The Daring Young Man, as promised

Last Sunday, I went to a local temple where they had this annual swinging competition to see who could swing the highest. It was this huge swing set made out of bamboo, probably about 40 to 45 feet high. In the center were these two very long bamboo rods, instead of rope, that led down to a skinny wooden bench. At about head height, standing on the wooden bench, there was a hook to fasten in a safety clip that itself was attached to a suit that the competitors put on before mounting the swing (by way of a ladder). Once on, the young boy or seasoned, red-mouthed champion squatted down upon the seat, holding high on the bamboo with their hands. Two men below, with another long shaft of bamboo (notched at one end), would catch the seat of the swing and then in two attempts swing the individual as high as they could. Then, of course, it’s up to the person on the swing.

I could tell by the first person I watched that it was quite difficult, that much effort could be exerted without having much result. Unlike a cord swing that you can twist in your hands to create swing, the bamboo poles were inflexible and could only be manipulated by the piston like motion of the person on the swing. Flexing up, basically pushing up from the lowest part of the swing, and then falling back down after the pitch. I could also tell, by the second person I saw, that much skill could be involved, because despite the difficulties of the bamboo, the man was able to go almost horizontal, at which point it seemed miraculous that it was happening at all, that the man had broken some fundamental law. At the highest pitch, as if to scorn the world, he kicked up his right leg high, and also leaning back so quickly that I thought he might loose his grasp, and the crowd cheered.

It seemed only a matter of time before an older man grabbed my arm and began motioning to the swing. At first a woman nearby scolded him to leave me alone, but soon I was on the stage anyway where there were judges and a woman announcer, and they were asking where I was from. I don’t know if you’ve ever been taken completely in charge by an older man who you doesn’t necessarily speak your language but who nevertheless knows what’s best for you. It’s one of the more sacred experiences of traveling abroad. I remember one time in Greece when I slipped and almost fell in a food market, an old man abruptly scolded me in Greek. A young butcher, with a cigarette in his mouth, informed me that he said, “if you’re going to fall, why walk around with your hands in your pocket?” Of course, I remember thinking at the time. Obvious.

Getting on the swing was by far one of the more exciting things, especially to look down and see a sea of unfamiliar faces looking up at me. But I let fly—or rather I was set fly by the two men below—and after a good go descended the set. A man came up to me later with a video camera asking questions in Chinese and an organizer who helped me into my suit translated, so I told them, the camera, that I was very happy, that it was very good to be on the swing, and that I was an English teacher in Chiayi, which seemed appropriate. They invited me back next year, and an older man, who performed a near horizontal feat himself (ending with the same victory, death-defying leg salute) told me that he would teach me how to swing, and began demonstrating right there for me the basic moves.

They gave me a large, double-layer stainless steel cooking pot for competing and after watching for a bit I wandered off because I felt awkward standing there with this huge box under my arm. I walked around and it reminded me of the carnival grounds at Stewartstown, but no Skeeball. Of course, here there were many more interesting snacks (are criss-cut fries even interesting?) There were also some local booths, and a used books tent that I looked through as well. Saw an enormous Chinese-English Dictionary, and also a Chinese calligraphy book that I looked through. For several pages, it detailed how to draw one smudge resembling the last digit of your pinky. For the relatively small and inconsequential mark, there were six brush movements. I thought, (sigh) “another day.” And then I thought, “but soon—but soon.”

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Bamboo Swing

More to come later...

Ali San

Finally, I went to the mountains. I followed along a group of three others in a car that left early Saturday morning, that drove up the long ascent to the Ali San park, where it was clear, refreshing, and brilliant. We spent a little time walking around eating before heading to the train station to pre-buy tickets to a further destination, 2oo meters higher to watch the sunrise Sunday morning. As we waited for the tickets one of us noticed something and we all turned around to find this huge wall of mist coming towards us, and soon, the blue sky, the sunlight, all was exchanged for an eerie, deathless, impenetrable mist.

Often when people go to see the Ali San sunrise, they never get to see it because the mists are too intense. But most Taiwanese and Chinese tourists don't seem to mind because half of the journey is being there for the "qi," the rejuvenating natural energy that can be found in the space where the clouds meet the mountains.

That first day we took a little trip to see some very old trees. We saw ruins first of a tree, struck by lightening twice in the fifties and sixties, and that then toppled in the nineties, and which will probably still be rotting peacefully, with little of its petrified shell altered, long after any of our names are spoken. The report of the age of the monster was a cool 3000.

After paying respects and seeing some other natural phenomenon, like a tree growing from a tree growing from a tree, we returned to the lodge and hotel area for dinner and rest (I myself was sick all weekend, unfortunately, so there was a lot of sleeping). 2:30 the next morning we all got up and boarded a train to viewing area at 2500 meters, where we could see the moon's sliver and all the stars beaming neatly in the sky. We waited, alternatively standing or crouching in the mountain nighttime cold, in a crowd of hundreds of people. At about 5 o'clock a man in gruff Taiwanese came on a bullhorn and talked nonstop until the stars disappeared and the sun arose.

We were lucky I guess. The sun came up as clean and clear as could be, while in the valley below bathed a lake of clouds.

Pai Pai: Week Four

This will be the last Pai Pai blog I think. At least, taking a photo of him and submitting each week will be kind of thin now because he's stopped growing. Or at least, he won't look very different at all.

Pai Pai is still growing though, especially in the way that he is accomodating himself to his maturing strength and to his still strange environment. It pleases me best when he runs along the bed or table (surprisingly fast) or else flies several circles about the apartment before landing on a high post or my head. It sort of reminds me of what a miniature batman would be like, leaping off buildings and then performing acrobatics upon whatever he lands. So far, no bad guys, but I'm watchful to see if he ever finds one of those lizards that hang around here...

My bird is also investigating the power of his beak by an everlasting series of uncontroled experiements testing his beak next to any other substance in this apartment, bedsheets, books, tea cups, and even my skin. I'm assuming the part about biting me is because of his deliquincy and that in a future time he will roam the parrot streets of hardluck without a penny or moral in his pocket. Upon my sister's advice, when he bites me, I immediately take him in my hand, bring him up to my face and sternly say, "NO." Then I put him in his cage for a fortnight with only water and stale bread. He's getting the idea; a very intuitive beast, actually.

For summary here are the four photos for the four Tuesdays that I've had him. If we consider him to be one week in the first picture, then the last picture is Pai Pai at one month, each photo in between being taken at exactly one week intervals.

"Oh, the Rising Sun"

By my foot is a dish with water and next to it a yellow towel, a bit worse for wear, with Pai Pai trying to snuggle deep into it. Water is scattered about the floor, the aftermath of trying to entice him (with splashes) to take a bath, an idea that was so strange and appalling to him that he took any lengths to avoid it. He even flew for the first time (image that—even today) eighteen inches up to his cage from my hand as I moved to place him there. I suppose he flew, that is he could not have jumped that distance, and he wasn’t thrown, so by inference, it must be ruled that he flew those eighteen inches. Although I have waited days for him to fly—watched him proudly as he reared his chest and beat his wings, making a current like a small helicopter, blowing tissues off tables and eliciting applause from the only other one in the room. “Good job, Pai Pai!” or “Li hai!” So all along my imagination was for something much more majestic, to see him running across the table launching off the edge like Wright at Kittyhawk. In any case, I think the day is over that I tease him as a “land lubberer,” which is rather mean of me I suppose, but in the end considering that it will be he that can fly, and not I, the joke is much more on me.

I was drinking tea at the table, which, if you can believe, I haven’t done in quite a bit, and so in a way, it was all new again. That’s something in the nature of the tea I think. You can have it a thousand times and then, again, one day, it’s all new again as if you’ve never before smelled it, as if the tea had never before waited as it was to be unfurled and draw its nectar out. And so, again I was seduced.

Samuel Johnson said, “Wonder is simply the effect of novelty upon ignorance;” luckily, I suppose ignorance is the chaotic entity of that equation. Today, I’m ignorant; novelty may be a well-worn coat, but I have never seen it before. So fortunately, today, again, Wonder.

Tea always panders creative energies. To every thought I had, it said, “yes,” as if clear sunshine fell upon the mind, and one could see again the mountains (one always knew were there) far in the distance, as well as those fallen long ago in the past. I enjoyed sitting upon that staircase of dominance like a child who, upon turning eight, hoists himself up upon that extra rung that puts his head over the top, now dizzy by the height but proud, anxious neither to ascend nor worried enough to turn around. At this moment, I enjoyed thinking about myself abstractly and where I might be in the futures. “I always wanted to sail,” I thought. Yes, the tea said. “I could translate Chinese poems.” Yes, again, the tea said. “I’ve always loved acting,” I thought. That’s right, said the tea.

I had put on George Harrison, his last CD before he passed away, and every once in a while I would catch a lyric or two, some that had always stayed with me and now rang with deeper meaning as though, as birth brothers, we had forged them together in a shared dark. To him I celebrate this day, I thought, pouring the hot water. He said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” A new brew of tea fell brilliantly hot into the pourer, the scent rising visible above the metal screen. It was an odd communion, I alive drinking tea, and him dead singing to me from my computer. He said, “Universe at play inside your DNA, you're a billion years old today—oh, the rising sun.” Then he sang to me “Pisces Fish.” I tipped the tumbler and the teacup upside down, the porcelain almost hot enough to burn my fingertips, as if warning me. He crooned to me, lovingly, mysteriously, “He was sending me a signal / that for so long I had ignored / but he held on to my umbilical cord / until the ghost of memory / trapped in my body mind / came out of hiding to become alive.” The tea touched my lips and then suddenly I disappeared.

Pai Pai, disturbed, woke from his easily bought slumber and poked his head from the yellow folds of fabric, gazed up at that large, strange creation—the chair—and saw… Well, I know not.

Pai Pai

I think I'm going with "Pai pai" for the bird's name, which means "clap, clap," or "slap, slap" or something like that, so it's more for the sound than the meaning. For a while, it was "xiao niao" which literally means "baby bird," or, more precisely, "small bird," but no matter how endearing it was to me, it has been a little bit difficult to say conveniently.

Thinking about the bird, specifically, today, I re-read passages from The Little Prince concerning the Rose and the Fox, both of which allegorize relationships for the Little Prince. The one about the fox is more excessible to me, which is rather poetic, and who, in the end, tells the Prince, "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." I think about this when I feed the bird and hold it in my hand.

I was reflecting on my students today--distinctly those in my afternoon class. And the class itself, as well, how, in the beginning, after they left and I began picking up and tidying, it felt like I was cleaning up after a war. A month later, it felt like picking up after a battle, then a mild skirmish, and so on. Today, it felt like picking up after a class of elementary school kids and in the negative connotation of the phrase, which means it wasn't the best class of the week, but that in not being the best class this week it's still miles above what we were when we started.

Perseverance, even when it's blind, lost, and led only by the dumb hand of time--that's to say almost, "even if it's not perseverance"--always overthrows any obstacle. It makes you give credence to the sentiment (to the record) in the dear old Bible, that faith can move mountains. That's to say concerted, diligent perseverance. Doubly true in Buddhism, where, they say, mountains don't even exist so of course you can move 'em. In any case, the world has shifted again, rolled over to its side to gaze longingly at the sky.

I was also just thinking of the portraits that my students make, singly or in montage. John who, for a week, would only enter the classroom on all fours barking like a dog, and who, even when not a dog, tries to eat anything, or at least put it in his mouth. One day he was eating his triangular ruler, and I said, "John, what are you doing?!" He said, "It's chicken!" There's Judy who everyone says is very pretty. Today she finished the writing assignment while Steven, the slowest writer EVER!, was still finishing the writing assignment from the day before. Judy lay her head on her arm and looked out the window. I was sitting next to Steven so that I could remind him to keep writing, for, at any second and for any reason, he will spontaneously stand upon his chair, or climb unto the bookshelf up to the air-con unit right near his desk, to stick his head into the rush of cold air, and sing a phrase of a song.

He is a very slow writer because of the care he takes with each letter (unlike John, for example, who chomps down on his extra eraser, and writes right through the asignment in large, messy, thick lines), and he was writing the word "around," again and again. For some reason, this made me feel really peaceful. All the letter's seemed to have the same circular movement starting from the nape of the "a," circling down and around, to execute in a tail. Then the "o," but with no tail. The "u," with a tail but with an abbreviated skull, the "n," slightly different, but still as thoughtful as any of the others. The "d," which is just an "a," with a very long spine... He actually was practicing this one incorrectly, beginning at the top of the letter, and executing the rest in the same movement as one would do to make an "h," on the other side. I didn't bother to stop him.

On the other side of the room sat his twin sibling, a sister, Ruby, who, just as in intelligent, does half as well due to things people would call, "behavior" issues, and many days she is uncooperative. She does do well with writing, though, I thought. She sits next to Andy who is very smart and has no class room decorum, so sometimes he loves what we are doing a little too much. If you ask him anything about Teletubbies or something called Yoyoman, or Spongbob Square Pants, he will know the answer--in English. After class, sometimes he even teaches me Chinese.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Fo Guang Shan, the buddhist temple that I stayed four weeks in two and a half years ago. It seems like ancient history now, almost like another world. Indeed it is another world, another world altogether even from Taiwan. It's quite large, the complex, with several musuems, two English colleges (men's and women's), art galleries, many temples with their accompanying courtyards and landscaping, lodges, giftshops, bookstores, and a huge 5,000 people dining complex, all of which is built upon several hills, an hour North from one of the largest (I think) port cities in the world, Khaosiung.

Here, it's incredible, but everyone is very happy--old people, young people, lay people, monastics. It's like the rule, or at least the myth, all over Taiwan, that here it's very happy and peaceful and, indeed, it is. In fact, it would be rather creepy except for the fact that, once you get used to it, you realize how rich and undeniable the happiness is.

I said it was ancient history for me but that made me all the more startled to remember things I had lost, or had never bothered to translate into my other world. I remembered the smells, even before I got there, the smells of their halls, their air-conditioning, their incense, and even the smell of their shrubs outside. I found almost every place we had meditated--the place outside where bees and flies had buzzed lazily from one neck to the next. The time we meditated in the men's college temple and the fan that blew in the window, the light that changed across the floor. In the early morning, outside the giant golden, standing Buddha statue, where the courtyard wasn't quite big enough and the neat rows of mats twisted oddly at the end.

Perhaps when you're letting your thoughts go, the ones that remain--those arrogant that stand up and claim substance--are those that fall so hard, once, and so distinctly that the impression they leave is left waiting like a fossil in your mind, like a cicada that waits in the ground, for that odd year to come around, when they summon brown casing, and rise from the earth.

Halfway around the World to Find the Picturesque

“Youzihhu-- “Youzihhu sits within a natural basin on the eastern side of the mountain beside a deserted aboriginal village. Ruins of early stone dwellings with their vacant fields bring about a sense of vicissitude and uncertainty. Looking down at it from the high point of the entrance road, you can see randomly scattered stone houses with mottled brick walls nestling close to the mountains, which is a picturesque addition to this site.”

I descended the road into the “natural basin” halfway realizing that I simply would have to push my bicycle back up and dumped it into some weeds. I had to believe that it was such an undesirable product that no one would ever steal it, for I did not want to walk back to the guest house. On my first test ride, “around the block,” I broke the peddle clean off the arm. This was the first bike of two, provided for free from the guesthouse. Neither bike was very good and as I have not found a way to rent motorcycles without an international driver’s license, they were my only means of transportation.

On this island, which really is a piece of jagged volcanic rock, and as far as I could see, eternally beaten by the light gray waves, the roads (or, rather, road), fluctuated from steep, twisting climbs unto the higher plain, and the slow, peaceful undulations of the waving, long grass hills where nymph like deer hung about and roamed in packs at night. For the latter terrain, having a bicycle was rather nice, but concerning the former, the bicycle was not built for such strain, especially with my leg length. The bikes' seats were built so low that even at the very lowest point of the leg thrust, my knee was barely below my waist.

So like I said, I threw it into the weeds. When I reached the beach, the basin with the ruined houses, and the waves that fell stumbling in over the scattered volcanic rock, I went sort of distracted for several hours. I think I lost track of the time. Volcanic rock is very easy to climb, and so I took advantage of this—following waterfalls up the mountain. Roaming out as far as I could on the rock formations that extended out into the sea. After a while the continuous high wind and threshing of the sea seized to seem terrible any more. Now I felt the perspective of the rock, or of the sea from a greater distance—a sense of calm and almost claustrophobic peace. Here I was with a bike, an entire island, and an entire day—what to do!

The first night I arrived, I, along with the six other guests, and the uncle of the family who ran the guesthouse, went out driving on scooters, even though it was a constant chill factor. It was not cold necessarily when looking at a thermometer, but the wind was so strong and constant that any body warmth produced was immediately striped away, so that after awhile, the fire inside slowed considerably and without eating—fuel—it turned an inescapable cold. We rode about on the highlands with a huge flashlight and went looking for deer, just like people would do back in Pennsylvania for shits and giggles, but here the scene was slightly different—slightly eerie. A bunch of silent people in the mid-twenties, driving around on scooters, neither excited nor bored, stopping every once in a while because something like eyes flashed back in the night.

We stopped by some other places. Though we were on the highlands, we somehow found ourselves in a cave with candles lit, and a large bowl of fruit set out on an alter. A pear was lying on the floor so the uncle, when he entered, replaced it respectfully. This was Quanyin’s cave. In a guidebook before I came, I had read something like that a man had been washed ashore and woke up in this cave and saw a cave formation that looked to him to be an emanation of the deity—thus the shrine to this day. There was a similar story like this I remember when I was on the coast of Thailand, but it wasn’t Quanyin—it was a giant penis. The cave in Thailand was filled with giant penises offered by the local fishermen.

The cave was rather odd. Water running about under us, and above us you could hear the wind and the laurel like shrubs dancing in the wind. Through much of the tunnel and cave, the rock simply was overhanging us, and there was space that you could see up into the vegetation above and, occasionally, the stars. The roots were growing where our heads were. As I said, it was rather strange.

I was accompanied by six other people in their twenties, two couples who all knew each other, and two girls who didn’t know anyone else. All of them were from Taipei and had come to Ludao for one night. I thought this strange for two reasons. The first is because the travel expense is higher than the expense it is to stay on Green Island (Ludao) and the other is the ferry ride over—basically, the most miserable fifty minutes of your life. Plastic bags are stuffed into the seat pouch in front of EVERYBODY by several attendants with un-humored features. The most vivid image I walked away with was seeing the attendants, walking hither and thither, making trips to the public, central trashcan, with sloshing plastic bags of various muddy mixture. I did not look forward to leaving Ludao.

In the caves, the uncle was explaining various other formations that over time have been identified as resembling over things. I was a little bored and more interesting in the wind above me and feeling strange, but every once in a while I asked one of the girls what he was talking about because she knew English very well. She would give thoughtful one word responses, so I was a little put off, and maybe she wasn’t really listening as well. I let my eyes look at the rock and make my own impressions. I was never a big one in looking at clouds and saying what I saw. I have very often let my fancy play with clouds, but to say, “that looks like an old man sleeping,” never really seems like a good idea.

I thought that at any moment I would find something—see the rock move, or to see something so horrific, frozen into the rock, something someone had never seen before but that was undeniably there, that I would scream and frighten the entire party, but soon after we left, and I never experienced that possibility.

On my bike, back up from the basin, I made my way around the island, past the various outlooks, and then past the beaches where many people go snorkeling. At this time of year, and especially with the cold weather, no one was doing anything more than stopping and looking. I made my way past the hot springs—my central driving force for coming here—where Teacher Minnie told me she would get up at 3 in the morning to go soak in the waters and wait to watch the sunrise. It’s one of only three hot springs in the world where the water is salted. I actually didn’t get a chance to go. 3 am was a little early for anyone at the guesthouse to take me halfway around the island, and though we tried to go another time, a misunderstanding and a rather perplexing situation denied me the opportunity to fulfill that chance to sit in those waters. Until another time. Here is a photo of a road sign.

Going to Green Island

Concerning the first day of the New Year, 2009

Well, it was a new day of a new world as I sat proud in my seat, the world rushing by outside my train window, and nothing in the world to indicate that the calendar had made its magnificent change other than my ticket stub with six novel digits, newly stamped. I thought it absurd that people made resolutions on this day—more absurd that they chose to stay to the last clinging fragments of the last dying day. I had been in bed. Actually, I heard the rat-tat-tat-tat of fireworks that lasted for, oh, maybe two minutes, until the fuse (and whoever's interest) burnt through. Then again peace, leading, racing me to morning, where I awoke, stuffed some clothes into my bag, wiped down my table and counter tops, and entered outside into a deserted world.

The streets were mostly empty so early as the sun was still quietly low somewhere behind all that foggy sky. Even if the world had not opened up right then to greet me, I felt just fine, peddling down the road, the wind particularly bitter this morning as the winds had changed sometime the evening before. I think it’s just commonsense to do the proper thing, and just as someone that you’ve anticipated coming from far away—perhaps from across the sea—you make sure to greet them at the door, well dressed, and with a cup of tea. So we should greet the New Year. And instead of being jinxed by the last, dizzy from its departure—altogether missing the entrance of the next—why not anticipate the inevitable? So—early morning—flight on my bicycle down empty roads (the first and simplest kind of flight). No wonder it was two men with bicycles who discovered the path to the sky.

A ticket waited for me at the train station window. In that last, difficult and troubled year, already a half day ago, I had been told that there were no tickets left to go where I wanted, that I needed to have had reserved a seat a month in advance. But not so this year. This morning there were tickets for everyone. And then, eventually, on the train, the sky opened up and the sun showed herself already risen and dressed. I was very excited and it took me nearly an hour to close my eyes. I noted everything that passed—an orange grove, a patch of mustard field (the only two colors in that bleak landscape.) The warehouses and farm buildings looked like rusty electrical fixtures on a circuit board. I noted everything that passed then sat the journal down. I had seen to things—the sun was well greeted and well on its way (and well it should be, for it was to wake my neighbors, across the seas).

A picture from my train window taken later in the day, and on the other side of Taiwan, which seemed composed of nothing else but mountains, breaks of gravel plains made by streams, and a series of tunnels that became so often that they seemed more real than the landscapes outside. The train's vibrations, leaving the cocoon of the tunnel, radiated out into silence, like suddenly stumbling onto an impossible dream in the middle of a peaceful night.

Recovered from the Annals of Warren Wilson College

A Natural Tea Seminar
Location, Warren Wilson Campus

What great fortune has occurred when three such men of rarity should in this world meet and fall to that civil occupation of drinking tea! Behold their subtlety and their ease! Behold the strange beauty of language they employ to equal their subject’s qualities! Behold as they mark every twist and turn of the tea’s taste—chasing it to that other side of eternity where perception and beauty escape even our simplest thoughts! And Oh what thousand-fold blessing it is that their experiences have been recorded in the annals of history, their exact methods, procedures, and correspondence described thus:

Brewing Parameters:

Amount - 0.25 ounces of Nanqiao shan Pu-erh (Factory: Mengyang Guoyan, 2006)

Water – filtered tap water, Swannanoa, Hun’s house, 106 Cabin Hill.

Amount – 120m

Water Temp – Boiled then cooled for 2 breathes

Method - Gongfu

Brewing Vessel - Yixing Teapot 150ml

After passing around several cakes, we decided upon a cake that we all agreed smelled of a certain mustiness that yet contained in its darkness the scent of flowers. “Sauntering Breeze” did honors as tea server, while "La Tea Doe" provided us with refreshments. And I, "Felt-Leaf," humbly took it upon myself to observe and record everything that took place.

The first infusion (twelve seconds):

We lifted our sniff cups and this is what arose. La said, “sweet honey incense;” S.B. said, “fermenting honey;” and I added, “very hot plastic spatula.” “Yes,” we said. “It is all of these things.”

Then we took sips and the taste provided quite another dimension to our senses. I said, “A very tight flavor”—here I could not find words, and then I could—“slightly bitter like a steamed lotus root.” My friends concurred, La reminiscing, “a light-green taste, a little bit of sharp bitterness—just a little sweet to keep you interested,” while S.B. attempted summation in the true spirit of science saying only, “Slightly dry. Sweet at the end. Light-bodied.”

So much to be said in one brewing of one tea! What more can be said? Yet the rise and fall of the taste in a Pu-erh tea is like the rise and fall of tides of all the world’s oceans, containing in it all of God’s creations. As it was once said, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” Likewise, I say now, Tea is in love with its productions in the mind of man.

The second brewing is finished, fifteen seconds by S.B.’s count:

La began by saying, “The aroma has a stronger green smell, with a sweet smell, like” (here, he was confident and smiled) “like General Tsao’s Imitation Chicken.” No argument there. I added that I still thought it reminiscent of that strange warm plastic spatula smell as when it has rested too long on the skillet, but this brew was less intense.

While the scent remained intangible to our normal vocabulary, the taste we agreed was very distinct. La began again, “Blank dryness—‘free-of-taste’ dryness—filled in with bitterness.” “An all-coating bitter effect upon the tongue,” I said, “and still light and dry.” “Dry…drier—bittersweet,” said S.B.

It seems, upon memory, that we were descending into the depths of taste, unguided by any hand. Led only by our instinct and will, into that darkness of tea, without thoughts and concerns that we might not return, that in this bitterness there could be Lethian forgetfulness… Yet surely all that sinks below arises once again.

Third brew, 19 seconds:

Very adamant, “Honey molasses!” La then told me that he outright rejects the reality of it smelling like a very hot plastic spatula. I suspect—but I cannot prove—that La is simply being contrary, led astray by the amount of tannin in his tea. I respectfully maintained that it did, indeed, to me, “smell like hot plastic.” S.B., eyes closed, smiled from over his cup as it came to him. “Very hot spatula,” he said, “stirring honey.”

The taste: “A throbbing dryness; it will make your teeth ache with bitter,” F-L. “A mirage of wetness to start; a bitter dryness to finish,” said La. S.B. said, with a confused look on his face, after smacking his lips, “like…dry.”

The fourth brew was 21 seconds.

Was it the wastes of the day—the wastes of the tea talking? Were we men then—or like the flies drunk on an early spring day with the delight of resurrection in the sunshine? The smell: I said, “maybe like wet hair.” La contended: “dry enough to reach my nose!”

In the taste, the bitter lifted, I thought, “awake in its intentions—sweet and wet.” La concurred though troubled, “wet with an oceanic swell, but I still can’t shake the dryness.” S.B.: “smooth sailing ambrosia.”

The fifth brew was 30 seconds.

Yet again, change. While the aroma to S.B. and myself reminded us of shiitakes, to La he objected to say that it smelled, “the same ol’,” but also, “smells wet.”

Then there was nothing but poetry left in us. Or perhaps, all the poetry had left us. As the tea had washed itself of life, so had, in our expression, come and gone the soul of just formulation. I could simply write in my pages, “A residual innocence left from the complete dispersal of the bitterness; the sweet and wet of the earlier brew is all that’s left.” And then to say something so charming I could not deny, La went on to say, “like bathing my tongue in shallow, sun-baked water.” S.B. murmured, “faint and warm…sugarcane.”

Yunnan Junming Rulpinhao 38888

Well, out of the few passions that regularly send me to my blog (frustration, homesickness, and new discoveries being the only others that I can think of), the euphoria following a good session of drinking tea is perhaps the most consistent, which is the state I am in right now, a delicious coaxing puerh state, purchased for near twenty dollars in Malaysia.

In our conversations, Hun and I have talked about the need to categorize our puerh teas somehow. It is easy to forget a tea once you've put it on the shelf and it gets buried with a half dozen others. Besides, the pleasure of puerh tea is that it ages, and a history of a tea's flavor would be interesting as well as useful. Hun said that he had begun to insert a slip of paper next to each tea brick after revisiting it, and, on the slip of paper, he would write all the information that he knew about its manufacturing and year of cultivation. He also took the time to include brewing as well as tasting notes.

Taking his lead, tonight was my smashing of the champaign bottle and taking the first step of diligence in journaling, for the sake of my future edification, the brewing, tasting, and manufacturing notes of the first of my puerhs. Hun and I like to think of this process as scientific, due to the seriousness of precision, but, in truth, it is as an account as subjective as an oil, landscape painting, which, again, is not the most subjective thing either. Three painters will differ in tonations here and there, a winging bird that one of them captured, while the other was indifferent scratching his butt, and the other taking extra care to ennumerate the trees that flank one hillside, and so on. But hardly will anyone disagree that the three products are anything but the same vision. To re-describe, the difficulty of transcribing onto a page, with an inadequate langauge, what occurs on the tongue drives one to borrow both from science and art. One tries to borrow from the former objectivity, control, and a special attention to nuance. From the other, one hopes to lie upon beauty's wing, a plea to the muse that the indescribable may, this time, be described.

I've also included a photo. Though not beautiful, I hope it is helpful. I call what you see, "my command center;" it is here that I drink tea, write, work on my Chinese, eat, and push the little red buttons that send bombs hurtling to my classroom. One last note, the shorthand "js" means "Joe seconds," which means the amount of seconds of each brew that I counted in my head (scientific?--yes!). Without further ado:

Yunnan Kunming Rulpinhao 38888
Purchased in Malaysia July 2008, puerh from 2007. Seller said that it would be pleasing to the taste of beginner puerh drinkers so long as it was served in quick brews. Also a good tea let age.

10/20/08 Taiwan
2nd break of the cake: The cake, like before, is quite hard, and it is necessary to use a pick to loosen the brick and create fissures. Using my small teapot, and there is one good-sized chunk of tea in there, so anyway it looks like a third pot of dried leaves but it is hard to tell. I flushed it once with hot water to clean the leaves and immediately drained it.

1st brew (14js) - First sense is a shy sweetness, followed by puerh tea's milky flavor with an accompanying slime that coats the mouth; a bitterness hovers like the taste of coffee through milk, but does not get the chance to intrude. I would also add that though the combination of coffee milk may be an adequate analogy to this taste, it is not so blunt and rude as that particular mix actually is, but rather maintains a lightness that is hard to match.
2nd brew (17js) - Sparkling and alive this time, a physical feeling actually spreading right to above my eyes (and brain?), a stronger intensity of the bitterness--not more bitter--but definitely sharper, almost sour, a sour milk or a sour stout beer. Color near that of the teapot but, of course, very bright. (Personal note: the smell reminds me of a friend's--Josh's, for those who know--old house.)
3rd brew (15js) - Absolutely tangy, attacking specifically the top back part of the tongue. Flavor more vegetable, I would say, than anything else.
4th brew (19js) - Noticing a dryness in the aftertaste, especially on my lips.
5th brew (half a minute) - Quite different here. Was really pleasant to swig back. The flavor finally found expression and freedom from the tang, milk, and bitterness as they subside into supporting roles. Really pleasant.
6th brew (half a minute) - Yep, change noted above has fully taken place. As Lateef would say, "the clouds broke," and it's smooth sailing from here on out.
7th-11th brews (indefinite) - Over a coal and/or vegetable flavor. Same as the sixth brew.

Well, there's the last brew still waiting for me at my command center (I just poured the hot water in and left it--at this point it doesn't matter). However, please note that it is the eleventh brew. Try doing that to your earl grey and see if there is anything left. Bye-bye.