“A society that has made ‘nostalgia’ a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.”

— Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism

Today is January the first, two thousand and nine… Right here and right now, I’d like to wish my loved ones and all of you a wicked year… A year full of great surprises and big smiles…

Let’s look for (and look forward to) the good times in the new year and let go of the rest… Let’s go to the edge and observe wisely… Let’s do things that scare us but let’s do them anyway… Let’s be a better person to ourselves and everyone else…

Here’s thanking you for reading my blog in the past year and wishing you the kind of year you’ve always dreamed of…

Much love and happiness,

S

And here comes another cool one!

“At 17 I still suffered from coffee schizophrenia: I loved the concept of coffee, but resented the taste. I decided to cure myself through auto-hazing. Around that time, my parents took me on my first trip to Paris. We arrived by train early in the morning and went straight to a little cafe. I ordered a large café au lait and forced down the entire bowl. It worked. Since then I have enjoyed coffee pretty much every day.”

— By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

And when he was 10…

“When I was 10 I still hated coffee, but fell in love with the ritual of making coffee. My parents were thankful enough about me fixing them coffee every morning that they overlooked my first clashes with brewing technology.”

— By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times

As we get close to the end of the year, our poor mind is occupied with too many distractions… that probably includes each writing down our list of resolutions for the year to come… I personally think having a resolution for each day of our life is more of a challenge and excitement as opposed to coming up with a long list of clichés… save money, go to the gym, eat healthy, travel more, blah blah blah… Now imagine opening your eyes every morning and deciding what really makes your day merrier and more satisfactory at the end of it…

Let me start with my own… Hmmm… OK, today I want to stay calm and deal with whatever challenges the day may throw at me… I want to think, think and think again and speak my mind… I will say my piece, even if it breaks the peace (being a peacemaker, that’s a total challenge!)… Today I want to read and read (I finished “Rebecca” yesterday, what a beauty of a book, may I add… today I started “The Hours”)…

And today I just started my every-day resolution… Yes!

S

As I’m sipping on my beloved classic blend, I’m posting another great work by Christoph Niemann… Enjoy!

“I must have been 5 when I first discovered the taste of coffee, when I was accidentally given a scoop of coffee ice cream. I was inconsolable: how could grown-ups ruin something as wonderful as ice cream with something as disgusting as coffee? A few years later I was similarly devastated when my parents announced that for our big summer vacation we would go… hiking.”

By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times

“People become who they are. Even Beethoven became Beethoven.”

— Randy Newman

I often screw up the moments I decide to write… There are many nights and days that I “decide” to put down my words on a blank page or on a piece of paper, but that’s exactly when the deleting action takes place… I write and then delete… I delete and delete… or rip the paper into a million pieces… There are also times when I’m almost too selfish to share my mind with anyone in the whole universe… even with you whom I always trust… So instead I obliterate the words inside my own self!

My words come on a piece of paper when there is no other way to express them… or when I’m inspired by a tiny little thing in my surroundings… by the smoke in the fresh air passing by and never coming back until the next inhale… by the smell of a fresh coffee at my favorite café on the corner… by the smile of the old guy who sells me the same cup of coffee every single morning… by an old lady climbing up the stairways and the sound of her breathing in and out… or by the beauty of the red rose on her green hat… by the Champaign bubbles dancing around… by the ticking of a clock which reminds me of this present moment… tick tock… tick tock… by a line of a song which is on repeat mode inside my frozen ears… by dreadful mistakes or by heartbreaking experiences in my, yours and others’ lives… by a shitty day which can easily makes you sick inside and cause ache in your heart… or by the times I want to retreat from the world…

And there are times like today that writing helps me get my focus back on conversations and improve my feelings towards others…

S

Now, only this and the fact that I’m still safe and employed could put a major smile upon my face today…

“I like coffee so much that I have tea for breakfast: The first cup of the day in particular is so good that I’m afraid I won’t be able to properly appreciate it when I am half-asleep. Therefore, I celebrate it two hours later when I am fully conscious.”

By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times