Our 1940s coffee grinder gave up the ghost—no more flip of a switch. So I unearthed our 1890s coffee mill, the one with a handle that turns only if I turn it. Being one thoroughly in love with my morning coffee, I turned that handle…with my left arm, my right, then back to left, and back to my right. I watched as the grinds fell excruciatingly slowly into the cup below forming little peaks.
While I was cranking, I had time to think of the process of making this grinder in England so long ago, the men who forged the metal and poured it into a mold, of the inventor who designed and patented the cranking/grinding mechanism, of the artist who painted the gold leaf trim. I had time to think of the coffee, where it was grown, the soil, the plants, and the workers who picked the beans.
And it was at that point that I remembered My Dinner with Andre, which I had recently watched, and the scene where Andre tells Wally about a Buddhist practice for mindfulness.
Andre: You know, if you go to the Buddhist Meditation Center, they make you taste each bite of your food…so it takes two hours, it’s horrible, to eat your lunch. But you’re conscious of the taste of your food. If you’re just eating out of habit, then you don’t taste the food, and you’re not conscious of the reality of what’s happening to you. You enter the dream world again.
Wally: Now, do you think maybe we live in this dream world because we do so many things every day that affect us in ways that somehow we’re just not aware of?
This Buddhist practice was spurred in me by manually grinding the coffee beans. I thought what if I take this idea and expand it to an exercise of being conscious of the origin and the processes of everything that I come in contact with for an entire day. That would take a lot of mental energy though, and it was to be a busy day.
Well someday soon, I’m going to devote a day to contemplating origins. I’ll start by using the antique grinder, and continue by thinking of the water I’ll pour over the grinds, the fuel that will start the fire under the kettle, and where the water will go after it drains when I wash the cup; of the sand in the glass in the kitchen window, the rare earth elements in my phone, the threads in my clothes; of the wood and nails in my house, and the hinges on the door I’ll close; of my car, the gas in my car, the asphalt in the road I’ll drive, the road and the land that was there before the road; of the life of the checker at the grocery store, and everyone involved in bringing me the broccoli, from seed to bag. I’ll think of my origins, from seed to baby, kid to adult, of my passions—those hibernating and those I’ve awakened. At the end of the day, I’ll look to the night sky, at the stars and planets and moons, and wonder at how their origin and my origin are entwined.
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