Butter Coffee in the Rain

This site has been dormant. It turns out that being a champion of imagination and organization while simultaneously participating in a podcast is time-consuming. Have I told you all about Procrastination Planet — the podcast I co-host? Go check it out if you haven’t already.

In late 2017 when I thought about having a blog — what I wanted was an avenue for me to complete prompts. I had writer’s block. I couldn’t finish a manuscript past a first draft. I’m obsessively watching films and reading books, so why couldn’t I write about that? I often sew my own experiences into the art I’m currently into, so I could definitely get some writing done if I concentrated on that. 1,000-word mini stories that were both a review of a body of work and how it related to my own life.

It began with a review of “Phantom Thread” and has evolved since to be a place where I have posted rabidly about film and television and then disappeared for a few months, but always returning.

After the Oscars, I took a step back. The popular films I followed and the award-bait films were converging. I could no longer tell the difference and it felt like I was preaching to the choir as if my essays were turning into a three-page long thumbs up that didn’t amount to more than fanfare.

My quest for the perfect collection of film and television at home without the dependence on Comcast took me down a learning path where I ended up with Hulu Live and over 70% of my viewing being of television shows. Maybe television was the yarn I needed to concentrate on? The time I spent thinking about how I would weave my own writing through another medium had me throwing in the towel. They were prompts meant to excite me about my own work and a way to expel current demons — but it was turning into actual work.

I shied away after my Ray Donovan review. I wanted to ensure that when I started sharing again that it was something I wanted to write and not a chore to keep you abreast of what I was watching.

Here I am with a cyber cup of coffee for you. Coffee plays a huge part in the stories in my life. Whether it’s meeting up with my writing group or having a meaningful conversation with someone that I will recall years later, coffee and coffee houses, in particular, have played pivotal roles. I love the smell of it and I have so many fond memories of it, especially when it’s raining outside. Here’s the confession- I don’t drink coffee and I didn’t realize that until about a week ago.

To really understand what I mean by this particular rant, you need to play a song for me in the background. “Just Like Heaven” by Katie Melua. How does someone make a cover better than the original? This song sounds like she wrote the lyrics herself. I bring this song up because when I think of coffee or step into a coffee house, this is the song that’s playing in my mind.

I’m a kid of the 90’s. Whether running errands with a parent or running to catch the ferry to the city, coffee houses were always around. There are over two decades of memories to unpack with this. Everyone has memories of coffee houses to fill a lifetime, I’m no different.

There’s the Company of Wolves in Benicia that I frequented in my teens. They were teen-friendly in that they allowed you to buy a single drink and then sit there for hours scribbling into your journal until one of your parents came to pick you up. I used to commute to the city and Berkeley for work and there have been many stops in Peet’s and Starbucks. I can smell the ACME bread at the ferry one building while I’m waiting to grab a drink from Peet’s. Then there are the boutique coffee shops across the city. From the Mission to the financial district there are so many coffee houses that I have stood or sat at on the cusp of the idea for the next great American novel.

Now it’s time to shatter these fragments of memories and take from it what we will.

New fads appeal to me. I don’t drink the kool-aid and put the sneakers on, but I do like to know what ideas are floating around out there. Keto has been around for a while, but a friend of mine is on it and I decided to give it a go. Eating fewer carbs is always a good thing. Before you come at me with your pitchfork, I do understand that Keto asks you to keep it under 25 grams a day. I was giving myself a pat on the back because I was keeping it under 60 grams a day, so in actuality, I was eating human portions and had just managed to stop eating my feelings and insecurity. That’s not Keto, that’s just treating your body humanely.

A popular breakfast that a lot of Keto followers do is butter coffee. You take organic butter and put a tablespoon into coffee for breakfast. You blend it for that extra foamy goodness. The Katie Melua song started to play in my head and I realized that my dietary changes were bringing me back to center. All of those memories of coffeehouses — they would evolve into memories of my kitchen and dining room. Inspiration would hit me at my own dining room table while I was behind my laptop. Just like a dream.

I blended my first cup of butter coffee and sat down. I even started the song up on Spotify to capture the moment. Yes, I was wearing a great pair of jeans and a flowing white top and my curls were on point. I propped my feet up and took my first sip. Then I immediately spit it right back into the cup.

I hated it. I hated everything about it. What was wrong with me? I immediately texted my closest friends and my mother to tell them about the experience. Was the Keto affecting my sense of taste? Was I mixing the butter wrong? Everyone I asked came back to me with the same answer — I wasn’t a coffee drinker. What?

All of the memories. All of the amazing times. All of the paused moments to enjoy the smell and take a sip before continuing on with my day. Was it all a lie? This is where the lie takes us.

Yes, I frequented many coffeehouses. Yes, I enjoyed my time in them. The little details? The drink was never a straight coffee. The frappuccino or close cousin was always the beverage of choice. The boutique coffeehouses? What I enjoyed the most was dipping my pastry in a hot chocolate.

This was a shock. It’s chilling how the truth can change a memory. Something you believe about yourself capsizes with the knowledge that the person you thought yourself to be may not be real.

I wasn’t the cup of coffee in the morning on my way somewhere girl. I was a milkshake or hot chocolate with a pastry girl. Does it change the image in my mind? I’d still frequented all of those coffeehouses. The amount of time I’d spent at them and the conversations I enjoyed and the writing I had completed hadn’t changed. The only difference was the beverage. It was never a coffee by my side. It was always chocolate.

The twenty years of coffeehouses were spent in lines and sitting at tables waiting on chocolate. It doesn’t change the intention, but it changes the image. The coffee girl never existed. If we follow that train of thought, did the other things about this girl that were deemed cool not exist either? Was she really listening to the best music while she waited in line? Was she as witty as she remembered in her deep conversations with equally interesting people? Dear God, were her curls not as perfect as she’d remembered with just the right amount of volume and shine? What else had she remembered differently from reality?

The answer is I don’t know. All I know and understand is what I remember and I can’t fix the way in which I remember it all. The reality I have created for myself is the one that I live with. It takes something pretty sharp, like the bitter taste of butter coffee to let me know that something wasn’t what it seemed. But it not being what it seemed isn’t all that bad.

Coffeehouses on rainy days still happened. So did the conversation. The only difference that is known between memory and reality is the liquid swirling through the cup on the table. In the long run, is the important thing to take away the contents of the cup or the cup being there at all? My memory can make the drink change from one to another, but it never changed the cup. The cup remained the same in all of the fragments of all of the memories.

Butter dissolves in coffee and creates an elixir that makes the drinker stronger, but chocolate will always release serotonin in the brain producing happiness. So, my actual drink of choice in all of these coffeehouses actually created a happier version of whatever the reality was.

I don’t drink coffee, but I have consumed so much chocolate in my life that I have the most amazing memories of drinking coffee in so many different places. This is probably why I write. This is probably why I believe there is a story everywhere. This is probably why I fall in love with a song and tie it to a place or experience. This is probably the explanation for so many things in my life. I can drink to that.