Sneaky vegetables
There’s an inhale-exhale pattern to the shape of this past year, maybe to all of time, space, stars, and every universe: a contraction-expansion, focus-dissipation, condensation-evaporation, a coming together and a dispersal, a concentration of effort and intention and a release into the medium of daily life, as we hold the new year in an open palm before time stretching out in front of us. Containers form to collect our joy and sadness and memories and love, carving channels before melting back into the groundwater. Points of stillness in a swirl of action. The breaking of dawn.
At its best, coffee – by which I mean this whole gotdang thing, the act of creation, service, tasting, cellular integration – is, simply and profoundly, a vehicle for transformation: biochemical, emotional, relational, maybe even spiritual.
What the puck prep are we actually doing here? What is the nature of community, as it brushes the permeable contours of a commercial operation? What is this emergent property that spontaneously arises within a container deliberately shaped and gently held, that flows in every direction, into, out of, and through it – and how do you solve for that? A community of individuals – who, if I've done my job, maybe have nothing to do with me – gazing up at the same eerie moon.
I’m reminded these past weeks of the potency of the grassroots, of activated neighborhood coalescence and deep-local root systems and soil. There is a real-life, street-level substratum, grounded in presence and relationship. The bioluminescent power to outshine darkness.
Don’t tell anybody, but the coffee at Moonday’s secret heart is a Trojan horse. Sneaky vegetables of ritual and relationship. I am told work is sacred. If you're reading this, I suspect you’re part of this weird Gödel ant hill consciousness. Thank you. I don’t know what’s bigger, the infinity of a day or the infinity of a year, but I am happy to continue living in fractal spacetime with you.
Happy lunar new year!
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Some admin. Kelsey is away charging up for a little longer, but she has once again left us a stash of the best english muffins this side of the moon, which we have been toasting up and serving with very good butter and Mari-made jam. Same deal as last year. Come partake of this sacred work.
One more thing. Instagram has never been a place where I want to put my energy. I’ll keep hanging out there, but I’m shifting my attention over to simpler platforms. Join me here at Moon-letters: a sort-of blog/newsletter, visible only by moonlight.