Good morning. I’m writing this late at night because in our home, we brew a large pot of strong coffee, put it in the fridge and then just drink it over ice. We’re not connoisseurs, we just want the drug to hit in the morning when it’s time to get things moving.
Laura is already asleep. I stayed up to watch the spectacular Knicks’ loss and then, as I was preparing for bed, remembered that the coffee pot was empty and Laura had asked me to brew a fresh one before I went to sleep.
I was playing Gem Fusion on my phone as the coffee brewed. If I’d been more strategic, I would have set the pot to brew before I performed my evening ablutions, but my brain lately has been a hapless substitute teacher presiding over a rowdy kindergarten class. I heard an ominous sizzling. GODDAMMIT HOW!
I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter. What was the matter was that I had, once again, not lined up the filter holder cup correctly. I don’t feel like explaining it. But if you don’t ka-chunk this thing properly into place, then another piece doesn’t get properly pushed up and the coffee can’t drip down through the pot so it pools on top of everything and makes a big mess before spilling out all over the counter.
I truly don’t know how, but I’ve done this maybe 1 out of every 5 times I brew a pot. I think about it every time, and every time I’m certain I’ve set it up correctly. But far too often I have not. I think it might be the post coffee ground dump even-out-the-grounds jiggle I perform.
When something goes wrong, my tendency is to blame myself and think about what I should have done differently to produce a more desirable outcome. But I’ve done this wrong enough times that I think there is a design flaw with the Cuisinart.
But that’s not my point. My point in sharing this is that as the shame rose up into my cheeks and ears, I thought: “I am losing so much aura right now.”
I didn’t grow up speaking this way. I learned it from the youth on TikTok. I feel obtrusive thinking in these terms, on my own, with no one watching but my own conscience. What sort of deficient adolescence did I have that I feel inexorably drawn to build out my vocabulary that the next generation has developed precisely to box me out of their lived experience?
I like their language, though. Oh sweet Lord above. I just googled something to look up some other examples and realized that aura farming is Gen Alpha slang. I had automatically attributed it to Gen Z. I’m so far removed. Holy mackerel. Good golly. Skibidi toilet. Baby Gronk rizzing up Livvy Dunne. Sheesh! Tuff.
Anyway - in bungling my coffee making for truly the twentieth time out of the hundred times I’ve used this thing to brew coffee - I really did lose a lot of aura. Aura is aura. Your aura is like…the mythical version of you, the you that is refracted by all of your fellow beings perceiving you.
Aura farming is bad. Aura farming is peacocking. Aura farming means you are strutting about in a way that you think looks cool, making a conscious effort to instill in others the belief that you are based af. But in needing to appear based, you actually lose aura, and that is cringe. But by accepting that you part of you will always be cringe, you can actually become more based. Yin and yang.
I cleaned up the hot mess and brewed the pot correctly. That’s what was happening while I was writing this. I have gained and lost aura in radical quantities over the years. When I was 17 driving through Wendy’s with my friends and Wendy handed me the tray of drinks and one of the Frosty’s tipped over and my hand shot out and caught the tumbling cup and then immediately flipped it back upright so nothing would spill - I gained aura. In first grade during story time when I raised my hand to go to the bathroom (might have been during Strega Nona) and stood up and a big fart tooted out of my butt - I lost aura.
It comes and goes. So do we. I’m going to bed.