Easter, 2007 [April 8, 2007]

Dear Colleague:  

    Starbucks and Steep-and-Brew are coffee shops I visit every day. Coffee makes me feel nurtured, as does the ambience of these places, which, during term time, are filled with students. I am struck, first of all, by how generously they tip. Wisconsin students are not affluent. Many are on government loans and work part-time; yet they may order a four-dollar latte and put a one-dollar bill into the tip jar. The latte is a fortifier, put to one side as they study textbooks and take notes. Studying in small groups of two to three is popular. Music to my ears is to overhear them discuss the finer points of Shakespeare or mathematics. I feel they are a gift to me, put into the world so that I can drink at the fountain of life.

    That's when the term is in session. During the long holidays, State Street empties out, including the coffee shops. The regulars are left alone, of whom I am one. What a sorry sight we make! Rather than twos and threes talking away, the regulars are old and alone, their faces a bleak mask, their shoulders drooping slightly under time's burden. Newspapers are their salvation. They don't buy the newspapers. Rather they forage around for a page here, a page there, or they wait hawk-eyed in their chair until they espy the departure of a client who has left his paper behind. They then spring forward to claim their catch of the day. When these modern foragers have collected a bundle, they return to their tables and there spend hours reading them from beginning to end, including the advertisement pages, which offer discount coupons, or they seek out the crossword puzzles and work on them. A few homeless people make the coffee shops their home: they use the rest room, find a comfortable armchair and slump into them, eyes-closed for an hour or two. The management leaves them alone unless they snore or smell.

    Lonely men appear to outnumber lonely women. But there are a few and they appear to be better off economically. This I can tell from their dress and from the more expensive drinks they order. They also look more desperately alone. One middle-aged woman with bulging eyes behind thick glasses always orders a vanilla cappuchino. She never reads but rather devotes her whole attention to her drink. She copes with the topped cream first, using the straw to shovel it to her mouth and then sucking it in with a gentle slurping sound. This takes a while, until she reaches the cappuchino. Ah, that's pure bliss—her cheeks inflating and deflating until the last dollop disappears from the bottom of the glass.

    I am one of these characters. I can describe them because I am right there with them day after day. The cappuchino woman needs only lift her head to see me, a couple of yards away, drinking my "tall" coffee and reading a book, using a pencil to underline a passage here and there. A retired professor at loose ends? Poor guy, he must miss his admiring students. Why do I have no respect for "mes semblables, mes frères"? The fact is, I don't. Self-knowledge—the knowledge that I am one of them—doesn't help. At work, I suppose, is just plain old sin, the human defect we are all born with and that only a few saints can overcome.

    One reason why I don't want to move away from campus is that, surrounded by the young whose faults are hidden by their pleasing exterior, I can delude myself into thinking that I am a lover of humankind, that I am a good person. Has God, seeing my incurable weakness, provided me with this kindergarden setting so that I will not be tested beyond my capacity?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu