The Art of Tea 25/11/2018

Grey, damp and cool; even so it is an improvement of the rain of yesterday. I started my day slowly and chose Ceylon Black tea flavoured with Pomegranate and mint a rich sweet tea with an aftertaste of the tannins on the tongue. The minute the lid is lifted on the tin you breathe in the sweetness of the pomegranate and freshness of the mint. The scent of this tea alone is real delight. The flavour rolls across your tongue unfurling sweet, bright, deep and then the slight dry aftertaste. A tea to set me up to use my mind today as I have to pull forth information I have not accessed for a number of years to create a presentation on learning.

Then I want to get another flash fiction written to bring my total for the 30 days up to 15 halfway. I certainly am not going to achieve the challenge of 30 stories in 30 days but I am please if I do get the story written today with my result of 15. Last year I only managed to get 5 done during the challenge so I have bypassed my previous effort and I will try again next year to better my numbers.

Aurora is curled in my arms purring as I type this enjoying being alone with me. After I had repotted some of the plants last Sunday I moved my Ctenante Golden Mosaic next to the plants layered up on the little step stool. Aurora has now chosen the space beneath the step stool as her new sleeping space as Serida is not able to ambush her under there. I was the recipient of Serida’s ambush of Khepra when he was sleeping on my bed curled up next to me, she wacked me a couple of time trying to get to him. I was not pleased at being woken so abruptly and it resulted in cats flying off either side of my bed. She just can’t help herself in doing these sneak attacks. Aside from that they are all getting on quite well.

Since returning to work I have not managed to get into the garden much at all and I can see the work I did slowly unravelling. I am hoping for a fine weekend next weekend just to go over the areas I had previously cleaned up and get them back into a tidy state. Then I can refocus on getting more of the new gardens cleared and planted.

I have pulled out my old Cheesecake Cookbook that I have had from back in the eighties. I said I would bring a Savoury Cheesecake to the Bookclub’s Christmas dinner. So I am tossing up between Minted Cucumber, Blue Vein Cheese, Avocado, Cauliflower or Broccoli. Previously I had made the cucumber and a salmon cheesecake that was close to twenty odd years ago. Thinking about it I will go with the Avocado and the Minted Cucumber but I will probably have changed my mind by the time I get the ingredients.

My thoughts today are on memory and changes. Every day things change and we make minute changes to ourselves as we adjust to what the world brings us. Some of the change we choose loop us back into our past and we then bring pieces of our distant self into today. As we bring those pieces forward we bring with them memories of who we used to be. As we remember the feelings beginning, of newness are once again accessible and able to recharge the way we see and interact today. Beyond this moment memories are all we have.

Some reflections on memories and change:

“Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.” ― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.” ― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

And finally

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surrounding. Kakuzo Okakura (The Book Of Tea)

Blessings to all, may you move smoothly through the changes that will occur during the upcoming week and lightly touch the

memories that may arise.

#Sunday #musing #tea #art #memories #change