Ringing in the new year with bad coffee

I’m ringing in the new year alone in my room knitting and binge-watching Stargate: SG1, and drinking bad coffee. It tastes oddly nostalgic.

Usually I balk at the very implication of bad coffee, but somehow — my cup nearing depletion — I want more. Perhaps it is a desire for a connection to something outside myself, something that is not of me or a part of me, a desire for something not isolated in the immensely interior manner of my thinking.

I know and have known people who, in fact, prefer what I think of as bad coffee. (This is not to say that they have bad tastes, simply that they are different from my own.) What I consider as bad coffee is mainstream coffee, coffee that has had all the complexity and flavor character roasted out of it. Beans that have been reduced to a monotone, vaguely burned substance. Somehow, coffee prejudices aside, I find myself enjoying a cup of bad coffee and thinking of everyone I’ve ever known who appreciates it. My mother, this one line cook I worked with a year ago, my grandparents, that one random person I can’t even remember now who actually preferred instant coffee. But I digress. This post was not supposed to be about coffee, but here we are.

Happy New Year, and may the next year bring much happiness.