Monkey Steals the Peaches

Two days left. Woke up at three. Did my morning routine uninterrupted. Read a few pages. But now I hear the children stirring.

Baltasar Gracian, the 17th century Jesuit, wrote a manual of practical philosophy called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom," which was highly regarded by Schopenhauer. In aphorism 205 (in the Christopher Maurer translation), Gracian writes on the benefits of scorn: One way to get things is to scorn them. When you look for them, they aren't there, and later, without your trying, they come running. Earthly things are the shadows of heavenly ones, and they behave like shadows; they flee when you pursue them and chase you when you flee them. He goes on to speak of scorn as a weapon, and to advise people to ignore their critics -- but this seems a serious change in tone. He refers to scorn as "the shrewdest way to seek revenge." At first he writes of a way to achieve your goals through a kind of unconscious state of retirement -- like Mozart playing billiards to take his mind off music, which often resulted in intense flashes of inspiration. But Gracian goes from achieving ...

 Breathing in, I am a flower of stars.                         Breathing out, I am                                                  bones on the mountain path.          Breathing in, I have eyes of sun fire                                                                                Breathing out,     I have palms of tea leaves.                                            ...

After an intense period of buying teaware -- from 2013 to about 2019 -- I began to favor simpler brewing methods. At present, I use what may be the simplest. Each morning before work, I put three tea leaves in my thermos and fill it with hot water. This produces a very pleasant, mild tea -- it is never strong, but also never bitter.  It is also affordable. After months, I've hardly made a dent in my tiny bag of oolong, imported from a family farm in the Wuyi mountains. Each morning I wash out the previous day's leaves and refill. And each day I look forward to the moment, which I often deliberately delay, of popping open my thermos lid and savoring those soft echoes of distant mountains. I think more complex brewing methods involving ceramic vessels are more suitable, perhaps only suitable, for use with guests. The three leaf method produces excellent results to be enjoyed in solitary moments.