“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh."There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
—A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Tea
for comfort, tea for rescue, tea for restoring oneself to oneself, tea as unqualified
largesse, the world itself poured forth.
Recalling
a Sung Dynasty Landscape
Palest wash of stone-rubbed ink
leaves open the moon: unpainted circle,
how does it raise so much light?
Below, the mountains
lose themselves in dreaming
a single, thatch-roofed hut.
Not that the hut lends meaning
to the mountains or the moon—
it is a place to rest the eye after much traveling, is all.
And the heart, unscrolled,
is comforted by such small things:
a cup of green tea rescues us, grows deep and large, a lake.
—Jane Hirshfield
image: Provence Mon Amour
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A friend of mine from Hong Kong got married today. You would be fascinated at seeing how important drinking tea is even during a wedding ceremony. There's a moment, during the celebration, when some guests are poured tea, and a person has to accompany their drinking with traditional sentences and sayings where tea is linked to happiness, wealth and prosperity.
ReplyDeleteAnd after a Chinese wedding we were given some of that tea that flowers in the pot. Lovely traditions.
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