Control the Caffeine, Control the Words

Love, love, LOVE this pic - it's so true!

There are few things in life that I can't live without - I'm not much of a material girl - but this pic pinpoints two things that I need in order to function: words and coffee.

I don't read blogs to live vicariously through others and I don't drink coffee to get high off caffeine. No, no , no - my real life is too much for me to schedule as is and, well, caffeine has little to no effect on me (thanks, ADD).

No, I read blogs to connect with other thinkers and writers, kinda like my version of a writer's retreat or writing group. I drink coffee for pretty much the same reason I read blogs, to feel - how did my boss put it that year he banned all coffee from our classrooms? like I'm in a "Parisian cafe"? Um, yep, he was right: I do want to feel like I'm in a Parisian cafe, don't we all?

Actually, no, according to his vision of what must go on there (he obviously never saw Amelie or perhaps he did watch it and all he remembers is the bathroom scene). To me, sitting in a "Parisian cafe" connotes feelings of being out in the world sucking nectar from the thriving whole instead of sitting annexed in a tiny, dimly lit cellar with the rest of those not allowed access to "the real world". To my boss, that phrase obviously reeks notes of subversion and perversion, no doubt thanks to the whole Feeney experience.

Coffee is communal and, as you have no doubt realized from previous blog entries, I dig community. The art of making or buying coffee is so much more than the act of drinking it, which is why combining blog reading with coffee drinking is about as close to Nirvana as I'll ever get.

So, what's La Pointe of It All? It's this: teaching should be communal but let's face it, it's not. It's weird and compartmentalized; superficial and lonely. I think the admin is so afraid of us making real connections with the kids or with the other teachers that its primary goals is to - in small, strange ways - retain control of our words and in order to do this, it must limit our coffee consumption.