Three Mountain Teas

I went to Mengding Mountain yesterday and took a LONG trek to find my Honey Dew Green supplier Bai Ting Ting (Xiao Bai) just so I could be there again. It a beautiful spot. Tea bushes as far as the eye can see and as clear a sky as the Sichuan fog allows.

Its real country out here. Peasants scream up and down the no-lane roads in their three-wheel go carts, ducks waddle around pigs nuzzle roadside refuse a cow hides in the reeds by the river that flows down from the peak.

Xiao Bai's processing plant sits right on the river just a few feet from the old bridge. Behind her building is the local school. Dirty kids screeched in glee when i rolled up on their classroom and took eyes-closed foul shots with their flat basketball. One rowdy lil punk through a paper plane at me so i chased hm down and threw him over my shoulder. An eye-opening experience for him for sure.

I drank the local Honey Dew and some Maofeng and it was crystal clear with hints of yellowish green and the buds stood erect int he bottom of the square glass. I swished it around my mouth and felt the cleansing. I could sit there all day and compose verse for cock-eyed peasants.

Later int eh week I will visit the second mountain and my other supplier Lao Li up in Qing Cheng Mountain. I might try and get there on the 8th, the anniversary of the quake. And then, at some point, maybe after the full moon, I trek up Emei Mountain.

Qing Cheng Daoism infused Piao Xue Green, Meng Ding's hallowed Honey Dew, Emei's Buddha chant fed Zhu Ye Qing. These are the teas from Sichuan that I bringing to the states.

Charlie took pics, so I'll have them soon.

Work is the Enemy of Doubt

Fortuitous fortuitous this is the word of the day.

I spent the last two days meeting my old tea suppliers Bai Ting Ting who provides me with the Honey Dew Tea that I love so much and my man Chen Su Yuan who has tea ware for sale and twin brothers Xiao Song and Da Song who are acknowledged tea gurus. Drank so much tea my bladder couldn't take it. Wore myself out taking trips to the john.

I found some amazing Qing Cheng Mountain tea that comes from the same people that rolled with Charlie in this story right here. Its a bitter tea with a very sweet aftertaste with an amazing green color like natural neon lights in a glass.

But i suppose the topic of the day should be the huge music festival going on right now here in Chengdu. It is an outdoor fest with a pretty big lineup. Goes for three days on the outskirts of the town and everybody and they mama is showing up. The fest is the kick off bash for an all-Chinese MTV channel -- so goes the rumor -- and in true MTV fashion the place is crawling with TV crews and streaks of light from huge screens onthe maiin stage. It is quite a show, I must say. I saw Brain Failure as soon as I walked in and the SJ Family (wak dudes, amazing girl) took it to town with some serious singing from their female lead.

Peep Chengdoo here for more info on that fest.

My boy Josh of Proximity Butterfly was there with his wife Heather and their child Aetheria Hope Love.

This one here is for you lil girl:

First time I saw you
You were passed out in a tent with red splotches on your face
Two young Chinese girls cute as could be
stood guard outside the tent flap.
They kept checkin to see if you were awake
Cuz they wanted to coo and coo and coo
Yer daddy said:

"She's gonna walk before she crawls ... she ain't down with crawlin."

After that me and yer dad sang the blues, the funk, the soul, the lament of love and cracked pitchers of beer together under the lights of Chengdu's biggest outdoor fest.

When you woke up, girls materialized out of the muck of the field
and gathered round you,
fingering your curls and fat cheeks and looking deep deep deep into
your mama's blue eyes.

I told you what i thought about the whole thing,
but you had Shrek-like earplugs in yer ears.

So instead I talked about Giving Voice to Others
And Daniel Boorstin with yer dad.

Love ya.

Reconciliation

So let me try and explain whats going on here:

My main woman Nicole went through several years of servitude and now, finally, the work she has wanted all her life has fallen like manna from the sky. She wants to be a freelance journalist on the move and that's what is happening to her. I saw what she was like as a slave, what it was like when those bastards let her go and her frantic weeks looking for a master to replace Fox News. Finally, she gave up and let Fate do what it will. And then manna began to fall.

So this inspired me. Because I am happiest on the road.

BUT, i am also aware that me and my Tribe are trying to build something and me traipsing off into the dusk might not help. I might not pull my share if i do take off for the summer writing about small town America ...

The tea business is more complicated then I imagined and I am coming up against both wisdom and obstacles. I am learning a lot. Basically it looks as if this type of thing cannot be rushed and my impatience to have a tea house by this summer might end up hurting me. My pops and a few other wise men cautioned me to write. Make some cash. Spend a year in the US. And work long and hard on a business plan. Then see if the tea house is what it is. This is wisdom.

I want them both ya'll. I want to write books AND have a tea house. And i am stuck in a limbo of waiting for one to facilitate the other.

So what i do is this: i apply for a scholarship (see Post below) and attend a seminar on Quickbooks and basic accounting principles. I pursue both and let Fate do what it will.

The pen is probably what I do best and the irony might be that me running off to write will be the greatest contribution I could ever give my Tribe. Cuz this is what drives me more than anything. Even if you can't see it, that's what motivates me to get up and do what i do. cuz i feel a duty to do so. If i didn't have tribe i'd probably be in a field staring at the sun waiting to get old.

So if it seems like madness dont worry, its just the madness of my method.

If Babylon falls in my lifetime

Nicole be twitterin with Questlove these days cuz he is in P-town freezin his ass off ... i mean it aint that cold up here but for him ... used to the sun and all ...

Is the Apocalypse nigh? I met a dude in Eugene who saw 7 of the 13? crystal skulls and he and his believe deeply in the beam of light that will strike the earth in December 2012 and carry some of us away, leaving others to fend for themselves in a soulless apparition world wailing under the yoke of being "not good enough to ascend."

I feel a constricting going on. Like we're being squeezed together by galactic arms. Twitter and Facebook are the farts emitted when we get pressed nose to nose ... so if the Apocalypse is nigh, is it proceeded by a consolidation of the human race down to a single? point in space/time so when the beam hits, everyone knows, from those guys who ran from the tsunami on the Andaman Islands to a yak jerky chompin nomad to a been drunk old Russian stumblin outta his pub to a fat German woman gettin her hair cut shorter than usual to a French waif-princess with delicate features and a penchant for wild romances with the wrong man ... to Spanish Fascists sipping wine in plazas down to Moroccan sages sipping mint tea and puffin shisha in the afternoon shade through the core life force blackness of Africa where our collective heart thumps.

I don't know what will happen when the beam penetrates the broad leaves of the Congo jungle and hits a walking soul between his eyes.

I'd like to be on Twitter with that fool so when it goes down maybe he can squeeze out a few lines to warn the rest of us here in the New World about what the answers to the test might be ... noone wants to be the fool held back while his crew keeps on to the next grade. The kid who failed is forgotten unless children needs be warned bout what not to do. Then that guy gets pulled out like a Brother's Grimm tale of woe.

I am mentally ready, but my soul ... although not dogshit ... aint ready to be with God. I have been close enough reaching my fingers through the sheeting that protects my unsound mind from the realm of God and I stood right there at the precipice of the whirlpool whose galactic arms are squeezing, twisting, melting and coming for us all. I stood there and pulled my self away like waking from a bad dream ... it oozed away from me and i got it on my mind as I plot on shady deals and tea houses.

What if my family aint my Tribe and I have to walk away from them when the beam hits? Is that possible?

What if my Tribe aint my family and they have to walk away from me when the beam hits?

And if the beam does not hit. then the decision we have collectively -- and i mean my Tribe here -- made will have to sustain us. I mean, wouldn't it be too much for this generation of humanity to WILL instant gratification upon the entire planet via a beam of light prophesied by crystal skulls? It just sounds like something we would want to have happen because the alternative:

struggling through Babylon and building a temple of light from out the muck

just aint quick enough.

I come to the same conclusions daily. If Babylon falls within my lifetime, I am holding hands with everyone I won't walk away from anyone. And i'll do the same if it don't. If you know me on a personal basis, test these words daily.

I gotta go and hustle in the shade and build a house for my teas. Holla at me when the beam hits.

me and the devil sluggin it out

so yo, I have been dwelling daily on a tea business. I started out thinking that I was going to get a van, pimp it out Thai style and then roll around Portland dishin out love. It doesn't work like that for a variety of reasons. So then I looked at my plans and numbers and realized that my ORIGINAL idea, which was to open a shop and have a van that I could cruise around in when the opportunity presents itself, was a much wiser course of action.

So then I looked at what it would take to get a retail shop going. All of the permits, regulations and Food Handler Card tests that I found necessary for a van, also apply to a retail spot.

And also a retail requires a much more substantial investment of capital. I got rent, re-modeling, health inspections, a kitchen, inventory, tables and chairs, etc. So this began to daunt me. I started wondering: Oh Lord, what if this idea is too much for me to handle and I can't get any of this done. I am just running after a shadow dream that sounds great to the people that don't have to invest, but for me and mine, the ones who have to shoulder rent and such, its a pit that might just break me and send me running for the hills again.

So I slugged it out with the devil all weekend. He said, fool, you can't do this. My spirit rebelled and we went toe to toe. This morning, we sat down over a plate of one-eyed jacks and a cup of jasmine tea and talked it over.

he was like: sasch, my man, I don't really mean you any harm. I am just the harm within.
I was like: I feel you, devil, in more ways than colloquial speech.

And we agreed that he ain't going anywhere and I ain't either. Ain't nothing easy. he was silent while a sang a little ditty to myself, then I went down to the Space Monkey and sold two ounces of Buddha Palm Honey Dew Green tea and my peeps were like:

We are down with Buddha Palm. It helps us get through.

And that's pretty much all I needed to hear. I have a duty to do this tea thing. Just like I have a duty to write and holler at my friends and smile at pretty girls. Its just one of those things.