Coffee and Rye
Baked & Wired is my favorite place to get coffee in the entire world. Since my sophomore year in high school, I’ve been frequenting the place, and I never get tired of it. Whatever roast they use for their iced coffee, it’s ensconced my heart in their wonderful location on Thomas Jefferson Street in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The walk from the Rosslyn metro across the Key Bridge, crossing another six blocks east is one I love to take, and I’m quite certain said trips have given the spot several hundred of my dollars. The other day I was down there, however, I didn’t feel quite right just leaving money before I left. I felt like I needed to give something back that meant as much to me as all the times I had come here before. So I looked at the “Lend one, leave one,” bookshelf present in the back seating area connected to the bathroom, wall adorned with doodles, sayings, and commemorations on paper napkins, and I knew what I could do. I knew what I would leave behind as a thank you to the staff, the regulars, and the space, but also to those who would discover it and come to love it as much as myself.
I must tell you, all those years that I’ve been going for pastries and the perfect cup of joe, my life has been pretty volatile. Tenth grade is the year I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and its manifestations have affected me every single day since then. I’ve been in some dark places, places most people don’t come back from unless they make a mistake, but there are a few things out there that I directly attribute to why I’m still alive and writing today. The very first thing that comes to mind is J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The story of Holden Caulfield helped me understand that I wasn’t the only person in the world with these dreadful feelings that seemed to play over and over again in a loop deep within my mind. I figured that maybe someone like myself will come through those double glass doors again, pick up this book, and it’ll help save them like it did me.

Below are the blurbs I left in that copy, inked on some blank stickers I had lying around that are quite hard to peel away or destroy.

“You are in a very special, very wonderful place. The people here work hard, the coffee is always good, the pastries always sweet, and the life here is present in spades. Love the coffee shop that finds you, and it will love you back.”

“To the readers of this book, what you hold in your hands is arguably the most important book in the world… to me, that is. I read this book in my 10th grade English class, not knowing that what was in the process of coming to a head in my mind was a severe case of clinical depression. I felt so incredibly alone, filled with thought that can only be described as, “a damp, drizzly November in my soul,” and I believe no one felt the same as myself. Then I read this book. The words of J.D. Salinger still ring clear as day and at the front of my mind, and Holden’s story is, in my opinion, what helped make me the person I am today. Holden’s story is probably one of the reasons that I didn’t go through with killing myself during the Christmas of that year. As this book travels from the Baked & Wired shelves to those of you own personal, temporary library, I can only hope that it lands in the hands of those who need it most, just a I did.
-Nikolas”

