Welcome back, you cardboard curators! Last week’s shoebox gave us a small stage with a lid. Maybe your shoes moved into a new home, or you spread the box into a map, or arranged a few things you’ve kept without knowing why. I keep thinking about the moment before the moment. A box can hold an unfinished idea while we decide whether it belongs on display or is something we’d rather keep to ourselves.
This week’s nudge takes us out of the closet and invites us into the kitchen: a coffee pot. Back in Creative Nudge 27, we spent time with the first cup of the day, feeling its weight and listening to the pour. Apparently, I never turned around to look at what was filling mine. I drink roughly a pot a day, so perhaps I’m too close to the object to see its other charms.
At home, I run two coffee pots: regular for me and decaf for the rest of the family. There’s a K-Cup machine for mornings when I wake before the automatic brew. I cannot wait fifteen minutes for coffee without somebody’s feelings getting hurt, usually mine. Meanwhile, the plastic French press I take camping makes a better cup than either machine at home. I haven’t shared this well researched review with any of them.
I started drinking coffee in my twenties, after getting my first office job in a call center. I’d had no trouble staying awake on a machine shop floor, where there was always something to do and dangerous machinery ready to eat you. Put me on a padded chair in a padded room, though, and I needed a reason to keep my eyes open. The office coffee pot also gave me a place to escape the padded cell a few times a day, hear what was happening beyond my desk.
In the film Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin’s character insists, “Coffee is for closers.” I want to think about coffee as an opener to conversation, to the ideas that arrive while we wait for a cup, to a few minutes when we can go unrecorded and unremarked upon.
These days, I mostly make coffee at home because it’s easy and much cheaper. My bank account is fuller, but I miss the chance for limited, brief encounters with co-workers. When I must get out and talk to another person over coffee, I favor Back to the Grind. I admire how it has thrived despite the storms facing a small business that opens its doors to the public every day. Its shelves hold enough humorous knickknacks to supply several future nudges. I intend to take notes and give the place proper credit if one of those objects finds their way here.
For now, let’s swing by the community watering hole for a creative refill with one or more of these nudges:
- First Pour: Imagine the pot dispensing something you need to start today: patience, a useful memory, good judgment or fifteen minutes you can spend twice. Draw the label for this new brew, including one warning about what happens if you drink too much.
- Ring-a-ling: Put a little cooled coffee on the bottom of a cup or pot and make a ring on scrap paper. Turn the mark into the edge of a planet, a town map or the outline of a creature that has escaped from its mug. Add only three details; let the stain make the other decisions.
- You Brew: Design a coffee pot that adjusts its output to the task ahead. What does it serve before a difficult conversation, an afternoon of yard work or a visit from relatives? Sketch its controls and include one setting you would never trust the machine to choose for you.
- Office Hours: Write a four-line exchange between two people waiting by a coffee pot. They may know each other well or have met while reaching for the same last cup. Let a small bit of news change what one of them was about to do.
- For the Coffee Gods: Compose a brief offering from the sounds of an empty, cool pot: a lid click, a gentle tap with your finger, a spoon against the counter, a little water poured. Perform your piece once. If the coffee gods want an encore, they can make the next pot.
My coffee pot and I have an arrangement: it gives me my first usable thoughts of the day, and I give it almost no thought at all. This week, I’m going to revise the terms. Several minutes of attention seems like a reasonable payment for all those refills.
This column was written with help from ChatGPT, which runs on electricity and therefore has no standing to judge my coffee habit.
