Alice in a coffee shop

I. Love. Coffee. I really do. I wake up thinking about it, I go to sleep fighting the craving to have a cup after my Jay. I usually obey this night time crave because I'll have a terrible day if I don't get enough sleep. So I sleep and I believe all the dreams I don't recall are about coffee beans. I love the smell of it, the way the beans look, the taste of it. I love everything coffee. Cappuccinos, Malindi macchiatos, frappes( iced coffee with lashings of whipped cream), cold brew coffee, iced coffee, coffee flavored vodka, coffee flavored jays.
Coffee apparently helps release a hormone that is really good at stimulating a certain part of the muscle in your large intestine a.k.a colon. It's not just the caffeine as decaf will assist in pooping also. Coffee helps release the bombs like it's a Baedeker blitz as soon as 4 minutes after your first cup. This should be good news for me since I suffer from constipation (read farfrompoopin).  How amazing is coffee and how did humans find it?

The most popular story of the discovery of coffee centers around a young goat herder named Kaldi in the Ethiopian province of Kaffa around the late 6th century. Legend has it that he noticed a strange restlessness in his flock after they had eaten the berries and leaves of an unknown plant. Monks from a nearby monastery heard of this phenomenon, and after various trials discovered that by roasting, grinding and infusing in water the seeds of this plant, a unique beverage could be obtained. This beverage helped to keep them awake during long hours of prayer. Word of this special drink quickly spread and it was soon drunk in coffee houses in the far away holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Propagation of the coffee bean began in Yemen and was well established by the 15th century. https://www.coffeecompany.com.au/coffee-101/history-of-coffee

I also love coffee shops. Coffee shops are my great escape, my wonderland. When the world feels like it's on my shoulders, I'll go into my favorite coffee shop and I calm down. I run away to this magical places when the power company decides to do maintenance that takes all day and sometimes it feels like they switch off the power just for kicks. Sometimes they blame monkeys, its a circus I tell you! And their timing is usually perfect, just when I'm rolling out of bed, anywhere between ten and ten-thirty. This is really early for me, what people do at six in the morning is anyone's guess. All I know for sure is that people who wake up at that hour are extremely priggish and will let everyone within earshot know about it, these town criers. I like to sit where I can watch the baristas do their thing, I watch them keenly and wish I could do that thing they do. It looks like it must be the greatest job in the world but I suppose that's an individual thing. I'll often find a corner where I feel like I'm hidden from the rest of the world, put on my earphones, listen to John Mayer and get swallowed by my wonderland. I'm Alice in a coffee shop. It's my rabbit hole, I find I can focus if I had hit a roadblock while working. I get lost in fantasies of owning my own shop in  Kilifi where I'll go in for an espresso shot in the morning as I work online and spend the rest of the day lazing by the creek sipping on a chilly Irishman. Coffee and alcohol. ''There should only be two types of beverages in this world: coffee and alcohol'' - Brian Koerber. I'll while away the evening by reading ''God in a cup: The Obsessive Quest For The Perfect coffee''. I want to understand the road the bean traveled to reach my cup.

While curled up in a hammock I'll remind myself that I don't know where this love for coffee began really. I grew up in a family that primarily drinks tea. In fact I cant recall when I ever really saw anyone in my entire extended family drink coffee while growing up, so I can honestly say I can't trace my steps back to my first cup of coffee. Either way I feel like a defector. I'm free. You can't brainwash me with the wonders of tea or some other bush league beverage, I muse.  But, then again I am a slave. This is some bizarre Stockholm syndrome situation. And that's alright because i am besotted with my captor. I even want to travel the world , not just because I have wanderlust but also because I want to stop everywhere and taste a little bit of my ubiquitous captor. I hear there are places in the world where people line up just to be able to pay for this kind of slavery. Fortunately this type of madness hasn't  reached my shores.  I created this monster in recent times,a time I can recall with clarity. You see, I do remember telling myself that coffee is a superior drink, that it's a lifestyle and it's one that I want to belong to, I feel like I belong. I didn't join a club nor did I have to learn some secret code word to be a part of this faux exclusive club. I just joined and it has given me something to do. Something to look forward to every morning in a world that is sometimes bleak to me.

An email coming in jolts me back to reality and I really have to wake up and smell the coffee.

~We are not broken, just bent ~

FarFromPoopin

For someone who has not been eating carbs, I cant explain why I am constipated, the opposite of diarrhea. The thing that killed Elvis. The torture that the elderly suffer most days. Prunes are the only savior. It certainly didn't come as a surprise when I went to my little 'thinking room' and realized I was in a lose - lose situation, the act of not being able to squeeze a turd out it is probably just as bad as having a baby.  I sat there for a
bout fifteen minutes as the Band Perry song (if i die young)  played and it dawned on me that my body was working against me,the room became dark, I had to stifle a scream as I needed all my energy to focus on not passing out. As I made that attempt, I really thought about my loved ones. Why have I not written a will, why did I leave my phone so far away, I was frozen in panic half way. Who would water my plants or? And also I haven't mounted my Khal Drogo, who says he doesn't want to be in friend zone and all he keeps doing is being in friend zone. I digress. Anyway, I kept thinking "oh God, please don't let me die here, not like this". I survived. Sort of. I'm never quite out of the woods...

Constipation: when you've gotta go, but you're ass says no.
In German it is called: Farfrompoopin.

Here’s the thing about me and constipation.  I have known this condition for as long as I can remember. My mom would beat the crap out of me (literally) when I wouldn’t poop. I guess she thought I just chose not to poop, she must have thought it wasn’t a condition but an act of rebellion! I don't know if I could ever talk about this with her, I have scars and they are too deep. And maybe it was more than a physical condition. I don’t know, this is Africa and we don’t run to the shrink when your child doesn’t poop. You beat that crap out of them. 

This one time I woke up and while scouring the internet, still in bed, I thought to myself, '' you haven’t pooped in a few days''.  So I made a plan to buy some laxatives and beat my system to it. I rolled out of bed to make a cup of coffee, I love coffee and it apparently helps (absolute lies), when the overwhelming feeling of bowl movement took over! Why me?  When I get my bowel movements it’s not the same as when other people just go the thinking room and do their thing. It starts with my entire system slowing and bogging me down. I can’t think, at that exact moment I can’t even remember a time when I felt ok and didn’t need to empty my bowels. I mean I completely forget how life was a day ago, before the bowel movement. And now, I have to strategize and think fast. But I can’t think. I should have bought dulcolax  the night before so this process could be easy, and now I haven’t got the energy to run to the pharmacy and buy suppositories that would magically clear this situation. So I pace around wondering what to do, I know it’s going to be painful so I need to pep talk myself through the pain. Maybe if I roll a jay that will ease the sense of impending doom. But first I need to walk it off. I have no energy for that. I’m now sweating and panicking. I swear it feels like my whole world is falling apart, something close to how I imagine an apocalyptic event would feel like.

I always wonder what guys carry newspapers, phones or a game into the thinking room for. Are they constipated too? Because if they aren’t this should be a five minutes or less activity. At what time do you read the paper? Are they pep talking themselves too? Is Assassin’s Creed on the phone a distraction? I can’t imagine Ezio Auditore da Firenze saving me although I wish he would. Most times in the middle of a difficult poop, I feel like I'm working in the dark but not to serve the light, because I don't even think I'll make it back to the other side. It feels like an assassination.
Some days I have an easy time in the thinking room and it takes less than two minutes. How do other people hold the paper and poop at the same time? I usually need both hands to poop.  No I don’t scoop it out of my ass, there’s an aryuvedic technique I learnt to make my process easier, thus both hands.  On bad days when even aryuveda doesn’t help, I still can’t hold anything in my hands; I’m in so much agony and I need to focus on not dying.

I can’t poop in other people houses because of how long it takes. I hear people say they don’t do it because they don’t want to stink their friend’s house, personal rules of decorum prohibit them. I don’t have that problem, I would gleefully stink your entire life if I could. But sometimes I just cant.

After I do manage to poop, it’s like the birthing, the pain is there but it’s such a relief it doesn’t matter. So I have some three or four days till my next event. I hate you people with normal bowel movements.

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I tried to have a quiet weekend this past one, and as it goes, the best laid plans of men and mice.... I went out till some ungodly hour. Woke up with one nasty hang down.  I also finally watched Nairobi Half Life. That movie was an eye opener. It opened my eyes on Monday when I was going home and the matatu I was in took a detour and we drove through a part of town I wouldn't be caught in on any other day. I saw 'Oti'. You know, that fellow who introduced 'Mwas' to a life of crime. This was the real life 'Oti', I was in the middle of a tweet when from the corner of my eye I noticed an unfriendly human to my right. I was seated in the middle at the back, I felt a chill as he ran to the left side but the guy there closed the window. I looked outside and wondered how other people manage to walk around that part of town in peace and without looking all schizophrenic. I would make such an easy target. Thanks Nairobi Half Life, now I'm in perpetual fear.

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Can hardly wait for February so I can go for a road trip. I have been dying to go for one of those trips and looks like this year i'm doing all the things I have set out to do. Already made my payments and I just need to pack and have a good time when I get there. Did I say I do not know anyone else on that trip, this should be interesting. That is kind of the point of RoadTripKe anyway. I just hope they keep their promise and not turn the trip into a Valentines affair, because I will die. Alone. I absolutely hate Valentines Day, what an asinine holiday. Who the hell came up with that? Red roses, dumb ass cards, wearing red. In fact I need to hide my red items, in-case I forget what day it is, I don't inadvertently end up looking like all the other retards, that would be really awkward. Also I just don't have a valentine. But that is not the point.  Here's my valentines thought all the same - Roses are red, my name is not Dave, this poem makes no sense, microwave. Yaaay.

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~We are not broken, just bent ~

P!nk - The Great Escape (Official Lyric Video)