So West Coast

A coffee table story from the front lines

Heads-up Note to Reader! 🤓 This short story has three footnotes plus one extra. Please enjoy the story through and read the footnotes at the end. The flow will be smoother for you this way. :)

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You know you’ve become well settled as a citizen off the shores of the Salish Sea when:

It’s Saturday morning and you’re headed to the Moss Street Market to buy locally-grown ginger that looks like some kind of magical coral marine creature. You and a number of trusted friends have already proven that making a strong cup of tea out of this spicy root will take care of that tickle in your throat in less than half a day.

You’re happy, because though you’ve entered perimenopause well over a year ago, for the past two months the first day of your cycle has arrived on the full moon; feeling powerful and in sync with the Cosmos is the mood of the hour. To your surprise you weren't tired last night on Day 1 and ended up staying awake until midnight chanting mantras while scrubbing your pressure cooker for the next round of bone broth.

The first thing you put on before you get out of your pyjamas is your toque, because the sun is glorious and you know it’s going to be crisp outside in late October. You suddenly realize that after the previous night of sweat equity you invested in the pressure cooker, a rinse-off in the shower before you get dressed will be smart. Your bedhead hair is well protected, which makes the idea of shampooing moot for now… In fact you don’t even bother removing the toque before you step in the tub.

(** As a lifelong torch-bearer of the old-yet-urgent adage “waste not, want not,”¹ years ago you reduced the frequency of your morning shampoo to a few times a week down from daily, since ALMOST NOBODY REALLY NEEDS TO WASH THEIR HAIR THAT MUCH to be healthy and still look fine… In truth it’s healthier to let some of the oils add moisture to your hair; human scalps manufacture oils for good reason. Plus think of all the chemicals that would be taken out of the equation if everyone shampooed less! You’ve become more than comfortable speaking about this topic publicly, especially since if there had ever been any untoward consequences of your choice to not shampoo daily you would have definitely already heard about it from your mother.)

The shower takes only three minutes, with the last 45 seconds devoted to the cold plunge. One time you heard a person refer to this refreshing ritual as “the splunk.” In your humble opinion splunk is an exceptional word and deserves its rightful place in the next published edition of the Oxford Dictionary as a culturally innovative contribution towards averting future water wars.²

On the way to the market you go out of your way to grab coffee from a cute café you’ve recently discovered called Hide & Seek, the “satellite location” for the bigger one in Oak Bay. You really did have to seek it out to find it; this shop for gluten-free treats and warming drinks may just be the best kept secret in the neighbourhood. You’re kind of mad at yourself because you had been off coffee for six months, and now you count twelve mornings accompanied by coffee out of the past 14 days. How quickly you jump back on the bandwagon! But it's easy to uncover reasons that justify your backslide: the coffee is fairly traded with farmers the owners have met in person, one cup of drip is only $2.50 still which is practically unheard of in this insane inflationary reality, and you’re supporting the local economy instead of the amalgamation of faceless moguls. Even better, the people you meet in this tiny hole-in-the-wall are the coolest folk ever. You get to pat really large labradoodles and watch mothers have intelligent conversations with their young children on the patio.

Internally, you're noticing a subtle conflict between your success at taking pleasure in the small things and your inability to not put oat milk and honey in your coffee; you’ve recently heard every naturopathic doctor is now telling their patients that messing with black coffee destroys the good-for-health antioxidant polyphenols. So you pair indulging your creamy Joe with looking up the research on your new-used iPhone 12 that you got an awesome deal on through Facebook Marketplace. (Holding hands with his teenager, the seller met you to close the deal sporting an orange shirt right before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation powwow.)

A few website hits beyond the blog articles on this topic, you discover the research is actually pretty negligible… The main study cited concludes a minor detectable reduction of some random measurement of immune response markers in coffee drinkers who milked their coffee versus those who didn’t.³

It's gratifying to share the “facts” you’ve managed to debunk with a chatty elder at another table who has delighted you with the red ribbons braided into her long salt-and-pepper hair. She practically winks at you through her one missing front tooth and proclaims: “Well I guess that means you get to have two cups of coffee instead of just one to make up the difference!” She then enjoys punctuating this with just one cackle.

You vow to quit coffee again when you do your next detox cleanse in the Spring and continue on with your day. Walking to the market, it becomes obvious that you’re going to write your forthcoming story about how still hardly anyone has gone back to using their travel mugs since March 2020.

!@#$%^&*()+

** Note to reader on Saturday... I wrote most of this story before I left the house, and when I arrived at the café I recited it to the gal serving up the joe… She’s a singer songwriter whom I’ve seen perform at a Bicycle (“Pedal Powered”) Music Concert hosted and curated by one of my friends—there have been many concerts and the movement’s growing, yeah. “Solstice” is the name of her band she’s currently in the process of forming to help her get her songs out into the world; she plays banjo and guitar and will be joined by a pianist and synth player. While I was reading, multiple times Slam Poetry-style she snapped her fingers, and afterwards she invited me to share the story at her Thursday open mic event called The Victoria Poetry Project. Continuing to feel in sync with the Cosmos! 💥

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But wait! On Tuesday, this happened…

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*** Tuesday note to reader... Here's to living a life of synchrodestiny. I stopped by the café again, and the barista turned out to be the shop owner because his staff was down with a cold. (He usually spends his time at the bigger café in the other neighbourhood I spoke of.) I read him the story aloud. He chuckled while drawing a white leaf with milk foam on the top of a cappuccino.

Afterwards, he informed me that he hasn't put a single drop of product in his hair for three years! Just water and those oh-so-nourishing natural oils produced by the scalp make for this handsome look. I asked if I could take his picture to add to the blog, and he happily agreed! The poster child for the story. How cool is that? 👏🏼

1. Did your grandmother ever say waste not want not? This understanding evolved even further quite a few decades back when policy makers in the West formulated a great idea called “The 3 R’s - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

Isn’t it fascinating that they and we almost forgot about the first two R’s, which are actually the precursors to the third if you examine the progression carefully? (If we’re intending to act like nature and diminish our damaging impact on the Earth-Nature, I mean.) And have you heard about how in the US approximately 4% of material stuff entering the recycling stream actually gets recycled? Here in Canada we’re not much better at about 9%. This means that 91-96% of everything we toss in our blue bins is dumped directly in the landfill. Recycling—what a forward-thinking innovation of humankind! Nice try guys! They even had us imagining for a second we might really be actors and contributors towards something like the mechanics of a sustainable economy. (It’s circular, not linear, which the 3 R’s logo reminds us of every time!) ♻️

BY DECREE:
Due to this rather hapless oversight of the “green” economy the human endeavour shall henceforth focus our main interest and attention on the first two R’s.

We also hereby rubber-stamp the launching of a public education campaign in “The Six R’s,” with the 4th, 5th and 6th R’s enshrined by the statutes of Natural Law: REPAIR, RESTORE, REGENERATE.

2. Did you know that in the English language our way of defining “nature” wrote us out of the equation? (Humans not being nature, naturally! 🙄)

Nature ~ n. The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.

* Notice how prominently “products of the earth” are featured in this short definition.
The consequences of believing this misconception and acting accordingly remain well-established today.

3. Different research studies focusing on the same phenomena may come to differing conclusions. It is always healthy when people can have mutually respectful dialogue about this, because that’s what makes science interesting—the fact that it is an emergent process arising from a diversity of perspectives, experiences and approaches to learning.
There are certainly many important discoveries that stand the test of time and become known as universal facts. However these are likely far fewer in number than the majority of scientists today prefer to believe. Notable qualities of any exceptional scientist include curiosity, humility and a willingness to have what they knew yesterday be blown out of the water tomorrow, even today.

4. This is footnote #4, which was originally #1, the footnote to my note about the West Coast-grown ginger and the medicinal effect of this bulb on oncoming throat tickles.

Footnote #1 was originally written “See: Healing With Whole Foods and Herbs: The People’s Original Medicine.”

But I decided to take it out. I was worried about inserting that bit too quickly. Sometimes when that happens you can lose many readers before they even dive into the story. After all, I could be talking “silly science.” (A friend remarked this to me recently in response to something science-y I said, which really put me in my place!) Would a reader’s hunch about such a possibility deem my story improper right from the get go? Even worse, uninteresting?

From this thought, I noticed myself then becoming anxious my channel could be cancelled for not adhering to YouTube’s Community Guidelines, which is why the footnote list became only three. But now I’m adding #1 back to make the list four again.

“So here it sits, number 4,”
she says a bit boldly, a bit
hesitantly.
She retreats to under her covers,
squeezes her teddy bear to her breast
and remembers how soothing it felt
to suck her thumb
when she was little.

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