How to Read the Horoscopes

Tracing my life-long coffee affection/addiction, I can go as far back as a cold-water bedsit in old East Austin, seriously, back in the day. Serious roots.

That’s where I first experimented with a “French Press” coffee maker. For an occasional purist like myself, the French Press offers the easiest, most “pure” form of coffee extraction.

I’ve been doing this for at least 20 years, and I’m only on my third press pot. The last one has outlasted at least two kettles for boiling the water.

The way it works?

The French Press is a container, usually glass, with a coarse metal mesh plunger. Ground coffee is poured in, steeped in hot water, then the plunger goes down. Because I tend to use cheaper, more readily available blade grinders, there’s some fine-ground coffee that doesn’t get separated with that metal mesh, material not screened by the plunger. Winds up in the bottom of my coffee cup.

How to Read the Horoscopes

So, to read the horoscopes? It’s like coffee made with that French Press. There’s a little bit of murky, loose material floating in the bottom of the cup. As the coffee cools, the escaped grounds, the little bit of flotsam and jetsam that made it into my cup? As the coffee cools, that heavier material will settle along the bottom of the mug. Makes a great sludge. Good for gardening. Not so good to drink.

Like that coffee?

Reading my horoscopes takes a little bit of caution. Can’t swallow it all whole, there’s grounds and stuff that’s bitter, perhaps not easy to digest. Thin shards of bitter, used-up grounds that get caught in the teeth.

My horoscopes should be approached like that French Press coffee, not gulped, but savored for the exacting method of extraction, and enjoy the good parts, which, in turns out, are very good beause of the purity of methodology. But no, don’t just swallow it all, all at once. There’s some bitter grounds in there.

#horoscopes