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Chapter 109: The Publisher
The manuscript reached one hundred pages in April. One hundred pages written at 5:00 AM, forty-three minutes at a time, one and a half pages per morning, the accumulation producing—in the specific, daily, patient, bloom-speed way that everything at Bloom was produced—a document. Not a finished book. A document. The raw material that would, through editing and revision and the specific, publishing-industry, someone-other-than-the-writer process, become a book.
The one hundred pages contained: the introduction (the bloom described, the attention named, the practice introduced), three chapters (Chapter One: The Water—on preparation and the environment that precedes the cup; Chapter Two: The Grind—on the balance between consistency and humanity in the daily practice; Chapter Three: The Bloom—on the thirty-two seconds and why the waiting is the most important part), and the beginning of Chapter Four (The Pour—on the circles, the control, the faith that attention applied consistently produces quality).
One hundred pages of a barista writing about coffee the way a barista made coffee: slowly, with attention, with the hidden thing approaching at whatever temperature the hidden thing required.
“One hundred pages,” Jiwoo said. At the counter. Wednesday. The weekly financial review—which had expanded, since the book’s inception, to include a second category: the book’s progress, tracked in Jiwoo’s spreadsheet alongside the cafe’s revenue and the academy’s enrollment and the wholesale accounts and every other number that Jiwoo monitored because Jiwoo believed that “if it can be counted, it should be counted, and if it should be counted, it should be in the spreadsheet.”
“One hundred pages. Approximately 40,000 words. At the current pace—1.5 pages per morning, 9 pages per week—the manuscript will reach 250 pages in approximately—” She calculated. The Jiwoo calculation—instant, precise, the operational arithmetic that the cafe’s partner performed with the same fluency that the barista performed the pour. “—twenty-two weeks. October. The manuscript will be complete in October.”
“October.”
“October. The month that everything starts at Bloom. The month of the wrong order. The month of the competition. The month that—apparently—produces manuscripts.”
“October is the bloom month.”
“October is the bloom month. Which means the manuscript—the completed manuscript, the 250-page, ready-for-publisher document—will arrive in the bloom month. The coincidence is—”
“Not a coincidence.”
“Not a coincidence. The pace that the writing chose—1.5 pages per morning, the pace that the 5:00 AM window permits—produces completion in October. The pace was not calculated to reach October. The pace was the pace. And the pace reaches October because the pace is—the bloom’s pace. The thirty-two-second pace applied to the 250-page document. The patience that produces the cup produces the book.”
“The patience produces the book in October.”
“The patience produces the book in October. The question is: what happens to the book in October? The book needs—a publisher.”
“A publisher.”
“A publisher. The entity that converts a manuscript into a book. The entity that prints and distributes and markets and places on shelves. The entity that the barista does not have a relationship with because the barista’s relationships are with: coffee people, not book people.”
“I don’t know any publishers.”
“You don’t know any publishers. The professor knows publishers—academic publishers, the university-press kind. But the book is not an academic book. The book is—a coffee book. A philosophy-of-coffee book. A how-to-pay-attention-through-coffee book. The book needs—a trade publisher. A publisher who publishes books that non-academics read.”
“A publisher who publishes books that people read in cafes.”
“A publisher who publishes books that people read in cafes. The irony being: the book about the cafe read in the cafe. The circle completing.”
The publisher found the barista. Not the other way around. The publisher—a small, Seoul-based, independent press called Slow Press that specialized in what the publisher described as “books about practices: cooking, crafting, ceramics, the specific, hands-based, attention-required human activities that the digital world has not yet replaced”—found the barista through the Coffee Magazine article. The article from the scandal’s aftermath. The “Twelve Cups, One Philosophy” article that had described the graduates’ cupping event and that had used the word ‘관심’ untranslated and that had concluded with the sentence: “The patience was in the cup. I tasted it.”
The publisher’s name was Yoon Sera. No relation to the barista despite the shared surname—the Yoon being one of Korea’s common surnames, the shared name producing the specific, Korean, are-we-related-no-we-are-not exchange that common surnames generated. Sera was forty-one. A former magazine editor. The founder of Slow Press—a publishing house that had produced twenty-three books in five years and that had, in those twenty-three books, established a reputation for the specific, quality-over-quantity, attention-based publishing that matched the Bloom philosophy so precisely that the matching felt—designed.
“I read the article,” Sera said. At Bloom. Wednesday afternoon. The meeting arranged by Jiwoo (who had found Slow Press through a systematic search that Jiwoo described as “googling ‘Korean publishers slow craftsmanship coffee’ and seeing what came up”). Sera sat at the counter—the same counter where every significant conversation happened, the counter that was Bloom’s conference table and negotiating surface and the place where the cups were made and the truths were spoken. “I read the article and I thought: the person who produces the patience that the journalist tasted is a person who has something to teach. And the teaching is—a book.”
“The teaching is a book.”
“The teaching is a book. Not a recipe book—the world has recipe books. Not a technique manual—the world has technique manuals. A philosophy book. A book that teaches—the thing underneath the technique. The attention. The patience. The ‘관심’ that the article described and that the journalist tasted and that the reader—the reader of the article, sitting in their apartment, reading on their phone—wanted to taste too.”
“The reader wants to taste the attention.”
“The reader wants to taste the attention. The reader wants—the bloom. Not the coffee. The bloom. The thing that precedes the coffee. The thing that the coffee carries. The thing that the reader can learn through a book if the book teaches it correctly.”
“And the book teaches it correctly by—”
“By being the bloom. The book should read the way the bloom feels. Slowly. With patience. With the hidden thing at the end that the reader doesn’t expect and that the reader—discovers. The book should produce—the bergamot. The reading experience should produce the same revelation that the drinking experience produces.”
Hajin looked at Sera. The publisher who had walked into Bloom and who had, in three minutes of conversation, described the book more accurately than anyone—including the barista—had described it. The publisher who understood the bergamot without having been told about the bergamot. The publisher who knew that the book should be—the bloom in print.
“You know about the bergamot,” Hajin said.
“I don’t know about the bergamot. I know about the hidden thing. Every good book has a hidden thing. The thing that the reader discovers at the end that reframes everything they read at the beginning. The thing that makes the reader want to start the book again. The bergamot is—your word for it. My word for it is—the turn. The turn in the book that makes the book—alive.”
“The book should be alive.”
“The book should be alive the way the cup is alive. Not preserved—alive. Temporary but present. The reader reads the book and the book exists in the reading the way the cup exists in the drinking. When the reading is done, the book is—consumed. The information is inside the reader. The way the coffee is inside the drinker. The book becomes—part of the person.”
“The book becomes part of the person.”
“The way the bloom becomes part of the barista. Through practice. The reader reads. The reader practices. The reader makes the cup. The cup carries the teaching. The teaching becomes—the reader’s practice. Not the writer’s anymore. The reader’s.”
Hajin made her a cup. The Wrong Order. The automatic response—the barista’s response to a person who understood. The cup that said: you are the right person. The Wrong Order that had been made for Sooyeon on the first day and for every significant person since: the chairman, the professor, the graduates. The Wrong Order was the assessment cup. The cup that said: you matter to this counter.
Sera tasted. The jasmine at 67. The eyes—closing. The involuntary, the-cup-is-speaking, the-taster-is-listening response that the Wrong Order produced in people whose palates were capable of hearing. The warmth. The middle. The approach.
The bergamot at 58. The eyes—opening. The specific, there-it-is, the-hidden-thing-arrived response.
“The bergamot,” Sera said.
“58 degrees.”
“The turn. The hidden thing. The thing at the end.” She set down the cup. “I want to publish the book.”
“The manuscript isn’t finished.”
“The manuscript isn’t finished. The cup isn’t finished when the bloom starts. The bloom is the commitment—the water committed to the coffee, the publisher committed to the book. The finishing happens—after the commitment. The commitment happens—now. During the bloom. Before the cup is complete.”
“You’re committing during the bloom.”
“I’m committing during the bloom. Because the bloom tells me what the cup will be. The one hundred pages tell me what the 250 pages will be. The telling is—sufficient. The waiting is—the trust. The publisher trusts the writer. The writer trusts the practice. The practice produces—the book.”
“The practice produces the book.”
“In October. At the pace the practice requires. At the temperature the book requires. The publisher waits. The way the drinker waits for the bergamot. The waiting is—the publisher’s bloom.”
The contract was signed in May. Slow Press. The terms—modest by publishing standards, generous by cafe standards. An advance that Jiwoo described as “the equivalent of four months of Bloom’s academy tuition revenue, which is: meaningful for a cafe and ordinary for a book deal, the discrepancy telling us that the publishing industry and the cafe industry operate on different economic scales but the same attention scale.”
The contract specified: publication in January of the following year. Korean edition first. English translation to follow—the translation contracted to Sarah, the Korean-American language coach who had translated the WBC presentation and who would now translate the book. The same Sarah who had said: “The presentation says ‘attention’ and the cup means ‘관심.’ The judges hear the English. The judges taste the Korean.” The book would do the same—the English saying “attention,” the Korean meaning “관심,” the cup in the reader’s kitchen translating what both languages approximated.
“The book has a publisher,” Sooyeon said. At 3:00. Same seat. Wrong Order. The bergamot approaching. The conversation—the 3:00 conversation that held every development, the ritual container for the life’s news.
“The book has a publisher. Slow Press. The name being—”
“The name being perfect. Slow. The word that describes: the bloom, the attention, the practice, the book, the publishing process that will convert your 5:00 AM pages into a thing that sits on shelves.”
“Slow Press publishes Bloom.”
“Slow publishes Bloom. The slow publishing the bloom. The patience publishing the patience. The practice publishing the practice.” She sipped. “The title is still—”
“Bloom: The Art of Attention.”
“Bloom: The Art of Attention. The title that was written on a napkin. In January. At 3:00. During the Wrong Order.”
“The title that the bergamot produced.”
“The bergamot produces everything. The bergamot is—the generator. The hidden thing that generates the visible things. The cup generates the cafe. The cafe generates the academy. The academy generates the graduates. The graduates generate the community. The community generates the book. The book generates—”
“The book generates cups. In kitchens around the world. Cups made by readers who learned the practice from the book. Cups that carry the attention. Cups that produce—bergamots. In Portland and Tokyo and Sao Paulo.”
“Bergamots everywhere.”
“Bergamots everywhere. The hidden thing. Multiplied. Through pages.”
The writing continued. May into June into July. The 5:00 AM ritual—the forty-three minutes, the one and a half pages, the notebook filling at the bloom’s pace. Chapter Four completed (The Pour). Chapter Five begun (The Temperature—on why every degree matters and why the degree that matters most is the degree the drinker doesn’t notice). Chapter Six outlined (The Cup—on why the temporary thing is the thing worth paying attention to).
The writing changed the cafe. Not visibly—the menu was the same, the chalkboard was the same, the seven lines were the seven lines. The change was—internal. The barista who wrote at 5:00 AM arrived at the cafe at 5:50 with the specific, language-has-been-used, words-have-been-organized, writing-brain-active clarity that the morning writing produced. The writing sharpened the pour. The writing organized the attention. The writing made the barista more articulate—not in speech (the barista’s speech was the same, the same compressed, Bloom-standard, say-the-true-thing-in-the-fewest-words style) but in intention. The intention behind the pour was sharper because the writing had required the barista to describe the intention in words and the description had clarified the intention.
The writing and the pouring were—the same practice. Two expressions of the same attention. The hand holding the pen and the hand holding the gooseneck performing the same act: the controlled, circular, attention-based movement that extracted meaning from raw material. The pen extracted meaning from experience. The gooseneck extracted flavor from beans. Both required: the circles. The patience. The bloom.
The book was the bloom’s autobiography. Written by the bloom’s practitioner. At the bloom’s pace. In the bloom’s month.
October approached. The month that everything started. The month that the manuscript would be complete. The month that the book—Bloom: The Art of Attention—would move from the barista’s notebook to the publisher’s hands to the printer’s press to the shelf to the reader to the kitchen to the cup.
The cup that the barista would never make. The cup that the reader would make. The cup that would carry the attention from the page to the pot to the palate. The cup that would produce—the bergamot. In a kitchen that the barista would never enter. For a person that the barista would never meet. Through a book that the barista wrote at 5:00 AM, forty-three minutes at a time, one and a half pages per morning, in the kitchen of the green-door apartment while the wife slept and the daughter slept and the rosemary on the windowsill grew toward the light.
Same everything.
Including the book.
Including the mornings.
Including the approach of October—the month that bloomed.
Every day.
Like this.
Always.