“You must be prepared to work always without applause” -Ernest Hemingway
You’ll never amount to anything. No one will read your writing. You’ll never talk to anyone about God. These words and worse seemed to play in my head on loop as I walked into Wiggin Street, where I work. Their volume dimmed momentarily as my coworkers filled me in on their days and funny interactions they had, but they persisted in the background as I stepped to take off my coat. I have to distract myself, I thought, stepping to the side to make a drink with our metal espresso machine, which looms over the counter and dominates the already tiny hallway of space next to an inexplicable, unused fireplace.
I have always loved espresso machines. I love their steam clouds and their mystery. Like cars, I love the parts of them that I don’t understand; the parts that invisibly make them run. Most of all, I love their violence: I love banging out the dirty grounds with a clang on the metal counter, and letting out the steam from the steam wand and watching it fill the room with a momentary haze. When I gave up becoming a professional dancer, the process of making espressos helped me grieve. It filled the whole ballet had left in its painful beauty, in its specificity, and its violent precision. Our machine hisses menacingly some days. It spits dirty scalding water filled with scorched espresso grounds as fine as grains of sand when I don’t screw in the tamper correctly. But our machine remains loyal to me. If I time everything just right, the drinks slide out of my hand as if I thought them into existence.
Despite what soccer moms and finicky professors might have you believe, coffee is the most forgiving art form I know. No matter how many insecurities and fears knock feverishly on the door of my mind, I will always have another latte to make. Even if I spill a cappuccino on the floor, I can make an identical one a minute later. If I make something wrong, I can remedy it. I make too many drinks to ever worry about one mediocre one, because I can usually try again within a minute or two.
During busy hours, I can stand at the machine for thirty minutes at a time. “You don’t get tired of it?” people ask. My coworkers tell me I like it because I haven’t worked there long enough to resent staying in a confined space for so long. But I don’t think so. I like staying in the space because it reminds me of forgiveness. It reminds me that my attention to detail hasn’t cursed me, but instead made me obsessed with becoming better. It reminds me that coffee doesn’t matter unless you want it to matter, but neither do most other creative enterprises.
Some people can handle college without an outside hobby. I can’t. I need something (whether it means coffee or yoga or playing the piano or all of these things) that I can repeat so many times that I don’t begin to worry about one bad practice or missed note. I need the guarantee of second chances. Although I try to cover it up by skateboarding indoors, saying “whatever” every other sentence, and blasting terrible music out of my car, I worry during most hours of the day. My favorite worry is “you’re not good at anything.” Unsurprisingly, when this semester began with an Economics class I completely didn’t understand, feeling homesick, and having pointless and avoidable arguments with friends, I needed coffee more than ever. Luckily, I have a job to come back to that has nothing to do with college or writing or whatever my mind has decided to fixate on during that particular day. In fact, it has nothing to do with anything. It just means stepping again into my corner of the shop and realizing how many times you have to make mediocre art in order to claw your way to something higher. In a strange way, I feel grateful for that.
Image Credit: Lena Mazel