Monkey Bring Tea

"Brigid?" Colm's voice rasped over chords dry as dust.

"Yes, my love?" Brigid leaned over and took Colm's hand. His eyes fluttered.

"Be a dear, would you, and open the shutters. Sunshine." He blinked slow.

"Of course, love." Her heart lurched at the sight of his bluest blues, flecked with gold and storm. She stood, letting his hand slip slowly from hers, the cool dryness electric against her fingers. She crossed a room full of tone and shade, a room that seemed to her in perpetual autumn twilight since the rude awakening of his diagnosis. Fitting, she thought, that Colm ever loved the fall. She opened the stained wood shutters. Worn, nacreous walnut under decades of varnish and beeswax. Built by Colm's own hands when he wore a younger man's coat.

Pure ingots of white gold light poured themselves over the floor and Colm's bed. He managed a smile at the sight, running a hand slowly through his stubbly salt-and-pepper hair. He insisted it be short, his patience had run out with maintaining the long locks from months ago. Too much work, not enough energy. The low embers that smoldered in his head and heart were just enough to get himself out of bed, some days. But not much else.

Brigid smoothed out her skirt, the wool scratchy and reassuring under her hands. She turned to look at Colm. She thought perhaps he might be up for some time on the patio listening to his favorite birds. She smiled back. "Window open too, my sweet?" She could see finches flitting amongst the trees along the back hedgerow. Yes, he would enjoy a sit-down on the terrace.

"Yes. I'm wanting to hear the songs."

She opened the window. The scent of lilacs zephyred into the room. Colm breathed deep, a gravelly sigh that loosened his chest. "Ah, lovely" he murmured. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, resting back against a walnut headboard carved in an array of stylized Irish elk and triskelions. The headboard was one of Colm's favorite pieces, and one of his earliest. His head sagged. A few dizzy seconds passed. Brigid thought he might be on the verge of fainting, but he raised his gaze to hers. She let out a breath she had not known she was holding. He smiled again.

"You okay, love? You look worried," he said.

"I'm tired, but okay. Worried about you," that worry tightening her voice.

"Ah, don't trouble yourself in such a way. Not much to be done at the moment."

The sun streamed through the window. A cozy heat rose from the stones of the floor. Colm struggled to the edge of the bed, Brigid quickly steadying him when he threatened to overbalance. His feet he placed on the stones, luxuriating in the warmth radiating up through his soles. Brigid wrapped her arms around his head and shoulders, drawing him to her. He breathed deep of her, a mixture of the sea and dewy roses that thrilled his heart with a burst of vigor. He looked up into her eyes, the emeralds that brought him home.

"To the terrace, love? With me?"

"Of course. No resistance from me, pulse of my heart. Here, take my hands and I'll help you up."

He did as she bade him, the journey a slow one as if he were struggling out of sand. Resting his head on her shoulder, he let her guide him to the glassy door that led out to the terrace. His usual scent of peat laced with wood shavings had changed since he had fallen ill. It was now tinged with wet clay and other things she could not name.  She found the combination to be simultaneously reassuring and unsettling.

They shuffled together, slow in the lowering sunlight, and sat down in oak chairs facing the slope down to the hedgerow. Colm huffed and sputtered a bit, catching his breath. Brigid moved her chair closer to Colm's, sat down, and took his hand. Silently they listened to the birds chorusing amongst themselves. Songs such as they sang made Colm feel that perhaps this storm would not end badly, that he and Brigid would sail through and get back to life.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he asked Brigid.
"Yes, my love. It is. I like watching your face when you hear the birds. It makes you happy, I can tell."
"Aye, it does, it does."

He held her hand and breathed in the lilacs and the grass, the sea and the roses. The world spun a few times more while they soaked up the waning sun.

"Brigid? Starting tomorrow, I should like a cup of tea every afternoon at this time." Brigid jumped a tiny bit.

"Certainly, dear. I'll have to get some, though, there's none in the cupboard."

"I'd like the one we used to drink when we first moved here. The one with golden in it's name. What was that, golden, golden..." his voice trailing off into a wheeze. He seemed genuinely upset that he could not recall the name.

"Golden monkey?" She laughed, and he could not help but chuckle.
"Yes, that's it. That's the one. Get some tomorrow?"
She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "That I will."

They both leaned back. He did not let go of her hand. She looked over, watching him watch the birds and clouds. Two rabbits frisked amongst the grass halfway up the hill.

"I'm thirsty, my love. And I'm scared." Colm did not look at her.

"Scared of what?" she asked.

"The treatment will be nasty, I think. All sorts of bad things could happen. I want to remember the taste of tea in case the drugs take away my tongue. I want to remember the taste of you." He turned his head, lit up yellow gold in the late afternoon light. She squeezed his hand and managed a small smile.

"I want you to remember that, too, my love. And you will." She kissed his hand. The rabbits scampered off to home. The light fell on the couple. Tomorrow they would have tea, storms be damned.

Tea and Coronation

August 6, 2012. Safe at home with the Dàgōng.*

Settling in after a semi-busy day hanging around with the Wee Lass. What an amazing thing to bear witness to the irrefutable knowledge that she is indeed my offspring. Went out to buy tea today, and ended up in a ceremony, just for us. If I had the presence of mind, I would have bowed before I sat down.

I can't set aside the notion that I should have bowed. There was no tea house door that demanded it as protocol, but still. To be a guest in what is after all a place of business is rare. Ah, that isn't quite right. The illusion of being a guest in those gray places is all too common. Market research has decreed it so, and perhaps I fall for it more often than not, a state of affairs that makes me sad and small.

But today, Wee Lass and I had good fortune in the tea shop. Not one, but two people with knowledge and enthusiasm engaged us in talking about, sampling and buying tea. The young lady who asked us how we were, what we were interested in, and sat down with us for tasting of samples. The joy of seeing a whole tub of fresh loose tea, and the invitation to smell the aroma. Wee Lass seemed to really dig it, if being somewhat shy about commenting. The owner arrived, and to my delight and surprise he remembered me from my one short visit to his shop months ago!

So there we were, a fine pair out for a day of sustenance, entertainment and the acquisition of small delights. We enjoyed tiny cups of green tea and black tea and oolong. The sort of thing I get a kick out of, but one in which you don't expect youngsters to truly enjoy.

But that Wee Lass, she has a wonderful knack of following a path of her own making. She wanted to taste the teas. She watched intently as the assistant and the owner brewed little cups and poured the samples. When I looked over at her, I was amused and delighted by the curiosity she radiated with her expression. I lifted the cups to breathe in the aroma; she closed her eyes and sniffed. I blew on the tea to cool it, and she did the same. We both sipped and swished and drank, savoring the tea and the moment.

It was wonderful. We chatted with the owner, who told us about the tea, and the farm in China where he gets it. We talked about green, black and oolong, sitting there surrounded by delicate porcelain tea kettles, fish and dragons carved of jade. We learned the price of some tea in China, backed up with anecdotes about the province of Fujian. My daughter professed her liking of Chinese green tea. And very much to my surprise, she declared the Ti Kwan Yin oolong to be good. I recalled that the name is a variation on the Chinese goddess Guanyin, sometimes translated as 'Iron Goddess of Mercy'. In a moment of fancy, I told myself that may not be an accident. Would it not be a wonderful thing to have associations with compassion and mercy?

Who expects a youngster to be interested in such things as good tea? Long ago as a child, on those rare moments when I managed to look up from my books or cease the questioning in my head for a few moments, I had inklings of the quirks that that would come to define my life. Later as a young man and adult, those inklings became full-blown knowledge, a knowledge that embarrassed me and led me to quietly hide it from the world.

But on an otherwise mundane afternoon, I entered a tea house of the moment as an ordinary man, and departed it as an emperor. As we stood to leave, I reflected on the confirmation that she is indeed the blood of my blood. A smart, beautiful diamond she is, and we shall have tea in the bamboo pavilion of my heart.

---
*I may be relying overly much on free translators, but to the best of my knowledge "Dàgōng" is a phonetic translation of a Chinese word for 'archduchess', which by extension would be the daughter of an emperor.

Weak Tea

There is a peculiar taste to tea brewed from the second or third pot on old leaves. Copper, fear, regret, blood: all things that pass over the tongue, sometimes choking them down.  Other times, swallowed with a sigh and dreaming of fatter times and headier brew.

How thin can it be cut? How slow can it be poured? The kettle heats, the water over the leaves, again and again in a Zeno's paradox of liquid. The second thinner than the first, the third thinner than the second.  There is no fourth cup. The spirit has not the resolve to even try, because the heart could not endure it. Staring down the prospect of a fourth cup from old leaves spikes the mouth with bitterness before the hand could think to raise such a travesty to the lips.

Yet...

There are days where bleary eyes and trembling hands consider such a thing.  Because the tea leaves can only be spooned out so far. Dividing half by half by half is absurd in the light of abundance, but abundance doesn't last. It gets lost under a mounting wall of bills. The cheap and plentiful becomes costlier and scarcer not because it ceases to exist; it is because the sluicing effects of money diminish when that revenue stream dries up. The flood becomes a trickle. The trickle becomes elusive.

It is the cold, grey light of diminishing that shines on the tea tin, pot, and cup. Mental calculus of how many more cups can be extracted from smaller amounts and repeated boilings.  There is metallic-sounding laughter in a far corner of the mind, with a voice saying "Two brews, same leaves, means no new tea bought until the end of the month." This offers cold comfort.

This is what it comes to, sometimes. Weak tea, staring at the bottom that is not usually seen. Not usually, in those weeks of Fat Tuesdays. But the tea gets drunk, all the same, because that is all there is in the cup.  That, and the memory of strength.

Happy Friday: The Nice Files

Let's just get it out there that this week has been a stinker.  Not catastrophic, not my-house-just-fell-into-a-volcano kind of bad, but a stinker all the same.  A big, greasy wurst of Too much to do, wrapped in a charred pastry Blanket of Angst, topped off with a nasty dollop of Too Many Bills.  Oh, and I was going to be home later than usual.  So it is safe to say that I was all prepared to get home, change into my sweatpants and hide under the pillows on my bed.

Fortunately, there was an alternative waiting for me, times two.

NICE THING #1:  The tea I ordered a week ago, shipped the cheap, slooooow way, finally arrived and was perched on my doorstep.  Hooray!  I likes me some India black tea, of the Assam lineage, and now I have fresh malty/smoky/brisky to warm me up these chilly mornings.

EVEN NICER THING #2:  Earlier this month, I commented on this post by Unmitigated, and made a remark about a book in the background of the photo.  Well, to my pleasant surprise, the lurvely and thoughtful Mary replied to my comment and offered to send me the book if I would read it.  So today, in my mailbox, was the package containing the book*.  How about THAT, dear ones?  That is all kinds of nice, and that made my day.  In New Orleans, they would call that a 'lagniappe', a little something extra, which warms the heart.  If you can, drop by her place and say hello.  Thanks, Mary!

*"The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller" in case you wanted to know.  Yeah, yeah, I'm a geek. 

Sound and (Re)Vision

It's been a strange week here in the militantly bucolic Republic of Gumbostan.  A veritable seesaw of angst and elation, laced with a soupçon of contentedness, topped off with a small schmear of being completely in the middle of everything.  The crowning moment was the Mexican standoff in my backyard, between two cats and the rotund groundhog that lives under my shed.  The cats were crouched in the flowerbeds, triangulating on the shed.  The groundhog hardly dared to show his face.  It was so surreal I decided they deserved a toast in the form of a wee dram of Scotland's finest.*

Later, I decided to try a little experiment and turn off all noise-making devices.  More accurately, I turned off the noise-making portions of the devices.  This act of rebellion included the streaming audio on my trusty laptop**, which many of you may know is akin to taking away the cell phone from a securities trader.  I don't often do this.  Silence is something that I want and fear in equal measure.  Without aural input, I am too often forced to face up to the noise in my head.


As anyone who has been there can tell you, the noise in my head sometimes ain't pretty.


Tonight I felt the pull.  I was listening to the radio for a while but something clicked over and I was seized by a sudden desire for quiet.  It must have been the end result of excess input, where the desire for sonic rest overwhelmed my fear of listening to the "freq" in my head.  So off with the radio.  I picked up a book***, some cushions and headed put onto the porch to sit and exercise my eyeballs.


The weather here has been great this week, and today was the best yet.  I know some of my bloggy friends****  have been dealing with rain of Biblical ferocity, so I have been extra thankful that it has been so sunny and comfortable here just outside of Mobtown.  And the a/c is off tonight!  Extra special in the land of wet-hot-towel-around-the-face summer days.


Out on the porch, I sat and read my book, quietly, not unlike Ferdinand***** and his flowers.  The breeze was blowing and it was almost completely serene.  It was then I noticed more of the sounds I normally don't hear because I'm so busy listening to the radio or TV.  Crickets.  Birds.  Leaves brushing on leaves.  The faint sounds of traffic from nearby streets, which really were more soothing than annoying.


Later, inside the house, with the windows open,  I made a pot of tea.  The act itself was very Zen, charged with a 'wabi sabi' vibe running through it.  The simple acts of filling the pot with water and getting out the teabags (it was for a big pot of iced tea) had their own simple and unique sounds.  I especially enjoyed the dry crackle of the paper surrounding the tea bags.  It sounded just loud enough against the low hiss of the gas flame on the stove and the crickets outside.  It sounded like just what I needed.


So as I let the glass go empty, cocking an ear to the wind outside my window,  I felt my mind empty as well.  Not empty as in my brains fell out; empty as in cares and concerns, stresses and worries, thoughts collapsing under their own weight in such a huge pile, they drained away.

"The thirty spokes unite in the one center; but it is on the empty space for the axle that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out from the walls to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space that its use depends. Therefore, whatever has being is profitable, but what does not have being can be put to use."  (From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, as translated by James Legge.)

This came back to me, in that moment of crumpling the tea bag papers in my hand.  The rasp, the crunch, the dry slither of the material on my fingers.  I tossed the ball of paper across the kitchen, aiming for the trashcan.  Watching it arc into the container, I knew in that instant, even of only for an instant, I had achieved peace of mind.

It was beautiful.

*In this case, represented by the Isle of Skye's gift to humanity, 10-year old Talisker.  C'est bon, c'est tout!  And to my friend Rich, he who bestowed upon me a generous gift in the form of 10-year old Laphroaig:  Just a little comparison tasting, to keep myself calibrated. Cheers!
**Surprisingly, the jonesin' isn't that bad.  I only shake...a little.

***"How to Read a French Fry" by Russ Parsons.  A good read, but it made me hungry. 
****Janie, Stiletto, here's hoping you weathered the storms! 
*****Ferdinand the Bull is probably my favorite childhood book, EVAH.  I have a copy that I read to Wee Lass almost every weekend she is with me, and sometimes she reads it to me.  I am blessed. 

Teapotta and Fugue in mE Minor

Unloading the dishwasher almost made me weep. I had washed my teapot, by machine.

This is no great thing, not on the order of a car crash or horrible elevator accident, but it caused me a great deal of consternation. I haven’t a clue why exactly, other than to say that standing there in the chalky bluish glow of the overhead fluorescents, in the middle of the kitchen with my little black teapot cradled in my hands, I was overcome by a fit of melancholy.

This was on the heels of a busy day after a long week, with another long week ahead. I was weary to the bone, and trying to keep from being pecked to death by the ducks of household management. I had looked for my teapot earlier, a little perturbed that I could not recall what I had done with it. I was too preoccupied and angsty about unfinished tasks that I abandoned the idea of a full-scale hunt.

I know what happened, now. It was the night before, and I was at the sink working my way through an unkempt pile of dishes to sort them for hand or machine. Ordinarily, I would have washed the teapot by hand, but I was robotically wiping glasses and utensils and automatically placing them in the dishwasher. In my fugue state, the teapot was just another lump of ceramics, to be dealt with expediently and quietly. So into the dishwasher it went.

You should know, dear readers, that I haven’t really washed my teapot in years. I use it every day, and it was a constant cycle of fill-heat-steep-pour-repeat. Always in motion, and engorged with boiling water, washing seemed unnecessary. There is a also a school of thought that believes a good teapot takes years of use to “age” and make great tea, and to wash it is a small heresy. It would disturb the patina. I do not necessarily subscribe to that theory, especially given that my teapot is a little, unprepossessing number glazed inside and out in glossy black. It is not one of those fantastic Japanese or Chinese cast iron or clay dragons (which I still covet), it is a humble bit of pottery made in production in England. It was given to me many, many years ago as a gift. I have loved it ever since. It was a bit like finding a lost puppy when I pulled it out of the dishwasher. I was so relieved to find it had survived the buffeting of the machine.

I felt at home, really at home, holding that teapot in my hands like a long-lost relative. It has been too long since I have had feelings like that, and the bittersweet pangs tightened my throat and made my eyes glisten. We are the little things that ground us: books, a string of prayer beads, teapots: all are bearers of memory and comfort, the subtle avatars of the parts that make up our whole.

Small, quiet, humble: it is my teapot, and it looks good. It is home.