Cup 65: Morning Coffee

morning coffee
Originally uploaded by matt_leclair.

where: home, Orono
when: 6:30 am, feb 7 2005
who: Dot & Dash
coffee: Port City India Malabar
mood: elated

A little deviation from the norm. I am skipping ahead to today, and I will backfill the previous days later. The past week has been difficult. I've suffered from chronic depression for all of my adult life and some days doing anything is such a chore and even little things can become insurmountable tasks. Keeping up this silly little blog was one of those tasks last week. For the past few years I've kept my depression in check with drugs. Zoloft, then Lexapro. But I decided to try to make it without the drugs this fall. My longtime friend and mentor Welch Everman died. I didn't feel it. I didn't feel anything about it. It was such a heartbreaking tragedy, but emotionally it held no more significance than a cancelled TV show. I decided then I didn't want the drugs anymore, and I tried to fight off the depression with diet, exercise, and sunlight. But the past few weeks it has been too cold to move, and it has been dark all the time and, well...

This morning I was up before the sun and did something a bit different. Usually I try to saturate my senses all day long, reading or watching TV as I sip my coffee first thing in the morning, and moving on from one kind of data input to another until I fall asleep (in front of the TV, or reading). But this morning I just sat quietly and sipped my coffee, the sassy yet sultry India Malabar from Port City Coffee Roasters. Dot and Dash played with their toys. The sky reddened and then a strip of gold appeared beneath the red as though the dark were a solid lid over the planet and some giant hand were prying it off to let the sun pour in. I'd say it was the most beautiful sunrise I'd ever seen, but it isn't. We get those all the time here. Pretty much any sunrise when it isn't raining or overcast is stunning. And how cool is that? To be living in a world where such beauty is as common as the start of the day? And contentment can be found in a cup of coffee and two cats. Not bad. Not bad at all!