Some have their cigarettes. Tobacco flavour and nicotine fingers lingering still, hours after the last smoke. The longing for more. I have my coffee. The inability to fully take part in life without a cup of caffeine running through my veins. Head blurry, eyes tiny, yawning endlessly when I start a day without. So I never start a day decaffeinated.
The travel ritual of drinking my morning coffee somewhere else every day turned into something much bigger. An addiction leaving me feeling cranky and my head aching when I don’t have a cup of coffee to start the day off right. Whether that means going to a Melbourne cafe, making a forest bonfire batch of boiling cowboy brew, adding baileys to a bialetti espresso at Canadian festivals or getting spanked for a cuppa black gold at Scarbutts Coffee at Burning Man.
Coffee rituals bring memories of sweetness. Steaming bowls of goodness warming hands and heart in the winter cold. Or keeping me going during long summer days of hardly any sleep. Like now, insomnia caused by caffeinated days and hot summer nights tossing and turning in my room turned sauna. I cool down my coffee heatwave with laps in pools of rose wine. Pink drinks and black gold seem to mix so well I’m spinning while my heart beats like mad. One leg wants to keep dancing while the other is deep asleep. Dreams and reality become a blur, and when my brain gets too foggy and the sun is out again, I stop and reach for my cup of coffee.