The Fool's
Journey
by Ned Hogan, Jr.
There
were cultures all over times and places that revered tea, just so,
(ly)
harmonic dirt and water, so naturally.
And somewhere out on the edge of a small cluster of stars
at the end
of an arm
of a relatively
tiny spiraling galaxy
(that was way beyond the reach of light and time from here)
the aroma arose from this healing phenomenon and civilized thoughts
created (ritually)
the inherent conjunctions. Personalities dissolved
Indeed
it seemed there were a direct connection between
civility
reasonableness and patience too
and tea.
Especially the green, green tea.
Now
as evening began it's seductive creep upon the sky the ancient and
immortal ritual began of its own accord. Everything split itself down
the middle and the halves gathered themselves to themselves and tried
to fly away from each other.
Two
skys seemed to meet for a moment ,overhead and underneath, and mix
and separate and one grew paler and the other grew darker. Nineteen
separate perspectives came together and formed a incredibly weak plasma
bridge between the phantom poles which moved like dancers now, a reciprocating
tandem describing a spinning helix.
In the thin mountain air it moved because it had to. Oh, yes, sparks
flew like shrapnel for a moment, around the pot over the low fire
in which the water tried to boil. It was bent copper and un-spouted
and sang like it looked. (Of course it can be called a pot! It contained
tea!) It squealed and then hummed and beat itself slowly slowly in
a perfectly arrhythmic rhythm. Electric pings and clicks and wooden
bonks and strange squeals seemed to almost pollute the stillness and
silence, at first, within a huge clear clear bell sitting atop, over
everything. Then, as the aroma reached throughout, the sounds became
a choir. An ensemble that sewed the attention past it. .The absolute
inverse of the cathedral cellar. Green eyes looked down as boots swivelled
and made the sound of distant small waves crashing just beneath the
crouching girl as she reached out over the fire and stirred the water
with a wooden spoon. Her arm soared high to escape the heat and as
she withdrew the spoon and brought it close to her lips, she sniffed
and then drew in a humongous breath through her nostrils. Mostly through
the right one, she thought now, as she pictured the aromatic medicine
traveling all the way completely through and through and through.
She moved her body like a gymnast, but with tiny moves, and leaning
the spoon against one of the rocks surrounding the fire so that the
end of the handle was against the toe of her boot and the other dripped
and hissed into the coals she put her fingers into the herbs rustling
nestling in the pack around her waist and let some identities and
amounts float up into her mind. She was feeling the herbs as they
rolled and fell through her fingers and could tell just which herbs
and how much of each was there in each pinch as it emerged mashed
between long pale fingers from a seemingly too long, almost breaking
into passion, touching. The arm arced again, as if it were trying
to swim all by itself in slow motion and put the hand into the swirling
steam rising from the still surface of the water in the pan. The stars
were coming out now as it got darker and she saw them first in the
reflection of the sky there in the tea. She let the moment consume
her and open the flood gates of the idea in her heart and let it soar
out the arm and curve itself down into the dark waters of the tea.
She opened her fingers and let the hot pot drop a franction of an
inch to the hot rock. She listen to a conversation over a game of
three dimensional checkers. It was a defense to the seemingly, in
the speakers minds atleast, more trivial , when compared to chess,
game of checkers. In three d no less. "It just will not work
with chess! Eighteen hour moves at best. And the special rules. My
God, man, you'd be youir life time just learning it and mine just
making it and the rules would consume all life's attenttion until
the end of the universe itself."
