THE NINE O' CLOCK COFFE

Some people, as they wake up in the morning, think about what they’ll do that day: the planned things and the unexpected ones they’ll face along the way, the familiar faces they’ll greet, that book to buy after having leafed through it in a hurry during a walk, the excuses to make at work regarding that technical hitch still unjustified, the time they’ll manage to free themselves to see that corner of the city they got a glimpse of from a bus. The list is long, as long as the number of people living in this metropolis, all different from one another.

I only think about the nine o’clock coffee:

and sadly that’s enough for me..

I do not remember the exact moment I stopped being passionate about life. I think it was a slow, silent process—ignored and therefore unstoppable. What makes an illness truly lethal is not the severity of its symptoms but how stealthily it moves, its footsteps muffled by a snowy blanket. You get on living your usual life, dragged along by the noise of the everyday, and no one warns you “Hey, stop! Haven’t you noticed that bad guy following you step by step?”. Those who want to harm you always operate in silence: the knockout blow is always the one you never see coming.

One day, you suddenly find yourself with this gray filter you can’t remove. It has become part of you, it never leaves. You have it in front of your eyes, inside your gaze, dulling everything, making it tasteless, odorless, colorless.

On an ordinary morning you wake up realizing there is nothing left to love about your days. Love is precisely that: continuously searching for reasons to express your attachment to life.

You open your eyes, mechanically get up, turn off the alarm that was supposed to ring in an hour (not that serious, you never sleep as much as you’d like; your dream life is populated by certain thoughts, even if you don’t clearly see them, you don’t even care to anymore). You drag yourself to the bathroom while everyone else is still asleep, do what you have to do, then head to the kitchen. In the morning, the brick floor is freezing—you walked out barefoot because, deep down, you kind of like feeling that sharp cold under your feet.

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«What was I supposed to do? Oh, right—eat.» You eat. «Now? Take a shower, for God’s sake! Do something—don’t just stand there staring into the void…»

There’s a new neighbour in the building across the street. He wakes up every morning at five, starts working, trying to be quiet. He’s probably furnishing his new home. You don’t have curtains on your porch and for that poor man the view must be horrendous: you, standing next to the stove, leaning against the table, staring blankly out the window in your worn-out robe wrapped around an inert body.

“He must think I hate him for the noise…”

You do hate him, of course you do, but for something else: you’ve seen his wife, his child, the still-raw interior of his home, the unfurnished space,

even the electrical markings on the walls.

And everything, absolutely everything, tasted like future.

“Good day, dear neighbor—I hate you.”

What has that poor man done to you, besides living his life? Nothing apparently but maybe that’s enough. You go to the couch, lie down, and wait for the nine o’clock coffee. And just like that, your day will be over.

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THE NINE O' CLOCK COFFE

L'IDIOT DIGITAL