Taste
I sat hidden inside a dark lit coffee shop on the edge of town. The rain pelts down on the pavement outside and slithers down the window pane in front of me. The glass is fogged from the heat of the coffee machine and the presence of people inside the café, a smiling face drawn onto it slowly disappearing as the fog takes over. The eyes, the mouth.... gone.
My coffee arrives as I sit down. I imagine the cup warming my palms whilst my arms inside the wide sleeves of my coat shake and shiver, my elbows jutting out as my hands claps together around it. I meet my imagination at its proposed destination and automatically feel at ease.
I lift off the takeaway lid and take a sip. Chocolate dust rests atop my lip, a sly smile erupting beneath it as I acknowledge its presence but daren't wipe it off. This is real living, I think to myself. Embarrassment n'existe plus. Embarrassment is outnumbered by the feelings of content and joy in this small, minute, minuscule, microcosmic moment that I have all to myself.
The chocolate settles into the coffee. It's no mocha, but I am instantly drawn out off this café beside the train station that will take me to a new destination, and plonked straight down into a Starbucks in Kurashiki, Japan, circa 2012.
Over three years ago.
I like the way Australia does coffee, but I remember, sitting in the parallel worlds of Hamilton, NSW and Kurashiki, Japan, of the wonders of that mocha with whipped cream that my high school bestie and I would sit at with accompanying egg and bacon muffins every morning in a somewhat religious venture out of our hotel and to Starbucks before anything else. This coffee I consumed on the 19th of June, 2015 in Australia had the same tasting chocolate as those back in Japan from Starbucks that I oddly could rely on for their persistence in taste and consistency.
We're machines of memory, us humans. Future plans, present actions - they're all based on past adventures. Shaped by thoughts of what has happened before the moments in which those thoughts are taking place. The past informs the present which designs the future and really all of our actions are by-products of actions long gone. This coffee pulls me back into thoughts of Japan and the adventures we had weeks before I am to go on yet another adventure abroad. It's this strange magic that I am unable to put my finger on and I damn well like it.
Taste is a memory maker and a memory reminder. It is so bizarre that every sense that we have - taste of food reminding people of a particular memory, of home, of abroad, of that kebab that you ate at 2am after a farewell for close friends that you walked 4 kilometres to get home from. Touch - like a prickly blanket on your skin that takes me back to sleeping on a cold farm alone in France with its resident cat beside me purring louder than the tractors that would become animated in the day light that followed. Smell - a cologne or perfume, the smell of clean hair, how different people's skin smells or discovering that a friend uses the same washing detergent as your mother when you sleep over and cuddle yourself in the clean sheets. Sound - hearing someone laugh the same way a friend from far away does at the next table at a restaurant, different pedestrian crossing alerts in different cultures, the reception of someone singing in the shower and how you wish you were as liberated as you used to be, or how the beat of heels against the pavement drags you into reminiscing the AAPT Smart Chat advertisement.
I am a sucker for the senses. I am a sucker for what they bring out of me - all sorts of memories and moments that have been repressed out of competition for others. And so I sit with my hand around my coffee overwhelmed by the fact that I have not been listening to these thoughts until now. That I forgot. But how blessed I am to be reminded. This little brain of mine. Such a good egg.
