Coffee, mate

A comma divides an artificial nondairy creamer into a roasted bean drink and a word with many meanings.

Mate, pal, buddy, friend.

Mate, join, reproduce.

Can we analyse the combination of coffee and mate in light of multiple meanings?

Is it a demand that coffee reproduce?

Does it imply that artificial creamers are friends of Coffee?

Or do we clearly see that artificial creamers naturally join / fuse with coffee?

Ingredients are not listed on the packaging so I cannot determine chemical compatibility.

Neither one can reproduce with the aid of the other.

I am perplexed.

I do not have a ready answer for my breakfast drink inquiry this morning.

I may never figure this out (low importance, no urgency).

Oh well…

Burnt coffee

Finished a midnight shift,

Serving my species by helping to save strangers’, maybe stranger, lives.

Sitting at the tire and oil change shoppe,

Sipping burnt coffee,

The styrofoam cup covered with black sugar sludge…

Listening to one man bragging,

His son having completed Navy Seal Team 7 training,

The father, a firefighter, keeping up, tandem skydiving nearby.

What does the coffee grower know of this?

Or the person picking coffee beans?

The coffee processing plant workers have an opinion, surely?

Do I?

Should I worry…?

Should I worry when I can’t taste the food I’m eating, when the coffee has no flavour, when the people around me seem like cartoon projections through a translucent screen?

Or do I know this is my normal state now, no longer a part of this world, just a passing stranger with only myself I’ll ever understand, if I know me at all?

I am tired, naturally so.

Time for bed rest, this five-year old in a fifty-five year old body wants to forget himself in his dreams for a while, maybe never wake up…








I trust my team.



Wish me luck!

Coffee, power, breakfast 

Arms and shoulders tired, sitting in a sunny cafe, waiting for breakfast to energise my morning physical therapy…

Brain is relaxed, thoughts moving slowly…

Should this writer expect more than a day’s pay for a day’s work, or can one invest one part of one’s earnings to build a personal trust fund which gives one a life after one’s useful working years are over?

What value does one place on instant gratification?

Tiny yacht, big feet

Raubine’s legs wobbled on the floating dock.

A sign on a boat read, “Work like a captain, Play like a pirate!”

Her eyes tracked the flight path of a large white heron, hoping it was a whooping crane lingering on its journey northward.

She looked down into the water where aquatic plants surrounded the dock.

No fish.

She set her rod and reel inside the starboard rail.

Raubine missed her father and their fishing trips in warm weather.

She wanted him here now, telling her the best way to cast and draw fish out from under the dock.

He always caught enough to eat, never more, never less.

She choked up.

She could barely remember how to hook a worm so she asked advice at the bait and tackle shop on the highway, three short blocks from the dock.

They sold her a cardboard cup of nightcrawlers and a few artificial lures to try out.

She stopped by the adult beverage store and bought two six packs of craft beer, wanting the high alcohol content to drown her sorrows for the weekend.

Stepping down into the boat, she looked across the small bay where the local yacht club marina was hosting a Mother’s Day Gala featuring local celebrities auctioning off an afternoon with them on a two-hour regatta.

Raubine took a deep breath.

She and her father had sat on this dock how many times?

She grabbed the mast and sobbed.

Had he been gone five years already?

She looked at all the boats on the water.

The last time they sat together on the yacht, he had told her about the radiation poisoning he had suffered at the nuclear plant, guessing it was going to shorten his life.  They laughed it off because, no matter what, they were going to outlive every fish they caught that day.

Raubine removed the moorings and pushed off, leaving the sails furled.  She’d paddle around the bend, out of sight of the regatta, to a spot her father loved.

It didn’t take long.

She dropped anchor.

From inside the hold, she removed a large tackle box and opened it to reveal it was a container for her father’s ashes.

She poured his ashes into the water around the yacht, crying the whole time, knowing he was where he always wanted to be.

Raubine pressed her arms to her chest, wanting her father’s hug one last time.

There had been many men in her life but no one like her father.

She closed the tackle box and picked up the rod.  She still had time to catch something for dinner.

Chips and salsa

As an experiment, I asked myself what’s the difference between attention and love. Then I tested the question on myself. Who around me do I love you and who in return loves me?

Of course, the easy answer is family, including spouse.

Can we see the difference between someone loving us and someone giving us attention, especially at our most vulnerable, needy moments?

Good question.

We ought to sense the body signals that signify the difference such as the teenager who wants attention and senses the pop music star singing on stage to thousands is speaking directly to her.

But often we don’t understand ourselves let alone the unintended signals we send others.

Which brings me here, drinking a Dos Equis beer in a Mexican restaurant on south Huntsville, waiting on my wife and her work colleagues, one of whom we’ve shared dance classes (and who I helped teach WCS the first time I helped Jenn teach with me playing the role of a follow (no, autocorrect, not a dollop) — my first step into the joy of teaching dance), with whom Jenn and I had fun singing and performing with a blues singer years ago near Madison Ballroom.

The decision is not instantaneous. 

For that, I am thankful.