Tag: history

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 223

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee:  Americano, Caribou Coffee; like being back in university, it’s become a tradition for me to get a Caribou Americano on Sundays;; caffeinated church; I’ve been trading coffee traditions every couple months; the espresso was warming today, which went well with the second chilly morning of Fall

Sitting outside for five minutes while the dog ran around the park, L told me about his job. He works at a printing company and injured his hand on one of the machines. He’s been delegated to office duty, which he enjoys, but there’s politics involved that have him doing busy work because he hasn’t ‘earned’ the cushy spot off the lines. When he heals, there’s a chance he’ll be right back down there, stacking paper, pushing hot sheets through big machines. One thing he says he’s missing is the community – “Those guys all want to get to know you,” he says about the line workers. They were teaching him Spanish and had him over for barbecue on one of their birthdays.

I’ve been listening to the 1619 Project podcasts. I’m 3 deep in the show. In the second episode, they go over how American Capitalism has long roots in slavery, how its management practices come from foremen on the cotton fields. On the 3rd episode, it talks about how pop culture began in minstrel shows.

Two weeks from now I’m getting a promotion. It’s a new position and next year I’ll be learning investments. I feel good about the promotion because it means I’ll have more chances to hear peoples’ stories, and I feel good about the promotion because it means more money for not too much more work. There was a bit in that 2nd episode of the podcast where they talked about banking. Back in the 19th century, banks were trading bonds but the bonds weren’t backed by the treasury, or equity, but on the most valuable property at the time, human slaves. Many banks grew big and wealthy with this practice. Families were separated, white men were rich, and half the world had forgotten how to care.

Some people say that Autumn is a ghostly season. Those cold misty mornings, spirits slipping out of graves. I like this idea, and I’ve always like the celebration, the shared horror, popcorn face-masks and candy-corn, festive Halloween. But deep down below the sugar is a sicker stuff, the dead rot of history climbing through the tubers, coming out not in Autumn but under the hottest white July, to sweat and pool wherever you’re stepping, always under you, always out of site, but present, so present it sticks, and even when you take the afternoon shower to wash the grime down the drain, it never goes away.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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You would get nowhere telling him that weeds too have tubers, or that the first sign of loose teeth is something rotten, something degenerate, deep within the gums.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Coffee Log, Day 357

garethlivesay2 Comments

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House, Office drip; the stronger you brew it the less it tastes like grass but the more it tastes like construction paper. What do you want to remember: soccer practice or kindergarten crafts?

Grammar: good, bad, or ugly? Ugly-bad, I’d say.

I’ve been swiping pictures like a fiend on Tinder. Internet dating never goes much of anywhere, but it’s an interesting addiction, like peeking in the metro windows during morning commute. Everyone’s dolled up and trying to impress each other. Or actively NOT trying, but that’s just another type of effort. I’m doing it too. We’re all peacocks. Anyway…

A lot of people put ‘good grammar = important’ on their profiles. They’re looking for people that can ‘talk,’ ‘spell,’ or ‘write’ right. I find that a little fascinating, that how you put your words together can be a metric for your desirability and worth. The same people usually use words like ‘looking for someone stable, who has their shit together.’ Ok, at least you know what you want.

I used to be someone who cared about Grammar. I’d be the kid in elementary who corrected your sentences if you said them wrong. Not a lot of people liked me, that’s for sure. I didn’t realize at the time that I was a product of something sinister: hundreds of years of history written by a ruling class.

What is ‘good’ language? In the textbooks, it’s well defined: it’s and its mean two different things, ‘good’ ain’t ‘well,’ etc. But when we’re talking under the blue February sky and you say ‘he did real good on his spelling test,’ I know exactly what you mean. So why should I care what word you used?

If you want to oppress someone, keep them away from books. Take out their tools to match an expectation of society. Don’t talk southern. Don’t talk mountain. Don’t talk black, or latin, or anything but rich white. If you say ‘y’all’ you’re ignorant. It’s selective understanding – we tell you it’s not good enough to get your point across, you’ve got to do it the right way. It’s bred in you to love yourself if you know how to comma and hate yourself if you don’t.

What a crummy view of language.

A thin black box to cram the whole world inside – no room, no air, no breath for different colors.

So anyway, I don’t judge those guys and gals that say they’re looking for a good grammared partner. I get the force of history clenching it’s fist around them. But I do swipe left.

Novel Count: 23,930

Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

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All my [people] talk like yo cotton picking ancestors
That don’t make us stupid, we just deeply rooted

Doctur Dot, Earthgang, Momma Said

Coffee Log, Day 219

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Americano, Caribou Coffee; I took a Saturday shift and got coffee on the way to work. It was a half-day, four hours, the coffee lasted two.

I served drinks at a friend’s wedding reception. I was behind the bar the whole night. I knew three people. I recommended wines for cake and vegan finger foods. I was mostly making it up, but people seemed to like it. Half of any front-facing job is knowing how to seem like you know it. Tonight reminded me of my years working as a barista.

One guy ordered Michelob Ultra and asked if I knew any jokes. I said I didn’t, but I’d trade him the beer for one of his own. He went long with the punchline, got cut off two times, but laughed a lot so I laughed with him. He was related to the groom through who-knows-what and I liked him. We talked a few more times. As the night went on, I drank a few beers. I told better jokes after.

A couple of aunts and uncles ripped it up on the dance floor. In between dances, they told stories about their kids. We talked about University politics and getting old. Her order was a Riesling, his a Michelob Ultra.

I spent a long time talking with two friends about anything. It was nice to give them drinks, nice to serve them. You don’t know somebody until you’ve got your arms and legs tied to their convenience. A person’s true colors are painted on the people who work for them.

At the end of the night, I talked History with a Daughter of the Confederacy. She was older, once a teacher, I told her my grandmother’s mother had been a member too. The first thing she said when those words came out of her mouth was: “Not for the race, of course, but for history.” Later, she told me about a time her ankle was torn and one of her students administered the physical therapy. She oozed a good soul. We hugged. ‘History’ and ‘race’ are inseparable to a Southerner. Sin is subtle. But for every sin there’s a proud woman who’s put good thoughts into generations of kids’ heads. Life is complicated. I poured her half a bottle of Moscato by the end of the night.

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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“A kind of joyous hysteria moved into the room, everything flying before the wind, vehicles outside getting dented to hell, the crowd sweaty and the smells of aftershave, manure, clothes dried on the line, your money’s worth of perfume, smoke, booze; the music subdued by the shout and babble through the bass hammer could be felt through the soles of the feet, shooting up the channels of legs to the body fork, center of everything. It is the kind of Saturday night that torches your life for a few hours, makes it seem like something is happening.” –
Annie Proulx, Close Range

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Coffee Log, Day 168

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Fair Trade Five County Espresso Blend, Trader Joe’s Brand

I take the highway at 65 high-school-track-fields per hour, faster than the 8-minute miles I managed fifteen years ago. Things sped up; times changed.

I’m working Raleigh, a branch I haven’t been to. Maps come out the car speaker anticipating twists and turns, turning the music down automatically, red lines for bad traffic, or lines in the eyes where I haven’t been sleeping, supplementing missed midnights with caffeine.

Crickets in the early mornings when I walk the two turnbacks downstairs to the parking lot, reminding me of that one night after high school when we all went to Cedarock Park and built a fire, grilled hot dogs, slept bare-skinned in sleeping bags, made reckless love with ticks and crickets and coal-cracking store-bought branches; or of nights lost to five-more-minutes with the four inches of my iPhone, a spaceship/rocketship sort of life, burning time like jet fuel; or of strawberry-cheeks and IPA lipgloss, the ways I wish I saw you, the ways I wish you saw me, but only the white walls ever see much of anything, even though I haven’t hung them with anything yet.

I’m a bill-payer; news-checker; chatbox stalker; internet lover; a Modern Man.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“I didn’t need to think of myself as a walleye drifting along in a current somewhere, just waiting for my hook. I was yearning for it.” – Emily Fridlund, A History of Wolves

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Coffee Log, Day 154

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: India Extra Bold Roast, Cafe Crema

I’ve been eating raw tempeh for a week. I thought that was okay, but apparently it’s dangerous. In Japan, I ate eggs fresh-cracked and uncooked pig intestine from a shady bar. What’s ‘dangerous?’ Yesterday, I read an article about parental hand-holding shaping an entire generation to be anxious and depressed. Today, I went ahead and cooked the tempeh.

They just found liquid water on mars, or at least the probably did. It’s buried a mile deep near one of the ice-caps and they can’t figure how it hasn’t frozen. They also found a petrified piece of bread from 14,000 years ago in Jordan. It revised some logic, complex cooking must have come first, farming after. Apparently, the Epipaleolithic chefs seasoned the bread with mustard seeds. Beetle-eyed conspiracy theorists are revising their Martian narratives: the ships came quicker, and they taught prehistoric man dope recipes.

A restaurant in an airport doing high-volume; beef bowls; pickled ginger; gray plastic bowls to prop your cracked egg.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals.” – Haruki Murakami

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