How To Have The Perfect Morning

Last week I experienced a moment of pure matitunal bliss as I sat at a cafe table on ol' Trade Street in downtown Greer.

I will tell you simply and plainly how you can have the same pure blissful moment. A perfect morning is a simple thing to achieve, if you know the recipe.

The first thing to do is to wait for a crisp, clear winter morning in which the sunshine can break through the cold and penetrate into your fat and muscles. If you're in the North, you might have to do this in late fall or early spring. The wait should be no big thing. After all, do you not wait for the sourdough yeast, the beer batch, the plum tree?

Once the right morning is found, get yourself a cup of piping hot black coffee. It cannot have cream or sugar, for that would soften the hard edge of the experience, which is what makes it most wonderful. Did we not just say "crisp" and "clear" to describe the morn? Keep your coffee so as well. It must also be piping. As in piping hot. You are the sacred bowl into which this experience is to be poured; it will be perfectly mixed if the sun is warm, the air is ice cold, and the coffee very hot. The clash of elements and temperatures will mix the whole into a cozy but wakeful perfect median.

The binding ingredient in this recipe for a perfect morning is the smoke. Your pipe will be warm, the smoke cool. Here is what you must load into your pipe on this morning: a perfect virginia/perique blend. If you don't know what that is, search out a lighter Navy flake. The clean saltiness and wakeful spice of a virginia/perique is what will exalt this morning. It could have been a good morning, but now it's so much more glorious: this will be a morning to be good on.