SUMMER ALIBI – 50 Gms

I don’t want to be a spice store.
I don’t want to carry handcrafted Marseille soap,
or tsampa and yak butter,
or nine thousand varieties of wine.
Half the shops here don’t open till noon
and even the bookstore’s brined in charm.
I want to be the one store that’s open all night
and has nothing but necessities.
Something to get a fire going
and something to put one out.
A place where things stay frozen
and a place where they are sweet.
I want to hold within myself the possibility
of plugging one’s ears and easing one’s eyes;
superglue for ruptures that are,
one would have thought, irreparable,
a whole bevy of non-toxic solutions
for everyday disasters. I want to wait
brightly lit and with the patience
I never had as a child
for my father to find me open
on Christmas morning
…..
I want to hum just a little with my own
emptiness at 4 A.M. To have little bells above my
door.
To have a door.
-Christian Wiman

“How can we actually hold such essentiality and not be a spice store?? Ah! Metaphors… I understand, now. And, what is it that they say – don’t think of a pink elephant and you think ………! How poets create their alibis in expression while the rest of us must find it! Seems unfair…But then again, maybe they too need to find it before they can express it. Who knows??” But we sure can take hints; hints that hint away in the direction of our own personal alibis, like the clues Diane Ackerman left behind when she wrote “Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else”

Sometimes a memory isn’t enough- you need a souvenir; a reminder, an alibi to vouch for you- that you were there witnessing the magic, when it mattered most. Animate or inanimate – it doesn’t matter as long as it reminds you, through its qualia, your own essentiality when it’s needed most and especially when its needed least!  You’d be surprised how often it is missing from us. If only ‘Tea-ness’ could, as easily be captured and conveyed, as it is experienced, there wouldn’t be any need for an alibi; an alibi for acknowledging that good intentions prevail despite limitations of expression; that search and you shall find still holds true; that what we are most looking for is to simply appreciate; to simply be reminded of the connections that are already in place.

Of all the multitudes we contain, none is as wide as us being the participant as well as the observer- we can both commit and witness at the same time. Possessing such essentiality, so innately and distinctly human yet almost always feels bestowed.

There is this psychedelic metallic twang you hear, that puts 50 year old sensibility, philosophy, vision and expression, all in alliance in the present, as Clearance White of the Byrds plays his telecaster guitar through some strange device as Carole King’s magical words “You may lead me to the chasm, Where the rivers of our visions, Flow into one another. I will want to dive beneath the white cascading waters, She may beg, she may plead, she may argue with her logic, And mention all the things I’ll lose – That really have no value, in the end she will surely know, I wasn’t born to follow” are melodically recited to the background of one Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda riding their glorious freedom machines in the movie Easy Rider. Hearing the twang is when you really know that you are well equipped to appreciate, even if you lack the 50-year-old generational sensibility you thought was necessary for appreciation.

It’s an other worldly feeling when you know you can still hear the clear testimony of an alibi from the 60s.

Endlessly invoking other teas for you, while still not wanting to be like any of them, it is not a Spice store but is every bit a Spice store in not wanting to be one; It is every bit a witness to its own wanting while still diffusing a strong alibi to its abundance; its essentiality; its qualia; its ‘tea-ness’. The leaves of its essentiality, they don’t dictate flavors but they make you their alibi, to confirm flavors for them; flavors that  get a fire going or even put one out;  flavors like superglue for ruptures one would have thought, irreparable; aroma of roasted lentils – the kind that’s only at home in rural kitchens of India now, where they still roast their lentils on wood and coal stoves before cooking – with dark unsweetened chocolate mix and rise, filling up your senses, pointing you in a thousand different directions, when and where you first encountered them – with Clarity, essentiality, necessity instead of intensity – just how you’d expect your alibi to be, in its dense aroma  and a thick floral body with a fruity, sweet- slightly tangy taste – there is a revealing, delivering finesse to it; a ‘tea-ness’ that seems rather eager to be perceived; It will endlessly reference other teas with the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else!

We aren’t kidding about Clearance White’s ‘Metallic Twang’, both in the song and this alibi.