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I had never thought the aroma of coffee desirable until this
morning. It snaked its way from the kitchen, through the
living room, down the hall, till it teased my nose as I
watched its graceful swirling. I felt the beans must have
been ground by a Columbian choreographer. I pictured her
in drab factory coveralls too big for her, the pantlegs almost
touching the floor, but when she walked, there were
glimpses of the crimson pumps she used to dance in and
she was angry that the teatro had been shelled forcing her
to work for the coffee cartel, so that her one act of defiance
was to grind her dancing into the beans. Later, when I told
this to Jane, who worked in a laboratory, and did not trust
anything that could not be proven either mathematically or
scientifically, she ran down the list of, what I call the
ingredients, in the coffee beans. Naturally, this was
followed by a short discourse explaining that ingredients
was a term used in cooking not in the laboratory, the type
of discourse that usually followed when I referred to
something scientific in an unscientific way. To quell the
flood of science this morning as we sat in bed drinking our
coffee, I began reading poetry to Jane, as I did after all her
scientific discourses. I had learned early on, however, not to
read any poetry to her that was not Contemporary as her
only response was to give a detailed explanation of the
mathematical construction of the poem. Jane had eventually
resigned herself to what she called the uninhabitable island
of free verse and so this morning, reading poetry, the air
clears of all theorems and formulas, and the aroma of the
dancing beans comes back to me.
Why Jane and I stay together amidst this constant tug­
of-war between science and art is rather complex. This
morning, though, I believe part of the reason is found in the
coffee, which Jane served in beakers rather than cups,
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