Coffee

May 21, 2014

It’s hiding in a small corner of the table we’re sitting at. The wooden table has a rolling top and it has corners, and it’s hiding there. Our sense of comfort is hiding in the corner. It is begging to be found.

We are not yet ready to see it. We are not feeling comfortable and are exploring what could change that. It is a funny sensation to know that we are both looking for something, for the same thing, yet somehow it remains outside of reach. It would seem the fair thing to just say out loud what we want, but that is not our social contract. We are going to sit here and try to sense our way into comfort. We are clumsy like that.

Coffee helps. Coffee is a cloak for shaky hands, yawns, moments of quiet repose, an excuse for banality, more excuses. So we both have some coffee.

We explore the boundaries of the social contract. You read my tweets and I worry about that. I worry whether you like them, and if you do, what it is that makes you like them. I worry whether you feel that they project a particular image of me that I don’t necessarily agree with. I feel like expressing these worries, but know that I shouldn’t. That if I would have to, that it would not truly help anyway. All this time, comfort is hiding.

It takes the cold last sips of coffee to really allow things to open up. What was awkward before has now transitioned to acclimatisation. But that means something else. Are we pleasant now because we are used to it, much like in the winter we are sympathetic with the temperature because we simply get cold ourselves? Is that not the definition of comfort? To find comfort in a situation could mean that you are simply being digested by that situation. Then whatever we do to learn to like each other is purely an exercise in adapting to the extremes that are new to us.

So if we enjoy each other’s company, does that mean that we simply accept the hostile environment we each create for one another? I sip my cold coffee and wonder if comfort truly does hide in the corner or if I am the one hiding from comfort.