I sometimes wonder at the thought that humans as a species persist. As beings on Earth in the vast universe, despite being arrogant and impositional, we are so fragile. 

Every day life requires so much labor, hurt, survival. In the past few years, we’ve endured an extraordinary time of psychic stress. We felt, at times in extremes, how much we are also just animals, with needs for human contact, trusting companions to connect with, sunlight, smiles, nature, fun.

Internal states are teachers, indicators. Emotion is energy in motion. 

We sometimes think on an essay that Duke Professor Omid Safi published, The Disease of Being Busy, the year after we opened our first shop. I particularly think of it’s discussion of the greeting, instead of How are you, translated Arabic into English, How is your heart?

Thinking on the feelings of these past years, more questions come to mind. 

What is in your mind?

How do you listen to the multiples that are your thoughts?

Which version/s of me do I choose?

How do I even begin to articulate all that I sense, feel and think of inside?

How do I investigate, interpret, understand, and continue to think and develop on the complexities of histories of the past, the present, and the future?

 

In an isolated stressed state, these questions take on new and more challenging dimensions. Interior life can come to the surface.

We changed our wonder menu theme late this summer as the question and ideas of interior state/s kept coming up around us. Our centering theme for 2023 has been Breathe. Reset. Bloom.

Asking the questions above, may be part of doing that. 

As we again lean into being out in the world, we have flavor to savor, friends who bring out our passion to live, loved ones who need looking after, and the balance in centering of our internal state/s...so that we may live in a world that many times feels at once awesome and at least at equally untenable. 

In this period, how do we allow ourselves, and those around us, to unconceal, to ourselves and sometimes others in our own essences? How can we honor others who are doing so? How can we love the stories and moments, both quiet and ecstatic that come to be? How can we in our own dynamics and multiplicity affirm and thrive within a pluralistic world.

With all of that in mind, we ask,

How is your heart? What is in your mind? How is your internal state? How can we thrive in pluralism? 

You are marvelous!

 

Drinks:

WHERE I’M FROM MY VOICE SOUNDS DIFFERENT

A honey latte with nutmeg and pepper, topped with Pink Himalayan salt and honey drizzle.

 

Via CC LKWD Cafe Leader Melissa

“I feel like salt is the opposite of honey. For me, this drink represents how you can be two different people, but one person at the same time. It’s like a certain crowd knows you one way, and others know you another way. But at the end, the ones you consider closer to you know both sides of you.”

 

THE ACCESSORY OF TEZCATLIPOCA

A cacao mushroom kakawa style infusion. This drink is made with a cacao reishi mushroom concentrate, oat milk, and topped with a mix of cacao powder, nutmeg, and salt. 

Team member Natzieli pitched this drink and was key in creating the photo.

Natzieli shares: 

“This drink speaks to the essence of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoky Mirror themself.

When we ask permission to step into the obsidian mirror, we are asking for it to show us who we are past, present, and future. Everything that is revealed will be for us to give it purpose or let it compost. 

I was working with this drink before it came to its final form and realized that to me the drink is the smoky mirror itself, but also the smoke and the first feeling that comes up when stepping in.”

 

THE LAND OF SAD ORANGES

A vanilla bean latte with clove-cinnamon powder, orange blossom, and topped with cardamom. 

Team member S pitched this drink.

After a story by Ghassan Kanafani

http://www.nobleworld.biz/images/sad_orange.pdf

“Ghassan Kanafani is a very well known Palestinian writer and was one of the first writers I was introduced to when I was learning Arabic. 

The story itself deals with cultural/national memory, grief, and exile. I wanted a drink that reflects the melancholy bitter-warmth of a childhood memory that Kanafani is reflecting on - something slightly sweet, a bit of citrus, and flavors familiar to the region.”

 

LAS LEYENDAS DE LOS GUERREROS QUETZALCOATL

A hot milk chocolate sweetened with vanilla syrup, cinnamon-clove powder, and topped with cocoa powder. 

Team member Luna pitched this drink.

From Luna:

“Drinking hot chocolate is a known thing in my family household. The drink of a sweet and warm feeling in my throat. It’s a drink that holds so many memories.

Some memories include learning about the great warriors of Guerrero. 

My uncle was the one who opened that gate for me and he also was the one who showed me the world of Aztec dances. Aztec dancing is a very powerful and beautiful thing in my life now. It’s something that is a part of me and my culture. It’s something that feels important to share and let people know how much the Aztec people fought and cared for their people. They were proud of who they were and I am also.”

 

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR

This is a three-piece deconstructed latte served in a mirror tray. In a graky smoky glass will be Little Waves espresso, a small beaker will hold our hazelnut windfall syrup, a medium beaker holds microtextured milk, and a demi-tasse spoon will have a pinch of black pepper. 

The guest constructs the drink for their pleasure.

From Leon: Decades ago, in another life, Leon imagined a story. 

Andy was an empath clown with a voice that sounded a bit different from the kids they grew up around. 

Later in their early 20’s Andy moved from Bretagne to Paris to attend Annie Fratellini’s National Ecole du Cirque. Fratellini treated clowning as a philosophical way of being, which fueled Andy’s exporation of their behaviors more deeply. 

They started walking around Paris, taking their interpretation of clowning further to reflect back all that they were taking in from exising in the world. They would dress and make themselves up in the extremes that they experienced without filter from the world and watch people see the world reflected in them.

Yet, Andy felt deeply lonely. One day after coming home from engaging on the streets of Paris, taking off their makeup, making funny faces to themself in the mirror as they listen to The Velvet Underground’s I’ll Be Your Mirror, they release into a flood of tears.