This is a tea that I received in the January, 2024 white2tea tea club, and now that I have told you that, you understand that my TBD (to be drunk) pile rivals my TBR pile. I have not retained the little letter from the tea club the way I should, so know that I only know two things about this tea: (1) It is a lapsang; and (2) It is not smoked the way lapsang souchong is.

 

This is a very lovely varietal of unsmoked lapsang. It brews up a bright daffodil gold in color, and the taste is sweet and fragrant with hints of flavor rounding that out to something deeply robust.

 

Denver is going through its usual “maybe it’s summer, maybe it’s winter” cycles, which means that we’ve had snow and 70 degree weather in short succession, and we’re likely to head back to snow pretty soon. This tea is a perfect pair for this time of year: the time of year when you look outside and you think it’s surely spring, and yet you know there will be at least one, if not four, more deep freezes.

 

But does it matter in the moment? Here are the daffodils I can see from the table where I drink tea.

I received this through the white2tea tea club in 2024, and alas, it doesn’t appear to be available on their site, although they do still have a variety of unsmoked lapsangs available, including this strawberry lapsang that I enjoyed.

One of the things I have been grappling with while writing this newsletter over the last few weeks is this: how can I be a responsible person with my platform?

 

Here's what I mean by this: it would, I think, be irresponsible for me to say something like “Hello, friends, now it is time to panic.” Panic is when your brain goes into fight or flight mode; panic is when you do your worst thinking. Panic is when your visceral response takes over and social, emotional, intelligent response flies out the window.

 

But panic is by its nature inherently ill-timed in the modern world: it was marginally useful in the times when we would need to scramble up a tree to avoid an angry moose in earlier days, but right now, it’s counterproductive. Mostly, what we need to do is calm down and think rather than flee. Panic is not something you consciously do; it is a reaction. So I try not to make people panic because panic is largely not useful.

 

Despite knowing that panic is not useful, it is a reaction I have had off and on, increasingly on, to events over the last few months in general and the last weeks in particular. I'm not going to go into a recitation because you have the internet and putting it all in one place will probably put my brain back in panic mode. Instead, I want to articulate my feelings watching my country go through a fascist takeover: to observe them and to understand them for what they are.

 

This isn't quite like the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, where you pass from one to another, leaving each stage behind in turn. No; these stages are an ever repeating hamster wheel, sandwiched between moments of normalcy because my brain cannot take all of this all the time.

 

I flicker through these in rapid succession. Denial ("this can't be happening; surely the courts will stop it"). Anger ("I can't believe what I'm reading in this executive order"). Bargaining ("If I call my Senator/if enough of us protest, surely this will have to end"). Depression ("There's nothing I can do"). Acceptance ("Whew. We're cooked!") I flicker back and forth between these, along with an unhealthy dose of the aforementioned panic.

 

The stages we are going through are not like accepting a loved one’s death death, nor their terminal illness, even though part of me fears that this virulence I am witnessing in my country may not be cured in my lifetime. This is because death is inevitable and fascism is not. Death must be accepted; fascism cannot, not for any length of time.

 

This means that the flickering of emotions is necessary, because I can never leave the bargaining stage. I can never tell myself that there is nothing to do, because to do so is give up and bend to the fascists. To stop bargaining—to stop fighting—means that even more people will be persecuted and harmed than are being harmed now, and that is unacceptable.

 

So I go from one mode to another, and in between these whiplash emotions, I find times when things are normal. I have taken classes on electricity at the Denver Tool Library, and I used that knowledge to swap out a broken light switch. I finished charring the wood for my garden beds. I am starting seeds and the little spring onions that I hoped would eventually be added to my herb boxes on the patio this year are poking their wispy green noodle heads out of the soil. I need to start digging a trench for the asparagus crowns that I ordered.

 

So yes, I have not mentioned the panic in this newsletter to it because I do not have an answer to it, and I feel like I should have answers.

 

But there are no answers. There is nothing here but reminding myself that the flicker of all those emotions and reactions is just what happens, and that coming back to bargaining mode—believing that maybe there is something I can do, however small—is how I keep my brain from playing all panic, all the time.

 

In the meantime, speaking of bargaining, March 29th (this coming Saturday) is part of a global day of protest at TeslaTakeown, and April 5 (the Saturday after) is a national day of protest against Trump and Musk.

 

And meanwhile, here are the spring onions I mentioned.

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