I love coffee. I do disgustingly love coffee. I am the most loving-coffee human I know. I have nothing but excess poundage of coffee all over my body. My fingers are made of coffee. My wrists are coffee. My eyes are coffee. (Can you imagine coffee eyes?) There is no question about it. I am a regular well-baked coffee bean.

Now the reader may ask: are there any advantages or disadvantages to being built like a coffee bean in a planet like this one? I do not mean to be facetious or speak in paradoxes but I must answer that coffee in itself is above bourgeois morality. It is simply coffee. Would coffee have a value of its own? No. Coffee could be, say, evil or pitying, is, of course, a joke. Absurd! For what is coffee after all but not an accumulation of coffee beans? And what are beans? Simply an aggregate composite of coffee bean cells. Can a cell be moral? Is a cell beyond good or evil? Who knows – they’re so small. No, we must train ourselves to confront the coffee-lover without judging, without thinking this man’s coffeeness is first-rate and this poor wretch’s is grubby coffeeness.

Let me tell you how it was that I became a coffee-lover. For I was not always one. It was the Church that made me thus. At one time I was not coffeenized – quite uncoffeenized in fact. When I was having tea and cracknels with my uncle (for the record, he was consuming coffee) at a fine restaurant, suddenly he put a question to me. “Do you believe in God,” he asked, “and if so, what do you think s/he drinks in the morning?” So saying he took a long and luxurious draw on his cigar and, in that confident, assured manner he was cultivated, lapsed into a coughing fit so violent I thought he would hemorrhage.
“I do not believe in God,” I said. I knew I was safe in claiming this because nothing ever shocked the man. Indeed, he had seen his chess tutor’s mother raped by Turks and would have found the whole incident amusing had it not taken so much time.
“There is a God, despite what you think, and s/he is everywhere. Yes! Everywhere. In this coffee mug for instance.”
I returned home wondering what it was that he meant by that one last statement. “S/he is everywhere. In this coffee mug for instance.” Drowsy by then and out of sorts, I laid down in bed and took a brief nap. In that time, I had a dream that it was to change my life forever.

In the dream I am strolling in the country, when I suddenly notice I am thirsty. Parched, if you wish. I come upon a restaurant and I enter. I order a freshly-squeezed-and-chilled orange juice and a side of three Schweppes bottles. The waitress, who resembles my uncle, (a thoroughly insipid man who reminds one instantly of the hairier monkeys), tries to tempt me into ordering the Turkish coffee which does not look freshly made. As I am conversing with this man, he turns into a twenty-four piece started set of cutlery. I become hysterical with laughter, which suddenly turns to tears and then into a serious ear infection. The room is suffused with a radiant glow, and I see a shimmering figure approaching on a white steed. It is God, and I fall on the ground with guilt.

Such was my dream. I awoke with a tremendous sense of well-being. Suddenly I was optimistic. Everything was clear. I went to the kitchen and started to make myself a fresh coffee. I drank and drank every coffee in sight. Cappuccino, espresso, mochaccino, latte… If God is everywhere, I concluded, s/he is in coffee too. Therefore, the more I drank coffee, the godlikeer I would become. Impelled by this new religious fervor, I glutted myself like a fanatic. In six months, I was the holiest of the holies, with a heart entirely devoted to my prayers and a stomach that crossed the state of Canada line by itself.

Now I know what readers are saying. They are saying this is in direct contradiction of everything – yes, everything. Suddenly, I am attributing neuter coffee values. Yes, and what of it? Because isn’t life that very same kind of contradiction? One’s opinion of coffee can change in the same manner that the seasons change, that our hair changes, that life itself changes. For life is change, and coffee is life, and coffee is also you. Don’t you see? Coffee is everything! Unless of course you are coffeenized.

Thought: The thought is pretty much passed to the poor prolific reader whose idea of opinions on life matters are subject to change. Mine is already out of the coffee box: Go beyond the obvious! Go that extra kilometre! If you’re too tired for that, have a cup of coffee.