Why Roast Coffee?
Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 08:53AM 
Check the drive.
Why roast coffee?
"Because I like to drink coffee." No!
"Because I like coffee." No.
"Because I like (not even single origin with creamy honey dripping from the portafilter?)
No, fool, you roasted it full city! Then why? "to be COMFORTABLE!"
Comfort being the ball, meaning that from the enterprise expect no more than a PIECE OF COMFORT. Ending up with a batch of strange looking beans that don't cup worth a damn and don't say, "this is a failure because it isn't a clean bean and it tastes bad. I try instead to say, "This bean of coffee not behaving like any I ever seen before. Let's see if I like it to drink when it stops swirling around."
Then how, after coffee goes in the mouth.
Then how does one know if he likes it or not?
Can't.
Can only say "I like it maybe not so good as roasting coffee from single origin small family farms, but I like it a heap more than roasting grasshoppers."
Then, weighing as much information available, decide, all things considered, and in that I imported 20,000lbs. of this bean. I'll drink it.
Then go at it, learning every way possible. Like a blind samuri battling the rain with a paper sword. Like a Jack climbing down the beanstalk. Like Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Like Bucky Fuller. Like Garrison Keiller. With a chainsaw. With a journal. With a measuring stick, creating soft angles in a hard world.
Where does that bring us?
I remember NOT DOING is all one accomplishes and is practically the same as DOING only in reverse. NOT DOING i.e. not thinking about the lost love, not worrying about the Lakers small forward, not looking at the slaughter going on in every heart, not thinking about the unicorn...all the same, putting us on the other side of the river from ourselves. Many times trying NOT to listen to a sound, or NOT to look at a sight, is the only way to perceive. As in watching a dim star, sometimes staring right at a thing obscures it until it's gone and can only be seen by looking away.
There is a painting on my wall.
A human skeleton laced with tones of grey over red that I am NOT looking at, and the more I don't look at it the more my interest runs that direction, until by stopping for one minute............done......did so. Eyes closed for 60 seconds, found myself accomplishing feats of NOT thinking about the painting a time or two and then swing back until it glowed very white at edge of my dark room and finally BAM opened my eyes AND.....AND....AND.....and....and...disappointment!
I was expecting my NOT looking to bring about a optic miracle so when I looked I was by then not only truly not seeing the picture I was not even seeing the optic miracle.
A FULLER HARVEST WITH LESS EXPECTATION!
To dance, fall down first.
The wiseman is the fool when he is the fool and through the fool finds his cool again.
All these bench marks that rattle and ring in my memory, but do not, CAN NOT link up to the goal, the cool place.
Yet they all must be learned. And forgotten. Or the act will prove to be nothing.
Keeper of the flame, do as you must. Roast thy coffee and return by dusk.
