Butterfly Mind

Coffee Grinders

April 28th, 2015

There was a bakery in St. Paul, or actually Minneapolis, across the street from Lake Calhoun, and the bakery was called Rustica. The bakery portion, where the actual baking took place, abutted the sidewalk and had huge plate glass windows so you could stand outside and watch the breads being moved on wooden paddles, the baguettes proofing in their cloth canoes, the buns and torpedos and rolls and loaves being pulled by floured forearms. I remember the bakery being white and stainless steel.

The next set of windows, and the door, led into a warm wooden room that smelled of freshly baked bread, golden crusts, and coffee. Croissants flaked in baskets on the the display case. Elephant ears sparkled with crystals of sugar, cinnamon rolls glistened sweet with brown spice, and olive loaves sat dusty and dark: caramelized crusts covered in flour with slices of black olives poking through. I could never decide what to get. I usually got a savory and a sweet — a dessert pastry for after my bread.

But, as if the bread weren’t enough, this bakery had the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. And I swear it had something to do with their grinder. It was an intense thing, the coffee grinder — a BIG DEAL — behind the counter, up against the wall, on it’s own sturdy table. It was rectangular, heavy, solid, stainless steel. It probably weight 100 pounds.

The grinder whirred and whined and ground the coffee almost to a powder. And when they brewed the coffee, it came out rich and strong, subtle and smooth, with no outlier burnt flavors or unpleasant bitterness. I did not know coffee could be so good.

I visited there several times when we lived in Minnesota. On winter days I’d whoosh in the door with the frozen lake behind me. I’d find a small table since I was alone, and I’d claim it with my notebook. I’d take off my wool hat and puffy down coat, unwind my scarf and pull off my gloves, and then I’d stand at the case forever before finally ordering a piece of olive bread, an almond croissant, and a coffee. And then, I’d nibble, and I’d sip, and I’d look out the window, and I’d write.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Thank you to cindyloucamp for the prompt, “coffee grinders.”
Rocks

April 27th, 2015

It’s funny, the word rocks is much harsher to me than the word stones. I don’t know why I seeded my prompt box with rocks when I prefer stones. Rocks are jagged and rough, while stones are smooth and round. Is that true or is that just the way I see them?

When I think of rocks I see dsuty gravel, grey granite shards with glints of quartz or mica, the rocks themselves planed and angular, bumpy with unclean breaks. Triangles protrude from a pile looking jagged and dangerous. Unwelcoming.

Jetties are rocks. Rocks are young. They haven’t been exposed long enough to be worn smooth by weather or water.

Stones, though. Stones are smooth and rounded. Domes of shiny grey on a Maine beach. They are welcoming. They fit in the palm of your hand and are comforting in their age and smoothness. They are old. They have clinked together on the shore for thousands of years. Each time a wave washes over them, then sucks back out to sea, they chink together as they roll with the surf, rubbing bits of each other off, grain by grain, until there are no rough edges left. Despite their hardness, despite their heaviness, they are soft to the touch — soft on the surface like fabric, like velvet or suede when you rub your thumb across their faces. Except they aren’t really soft. They are hard. Sturdy and grounding.

We have stones from Maine scattered around our house. Our daughter uses one as a doorstop. Others lay atop a book shelf in the basement. They comfort me. Pieces of earth. Unglamorous. They aren’t gemstones. They aren’t crystals. They are basic granite stones that have been worn smooth by the passage of time. By existence. Yet in their age and smoothness they are still solid. Still strong.
Pastries

April 26th, 2015

My favorite part of France was the pastries. Not just that they were so good — the best pastries I’ve ever eaten — but that they were important. That they were such a part of daily life. Walking around Marseille or Aix en Provence, every other doorway was a patisserie or boulangerie. Pastry, bread, and coffee. What could be better? These people know how to live.

It was the same in Barcelona. We walked the streets and in every other window were cases of flaky pastry. I couldn’t get enough of them: bunuelos, pestiños, ensaimadas, plain croissants, chocolate croissants, croissants filled with raspberry, sandwiches on croissants. All of them light and buttery and airy on the tongue, but with just the right bite, just the right amount of succulent chew that satisfied your teeth and your jaw and your palate.

My favorite part, though, was that since pastry shops were ubiquitous, there was always one within a few steps of where you were standing. We stayed with friends in Marseille, and each morning, instead of making an elaborate breakfast, Joaquim descended the stairs of his 200 year old apartment building, pushed open the door, walked a few steps to the boulangerie, and returned to us with an armful of croissants. He and his wife gathered the jam, the butter, the Nutella, and filled coffee cups; my husband and I spread the table cloth. We breakfasted with the July windows open, our knives clinking the crockery after we spread spreads on our pastry. One morning I spread raspberry jam on my croissant. One morning, Nutella. One morning I ate mine plain, and the next I was back to jam.

When we finished, and we cleared the table, exhausted from trying to speak Spanish with our hosts, we carried dishes to the tiny kitchen and began washing up, glassware clinking, while Joaquim bundled the table cloth, held it out the open window, and shook crumbs onto the sidewalk below.

Photo credit: Croissant by Zdenko Zivkovic

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page.
Thunderstorms

April 25th, 2015

Blue grey. Cloud soufflés. Thundering rumble. Neon grass against blackening sky. We wore minimal clothing because of the heat. I leaned against my boyfriend in a bed in Key Largo, and it was dark outside, and the windows were open. Palm fronds crackled in wind. We stroked each other’s skin while thunder shattered the air and lightning lit the room. Hard rain clacked against glass.

A wall of clouds moving onshore from the ocean, blue black jellyfish in the sky, rain trailing like tentacles.

I remember being in the skiff with Dad near Williamson Island. The Olympics were over and the Day Marina was littered with pallets of Coke and Powerade. We looted, Dad and I. The place was abandoned. We saw a storm coming and hurried. There wasn’t another human for miles, and we floated in the mouth of a river on a marina, surrounded by water, no shelter.

We were in the river behind Williamson when the squall caught us. The boat was small and open; I could hold both sides from the middle of the mid bench. Lightning struck the water and the nearby island, and thunder cracked in our ears at the same time we saw the lightning flash. Wind whipped the green-brown river to a froth, my hair whipped me in the eyes, in the mouth, got caught in my teeth. Rain stung my skin. Rain puckered the river. It smacked the water, slapped my skin, rattled the floor of the aluminum boat. It made a racket like ball bearings clattering on a metal floor. The sound was deafening.

Lightning bolted, thunder boomed, and Dad and I hunched forward in the boat so our backs would take the needling rain instead of our faces. I shivered with cold. I thought about being struck by lightning. About the boat capsizing. About how Mom would worry if she knew.

I felt electric.

Dad and I grinned at each other and prayed we wouldn’t die.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page.
Muzak

April 24th, 2015

Our daughter’s music — Katy Perry, Run-D.M.C. — and our music, especially when we play hard hip hop, make our son cringe. He has specific and limited music tastes. He will tolerate classical, and jazz without singing, but rarely has he said he likes a type of music, and never would he seek any music out.

One day we went to the mall, and as I power walked to whatever store we were destined for, in my hurry to get the shopping over with, our son strolled behind me and said, “I like this music.”

I stopped to listen. It was some horrible generic Muzak whose blandness offended me. I scrunched up my face, one nostril raised, and said, “You do?”

“Yeah,” he said, with his contented Buddha smile. “It’s quiet. And sad.”

He was 10 at the time. And he liked quiet and sad music.

He didn’t seek out or buy Muzak after that, thankfully, but the moment was enlightening to me. A little window into our son’s sensibilities: he did not care about music, as evidenced by his appreciation for Muzak. It just wasn’t his thing.

So when he started requesting a song in the car recently – “Can you play the whale song, Mom? – I was happy to play it for him. Over. And over. Again.

“What is it you like about this song, buddy?” I asked him after the fifth or sixth request.

“I like that it tells a story,” he said. And he shrugged. “I don’t know. I just like it.”

“Oh, well maybe you’ll like the rest of this band’s songs then. Most of their songs tell stories.”

“What’s the name of the band?”

“The Decemberists,” I said. “You want to listen to another of their songs?”

Since then, we have put 39 Decemberists songs on his tablet for him. I’ll be folding laundry in the living room and hear, drifting down the stairs,

We are two mariners
Our ship’s sole survivors
In this belly of a whale*

He listens while he does his homework. He listens while he curls up and reads. He listens while he lays in bed and stares at the ceiling, doing nothing at all besides absorbing the stories, and the music.

*From “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” by The Decemberists.

Artwork from University of Toronto Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page.
I took the road less travelled by

April 23rd, 2015

Wow, this is a hard one. Because I don’t feel like I’ve taken the path less travelled. I’m a middle-class white woman who went to high school, went to college, married a man, is raising a family, and now has a job. Isn’t that the most travelled road for my demographic in the developed world?

I guess the only way I may have taken a less travelled road is to follow my heart in terms of the work I do. When I realized my college degree wasn’t in a field that I felt passion for, I lost interest and pursued my love du jour, which was helping with fundraising and athletic endurance events for a not-for-profit. I cared about my work and threw myself into even thought the pay was terrible and the hours were long. I think a lot of people put a lot more financial value on their time than I ever did. I couldn’t stand the thought of being bored in my work, so if a job sparked my passion, that passion was a higher priority to me than money.

Likewise, when we started our family, we knew we wanted one of us to stay home with our kids while the other worked. Since my husband was on a career path, I volunteered as tribute. He was a graduate student on a teaching stipend, and me staying home without earning was not the wisest financial decision we’ve ever made. Having a second child under the same circumstance was even dumber (financially). We will be paying for those years for at least another decade.

During those years that I stayed home, though, I bonded with our kids, I launched a business, and I began writing in earnest, all of which led me to the place I am now: working at a dream job that pulls from my my random skill sets, that I’m passionate about, that keeps me at home with our kids, and that actually pays well. So I guess following my heart, if that is a road less traveled by, did make all the difference.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Thank you to Writeanne for the prompt, I took the road less travelled by, And that has made all the difference, from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

Coffee Grinders

Rocks

Pastries

Thunderstorms

Muzak

I took the road less travelled by