For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.
Today’s tip – The Importance Of Percolation
Source – Beyond the Words by Bonni Goldberg
However you do it, the point of percolation is to let the little cells of the idea gather, divide, and multiply in order to sustain life and energy outside of your thoughts, to coalesce into something that isn’t crushed by written words or blown away by your busy mind.
I am old enough to remember clearly, from the time I was a child to about the time I was in college, that everybody drank coffee (unless it was instant) that was made in percolators. In my mind, mornings are punctuated by the strange hiss and gurgle of hot boiling liquid coursing through the inner mysteries of the percolator to throw itself against that clear bubble on top. The contained brown fountain of hot caffeinated liquid, slowly becoming darker as it circulated again and again. It was a combination of mystery and totem – familiar and unknowable.
Of course, today, in the modern world, we know that a percolator is the worst way in the world to make coffee. You are basically boiling and reboiling the distillate – guaranteeing it will be bitter to the point of being undrinkable without generous dollops of sugar and cream. Of course, in those days, coffee was represented by factory roasted and preground Robusta beans from someplace called Maxwell House – so it didn’t even matter how it was prepared, really.
Yeah, now we know better and we argue over the freetrade country of origin, the coarseness of the grind – the advantages of drip, French Press, cold process, or whatever newest gadget has hit the shelves.
I wonder if anyone still uses a percolator?
This is truly the best of all possible worlds.
