Convenient coffee

The stove or the machine? That is the question.

I went out today and bought some freshly ground coffee from a cafe around the corner. When I asked them to grind the beans up for the ‘macchinetta’, they looked at me with a puzzled expression until I eventually found the words ‘stove top’. They took the coffee beans away and when they brought the bag back it felt warm and thick in my hands. I could smell coffee seeping from my bag the whole walk back.

I realised later that macchinetta wasn’t a commonly used word outside a small subset of people. I reasoned that for me, it had come from Nick’s parents, and from theirs, and so on. Somewhere, a group of people in Northern Italy would’ve known what I’d meant (though a quick Google search later on seemed to indicate it was a fairly common word, I preferred this version of things).

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By the time I got home, I was fairly hot from all the walking and translating and had shed two layers. After I unpacked my coffee and put my two stems of flowers in water, I ended up using one of the last pods in the machine to make myself an afternoon coffee, despite having just gone to the effort of acquiring fresh coffee beans. Why? I knew the macchinetta coffee was the best; that it reaped a generous reward given the relatively small amount of effort it demanded. The coffee machine on the other hand… though it gave slightly less reward, required even less effort. Turn on, put in pod, press button, fill milk, press button, pour, done. In less than two minutes. It seemed to be a case of being more convenient > just convenient.

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Sometimes I craved the things that were less convenient, that required a little more effort. Sometimes it would feel relaxing. Earlier that morning I made myself boiled eggs and felt a sense of calm come over me while I watched them slowly bob in the boiling water. I sat in silence before scooping them out, cracking them on the bench and slowly peeling the shell off with my hands. It was fiddly, but tactile.

Sometimes I had more time and space in me for those things. I was so used to operating at fast pace; I watched TikTok videos videos at 2x speed, I listened to audiobooks at 1.5x. I usually had something playing in the background while I was getting ready, or cooking or driving. I rarely sat still or in silence – in fact, I preferred filling whatever space I could with something.

It took me less time to eat those eggs than it did to make them up, but I guess that’s what I was searching for. Otherwise I would’ve cracked and fried. It was rare – the urge to do the thing that took longer, or felt slower, but when the pull came I usually answered. Because most of the time, small things felt monumental.

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It felt ironic that later, after I’d made my machine pod coffee, I spilled it on my way outside. I was juggling a lot: I had a shirt, a book, keys, a cap and my mug in hand. As I felt myself jolt, I felt the warm, milky drink splatter all over my floor, making everything far more inconvenient that a macchinetta coffee would’ve ever been.

I ended up saving myself no time – wondering if maybe it was a case of really needing to have a while day of slowing down and taking my time with things, and the world punishing me for not heeding its call. Likely it was just my own clumsiness, but whether I liked it or not, I ended up having to slow down before I got to drink my coffee and wipe the floor clean.