Be kind to that person you were.
Tear down the entire city, destroy every building, the one still standing that would matter most to me is the humble, perfect, coffee shop.
This is my favorite one: the 61C Cafe, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I lived in Wheeling for a brief period after getting laid off and turning 30-ish, and I would drive the hour or so from Pittsburgh in order to drink tea there and write. I’m doing that now: writing and drinking coffee. What do I love about it?
the ambiance
the people watching
the tea
You’ll notice that I didn’t include the coffee. It’s fine. It’s good, in fact, but it always makes me have to go to the bathroom.
A History of Coffee, Briefly
There has been so much written about coffee that I hesitate to begin another newsletter about it. I already wrote a bit about coffee in an earlier version of this newsletter in 2019.
Thanks to the wonderful wikipedia, I found a paper that discussed the history of coffee. Here’s the important bit:
Coffee was initially used for spiritual reasons. At least 1,100 years ago, traders brought coffee across the Red Sea into Arabia (modern-day Yemen), where Muslim dervishes began cultivating the shrub in their gardens.
…
Coffee drinking was prohibited by jurists and scholars (ulema) meeting in Mecca in 1511 as haraam, but the subject of whether it was intoxicating was hotly debated over the next 30 years until the ban was finally overturned in the mid-16th century.
In a way, we use it for religious devotionals to this day. I would hardly call the work I do an act of religious significance, though there is something ritualistic about opening the computer and sending emails and blog posts, like prayers, into the invisible spaces of the internet.
I see myself in these photos and —whoo boy— I feel old.
I saw a TikTok the other day of a woman who was only just emerging from a depressive episode of multiple days triggered by the absolute certainty that she was too old, that she had aged beyond her goals, that she was going to amount to nothing because she was too old.
How old was she?
25. She had just turned 25 and had spiraled into a depression bender about how old she was.
I am 45.
I wrote two novels. Nobody wanted to publish them. I tried! I really did. Maybe they’re not good? I probably didn’t try hard enough. I read them again and I love them. They ARE good! But maybe the next one will be better.
The point I’m making is this: you’re not too old—for anything—until you’re dead.
I’m not dead yet.
I need your support to keep writing. It’s true. Subscribe if you haven’t. Share if you wanna. I’d love to reach more people because I think I have something to say!
Speaking of Getting Old
GenX is on TikTok. If you’re not on TikTok, you’re missing out, because it is a constantly shifting firehose of Everything.
Of the many fun things you can do on the platform, you can use filters that alter your voice or appearance, using various machine learning algorithms. One of those is the Teen Filter, that makes you look like what you allegedly looked like as a teenager.
For some people this is an accurate depiction of what they looked like when they were younger. The tweet below is part of an amazing thread of people my age discovering this filter and how it makes them feel about themselves.
I picked this one because, well, watch it and keep reading:
What Would You Say to Your Younger Self?
Good therapy is like when you take a photograph of a room you live in that you only ever see in the soft light of your table lamps. It’s a glimpse of how things actually look, with the hard contrasts of a crime scene, captured with an unforgiving flash that shows you how things really are.
Good therapy is a sudden flash photograph inside your skull.
One of the most profound moments in therapy for me was after I had uncovered the memory of myself as a child being berated by his father, and then the person who grew up living with the implications of that (the child was me).
That child felt even smaller than he was, and he would internalize those awful things said about him by someone who should know better, and would carry the repercussions into his life as a grown up.
My therapist asked me what I, the grown up adult, would say to that scared little kid who had felt those tiny little joys belittled and dismissed and stomped out and made to feel tiny and insignificant and useless.
This kid:
“Imagine the state of mind of the man who would tell that boy that he was worthless,” my therapist, who know my father, said to me. “Imagine why he would say those things.”
He would not excuse it, my therapist. It was given as context, not a defense. But it wasn’t about my father, it was about me.
“What would you say to that little kid,” my therapist asked me.
What would I say to him?
When I said I wept, I don’t think it would do those feelings justice.
What would I say to him?
That’s a subject for my memoir, not a newsletter. The overall message I would give, as the old and bearded and bedraggled future version of that kid, would be one of hope and comfort and reassurance. Lean on your mother, whose goodness and resilience will carry you through the worst of it. Lean on your siblings, who will give guidance and steer you right.
Most important of all, be kind to yourself. Cast shame aside. Ignore the urge to disparage the person you are, or were.
The Week in Review
I was extremely busy with work this week, so the week in review is a bit thin.
I read a book I really liked a lot, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo — a cozy, short novella about, among many things, love in times of turmoil.
another lovely little piece from Merrit K, about how hobby shops Used to Be. It reminded me of my experience at Gateway in Morgantown in 1995 or so, where I happened to walk in with a book bag and had the man at the desk point at me and yell “BACKPACK” repeatedly until I realized that they didn’t want us to wear our backpacks in the store.
The text from Aragorn’s coronation is detailed here, but I prefer the version sung by the man himself, in a passage from the soundtrack that makes me glow. It was so good that Viggo Mortensen remembered, and recited, this song many years later. The translation is this: Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the World! It sounds better in elvish.
One of my absolute favorite artists is Michael Kupperman, and he always has so much hilarious and poignant stuff to say that the internet only gives us a glimpse of his genius, and you can join his Patreon and get instant access to that genius.
Thank you for reading.