Making coffee first thing in the morning is my duty and pleasure. For coffee, I am a bit of a perfectionist: I want, we – Sarah and I – want, the best. I got us a superb Melitta coffee maker for Christmas, as a joint present. Usually, Sarah joins me at the time of starting brewing. I get up around 6:30 (GMT) and she about an hour or so later.

This morning I was thinking about Melitta, who invented the coffee filter in Dresden, and by extension, our visits to Dresden in Saxony. Sarah walked in, as ever smiling and being the love of my life. Then followed this dialogue:

“Good morning Julian!

• Good morning my love, coffee almost ready,
• What are you thinking of, while you make coffee?
• I was in Dresden for a minute or so…
• In the past, in the future, or now?
• I guess all that, at once, in the past about Melitta, and then Paulus, in the near present, our visits there, and a bit about future visits: I want to go back!
• Are you more in the past or in the future?
• I can’t easily answer that my love, I have always lived in the three tenses (we were, we are, we will…)
• Cheat! You are supposed to know!!”

The prompt says:

“Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?”

I think, now, that there is no “why” for those of us who never leave the past, live firmly in the present, and keep the future in mind.

More about Melitta.

About Paulus in Dresden: