I bought this mini teacake right around the time I first started getting into pu-erh. It was described as a good gateway for new pu-erh drinkers (and also “what if you want to casually drink raw Puer at the beach?” which I now understand is a hilarious white2teaism and not a general statement about the appropriateness of this beverage for various outdoor venues).
I, a new pu-erh drinker at the time, decided to go for it and then put it in my mini box and promptly forgot about it because I bought so many other minis that it sank to the bottom.
I am no longer a new pu-erh drinker, and I like this tea. It would go well at a beach, or outside on a day like today, unseasonably warm in Denver having blown past our first frost date with none coming on the horizon. It starts off mild, which is not something one normally says about raw pu-erh. It is an excellent fall tea: a tea that has the scent of more robust teas, sweet and a little smokey, but lingers on the tongue with a gentle warmth. And then, like many light and gentle falls, right around the third steep, it punches you in the face with flavor.
It was always there, that flavor: you could taste it in those first two steeps, even though you were saying, “wow, this seems mild” a moment before. Sometimes, it takes a little time for the truth to come out.
I had said earlier this year that I would be at Steamy Lit in Southern California at the end of this month. At this point, though, my knee is still complaining when I sit for longer than half an hour or so, and I do not think I can manage an entire airplane trip.
The knee is a lot better than it was a few months ago, but sitting is still a source of pain, and so I have unfortunately had to withdraw. I'm very sorry to have to do this.
who emotions belong to
So I don't want to dwell too much on the fact that the authoritarian overreach is getting really bad around these here parts. If you're here, you know; if you're not, well, you probably also know.
One of the things I have been thinking about for a while is who owns emotions. In a social world, we often feel emotions that come from other people. If someone pushes past your boundary, you feel uncomfortable--but that's not your discomfort. It's the discomfort they should be feeling for not respecting another human being. You don't have to hold the emotions that someone else is trying to assign to you.
Fascism thrives on fear. They want people who are on their side to be afraid. That's why they claim that cities are burning (they aren't) or war zones (they aren't) or that immigrants are all criminals (they aren't) and using all our tax dollars (again, no).
They also thrive on people being afraid of them. That's why they're claiming that protestors are “hard-core left” paid for by George Soros and inevitably violent: because they need the people on their side to be scared of us, and they need us to be scared of what they'll do based on the lies they're telling, in the hopes that this will discourage people and convince them to stay home.
And it's not like we can simply choose not to be afraid. It is terrifying to see what is taking hold here, and we shouldn't pretend it's not. But having tried the “ignore emotion, see if it goes away method” before, I can report it doesn't work. Sometimes the only to manage an emotion is to acknowledge it out loud: to say, yes, I am afraid. To feel it for a space of time. And then I try to remember that the fear is there because they have assigned fear to me. It is their fear, and I don't have to hold it in a permanent capacity. They can't have the satisfaction of winning.
There are a lot of us, and we don't have to be silent and afraid. It's their fear. We don't have to carry it permanently.
Until next week!
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