25 December 2006

Here is a piece I wrote on my father's old typewriter. click to zoom.

Books on tape and downloadable books for your iPod /computer, like Gutenberg.org... another example of this kind of thing. It might be more convenient, and I'm sure both are successful, but I could never do it. I am in love with physical books: pulling one out of my bag on a subway platform, physically turning the pages, feeling them between my fingers, underlining lines and passages I will want to reread. It brings me closer to the act of reading.

Maybe that's what I meant when I referenced rituals, like brewing loose leaf tea in a diffuser with boiling water from a kettle. The process makes the experience of drinking more meaningful to me, brings me closer to this experience, and almost does something transcendental. Just me and the tea. I cherish each sip more than if I just put a teabag in a mug full of water and microwaved it. Sometimes I have to pause and do little things like this so I don't lose myself in the pace of everything.

EDIT | It is 10 February 2007, and my father sent me this article from the Chicago Tribune a couple of weeks ago:

Coffee's brawny expansion in the marketplace in the last several years thoroughly captured public attention, so the contrarian in us took delight in reading that the quieter charms of tea are now in play. Tea sales, now at $6 billion annually, are expected to increase to $10 billion in the next three years. The number of teahouses has increased tenfold in the last decade.

There is a silent, well, minority, that believes you can shove your half-caf venti skim mocha frappuccino, that nothing settles a body down like a nice cup of tea.

It is unhurried. It must steep, and that alone has a calming effect on the psyche.

Anyone who has read an English cozy--those murder mysteries usually set in a village with a name like Shroppshireford-on-Ham, populated by eccentrics and a wise detective--firmly believes that tea is a catalyst to solving the crime.

Henry Fielding noted that "love and scandal are the best sweeteners for tea."

Yet, in the U.S., tea has labored in the shadow of coffee. That's not the case in much of the world. The Japanese have observed quiet and formal tea ceremonies for centuries. Meetings in China usually begin with a steaming cup of green tea. In the Middle East, from Bedouin tents to the palaces of kings, tea welcomes both friend and stranger.

The Russians and Indians favor black tea, and most chats over tea allow for time and ritual, an almost languid pause and expectation as the tea is prepared. The English like to add cut cucumber sandwiches, currant scones with blackberry and lemon curd jam and pastries. The Irish have a nice cuppa with some soda bread slathered with sweet butter and orange marmalade.

There is a certain ritual for those who fiddle with the mesh tea ball and strainers, the cotton tea sock and bags, the tea infuser spoons and sugar tongs. Do you take it plain, or with milk and sugar, or honey and lemon? Perhaps a splash of whiskey for what ails you.

There is a little bit of danger in the increasing popularity of tea in these parts, the danger that tea drinking becomes a competitive experience, as coffee has. It would be wise for tea drinkers to enjoy their oolong from a certain Himalayan field combined with sugar crystals and whole mint leaves but not be too vocal about it.

Let the coffee people boast of their expensive roasted beans from near the tree line. The point for tea drinkers is not to preen, but to sit back, sip and be soothed. - 14 January 2007

wonderful!