This today piece is part of a new direction for Jo’s Epistolary of Imaginary Friends. As you might have gathered from other recent posts, I’ve been exploring the inner thoughts that run though our heads with regards to climate change, looming crisis and all that jazz that we refuse to fully engage with, yet let linger in our souls and ruin our day. I’ll still be writing about homes, worry not. But now, today, this is important stuff.
Laretta dear,
Our walk the other day was just what I needed. Being with you, hugging you, sitting and having coffee while looking out at tourists and dogs and children with bikes. It was good coffee too, which is hard to find these days. I've had two coffees already today and neither of them have been what you would call "up to standard".
I should not have had that second one though. I'm all jittery. We're going for semi decaf now, like that's gonna help. Weaning off coffee... But I love coffee so much! Only, there's this guilt that always comes with it lately, this image in my mind of the mountains getting warmer and the diminishing crops and that poor random guy working his ass off thousands of kilometers away for my morning comfort. A constant feeling of not doing enough of not being enough... As if all of climate change depends on my individual choice of a morning brew. Is that fair? Is that even true?
I do my best, I buy the expensive one. The fairtrade, the organic when I can find it. I'm a good girl, I've done my research. It's all bullshit anyway. "be the change" and "bring your own cup to the coffee shop". Whatever cup I use, that guy is still there breaking his back and cutting forest and using God knows what to spray his land and seeing worse and worse crops each year anyway.
Not fair... Whether I chose to drink coffee made of real beans or fake brew by sustainable startup number X, that guy is still gonna be there, trapped between a business that destroys his land and not feeding his family. If we where all to stop drinking coffee tomorrow, would that guy say "Hey guys thanks! That's all I needed, being jobless!" But that's just my slimy pretext to not give up my cup.
Anyway, at the rate the climate is going, we're not gonna have coffee for much longer anyway. So, green tea it is, right?
Please my friend. I need you to tell me what to do. My brain is like popcorn, I should not have had that second semi decaf.
As always,
Jo
Earworms much?
This is a good one
Coffee is something I haven't spent enough time worrying about...
Or the poor coffee farmer in Java...wait maybe Ethiopia...or was it actually Ecuador?
Or my role in the 'brewing' coffee crisis...
How can I possibly worry so much about coffee when there is water to worry about?
Or chickens, pigs, cows, salmon?
Or the tiny plastic bits shimmering in the sunshine on a beach in Puglia?
Or even the air I breathe...or the vanishing bees...or the beautiful glaciers that turn into dripping water?
There is so much to worry about...
Suddenly the coffee I am drinking as I consider the poor farmer does not taste so good...
Suddenly I'm wishing I could fly to that farmer and offer some help...some financial help to ease my worrying mind...
Then, I see the farmer taking my money, packing his family and moving to the city...and his farm? Well, that was sold too, so that everything can be razed to the ground and new crops can be grown to feed the hungry cows...
There is really so much to worry about...
Ahhh, coffee. I’m on day three without it. Could it be that the flavor of coffee is itself one-and-the-same as the flavor of the unsatisfactory nature of this world’s impermanence?