#20/365 Paintings 2013

Gosh, I’m no expert, but living inside the shade of the coffee tree — in cozy pod families — with the occasional balmy breeze — lifting the leaves to symphonic notes… sounds pretty nice to me. In fact, I wonder if Peet’s coffee invented it’s classical-music-atmosphere-brand from the lives of beans in trees?

One day everything changed for the beans. There were popping sounds and the drip of men’s sweat heavy on their little coffee bean bodies. Peace was broken. Then came the agonizing pull — their belly buttons, legs, arms, skins — tossed aside like lumps of clay into a basket on a dusty abandoned road. An old pirates ship as far as they were concerned. Drowning in coffee bean strangers, they couldn’t find their families. Everybody was screaming. Some yelled in Kona, others in Columbia. They suddenly wished they had buckled down and learned each other’s languages instead of being lazy beans in trees. Maybe they would’ve found their families if they had.

Dramatic? Maybe to us. But beans are durable and well tempered. After the initial trauma, they were just very sleepy. Exhausted from the separation anxiety from their tree homes and unable to fully process that life would be very different — they took a siesta.