ABOUT: THE WORD COFFEE
NARRATIVE : THE WORD COFFEE
Another landscape.
Time, encounters, and words that should not have existed.
For a very long time, I wandered through a space covered in gray, devoid of color. Countless fragments were scattered there, most of them broken. My breathing became shallow, and my senses were fading; to escape this suffering, I repeatedly thought only of disappearing, day after day.
That illness would not allow my existence.
The gray space was transforming into darkness.
Standing on a fragile, crumbling boundary, just as I was about to gaze into the abyss, I caught a faint glimpse of color among the scattered fragments. I had to gather them before everything was engulfed in darkness.
I spent such a long time, so long that my memories became vague, continuously collecting those colorful fragments. When I finally looked up, I realized that the gray space, which had been turning into darkness, had transformed into a landscape full of color.
Those colorful fragments were deeply ingrained, forgotten pieces of words from my memory.
I realized that everything that had happened until then was connected, and I felt the inevitability of this flow.
Among the fragments scattered in the gray space, there was a vivid amber color and a fragment containing many words.
More than a decade ago, before I got lost in the gray space, I encountered Specialty Coffee on a chilly autumn evening. It was a deeply memorable encounter with a transparent, vibrant amber liquid, completely different from the coffee I had tasted since childhood.
Without that event, which instantly changed my perception of coffee—which until then had been merely a hobby I hadn't given much thought to—and became the trigger for me to delve into its profound world, it would not have existed among the colorful fragments in the gray space. Nor would I exist today as a purveyor of coffee.
Even the slightest incidents chain together unconsciously, influencing each other, and becoming their own colors and landscapes.
For me, the key to the entrance of a new world born from such a small trigger was that single cup of coffee I tasted on that chilly autumn evening.
Even if I were to be engulfed by the gray space again, I would no longer be lost. For there, the colorful fragments and the many words they contain certainly exist.
Going forward, I hope to continue weaving this sentiment, sometimes even beyond words.
So that the words, and their breath, will never be lost.