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Coffee is a great
power in my life; I have observed
its effects on an epic scale. Coffee roasts your insides. Many people claim
coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee
only makes boring people even more boring. ...as
Brillat-Savarin has correctly observed, coffee sets the
blood in motion and stimulates the muscles; it
accelerates the digestive processes, chases away sleep,
and gives us the capacity to engage a little longer in
the exercise of our intellects. ...Coffee changes over
time. Rossini has personally experienced some of these
effects as, of course, have I. "Coffee,"
Rossini told me, "is an affair of fifteen or twenty
days; just the right amount of time, fortunately, to
write an opera." This is true. But the length of
time during which one can enjoy the benefits of coffee
can be extended. For a while - for a week or two at most
- you can obtain the right amount of stimulation with
one, then two cups of coffee brewed from beans that have
been crushed with gradually increasing force and infused
with hot water. For another week, by decreasing the
amount of water used, by pulverizing the coffee even more
finely, and by infusing the grounds with cold water, you
can continue to obtain the same cerebral power. When you
have produced the finest grind with the least water
possible, you double the dose by drinking two cups at a
time; particularly vigorous constitutions can tolerate
three cups. In this manner one can continue working for
several more days. Finally, I have discovered a horrible,
rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of
excessive vigor, men with thick black hair and skin
covered with liver spots, men with big square hands and
legs shaped like bowling pins. It is a question of using
finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous,
consumed on an empty stomach. ...this coffee falls into
your stomach ... it brutalizes these beautiful stomach
linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus
becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the
brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated.
Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand
army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle
rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the
cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop;
the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons
and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters
sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up;
the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor
begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a
battle opens and concludes with black powder. ...When you
have reached the point of consuming this kind of coffee,
then become exhausted and decide that you really must
have more,... you will fall into horrible sweats, suffer
feebleness of the nerves, and undergo episodes of severe
drowsiness. I don't know what would happen if you kept at
it then: a sensible nature counseled me to stop at this
point, seeing that immediate death was not otherwise my
fate. To be restored, one must begin with recipes made
with milk and chicken and other white meats: finally the
tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the
relaxed, meandering, simple-minded, and cryptogamous life
of the retired bourgeoisie. The state coffee puts one in
when it is drunk on an empty stomach under these
magisterial conditions produces a kind of animation that
looks like anger: one's voice rises, one's gestures
suggest unhealthy impatience: one wants everything to
proceed with the speed of ideas; one becomes brusque,
ill-tempered about nothing... One assumes that everyone
is equally lucid. A man of spirit must therefore avoid
going out in public. I discovered this singular state ...
some friends, with whom I had gone out to the country,
witnessed me arguing about everything, haranguing with
monumental bad faith. ... We found the problem soon
enough: coffee wanted its victim. |
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COFFEE CONNECTIONS
