%title Tea
## All the places I'll never go
> [Skip every other shot, no matter how alluring.](https://cohost.org/victoria-scott/post/1079705-all-the-places-i-sti)
I will freely admit that I am a digital packrat. It's not something that I'm proud of, though neither is it something that I'm ashamed of. That's not to say that it's value neutral — I certainly have feelings about it, most of which are tied to the importance of words (99% of what I keep are words, though there are a few A/V things that will touch a nerve for me) — just that there's no particular judgement involved.
The one thing I do keep around like a packrat, however, is tea. I'm a *huge* fan of pu'er, oolong, black (or "red") tea, and even if I don't I don't drink it every day, it's always a large part of my life in terms of seeing it, smelling it, simply being near it. There was a brief period where I thought I might get into collecting teaware, but eventually, I settled down into a few pieces that I use often and then a bunch I wound up with and never use. You can see a few above.
a friend asked maddy: why do you drink tea?
maddy said: i like it. it's tasty, it makes me feel good.
the friend said: well, that's dumb.
Included in the first two two pictures are two ceramic animals, both with a head in raw pottery and a matte glaze body. These are called tea pets, and for a lot of folks, they're merely a curiosity. For some, if you soak them in cold water before your tea session, pouring a bit of hot water or tea on them will cause them to spout a thin stream for a moment as the air temperature within raises.
These are pertinent to tea drinking mostly when it comes to *gong fu* style, wherein one brews tea in several small steeps, perhaps 10-15. The proportion of tea to water is much higher, and as such, steep times are much shorter, ranging from ten seconds at the beginning of a session to a minute at the end. The amounts of tea produced are also much smaller: the *gaiwan* shown above in the picture on the left, the one with the lid, is maybe 110ml, much of which will be taken up by tea as it expands, and thus each of the cups on the left hand side, will contain maybe 20-40ml of tea.
maddy went and drank tea.
the friend asked: why do you drink tea?
maddy said: i don't know
the friend said: well, that's dumb
The benefits of this are not only that one gets to experience the tea over time — with each steep, the profile will change, and what may start out astringent with plenty of *huigan*, that bitterness that transmutes into sweetness, may open up into a smooth, comforting, caramel-y humus — but it also turns the act of drinking tea into part of the experience.
You lift the kettle and pour the hot water into the *gaiwan* sit and think while it steeps for however long, then you hold the lid of the *gaiwan* just slightly askew with the knuckle of your index finger while you hold the rim with thumb and your other fingertips and pour it into the *chawan*, the fairing glass that allows the tea to mix. This is because the tea at the top of the *gaiwan* will be weaker than the tea at the bottom, and you want each pour to be fair. Then you smell the *gaiwan*, or perhaps just the inside of the lid, and then pour the tea into the cups to drink.
maddy went and drank tea.
the friend asked: why do you drink tea?
maddy said: i know: i don't know
the friend said: well, that's dumb
Or, well, you pour *most* of the tea into the cups. The last few milliliters are poured out over the tea pet. Maybe you do so because you like to see that thin stream of water jetting out, or maybe you like to let the dark tea form a patina on that glaze — the nice glazes will crack or "craze" under the temperature difference, which is not to say that they break, but the darker tea will stain along those lines first and leave a pleasing pattern in the porcelain.
Me? I pour tea over the tea pet because not all of this is for me. It is my little vanity. It is my little *memento mori*. It is a reminder that the world, the universe, that all of life and all of *things* are limitless and not all of that is for me. It's not even about keeping for myself what others might experience, but that my time is short, and even if my time were infinite, I could not see what others do because I cannot see from where they stand, and even if I were omnipresent, I could not experience what they feel, and even if I were omniscient, I could not know the feeling of not being omniscient in that moment.
maddy went and drank tea.
the friend asked: why do you drink tea?
maddy said: i like it. it's tasty, it makes me feel good.
the friend laughed and clapped delightedly and said: perfect
then sat to drink tea with maddy.
Even when drinking tea "grandpa style", where a large glass contains whole tea leaves floating around in the hot water, one drinks only until the water reaches the top level of the leaves. Ostensibly, this is to keep the tea from drying out on top while the rest gets progressively more bitter. For me, though, it is one more way of knowing that not all of this is for me. I can't go back and drink the tea I left in the glass or that I poured over the tea pet.
This drives my mom batshit (ditto several commenters when I post about this, apparently). She's a boomer (a lovely one, granted!) and is quite taken by the idea that, should one make tea, one ought to be able to drink all the tea. It's a very contemporary mood, which is okay. That's not for me.
Not all of this is for us; some of it is just for you. We will doubtless do the same, because not of this is for you.
Not all of this is for me.
## On imperfections
This is a "cake batter ruyao" teapot. You can see the crazing I mentioned before, where the drop in temperature after firing leads to fine cracks forming within the glaze. It's still well-fired, it's not going to come off any time soon, but as the piece cools down after firing, the underlying porcelain and the glaze cool at different speeds, leading to these subtle imperfections. Cake batter glazing involves using a lot of glaze and applying it liberally and incautiously, leading to the effect of a pot that looks like it's been dipped in, well...cake batter, rather than glaze.
I struggle a lot with perfectionism. I just got out of therapy a bit ago, and a lot of that was spent discussing how perfectionism has overwhelmed me when it comes to school work in a way that it hasn't when it comes to writing about skunks or teapots.
It's strange, really! I spend a lot of time talking about writing versus editing, dealing with writing block, cognitive distortions that lead to perfectionism, and all sorts of related topics when I'm teaching writing, but this ✨very clearly✨ applies to people who aren't Maddy. If others experience writers block, they should keep in mind that going for a walk is writing, that writing shitty flash fiction and then closing the file and never looking at it again is writing, that reading is writing. If I experience writers block, I am failure and disgrace.
Tea, though. Tea is a celebration of imperfection. It's finding the beauty in the lack of perfection, the sweetness after the *huigan*, the patina on the teapot. Dale Pendell calls this "A celebration of imperfection."
> One time Hideyoshi tried to trap Rikyū with a seemingly impossible task. Hideyoshi filled a large bronze bowl with water and placed it in an alcove. Beside it he placed a plum branch with crimson blossoms, and ordered Rikyū to make the flower arrangement [for the tea ceremony]. Without hesitation Rikyū held the branch upside down over the bowl and stripped off the flowers by lightly pulling his hand down the branch. The open blossoms and buds floated together on the surface of the water. Hideyoshi appeared delighted, confessing that he had tried to embarrass Rikyū, but that the man could not be flustered.
(Dale Pendell in *Pharmako/dynamis*, p. 59)
The key shared factor in overcoming a writing block, the crazed glaze of the pot, and the answer to the koan presented by the flower arrangement story is intentionality. Despite my struggles with perfectionism — or maybe because of them — it shows up all over in my own writing. From [*Mitzvot:*](https://mitzvot.post-self.ink)
> “[...] I like being what I am. Short, soft, furry, chubby,” she said, poking at her belly. “It is just that these are all things that are disarming to a great many people. Even skunks, despite their reputation for smelling bad, are often seen as bumbling, stupid creatures.”
> “I wouldn’t call you stupid, May. Bumbling, though…”
> She rolled her eyes. “Thank you, I think? But yes, even bumbling is a calculated gesture to be inoffensive.”
> “End Waking said similar.” Ey dug through eir exocortices until ey came up with the memory of the conversation, “He said it was a matter of intent.”
> “It is, yes. I am sure that some of the wider clade who remain skunks do so without a second thought, but that is not how True Name worked, and so it is not how we work.”
Imperfection is there in all its wondrous glory. It can be the beauty of the glaze. It can be the act of stripping flowers. It can be the shitty flash fiction you write and never look at again. It can be an art. It can be a tool.
The one thing it can't be, though, is inescapable. Might as well own it.
## Translating spirals
I have a small stable of books that I pull quotes from essentially every chance I get. For those who have read the [Post-Self cycle](https://post-self.ink), you can probably guess that one of them is a copy of Emily Dickinson's poetry, and for those who read ["Seasons"](https://florilegium.ink/seasons), you'll know that another is Eliot Weinberger's excellent [*19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with more ways)*](https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/-9780811226202) — and if you've read both, plus [*ally*](https://ally.id), you've definitely seen "The Poet" from Emerson's second series of essays. I'm pretty selective with each when it comes to quoting, but, at least in the case of the latter two, the whole theme of the work lends itself to being particularly quotable.
*19 Ways* in particular follows a thread that I can't seem to escape from, which is the act of reading being an act of translation. Any reading that we do — particularly reading where we approach the text critically — is an act of translating the text from static words on a page (or screen) into the experience that we have. Of course, the original book focuses on the act of translating a single poem from Tang dynasty China, so much of the discussion about literal translation. However, at one point, he drops the following:
> [...] every reading of every poem, regardless of the language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader's intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different — not mearly another — reading. The same poem cannot be read twice.
(Weinberger p. 46)
This wound up becoming the basis of "Seasons", which describes the year as a spiral, just as the act of reading (and thus translating) a poem is a spiral: Not only is it a retranslation, but it's something that takes place over time.
Similarly, a *gong fu* tea session is a spiral, an act of translation of tea leaves into the soup, the soup into you, the compounds into flavors into sensations into feelings. You boil your water, perhaps give your tea a quick ten-second rinse, pour the thin and dusty rinse into your *chawan* and cups to warm them, then over your tea pet. You run the first steep hot and fast. Ten, maybe fifteen seconds at a full boil, then pour and drink. Second steep, same thing. Third, bump it up to 20 seconds. On through ten or more steeps.
And through it all, each steep is different. The soup color lightens. The sweetness ramps up and the bitterness starts to fade. The grassy notes are softened towards hay, or perhaps sharpened to something greener. The mouth-feel swells. The energy of the session shifts through comfort to energy to euphoria.
You, tea-drunk Heraclitus, drink cup after cup of the same tea, the same leaves and the same water, and it's never the same. You put the tea away, clean out all of your teaware, empty your tea tray, and go about your day, somehow both lighter and fuller than you were before.
And then, the next day, a different you retranslates that tea over the course of a different hour. A year spirals. A poem spirals. A tea spirals.