Coffee or Tea?

Photo by the very talented Carrie Thomas

I stumble groggy and confused, bumping into and tripping over things, the result of 6 months without two consecutive nights of decent sleep. I find myself taking cat naps on the train, unaware of my surroundings and not really caring if I am mugged or assaulted just as long as I can get a little bit of rest between frantic efforts to accomplish something. What is this something? Is it worth the toll that it is taking on me?

I switched from coffee to tea in an effort to ease the jittering hyperactivity that I tend to induce when overcompensating for that which can not be replaced, regular deep sleep.

I'm writing sad songs and eating massive amounts of bacon. Last night I devoured half a package of lower sodium bacon, not a choice, but rather the only thing the deli had at 2:00 in the morning on the way home from my gig. It was given to me like a fresh newborn wrapped in a glistening plastic skin. It tasted oddly saltier than regular bacon which made me think I might be losing my mind.

Crazy people obsess about things like global warming and conspiracy theories. Sometimes I think they are spouting the jumbled truth, and we are too caught up in our desensitized little lives to smell the coffee, the roses, or the shit that is stuck to our shoes.

I've become very concerned with the world and its demise, marked today by temperatures so warm you could wear shorts. People have decided that they will wear their thick woolen coats and vests simply because it is November and not because they are necessary. This is part of their denial that the Earth is frying away on the fossil fuel griddle.

At every deli where I buy food wrapped in plastic shoved in a plastic bag, I am greeted with fistfulls of disposable plastic forks wrapped in plastic. I try to refuse them, but deli workers are confused and offended when you don't take as much plastic as your arms can carry. After using or not using this plastic, I throw it in a garbage bin lined with more plastic.

I feel caught up in the momentum of the Earth's destruction and unable to stop it.
I also feel oh so tired. Now what do I do? The question is whether I have coffee or tea. Either way, it will be served in a disposable cup with a plastic top and I will eventually throw it into a plastic bag and jitter my way on to my next act of global annihilation.