“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing”. “It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive”. “It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain”. “I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it”. “I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human”. “It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy”. “I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty, every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence”. “I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.” “It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done, to feed the children”. “It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back”. “It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside when all else falls away”. “I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments”.
‘The Invitation’ – Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Just when we thought the summer was over and we sat wondering, which tea must Jack Kerouac have had on his mind when he wrote “The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy” in the novel ‘The Dharma Bums’, we received a late summer ‘invitation’ humbly asking to ‘brew’ our presence. Just when we came to the conclusion that we would never be able to deliver the quote without the beat sensibilities of Kerouac; without it containing the desperation of a contemporary sales pitch, we decided to relinquish our presence unto this invitation. Conviction, it seems, is the R.S.V.P to the possibilities of Invitation. Kerouac, it seems, wasn’t as much describing the tea after all – he was describing the possibilities of invitation it presented – Joy, gladness, serenity, madness and ecstasy. Just when we thought the summer was over, we realized we still have a ways to go, through reading invitations and possibilities and how it’s not over, till it’s over.
Invitations, as much as they summon our presence to an experience, are also an experience unto themselves and it is in the moments of their reception; of their grand gesture, we realize how famished we are for a connection and how longing and willing, we are, for the possibility they contain – the feeling of being Invited, as ourselves; for ourselves. Much contained sentiment in the invitation of Oriah, that reads like a checklist of reminders of the wide contrasts we exist in and against, and the invitation to rise above these contrasts we exist in and against, is the healing sensibility of kindness and its openness; maybe, invitations are reminders; maybe vulnerability is proof of humanity; maybe kindness is the only response to such contrasts; maybe invitations are the reminders to be kind to ourselves.
If there was some way to list this tea without naming it, we would have done it- just so we could extend you the invitation to name it in your own experience. Would’ve been perfect! It seems, there is no word to convey the largesse of an invitation – prose written by Oriah, from her book ‘The Invitation’ seemed befitting and ‘Ochre’ seemed to complement, both in color and symbolism of its opulence, auspiciousness, reverence and its antiquity . And of course, how it all ties into the brew that is equal parts spiritual and sensual, endowing humility and conviction with every sip and an openness that seems to subsume human vulnerabilities in its invitation.
“It’s Sweet, sweet as elephants stopping trucks full of fresh Sugarcane, to get their share before letting them pass!”. “Sweet as Jack Kerouac strapping a giant tape recorder to his back, one night and walking five miles to cheer-up his girlfriend”. “Sweet as the opulence of Gustav Klimt’s painting ‘The Kiss’ and its Gold and ochre imagery stuck forever in your head”. Gold-Ochre leaves comprising completely of young buds, clumped together, smelling of sweet cocoa harvested from the AV2 cultivar, make up the whole of this tea. If we didn’t know any better, we’d say “its tea mixed with sugarcane juice!” to justify it’s translucent-hazy, amber-ochre brew or even its flavor – it is sweet, differently sweet, as if its honey was made by lab-coat wearing honeybees and the maltiness came from a drunk pâtissier experimenting with malt and dextrose syrup. As for the aroma, oh! we know, you will do so much better than us.
“……the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” – If that makes sense, then this is your invitation!
Brewing Instructions: 3Gms for 5 mins in 180 ml at 90 Degrees Celsius. Add a minute for subsequent brews. It will give, at least, 4 brews.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.