Ritual

The truth is, I don't really like coffee. But that's not the whole truth.

It tastes nice enough, compared to most other brown water, but I don't like how it gives me that double-time drummer in my chest, that twitching under my skin or the sensation that everything is taking too long. I don't like my sense of dependence. I don't like needing it, even if it's normal to do so.

I like the preparation, though. I like heating the water, cleaning out the pot, opening the jar, waiting for it to be ready. I'm fairly certain this feeling also applies to religious people and druggies: we like the ritual. And, like most modern Westerners, I don't really have many rituals.

The word 'ritual' derives from the word 'rite' - "the prescribed or customary form for conducting a religious or other solemn ceremony." More than a century ago, Nietzsche let slip that Gott ist tot and that we had killed him. That's fine, but just because nobody's religious any more doesn't mean our customary forms for conducting ceremonies aren't as weird as ever. No more baptism, blood-drinking or somesuch. We drink coffee, prostrating five times a day, facing that sacred, steaming cup.

As Nietzshe's madman put it: "God is dead... What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What sacred games shall we have to invent?" What water is there? Well, obviously it's water with coffee in it. What sacred games have we invented? Making coffee in ever more interesting ways, drinking it in newer, hipper locations. We use the stuff to chemically accelerate our collective heartbeat until our collective body is convinced we're running all the time so we can work harder, faster, better, more.

So, I don't really like coffee. It makes me twitch, when what I really I want is to be still. It speeds me up when I really need to slow down. It makes me dependent on things, when I am mostly inspired by non-things.

But I suppose I'm really not talking about Gott or kaffee, am I? I just feel a profound need for ritual for me and us and I don't really know what to do about it. And that's the truth.