Coffee Break

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This is you. You make coffee because in Italy that’s what you do after lunch. You’re not a traditionalist, not even a nationalist, but at least about this you care. Not so much for the taste, more for the gesture, the ritual. And then you overdid it with the pasta. And then you have to work, write the comment on that draft short story.

You’re looking for the boost, the concentration you need. You put the contraption on the stove and flick the lighter, making the spark jump. Then you light up the screen of your phone.

Somewhere you read that coffee isn’t really an energizer but just serves to soothe the symptoms of tiredness.

Fine, you think, I’m very tired anyway.

What are your friends doing? All great things. All on vacation? Seems so. Home page. A soccer video: build your ideal footballer. Tactical intelligence? Right foot? Left foot? How much do you pay in rent in Milan? Another video. Too much, everyone pays too much. A singer-songwriter, guest on a comedy show, says seriously, “Calabria is the future.” Left-wing meme. Patrick Bateman walking with determination in a scene from American Psycho, captioned: “When you get on the regional train and wait for a maranza to bother you so you can dump months of repressed, pent-up rage on him.” Right-wing meme. Another unbalanced American discusses, in an Oval Office studio, the possible use of nuclear bombs: he’s in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The line between reality and fiction, razor-thin, you think—sure, there’s something to be written about that. An article about how artificial intelligence isn’t actually that worrying, about how every day we unknowingly overturn the universe of possibilities and absentmindedly embrace the unsettling and fascinating absurd. So, the comment! “For the friends on the judging committee: the story is rather inconclusive, it seems to me… the narration often breaks off without any apparent reason; what’s it called again? In Praise of Boredom? Who is the protagonist? And the antagonist??? The villain, I mean; the text lacks suspense; it also lacks a confrontation with some kind of God, or at least a Hamlet-like doubt; it lacks…” Video of a half-naked woman. The coffee is coming out. You take a small cup.

Where were we—right, video of a half-naked woman but not vulgar: that is, she proudly displays a hypnotic ass and a pretty decent back, but it’s an ad, she wants to sell you the underwear she’s wearing. You watch it again three or four times and think about your ex, about her underwear and the trip to Iceland that was booked and then canceled.

Again the psychopath from before: this time, his statements in a mic’d intervention are excerpted, dismantled into little bricks, and debunked by an analyst. The video, and everything that follows from it, makes you nervous. You even get angry because you realize how long this coffee break has become. And yet you wait for it all day, this break.

The problem isn’t the break itself, you reassure yourself. It’s what you do. You immediately rush to make sure you open this window onto the world, to cure your claustrophobia. But you know perfectly well that you’ve developed a worrying emotional dependency. Your phone isn’t your mother. How long has it been since you talked to your mother? Suddenly you remember when—during the pandemic—you decided to take your life back in hand and wake up very early, combining an hour on the stationary bike with various phone calls to all the people you cared about most, to prove to yourself that you were affectionate in that very sad time.

“I’ve decided… to give… my life… a turn,” you said every time, out of breath, smiling as you pedaled and waited for the response. Only your mother didn’t insult you for that godawful hour. You should call her now. How long has it been since you tried to solve a crossword? And have you read The Stranger by Camus? The book on the nightstand, it’s been there for about six months. Have you read The Stranger? It’s just a handful of pages long, The Stranger. No way. Here are four low-cost gadgets to always carry with you when you go camping. To your great surprise you discover the existence of this ass-sprayer, a mini bidet for taking a shit cheerfully in the woods while squirrels are there, for example, in the pines, having breakfast. Disgusting. I’d rather stay home, you say out loud.

Next. Bombing video. Your eyes widen. Video of a bombing over a city. It’s reduced to dust, the buildings crumbled. Children are crying. These children lack everything. The situation is inconceivable, unbearable.

At this point you get up and sigh. You drink a glass of sparkling water to open up the pores of your tongue and then savor the coffee properly.

You sip it strictly bitter.

This is what you do, this is who you are.