You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
My new coffee mug.
It’s twice as big, twice as a capacious, with twice the get u and go.
It’s a sun shiny face with a golden glow and polka dot sky.
This new mug is a volley ball named Wilson to a desert island cast-a-way.
A coffee mug is Crazy, You ask.
Why aren’t you writing about a coffee mug, and not the discourse in this country or the racism or governmental waste, you wonder.
I will. I always do. But to write I need fuel and the bean is the answer.
The bean brings a rythm.
You just don’t sit down at a blank field of white and unload words that inspire, anger and make you laugh.
There’s a trigger mechanism that starts the process, unlocks the synaptic fireworks.
The bean begins the churning bubbling brew that cranks out the creative process.
It’s how you start. How you start your day, how you start a project, how I start to write.
For a baseball player it’s stepping out of the box, adjusting his cup, fixing his helmet, fastening and unfastening his batting gloves. It’s a mechanism.
For a free throw shooter, it’s bouncing the ball five times, and spinning it backward till his fingers find the perfect piece of leather to hold onto.
For me it’s the morning cup of coffee.
Maybe it’s the caffeine. Maybe it’s the swirl of aromatic steam. Maybe it’s the colorful sunshine mug that excites the mind and stirs the soul.
For me the process starts with that first belch of the coffee machine. It gasps a burst of air mixing with water. The flow of life forces itself through a filter filled with coffee grounds.
To me that rush of percolating water through the perfect bean is nirvana. It’s a Pantagonia sunrise meets a Juan Valdez kind of moment.
Soon the house is filled with the aroma of morning. It’s a primal yell that uses my spine as a diamond lane to my brain.
WAKE UP!
The gurgling goodness of the coffee pot stirs a primal pavlovian response. Like a dog listening to the can opener, it makes my brain drool.
The words in my head start to wake up, kicking off the covers and jumping out of bed.
Like a bear in a cave, craving a cigar and a budweiser after a long winter’s rest, I am coming to life.
Multiple syllables of crisp verbage and flavorful adjectives begin to spread their wings ready to soar into the ether.
Chug, gurgle, splash, drip.
The liquid gold pours into the caraffe.
It’s a wonderful sound, a blissful inhalation of beans turning to life.
It’s a waterfall of dark invigoration.
Nothing says good morning, wake up!, like a big cup of morning Joe.
Every day the bean brings pleasure. But today it’s the new morning mug in my writing emporium that makes morning special.
That’s because my coffee mug is bigger than Adam Levine’s ego.
I made it twice as big, twice as sun-shiny.
I picked it off the shelf as the pottery place because it was large.
It didn’t speak to me at first.
It was on the shelf, a non-descript curved slab of ceramics.
It was boring like toothpaste, dull like Nicholas Cage.
I sat there and stared at the cream colored orb.
What can this be? I thought to myself.
Suddenly I dipped my paint brush into a glazed hue and began to create.
My brush flowed across the smooth surface, creating a line, a border, a beginning.
But of what?
I feel the tip of the brush glob with glaze. It is hard to control and rolls sloppily off the bristles. I am applying the glaze free hand, painting hurriedly, trying to keep the glaze within the imaginary lines I have established for myself.
But this canvas is curved and the glaze runs and the design a run-a-way idea.
I am immediately concerned that my $18 blank mug is ugly and I am losing it like a plane flying into the Bermuda Triangle.
Colors start off in the bottle as blah. They are dull and you have to imagine something greater.
There is a chart on the wall that shows you what a thousand degrees will do to glaze.
I look at my gigantic mug. It looks like a crime scene. A peregrine line of drab unspecified boring spilling across the facade.
I look at the line. I look at the tile on the wall. I have to use my imagination to trust that the orange vomit on my mug will blossom into brilliant exuberance shown on the tile.
I paint another line. It rolls, and glides and dries where it wants. I paint another line that meets the 1st and 2nd line like a confluence of rivers in Pittsburgh.
After 30 minutes, the ugly yields to possibilities. After 30 minutes the desultory design has become a tempered sun with a smile and a rich robust aura.
I sign the bottom of the mug and hand it over to the teenager behind the counter.
“That looks great,” she says.
I wonder if she is reading this off a card taped to the cash register.
“You think so?” I respond.
She smiles.
A week later, I pick up my mug.
Her smile was her tell. She was right. The vomit let go at 1000 degrees and a butterfly of color blossomed across the mug.
Today, for the 1st time, I pour coffee into the sunshine mug.
It’s big. It’s shiny. The sun is smiling. The coffee is aromatic and flavorful, filling the kitchen with a “let’s get it on” kind of attitude.
I begin to pour. The liquid gold dives into the cup and disappears into a swimming pool of space.
This new sunshine mug is big like Texas, deep like a method actor, wide like the smile of a breast cancer survivor.
I pour the coffee and instinctively stop. Like a trained seal, I know my boundaries. My brain says, “Hold up son. That’s all she can hold.”
But my eyes look into the the grand canyon of coffee mugs and I see there is room for a 2nd cup.
I smile a smile of deliciousness.
I inhale the vapor and create a morning elixir the likes of which I will cherish.
There are moments in life to savor; little moments that make up the composite of a full day. If you stop and look you will see these moments. They are the threads that make up a suit. They are the bricks of a house. They are the words that fill up a screen.
Take a moment and appreciate the little things; like a big-ass smiley face mug.
I sip from my bottomless mug. It’s big like a thermos at a construction site.
The cup should come with a hard hat and blue prints.
I take another sip and salute my new mug; a swimming pool of possibilities.
Life’s Crazy™