SUMMER CAESURA – 30 Gms

Now with love come strange currencies
And here is my appeal

I need a chance, a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance
A word, a signal, a nod, a little breath
Just to fool myself, to catch myself
To make it real, real.

Michel Stipe (REM) – Strange currencies.

Amrita Pritam wrote “My love toils like a manual laborer at the factory furnace…. and meeting you feels like today’s worth, in wages, placed in my palms sufficient just for today…. with no leftovers from yesterday and nothing left over for tomorrow”. They indeed are a strange currency- feelings; sandy; pocketful; full of sufficiency, but only for today; full of value and doubt; begging for safety of your stowaway box; impatient; silent; awaiting a strange day when you come across someone or something’s demand for your strange currency; suddenly to become priceless in a thoughtless pause when you, without a bargain, barter your pocketful of sand and doubt for another’s strange currency of value. Just one of those perfect days when you realize why you chose to be paid in strange currencies, stow them to safety and how unknowingly you carry them everywhere!

Pauses are important; between breaths, words or verses – that’s where the feelings are born or at least that’s when they first wrap their tiny fingers around yours, like a child, toddling back home with you and you start to think of places to stow away this ‘strange currency’. The pauses, when marked and articulated in poetry and verse, would be Caesuras. Its equivalent in music would be more familiar – when the music momentarily stops and then begins again – right when it coils its little fingers around yours. Think of Caesuras as pauses in which you trade strange currencies, stowaway boxes, daily wages and the moments in which you realize you carry them everywhere you go.

And if on some strange day you come across the strange absurdity of a man in in bowler hat with a bright green apple for a face as in Rene Magritte’s painting ‘The son of man’ you will mark the moment with a caesura as you barter your strange currencies of curiosity, your own strangeness and the strangeness of curiosity for Magritte’s absurdity, surrealism and demand for your interest and walk home smiling, looking for the hidden, behind everything visible as a green apple, feeling a little closer to Magritte as you pocket his strange currency- Everything visible, is hiding something behind it! And if along the way, you wonder why his left hand is slightly backwards, it may well be Magritte feeling the tug of a child’s little fingers in his, toddling back home with him, as he thought of places to stow away this strange currency. A painted-broken-hand is always a stowaway box!

Absurdity, strangeness, interest and imagery, all mark this Caesura, a white tea with Magritte’s Green apple hiding, masking every other flavor – waiting to exchange strange currencies with you. Absurdly large, sun dried leaves with abundant hair clumped together like twigs of a bird’s nest, strangely bearing more resemblance to a spring tea with its colors of the green and white than pickings of summer, make up the whole of this tea. Brewing, however, will leave little doubt about the season. Not floral at all the brew is thick – one of the thickest and creamiest liquors that changes colors from pale yellow to deeper shades over subsequent brews, never losing its consistency and texture. The green apple imagery is all over the tea, hiding just enough but still willing to barter curiosity for interest in its appeal of Red apple juice with a sweet, mild, brown sugary, spear minty for ‘a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance’. Aroma and taste of vanilla and honey feel exactly like ‘today’s worth of wages in your palms, sufficient just for today…. with no leftovers from yesterday and nothing left over for tomorrow’. Made from a cultivar known as TV1, it is the first and only listing of the variety.

The absurdity and pause, the hidden behind the visible, strange currencies of feelings and chance – Its never quite just one appeal asking for chances, is it?