“I don’t know if it’s a function of age or temperament, but I’m no longer seeking those major exclamatory notes of pleasure. I want a life that has pleasure contained within it.”                                               […]

…But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about […]

There are things I won’t miss: being on my feet all day, inhaling grounds while grinding bar coffee, my wardrobe of weirdly-stained t-shirts, working major holidays. Thankfully, these are outnumbered by any one of a hundred things I love about what I’ve been doing for the last six years. I’ve been fortunate to live in […]

…if you are a customer in a coffee shop. It is a perk, and in my best interest to provide since there is clearly demand, but you are not owed the internet as part of your coffee drinking experience. Free, unlimited internet access? THAT’S WHAT THE LIBRARY’S FOR. Other pieces of valuable information that will […]

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it–don’t cheat with it. Thanks, Hemingway.

I spent the first real sunny day we’ve had all summer sitting on a park bench with Pheobe Damrosch’s Service Included, which, in addition to being a perfect park-bench kind of read, is a sort of love letter to the service industry, and the often-unappreciated dedication of a successful service professional. In 2006, Damrosch was […]

There are a very few places I regularly order tea, mostly because I’m a jerk and am extremely picky about both the quality and preparation of what I choose to drink and there aren’t many places that do it right. Hazard of the job, no, having constant access to really stellar teas? MEM Tea Imports […]

Perhaps it was being in Portland, not thinking of work or inhaling coffee for the first time in months, the smell of Powell’s, the warm rain or some other mystic combination of good vibes, but I was primed to devour a good book and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog fit the bill. I […]

…the last bit of silver cloud, doled out carefully over the last year. An old-growth Chinese white, mature buds plucked on the verge of opening, all covered with silvery down… Steeped in a clear gaiwan. 190ish degrees, three minutes. If my camera battery weren’t (perpetually) dead, I’d snap the buds, bobbing vertically in the cup, the […]

In thinking about where to even begin to begin the first steps of a new journey, I’m taking some comfort in knowing that what is new and strange to me has been glaringly obvious for years to those who know me best. Case in point: the letter excerpted below, written to me upon my graduation […]