How To Drink A Chai Latte

 

 

What you do is, you have a cold, rainy day. Then you put on a grey overcoat and trudge along on a gritty city sidewalk with motorcars hissing past you spewing up storm drainage. You shudder and pull up your collar around your reddening face, feeling a sudden kinship with the Londoners. A wicked black sports car bears down on the boulevard, and beyond the tinted windowpanes you can barely spot one of your Arab friends downing a swallow of coffee in a to-go cup.

That's when your whole day changes. Across the street your dim reflection wavers in the cafe window. A quick evaluation of the traffic flow and you're dodging through the asphalt jungle, bound for that jingling door.

And when you step into the smell of cappuccino and espresso, you know what you want. A chai latte. So you get one. Shot of vanilla. Cream on the top. Only one thing left to do now.

The Eternal Golf Course

Am I the only one who sees The Eternal Golf Course?

I'll just be bumming along and then suddenly, there it is in my mind's eye. The Eternal Golf Course.

Now, I've been surfing the net for the past forty-five minutes, and I still haven't found a picture that looks anything like it. So far this shot that they call "Westminster Abbey" comes the closest, but it's still a measly substitute for The Eternal Golf Course. What this picture almost gets right is the mood. The Eternal Golf Course has the most profound atmosphere. It's overcast and misty, but the mist is whiter than what you see here, and a whole heck of a lot thicker, as in you can't see the sky, or much of anything really. And yet, it's not a suffocating mist. It may be thick, but it's gentle and cool. Much less depressing than this picture, although I have nothing against this picture. I actually have this thing for depressing landscapes, and "Westminster" here is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. But it's just not The Eternal Golf Course, you know?

The Eternal Golf Course is incredibly well-groomed. The grass is the healthiest, greenest grass I've ever seen, a much deeper green than the grass in this picture. It's thick and lush and beautiful... a little too thick and lush and beautiful for a golf course, to be honest; I almost decided to call it The Eternal Rich Person's Lawn, but then I wondered whether Eternal Rich People wouldn't prefer a shorter lawn too, so I went back to calling it The Eternal Golf Course, since there really isn't any title that can do this place justice. All I can usually make out in The Eternal Golf Course is a large evergreen tree, something like a white pine except bigger and fuller, in the right foreground, and then a barely discernible backdrop of a thick green wood, which quickly fades into the mist. Some times I think I see a hedge or even some sort of marble gate, which leads me to believe there might be a manor nearby. It is so quiet there, and yet you feel like someone has been around, caring for the place, maybe even an entire staff of someones, which somehow doesn't take away from the exhilarating aloofness of the atmosphere. Everything gives off the feeling of being just huge. This hugeness isn't intimidating, though: it's amazingly soothing. You want to just stand there and soak it up, the power, the presence of The Eternal Golf Course. It's indescribable.

From time to time I try to describe The Eternal Golf Course to my colleagues, but scarcely do I begin putting words to my vision before the vision disintegrates, leaving only words behind... cheap, flimsy words that convey nothing of what I have seen.