Sometimes I would get my name written on the saucer that comes with my cup of coffee. Usually a black marker pen. The delight comes from admiring the handwriting, as diverse as the baristas that make the coffee and the cafés we find ourselves in.
I am brought back to Kyoto, to Chiang Mai. I am in Cape Town, I am in Buenos Aires.
These past few months coffee is something we make at home. I grind the beans myself, place the filter paper into the dripper, pour just boiled water as carefully as I can. It’s a beautiful process, humbling and simple and magical.
It’s not the same as perfect shot of espresso or a caffè latte adorned with a rosetta or two though. It’s different when it’s made by someone else, as different as their handwriting is compared to mine. Drinking coffee someone, a friend or a stranger, made for you is a form of communion. We touch without touching though another’s touch is what we all fear right now.
It’s my name, held in memory and in ink by another person for the few seconds required to print it, then lost to time, to the next cup the barista must make, to the conversation I’m having and must return to.
But for a while, it’s my name on a saucer. It’s coffee and acknowledgement: Here is what you desire. Here let me provide.