One might never finish adequately describing a cup of coffee. Yet it is a liberating task: it gives us back the world we live in. It works most effectively on the things we may not usually think of as material for philosophy: a drink, a melancholy song, a drive, a sunset, an ill-at-ease mood, a box of photographs, a moment of boredom. It restores this personal world in its richness, arranged around our own perspective yet usually no more noticed than the air.