slow coffee takes
It’s a Saturday and sitting here at coffee makes words form. Sometimes it’s like this rush. I feel this need to just get things I feel down. It never matters how it all ends up. I rarely start a blogpost and think,
I will cover x and y and z. I’ll schedule this for tomorrow. I’ll have some plan and goal
Writing is not that way. While it can be this quick feeling most often like now it slows down to the speed of my coffee. My time out to quietly consider today. The places from here line up waiting to see if I walk there. Who knows.
I do know when it’s coffee time out, it’s about both finding words as willing accomplices and slowing down. Coffee should never be rushed. A primary thing in Cambodia I think is the desire to slow down. To just take the moment. No rush to move to a next thing. Accomplish a thing. Feel compelled to go do. The writing should mirror that life. It should be a companion and a refuge. A place to find and lose.
I enjoy the slow coffee moments most often out somewhere. Coffee shops are all over in Siem Reap so finding a place to do nothing takes no great skill. WiFi never times out. No one asks me to move along.
It naturally takes me back to other slow coffees. In Hanoi in the mornings, I would walk the 5 minutes to West Lake. There was this small cafe that was used to seeing me. When I went back they remembered and greeted me smiling. Next door to the coffee shop was the place for $0.70 cent Hanoi beers with ice. With a sunset I would always feel was legendary but we all took for granted.
All this floods by when I do coffee. That small place in Taipei. The morning in Kuala Lumpur eating a Chinese breakfast by the hotel with coffee. Or so long ago in Chennai India having a masala dosa and a filter coffee.
Always things seemed slower than back in America. I figure we are not good at slowing down there. Life is a race there. We race to jobs. Race to relationships. Race through moments. Stopping seems a skill not found until much later. Even then when I approached my last days before flying out life was spent in some race. It’s no wonder in Southeast Asia that the opposite happens. But it takes us so long to stop. To slow down. To find that it’s more than just ok to do less. Along with that it’s okay to have less. Want less. Find those slow coffee moments.
And now here I am. I doubt I will finish this today. Something rebels in me about being done. Saying I’m done. I don’t want to say
Next
Saying that makes this thing now end. So I’ll let this percolate. Think on it walking and whilst I enjoy my slow coffee moments on a Saturday.
It’s Sunday
Somehow this thing lasted or I decided to just write more here sitting for morning coffee. Got frustrated at the house. That happens faster lately. So best thing is to just go. Today will do a nice walk away from it.
Writing with coffee always seems this slow move from thought to sentence. Throw in some punctuation and maybe a quote. How about a photo that has no bearing at all on my frustrating follies. This is from somewhere. Somewhere other than here.
Some wonderful historic and cultural space I visited a few times in central Vietnam. I loved the food and history and people in Hue. It always seemed like walking the forbidden palace and seeing the citadel standing tall gave me this wonderful sense of both history and mystery.
So yeah. I miss Vietnam and those coffee moments while I sit for these. Sometimes living here seems nice but somehow less. Like the places there always seemed more. A street in Hanoi. A bar and pub in Hue. The all of it thing.
And that’s where I think things stop and I get back to my coffee.