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Thursday, May 13, 2010

On Tea

Tea


"Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn--and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb.

So, let us drink a cup of tea...

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accesion to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor...Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight...And, with each swallow, time is sublimed."

~Muriel Barbery in The Elegance of the Hedgehog

3 comments:

Kristen said...

Just reading your post title relaxed me, thank you for my tea break

Laura said...

I just finished reading that book a few days ago... isn't it lovely??

Tabitha said...

I love the soothing ritual of tea! My mom and I have tea almost every time we get together and it always relaxes us. I have "Chicken Soup for a Tea Lover's Soul" and it has so many lovely stories and quotes....lovely!