A 3 Hour Avocado Toast
Have you ever taken 3 hours to eat avocado toast and sip coffee, in public, while alone? If not, I suggest you try it. You might think avocado toast would get soggy and your coffee cold, but it was perfectly delightful. The bread held up with its weight of grains and seeds, and the coffee was not piping hot, but remained pleasantly sippable at room temperature; warm in my mouth and palatable. A 3 hour avocado toast and coffee is nothing like eating a dreadful bowl of soup after it has lost its heat. A 3 hour avocado toast, in public, while alone and in Mexico - well, it’s luxurious.
What did I do for 3 hours, by myself, in public, alone, in Mexico, with an avocado toast and coffee? I took the smallest, most perfect bites of my food; each bite composed of the individual elements that decorated the weighty, dense, bread. Each bite was a symphony of flavor - creamy avocado, oily arugula, bacon, the thinnest slice of a Persian cucumber, red onion and jalapeño. It was pure romance.
As I ate, in the absence of time, I watched the light reflection of plants dance around on the ground beneath my table. Beneath my feet plants swayed; a tango of branches and leaves that used the ground as its dance floor. As the sun moved, I watched the sunlight dance up the building in front of me, the branch dipping the leaf - deeply and slowly - it wasn’t lust, it was intimate. It was love.
The coffee, well, the dirty chai, was flirty in my mouth and creamy, what with its complementary nut cookie on the side. Normally, in 5 quick gulps the coffee would be done and in one bite the cookie would have ceased to exist, but not that day. That day each sip of coffee matched each bite of avocado toast; the perfect first date which would end in a second one. The cookie; the sweet decadance of powdered sugar coated my mouth, my lips. And, well, you might have guessed it - I saved those 3 miniature bites for last.
Over the course of the 3 hours, the waiter was kind enough to keep bringing me water. There was no rushing, no time limit for him or for me. It was hot, even in the shade, and I had just spent the last 6 days donating and packing up 21 years of my life in New York. A friend told me that as soon as I left New York time would not move as quickly and he was right.
In this moment, on a hot day in Mexico, it seemed as though time no longer existed; a full stop for avocado toast and coffee. A recognition of devotion to what would be my new life. Food had a taste, coffee too. A renewed belief in romance and light. The acknowledgement that life has its own vibrant flavors, like luxury and love, when bathed in the grace of time.