Irrational Exuberance

Caffein

If you were able to zoom in on this image, you would see that the cup that dancing, jumping woman has in her right hand, is from Brick & Bell, the coffee shop I go to every winter morning.

And what’s in that cup, at least in mine, is a 2 shot, extra hot Macho.

It’s a mark of my age that I hadn’t visited a coffee shop, or known anything about the exotic drinks those places provide, until I was long past middle age. I had been on walking tours in Italy, and was introduced to Espresso, but I considered it a European phenomenon.

Now it’s unthinkable that I would go a day without my double shot Mocha.

What the woman in the photo demonstrates is that the Mocha is at least as much about the experience as it is about the drink.

I have come to love the baristas who greet me by name, and have my Mocha ready before I have time to order and pay for it.

There is also a coffee klatch of people as addicted as I am, whom I see nowhere else, but who have come to seem like sometime relatives. They know local gossip, and are reliable restaurant critics.

In the dark times in which we’re immersed, my hunger for companionship has metastasized. Though we rarely spend a lot of time deploring the mess we have mired ourselves into in our nation, there seems to be an assumption that we’ve all had so much of what we value and love about the privilege of living here, robbed of us.

We’re all old. We took to the streets in protest against Vietnam and Iraq. We marched for racial justice. We still occasionally stand on street corners with cardboard signs, deploring the inhumanity, cruelty, that drips from the lips of those who presume to call themselves our leaders.

We seek each other’s solace, and caffein.

While we may have aged out of being able to leap as high as that young woman, we can still taste the diverting pleasure of an extra hot Mocha. The momentary exuberance we experience, may be irrational, but we have lived through these assaults on decency before.

And, with a little help from that caffein, we shall overcome!