tíu dropar

After lunch, a cup of coffee.

Not a clunky mug or (angels and ministers of grace defend us) the supersize abomination of the pint glass. The latter is, to me, ever depressing. Its proportions and the dark color of the liquid contained conjures the subliminal thought of a rich-flavored, warming stout, and the watery drip coffee that actually hits the palette suffers greatly from the unavoidable contrast. Coffee good enough and brewed strong enough to stand that comparison is not something a sane person would wish to consume by the pint. In fact, no coffee I know should ever be consumed by the pint once the prospective drinker has passed the age at which life includes things called final exams. The pint glass is in no wise an appropriate receptacle for coffee, and the serving of coffee in such containers by local cafés only provokes the desire to begin drinking well-hopped alcohol that much earlier in the day, and as none of the local cafés serves the stuff (not in pint glasses nor in any other fashion), the frustration is great --- the greater, even for being fueled by an entire pint of steaming coffee.

My after-lunch coffee was neither of these, no, and not any paper-cupped pool either, girdled with some recycled, corrugated strip stamped with advertisements for a) raves, b) wireless access, or c) web-based ventures too ill-conceived to fully penetrate my awareness. It was instead a civilized amount of coffee, 8 oz., brewed over a gas flame in an aluminum mocha pot, a poor man's espresso served in a plain, white, straight-sided German china cup. The cup's exact career is obscure, how it came to me I have forgotten if I ever knew it. But it is empty now, its slight translucence observable again, and the outlines of a few stray drops are visible on the saucer.