Coffee Break
I read of people signing business deals over a cup of coffee, deciding to get a divorce during a coffee break, or breaking other people's marriages when they get together for a coffee. Nothing remotely dramatic has ever happened to me on a coffee break. Apart from occasional bum stopping by to ask for change or a cigarette, nothing dramatic occurs around my coffee, period.
And a significant portion of my daily life revolves around coffee. I have writing coffee breaks, sketching coffee breaks, let's-get-together-for-a-coffee coffee breaks, planning coffee breaks and people watching coffee breaks. Of all those, the last one is most fraught with danger of being interrupted by someone who's on his people watching coffee break and thinks this coffee break can be successfully morphed into a let's-get-together-over-a-coffee break. No, different types of coffee breaks cannot be merged and when I'm on my writing, sketching, planning or people watching break, we can't have a let's-chat-and-get-to-know-each-other break. I'm very particular that way.
There must be some yet to be discovered ingredient in coffee that makes one write better, and if they ever need a human guinea-pig, I'll volunteer. I wrote my best stories on writing coffee breaks, all of them in Serbian and half of them no one is allowed to read. They can be published when I die. But I know they're good and they'll earn me a posthumous fame some day.
My sketching coffee breaks are much less successful: no one will sit still and people get extra-fidgety when they notice someone is drawing them. So, I fill my sketchbooks with buildings, streets and store fronts and it's boring me to death already - it's colorless, dull and predictable.
I have noticed people are starting to have a whole new kind of let's-get-together coffees, where they chat on their cellphones while sipping a cappuccino in a coffee shop. I guess the person on the other side is having a coffee in a Starbucks few blocks further, and they "get together" via the cellphone. And, speaking of cellphones, some don't seem to be able to walk without talking any more. They are either by themselves or they take their dogs for a walk with phone headsets on and they talk and laugh all along down the street, behind the corner, and few blocks up. It still takes me few moments to remember these guys and girls are not completely gone off their rocker, but very important loquacious people who can't miss a call. After all, what he said to her and what she said to him in return has a ring of urgency that couldn't possibly be postponed or relegated to the privacy of one's own home, could it?
It may be becoming a rarity these days, but I have a number of let's-have-a-coffee friends with whom I sit to talk. At the same table, I mean, so that we actually look at each other above our foamy, steamy coffee cups, so that we can touch each other to offer comfort and bathe in each other's smiles. Out of all the other coffee breaks, those shared with friends are the best.