It was almost too embarrassing to ask. I had ordered a cup of tea — chai decaf — and baklava. In a place named Filo, how can you not order the baklava? I was feeling pretty international, like a character in a Mahfouz novel or something. Very cultured. The thing was, I did not want the tea to be cooled off before it had fully steeped, so I did not want to put the milk in. (Yes, we can have a discussion about putting milk in tea another time.) So, I had to ask for a little cup to put the milk in. Precious.
But come on, I’m sitting in a cafe, having tea and baklava. Blogging. Feeling good. I want to get this right, and it is the little things that make it right. Much of the time, I deal in good enough, git er done land. Some of the time I live in the land of minutia. It is only very rarely that I get to inhabit the land of a few simple things done well and without a fuss. Such is the case with tonight’s sit at the cafe.
My roommate in college maintained that this appreciation of the simple pleasures, along with the cluelessness of youth, were the themes of Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen.” His evidence for this was that the song contained the lyric “The Cuervo Gold, the fine coat rub in, make tonight a wonderful thing.” ‘The fine coat rub in’ is, of course, the practice of finishing wood with an extra step, rubbing it with fine sandpaper and giving it a final coat of whatever. This makes the finish better in a way that may not be immediately obvious but will be perceived by the connoisseur. A nice theory, but the lyric is actually “The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian.” This refers, of course, to the rich coffee blend proffered by Juan Valdez. In either case, the point is the same: it’s the simple things in life that give the greatest satisfaction.