The evils of caffeine

Closely related to the whole napping-is-evil thing is that caffeine is evil too. One vicious cycle feeds into the other, mandelbrot-style, until life is pocked by bursts of insomnia, wiredness, crashing, naps, wired naps, crashing insomnia, and dreaming about insomnia and waking up from naps and being wired.

In college caffeine was a kind of necessary evil. It is only in the past couple of years that I've come to like coffee - only as I discovered things like La Colombe, the New York Times, and pretty girls who like coffee. Now I really like coffee. It's a part of life. There's little disconnect between the aroma of coffee and the feel of books and newspaper. When I taste 'coffee', my mind tastes 'smart', and I'm a man of the wor(l)d.

Pop is similarly set deep in experience. It tastes good, sure. It's sugary sweet. But moreso it tastes like my youth, and like summer, like the REM green tour or ballgames at the Vet, or picnicing. The taste of pop is comes with an American appeal, one that's familiar, innocent and likable.

So while napping is a bad habit, caffeine is more insidious. Not napping becomes another kind of habit: it might be tough to make the transition, but napping and not-napping are reasonable substitutes. Not caffeine, though, means a loss of me.