Coffeecore: The Rainy Day

Grab a cup, and snuggle up ... 

...  because it's a rainy day in the Coffeecore Extended Universe. Think of an Impressionist's rainy day in 19th century Paris, but without the pungency of horse dung and deprivation. Okay fair, that wouldn't really be Paris, but keep the wide boulevards. And keep most urban Impressionism's persistent, drifting quality of light on every surface, glancing off the canvas. This, too, is essential for the sparkling countertops and empty windows of Coffeecore. The Coffeecore Extended Universe is loose about particulars, such as Paris or canvas, as #coffeecore is a sensibility and not a set of laws.

This umbrella is dropped for the sole purpose of the puddle accumulating in its forefront. It is always just about to overflow. You can see it glimmering on the neatly paved sidewalk outside the windows of the coffee shop. You hear the little bell ring on the door when you enter, and stamp off your rainy shoes on a generic mat that reads W E L C O M E, but means it. Look at the mass produced object in all its radiant uniqueness! Look, at what it has now become, purple and cupped liked an inverse nasturtium!

1.

Everyone's legs are long here, so that the expanse of the boulevards is not difficult, and going out is never a kind of mission.  Rain gear is plentiful, as is regularly scheduled rain. Bask in the rain as you would bask in the summer sunlight. It smells faintly of lavender, but not the kind from Provence, the kind from a perfume lab, for four or more major brands that, naturally, I cannot name. It is lavender from a flower never rooted or bloomed, from the lights on the slick of the metropolis. Do not ask Baudelaire. He would name the wrong flower. This flower is gentle and never diseased, constant and inconstant at once, as the flow of rain, plonking against the plexi-windows of the cafe. But it's night now, in the Coffeeverse, and you're going out.

The rain exists to make the indoors good again, to beatify it by contrast. It's like the snow on an old tv, running in the background as you sleep. It is, in order, a love song, a lullaby, a nocturne. Run your fingers across the keys. They look like crosswalks, the white keys, and the crosswalk in the rain. Play it as it lays, kiddo. Everyone's a loser in the Coffeecore Extended Universe because there is no winning, because winning is now forfeit. No one plays for stakes and stays this calm, as calm as you, now humming along faintly to a soft jazz rendition of Debussy, anticipating the notes.

2.

You grab a drink at the long bar with your umbrella tucked safely away. You listen to the ice clink in the glass, to the sonorous hum of the lights, the kind powered by a secret orchestra of crickets. You swirl them around as you swirl the whisky in your soft mouth, and it doesn't even burn. Even the terry-cloth fabric of the bar seats is plush with well-threaded fecundity, practically new. Are those pool table balls or fruit or sculpture, over there? Yes.

You ask Donna all about The Trouble With James. You discuss the broken office fax machine at length, the varying utilities of the printer. Does he love her? Does it matter? You don't know. You play with the little stirrers and drink mats and the bartender says nothing, because maybe he is a robot. "Maybe," he finally says, and smiles at you as he slides a second drink in a perfect arc across its own moisture back across the table. There is so much upholstery that nothing can be sinister. There are no hard edges for sinister to bounce off of.   

3.

You always do your laundry, late at night when only the ones like you are there, commending the tumble dryers. You sort your lingerie and pillowcases while playing the same track again and again on your SDAT, headphones in. It's Satie now, the Gymnopédies. Your arms are slow and deliberate and glowing. You twirl. In the Coffeecore Extended Universe there is no art so elevated as dancing, in public, but also alone. The chequerboard lino welcomes you in forgiving counts of eight. You unfurl like a supermarket rose against the clear plastic sheet of the bouquet. The rain keeps time, watches benevolently in rivulets and courses. Adagio.

 4.

Convenience store bingo. John at the counter, who is always studying and marking down notes, looks up from his textbook when you come in, noting the kind of night it is. It is that kind of night, you nod in return, and peruse the cans that each offer delectation packaged up. When you get on your motorbike to go home, you hang the bag from the left handlebar, swinging under the grip as you ride. It's Brubeck now, on an old digital Casio, the kind that, when you hit a key, it makes a synthed-out twang.

If you are thinking you are not the kind of person who would own a motorbike, even a pleasingly pink one in real life, you must remember that in the Coffeecore Extended Universe, nothing goes wrong. There are no squealing skids against the pavement, no hard turns. This is the safety of the rain, each round droplet extending as it falls into an ovoid promise.

5.

You have purchased eleven red, heart-shaped lollies. Each is for one of your past lovers: William, Meredith, George, Tess, Constance, Rainer, Susan, Tom, Michiko, Carl, and Joe. William's tastes like sunscreen and sand, in a cooler filled with sandwiches at the beach. Tess' tastes of pistachio ice cream and new shoes. George's tastes like the inside of a woollen business suit lined with dark chocolate bonbons.  Rainer's tastes like the pod of a single perfect snap-pea . Yours, you think, must taste like Clair de Lune, slow and full and irrevocably long. For the devotees of Coffeecore, there is no such thing as time, only intervals, the fast and the slow.

6. 

Bedtime. Make an everywhere of the duvet, the one that sinks into you as you fall into it, a single body, a travelling cloud.  Cut the lights. You will rise again tomorrow with a cup of coffee, and full of gently palpable love. 

Optional Soundtrack, Play While Reading: