Another life pondering heading your way

Like I've said before, I have so much time to think here. I could be writing about what I’m up to, but honestly, I’m really not up to that much. So instead, here’s what’s up in my head. This is a goodie.

As you know, I’ve been working on putting together episodes for my YouTube coffee channel, Behind the Beans (man I love saying that name!). In my upcoming episodes, I’m going to talk about what coffee picking is like, how a typical day goes, and then spotlight 2 or 3 of our pickers. I think it’s going to be awesome.

I have filmed quite a bit of it already. The last couple of days I have worked alongside two different pickers, filming them in action, and “interviewing” them (that alone is worth tuning in for, cause it’s all in Spanish!). It has been eye-opening and truly educational. It may have given new life to my stay here.

The first picker I filmed was Negro (just a nickname people!). He is a little man (more pequeño than me-see picture below!), 59 years old, and always in a good mood. He has picked coffee his whole life and worked in construction. As you’ll see in the video, he is very difficult to understand, even if you know Spanish, and it doesn’t appear that he makes any effort to enunciate when it’s pretty darn obvious you’re struggling. It’s actually pretty hilarious. But if you laugh too much, he’ll think you understand, which then makes you laugh even more. God bless him. He is so nice to us gals, shares his delicious sweet coffee with us in the morning, brings us candy, and even brings food for the dogs.

The second picker was Papo (again a nickname). He is 60 years old and the foreman at the farm. Again, similar story. He has been picking coffee since he was 5 and also worked in construction (he and Israel built the house I’m in right now). He’s a bit gordo and jolly, kind of like a Puerto Rican Santa Claus.

That’s just a bit of random background info. It’s pretty amazing that they are doing such physical work at their age. Even more amazing is what I learned in the interview. They both actually love picking coffee and love working. Papo called it therapy. I couldn’t actually get out of either of them a single negative comment about the work. Could it be that they really love it that much?! I was like ‘what’s the worst part?’ and they just drew a blank. Subsequently, I drew a blank. I was astonished. We girls could probably name 10 things we don’t like about it (starting with bugs, mud, and hills), but they couldn’t come up with one! There was such a genuine enthusiasm in their faces when they talked about their work.

Equally if not more interesting was their answer to “what do you think about all day when you’re picking coffee?” Both of them looked a bit confused by the question and answered “I think about picking coffee.” What? I start rattling off things that I think about, hoping to inspire a new answer, but Papo gave me nothing. Negro eventually said he thinks about having a girlfriend…ok, now that’s more like it! Then it made me think, wow, they are just so zen, so in the moment, so everything I try to be, and yet my mind goes a million places…mmm, like having a boyfriend ;)

My conversations with them have got me thinking about their work in a larger context. The passion with which they spoke about their work made me realize that what they do truly is a respectable and admirable thing. They are proud of what they do, and why shouldn’t they be? They are the reason we can drink coffee every morning. It has me thinking how sad…no, tragic… it is that we Americans really place so little value on agricultural work. In America, you’re supposed to get the best education possible and then get the highest paying white collar job you can find. Well what would happen if, in my ideal hypothetical world, we all got an education? Then what…would we all be too good to be farmers and then go starving? Or shall we just continue down this path toward more synthetic and genetically modified food?

Agriculture is the most valuable industry there is, if you base value on real wealth (food) instead of a symbol for wealth (money). And yet the farmer, especially the small farmer, continues to lose importance in our society and is even looked down upon. How have we let this happen?

I don’t really know. I am still trying to wrap my head around it, though the more I do, the more disheartened I become. Looking for answers…anyone have any?

Hype, you make me so tired

Coffee is a world of hype. Everybody claims to have the best coffee. Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Guatemalan Antigua, Ethiopian Harrar, Costa Rican Tarrazu, etc etc., each with their own magic recipe that makes theirs the best. Some special combination of altitude, volcanic soil, rain, sun, and shade, makes this one better than the other. Then there is the outrageous and absurd hype. Like Kopi Luwak coffee, the one that gets eaten by a civet and then pooped out, selling for over $100 a pound. That’s what I would call, in coffee speak, single origin shit. Okay, I’ve never actually tried it, so I can’t knock it too hard. But seriously, all this hype has begun to disgust me. I’m so over it (hype that is, not coffee!).

Knowing what I do about coffee, I would say that there are certainly a number of factors that make one coffee better than another. I guess it’s like any product. Better care will result in a better product. The most important factors, in my semi-professional opinion :), are ripeness of the fruit (obvious, no?), drying the beans to the right moisture level, proper storage, and, perhaps most importantly of all, freshness. These are all common sense though. You pick your product ripe, you process it with care, store it properly, and get it to your customer fresh. Can’t it just be as simple as that? Or is that just too simple? Will nobody buy your product if you just tell it to ‘em straight? Does honesty have no value in our consumerist culture?

I’ve been thinking about hype a lot lately. And it’s not just coffee. It’s everywhere. In every aspect of life…work, dating, religion, politics…too many voices just telling you what they think you want to hear. Misleading and disappointing one innocent victim at a time. I think about what this means for society as a whole. Is this what makes us distrustful and cynical? It surely must be a part, a significant part. Sure, life will inevitably have its share of disappointment regardless, but the incessant spewing of empty words must accelerate that spiral.

Maybe the key is to just take it all with a grain of salt. You hear the message, you acknowledge it as hype but know better than to fall for it. But then that begs the question: when do you know when you’re hearing the truth? If you’re brushing off words that are actually being communicated to you, which ones are actually going to stick? Over time, I suppose, your gut sort of fine tunes its compass and makes it easier to distinguish the truth. Bouts of paranoia aside, we generally have an instinct that tells us who to trust. If we’re talking about a product though, trust can only come about through trial and error. I don’t think our guts have the same instinct about laundry detergent or plastic wrap (that Press 'n Seal stuff is crap, but I sure believed it would work wonders).

All ranting aside, I have a point. Life would be so much better if everyone was honest. A white lie here and there, for the sake of being polite, is fine with me. Beyond that, lies just pollute the natural state of our universe and harden our hearts.

So may our words hold meaning
Our message be true
And don’t spend a fortune
On coffee from poo.

Dream log turned blog

It’s about 6am, probably the earliest I’ve woken up on a weekend here and certainly the earliest I’ve ever started a blog!

I just remembered my dream. Well, actually, all I remember is the end, but that’s really all that matters right now. It has to mean something, something big and wonderful, but I don’t know what! At least not yet.

(wow, I really am sharing too much information, but I think I’ve stopped caring!)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had, and pretty regularly I might add, these dreams where I have a plane to catch. Usually, I’m going on a significant trip, where I’m moving to Germany for a few months, or something major like that. Sometimes, in the dream, I’ve forgotten all about the flight until just a couple hours prior. Other times, I’ve known about the flight all day, but somehow forgot to pack until the last minute. Either way, the dream always involves a lot of stress. Sometimes I try calling the airline to see if there’s a later flight I can catch, but I never actually get through. (You know that helpless dream feeling I’m talking about?) Well, it always gets to be too much. Too stressful, too impossible, too overwhelming…and so I wake up. Then I thank god, in typical bad dream fashion, that it wasn’t real, and acknowledge myself as a responsible organized person who would never let that happen to her :)

Well, something unusual and magical happened in this dream. For the first time ever, I made my flight!!! It was the most amazing feeling. Not only did I make the flight, but I even had time to pop outside to wave goodbye to my mom and dad and let them know I made it. It was a beautiful beautiful ending.

What it all means, I haven’t a clue. I am so interested to know, even to hear some ideas (any dream decipherers out there?). I just know it has to mean something really really good. It just has to. That’s where my investigative skills have gotten me so far :) It’s still early.

A film critique

This was a tough week. Too much confrontation with myself. It all came to blows when I tried to film my first video for this coffee project. I wanted to make a brief intro, explaining a bit (maybe a minute’s worth) of who I am and what the project is. Well, that was overly ambitious. There was no way to cram all that into one minute, and it ended up being about two and a half. I found it excessive, for one. Just too much of me talking. And it doesn’t matter what I’m saying or how I look, it’s just not interesting to listen to someone talk that long. That’s the conclusion I came to.

Secondly, I had to watch myself on playback. Awkward. Painful. Embarrassing. Those are just a few of the emotions I experienced that dreadful Tuesday. I guess I hadn’t really thought much at all about how I appeared to the outside world. I guess I assumed it was all good, cause I felt good about myself and knew that the things I said and did to other people came from a good place. Well, unfortunately, there was nothing warm and fuzzy about the way I felt when I watched it. It was like I was looking at a stranger. She sounded kind of ditzy, a bit like a valley girl. Oh my god, I thought, people must think I’m stupid! What an odd realization, to think for the first time in my life that I probably have had to convince people, over time, that I’m intelligent. I was under the impression that was the most apparent thing about me. HA! Then there are the facial expressions, which people have warned me of, but I had never actually seen for myself. Yikes! I’m just giving a straightforward speech about coffee…how many faces are really necessary?!!

So I saw myself as an overly expressive borderline airhead. Great.

That sort of put a damper on the project. I thought a lot about it. Can I use this footage, I wondered. Will it repel people? Will anyone (other than of course my friends and family) really give a $%*? These were just some of the horrible negative thoughts running through my head. My lovely roommate Tracy, who filmed it, was like no, no, it’s good. God bless her. I was dumbfounded by the whole experience. I was talking to the other new gal, Andrea (who by the way is great) about it later on in the week. I was telling her that after the whole watching myself trauma, I was wondering, ‘is it acceptable?’ I was questioning whether or not I can accept that person on the video, me! She’s like, yeah, it kind of has to be. Ha! What a brilliant moment! Of course, it HAS to be! Ahhhh, I felt relieved. I didn’t have to fix anything. I just had to accept it. And I did. So I sound like a California girl. Well, I am, and I’m proud of it :)

I’m sure that you, my small audience of friends and family, will read this and protest. I can already predict my mom saying ‘how dare you call yourself an airhead?!’ Well, I write this not to seek comfort or praise. I know I’m not stupid. To be perfectly honest, my intelligence is something I’ve never questioned. It is amazing, though, that I can see a projection of myself that is so misaligned with my own personal truth. Though I’ve made peace with the video and accepted this projection as merely a vantage point, it sure got me thinking.

See, I’ve long held this theory that you can never really know another person, and this story illustrates why. If how you feel inside isn’t being accurately reflected to the outside world, then how can anyone really understand you? Over time, a really long time, it’s possible, I suppose, to come close. Think about the person you know the best in the world. How do you really know what’s in their heart? A heart, a soul, a spirit, even a mind…these things live and breathe in their own cozy cocoons. They’re not readily available for examination, but rather expose themselves gently, in their own time, at their own pace. You can catch many glimpses at somebody’s essence, through telling looks or a colorful bursts of laughter, but you can never see enough to really get the whole truth.

That’s just how I see it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even without getting someone one hundred percent, you can still reach a heightened level of intimacy and reap its beautiful benefits.

Maybe that’s a bit of a tangent, but it’s definitely a theory I stand proudly behind. You might not totally know me, nor me you, but what would the world be like without a little mystery?