Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 200

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

How many posts since I started this thing? 556? No, I missed three days, so 553. Sometimes you’ve got to take stock of yourself. If you’re always looking at the future, you’ll never know what you’ve learned.

I had a friend tell me I was being ‘willfully obscure.’ She was talking about a post I made a few days ago, the way it ended, signs without symbolism, etc. Fair point. If I had to pick a topic to pin the entire Coffee Log to it might be ‘obscurity.’ We all slip in and out of it, putting our heads down so they can’t see us, or hiding our eyes from the roadkill. From the artists in the articles I reference to the banker across the hall, its in all of us, its how we survive. But there’s a difference in creating a narrative to hide in and hiding from something inside a narrative – the ‘willful’ part is a problem, it shares its name with all those black flags that wave around socially acceptable oppression. Another thing I’ll have to pay more attention to.

There was a lot of talk about 9/11 today. Everyone remembered where they were when it happened. The memories came out on blue and red carpet, strutting their patriotic stuff. Someone told me they had ten moments of silence to observe. A few people were pushing commemerative articles.

I was in 6th grade that day. I was taking social studies. We were huddled on the floor working projects, drawing maps. Our English teacher came in and then the TV’s cut on. We saw the fire, the smoke.

By the next class everyone knew what was going on. Some kids called home, some stayed. The teachers knew enough to be more nervous than the rest of us. In all of it, though, the thing I most remember is how we all got to talking about killing. First it was the blonde kid at the back of class, then three girls with pigtails, and even the teachers got in. We wanted vengeance, blood and murder. Everyone was talking bombs.

18 years later, those thoughts we gave birth to have grown up. They take late night drives around immigrant detention centers, party hard with the Yellow Vests in Europe. A white-sand prom in poorer countries, the way we pick apart Afganistan and dance with the Taliban, leaning close to kiss lips of gun muzzles, so caught up in the emotion that we won’t ever let this long night end.

Slow down, breathe, and take stock once in a while. Did the 3000 lives lost really call for all this? Was one awful day worth drinking gasoline with the world?

I love the way you paint your face to look better than you are. But I hate the way you paint over the parts that are hardest to talk about, willfully.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Voltaire