I'm Back

Yes, it's true. I have come back a little bit older and with a few more stamps in my passport, but I am back. It's quite a strange feeling actually, especially since I feel like I am not coming back to the same place I left, nor do I feel like I entirely belong here anymore. My space seems to have disappeared. But enough of that now. I am content for the moment to sit here and sip tea out of the mug I found late one night by the side of a bench and to stir it occasionally with a small spoon that also came to me one late night in Holland as I stood next to a church older than my nation with three people I am honored to call my friends. I sit here and drink, and let myself become saturated in memories. You see, I discovered on this trip that I am quite thoroughly addicted to tea, but not quite in the way one might think. Although I like the tea itself a great deal, it is not for the tea that I drink it now. I drink it for the memories and for the meditation. Tea for me is like a morning of sharply soft sunlight, or like a rainstorm, or like a body of water under a gray sky. It makes me think, it makes me become contemplative, quiet, thoughtful. The very ritual of making the tea, of watching it steep, of adding the sugar and stirring...it quiets me. It calms me. It leaves me in a place where, as the bittersweetness slowly disappears from the cup, I can be still and know myself and think softly and remember. That is why I made this cup of tea, in its mug of rememberances and with its spoon of memories. I made it to remember and to be still and to know myself in the quiet of the morning. Perhaps you should try it sometime. Who knows?

Who knows...