from a coffee bean's perspective

You are the air you breathe

You are the Evian water you drink

You are the Oreo cookie

You are the Pringles Macho Nacho chips

You are the Mustard and Rosemary Lamb with tomato chutney and side salad

The old saying, 'You are what you eat' couldn't be more true.

And yet you are more than that...

If you can tag every single molecule that goes into and out of your body, the dynamism of molecular exchange between you and the environment would be astounding, and the distinction of the uniquely you starts to dissipate. If you are to trace the entire life-journey of a single carbon atom, it will be an amazing voyage.

Hi, i'm a carbon-14. i lead an idyllic life floating in the atmosphere. One day i was minding my own business when i got sucked into a leaf stomata and forced into bonding with 5 other carbon-14s. Not that i mind that much, they were great guys. We eventually got our own bachelor pad in a cool underground potato. But that didn't last long. Our bachelor pad potato got sliced and deep fried into Macdonald's fries. Then we got introduced to this Ronald guy through his gut. We met lots of other Carbon dudes in their own circle of friends in the liver, and we bumped into some rather sour carbon stuck with those snobbish oxygen and hydrogen punks in the blood stream and he cursed and swore that one day we'll end up in the same fate as him. We got a temporary abode in the thigh muscle, but one day Ronald, intending to impress a date, decided to go jogging. That totally screwed up our plans and these burly enzyme guys barged in and broke us all up. And it was downhill from then on. i got coupled with some weirdo nitrogen nerd and got locked up back in the liver. When i finally managed to free myself, i got into bad company with some of those oxygen snobs and hydrogen punks and before i know it, they betrayed me to some bouncer guy and i got expelled right back out into the atmosphere. Oh well, just my luck. Think i'll go find some mountain to hide in and come back out in a grand explosion a million years later.

Our body is a mosaic of atoms descended from the beginning of time, in transit.

We are the dust of stars.

That inch of hair came from last month's focaccia.

That new bulge of muscle was that delicious chicken backside last week.

That earwax used to be part of Spinelli's Philly cheesecake.

That additional curve in your butt was contributed by last wednesday's lovely Tiramisu.

That clot in your artery was sponsored by yesterday's fried carrot cake...

The breakdown of the physical form of food and the assimilation of the basic components into a totally new structure, contributing to the larger scheme in the form of a human being echoes the very essence of Picasso's aesthetic beliefs. Analytical cubism is the art of taking a three-dimensional object, break it down to its aesthetic essence of lines and colour, and through different perspectives, reinterpret those lines and colour and reconstruct these elements. The art of deconstruction, interpretation and reassimilation is a good challenge to any artist willing to acquire a trained mind. Picasso would have been a great reductionistic scientist, too bad he chose Art, probably to allow the support of more mistresses. So there, i have established a link between theoretical Art and reductionist Science.

They say scientists are machines that converts coffee into theories.

Then humans as a whole must be the realised dream of every coffee bean. For it is through us that a coffee bean can achieve so much more. The coffee bean that painted Mona Lisa. The coffee bean that conquered Mt. Everest. The coffee bean that invented the atomic bomb. The coffee bean that went to the moon...

In the eyes of every coffee bean, we are the ingenious vessels that make all things possible. And our very existence has just become all the more justified and meaningful. For those still searching for the meaning of life and have miraculously escaped those ever-on-the-lookout evangelical eyes, how's this for a choice?

PS. to the discerning people familiar with the periodic table: even though naturally-occurring carbon exists mostly as carbon-12, the rare radioactive carbon-14 is also taken up during photosynthesis in proportion to it's natural occurrence, hence creating the basis of the radiocarbon-dating technique. Choice of carbon-14 in the story-plot is purely personal and does not represent any biasness in proportion of carbon-14 existing in your body.