Tag: caffeine

I sit in the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station waiting for my train, which should depart in about three hours. I’ve already been here for three hours, so it’s a long wait. I’ve drunk two lattes and three shots of espresso, and my teeth are beginning to hum. But there’s wi-fi, so I can indulge myself in some blogging.

It’s cold in here, and it’s raining outside. The Metropolitan Lounge is reserved for people in business class and those sleeping in sleeper cars (like we will be). It’s quiet with comfortable chairs with outlets nearby and a shower in the bathrooms — although I don’t know who actually showers in a train station shower.

I’m trying to coax some latte out of the machine and hope it warms me up. My teeth will be humming so much I’ll be picking up radio signals soon.

For the Love of Coffee

On Facebook, coffee is a sacrament. Have you noticed this? Coffee jokes, coffee witticisms, coffee mugs. If you subscribe to writing-related pages on Facebook, you’ll quickly become convinced that coffee is the fount of all inspiration. For many of us, it is. (Those of you in the United Kingdom don’t understand this because your coffee usually is Nescafe instant and some boiling water. That is not coffee.)

Some of you reading this don’t fancy coffee and prefer your caffeine another way. For example, tea — sweet, unsweet, green, oolong, Earl Grey. Most of the people I’ve met who drink Earl Grey were English majors or Star Trek: Next Gen fans. Or Mountain Dew — all the people I’ve met who prefer Mountain Dew are computer programmers. Read on, because it may help you understand us coffee drinkers.

Why do so many writers prefer coffee? It could be because of the allure of coffeehouses* as places to write. Perhaps it’s knowing the mystique of the coffee’s journey from coffee cherry to processing method to grinding to brewing. Maybe it’s just that coffee is a socially sanctioned form of stimulants.

Coffee drinkers, like writers, appreciate the history of coffee. The apocryphal story of the discovery of coffee goes like this: An Arabic shepherd, feeling weary, sat under a bush to rest after making a fire to boil water. After he let the water cool, he notices one of his goats take a drink and then bound around the pasture with leaps and hops. The shepherd witnessed this, took a drink of the water, and no longer felt tired.**

Can you write without coffee? Yes — any ritual will help you get in the mindset, and writers have plenty of rituals — Using a fountain pen to write, writing in a dedicated Moleskine book, writing in a blog as a warmup, listening to music … Coffee is just another ritual. With caffeine added.***

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*  You will find the best ambience in indie coffeehouses. Consider yourself lucky if you have access to these. Chain “stores” that sell nationally recogized brands, not so much. Only one Starbucks in the US, in my opinion, has true coffeehouse ambiance, and it’s the Starbucks at Northwest Missouri State University, in the library. I work at that university and hold some of my office hours here.

**  I question this account for a couple reasons: 1) I’ve seen goats. They dance like they’re overcaffeinated ALL THE TIME. (Meet the crazy goats at Goats Gone Grazing Acres for an example.) 2) The herder boiled his water to be sanitary, only to drink it after a goat slurped it up? I prefer the story without the dancing goat.

*** Full disclosure: I am a coffee snob. In this household, we buy small lot green coffee beans and roast them at home in a small-batch drum roaster. We brew in a French press. We check for flavor notes. It’s really quite obnoxious. Really.