect cup of coffee? How can you not love the women you bring coffee to, with or without sugar or cream, or with three ice cubes in it because she takes it black?
Do you have a ritual with coffee or tea? Do you have memories associated with the smell of coffee or the taste of coffee? Does your character? Or is it tea, from a bag, a mixture of herbs or what my son would call real tea, that he orders from Upton and carefully steeps in a white tea pot till it is perfect and fills the apartment with a lighter and more complicated smell than coffee. He makes a good cup of tea.
My character, Slo, makes his coffee with a Chemex, with good beans he buys in town. When his coffee is ready he adds sugar and cream (though he wishes he liked it black like all the men in his family do) and he sits outside his beat up white trailer and drinks it there, sitting on an old, brown straight baked chair and he looks out at the land he watches over and misses his wife.
If you think of the smell of coffee brewing what comes up for you?
When you think of morning rituals for you or a character what comes to mind?
You could start there.
Or
I remember...or...the last thing she remembers...
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She woke up that morning, to the smell or sound of ...
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This is what that coffee tasted like ..... or.... the sound of the coffee pot shattering....
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She hated waking up hungry...or...there was never enough...
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If all this coffee business is not doing it for you think of other things that you or a character drink. Is it tomato juice, ice cold vodka, iced tea? What does the glass or mug or bottle look like. What does the hand holding the glass look like.
As always turn it around till it suits you. Write to anything that comes to mind. Just begin and see what happens next.
I hope your day started with something you like to drink or taste and that this is a good writing day.
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