make tea, not war communi-tea

Right Head: Oh, stop bitching and let's go and have tea.
Left Head: Oh, all right, all right, all right. We'll kill him first, and then have tea and biscuits.
Middle Head: Yes.
Right Head: Euurgh, not biscuits.
Left Head: All right, not biscuits, but let's kill him anyway!
All Heads: RIGHT! - from film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

When Lucy steps through the fur coats in the English country wardrobe and right into a completely new world in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, it is no surprise that the first being she meets, a bushy red faun named Mr. Tumnus, immediately invites her to tea: "Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"

This is not the stuffy tea with just the right curd and just the right Devonshire cream of high flying society, but the welcome tea. (Anything goes. It's a gift.) Tea for two. Tea for three. In Walden; Or Life in the Woods, Thoreau wrote: "I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude , two for friendship, three for society." 

"[I]n the East tea is a dietary staple for one and all, and a sign of hospitality even in the humblest of surroundings. Chinese tea houses, India's roadside tea  stalls, Afghan chaikhanas, and the little cafes of Turkey and Egypt are democratic and lively - the opposite of tea rooms in Europe." -   The Little Book of Tea, Sangmanee, Kitti Cha et al

Sometimes I have a fleeting vision of a petite mobile tea with collapsable stools that one carts around the street like the ice cream vendors in the Mission. I pull up to any street corner for instant comradeship. Instant poetry. (You see poetry and tea just fit together.)

The old maxim, "Make Music Not War" is sprinkled generously throughout souvenir T-shirts in the French Quarter shoppes, New Orleans. I cherish that philosophy as a way of life. Maybe less so as simply a slogan.

I have a strong hunch had I'd ever gone busking with my friend between the guitar, the mobile tea cart, and a cheerful placard gently coaxing soul-baring, "Tell us your dream. We'll tell you ours" we'd have prevented civil wars, if not worldwide war.

In April of 2006 I started to drink tea and toast at dawn in the garden. An old habit I'd picked up in Sri Lanka, a land where we drink a warm milk tea (in lucky days maybe with trifle from those little clay pots) and convive at the drop of a hat. My writing blossomed along with that spring. (Please! Don't use this post as any evidence....I've not been up before the crack of 10 o'clock in many moons. I'm anticipating these teas will get my groove back.)

"While other social gatherings might make some people nervous, a tea party should be relaxed. The host or hostess or tea-master is Zen calm. Tea is peaceful. Is it possible that the tea party brings out our truer nature? Do we open ourselves up, let go of conflicts and problems, and experience our lives as part of a larger whole?

The tea party is an opportunity for metamorphosis." - Tea Celebrations, Alexandra Stoddard

Tea is only the symbol. Look closely and it's exceedingly simple. Dried leaves plucked from the Camellia sinensis bush, add boiling spring water, sip. Look deeper and it's twined together with peace, tranquility, inspiration, fantasy, conviviality, hospitality, poetry, soul, companionship, alchemy and immortality.  Look closely and it's exceedingly simple. Toss out the tea leaves if you wish, but consider the rest as a recipe for what we've always supposed was the elusive and exotically far-off: eternal now and unity.

Art Make Tea Not War stencil from the Worchester Stencils Photo Essay (yay street art!) (Thanks! Aha, at this photo essay learned that Buenos Aires started the stencil movement: Some might call it the birthplace of the political street stencil.); Tablee Aux Cinq Jeunes Filles (or Tea Party), by Franck L.

PARTICIPATING (or HOSTING) "Greetings and Gleanings" COMMUNI-TEAS" Schedules & WhatNot:

Updates here and via twitter.com/Panmesa

When? Between September 9th and September 11th, coinciding with the no work, no school, no shopping stop everything theme of General Strike 9/11. (I'd add no driving.) You know me - I'm not into resistance, struggle, or protest. I'm about What I am for? Yet I support radiating ripples of peace and community that symbolic day (yes, it's also a solar eclipse heralding new beginnings):

"Is it “inappropriate” or “disrespectful” to take the day off, reflect, and express your dissent (quietly and personally or loudly and publicly) or rather to go about your business as if this was just another a normal day?" - General Strike 9/11

"ON TUES 9 11
STOP EVERYTHING" - Rosie O'Donnell

What do I bring? No cost. Everyone brings something to the table. Let's use the legendary stone soup approach (Wikipedia's version of the stone soup tale). For instance, maybe you have a wonderful set of tea cups and saucers you can bring (let us know this in advance). Bring local, seasonal fruit or nuts that you've gleaned or foraged (edible found objects) or that you or a friend grew in a garden, and/or farm to share. Consider that there's something you already have that you can offer as a gift. If you must go shopping, enjoy yourself at a local farmer's market.

Along with earth-food, consider sharing soul-food, maybe a song or poem or personal anecdote about the harvest, peace, community.

Where? Community spaces. Common spaces. Welcoming spaces. I am still seeking spaces throughout the Bay Area. Encourage you to copy this, tweak it for your area and roll your own communi-tea wherever you live on September 11th. The space should be either community gardens, community/city parks, private homes (with gardens much preferred), community centers, or arts collectives/lofts that can be accessed by public transportation (to encourage biking, walking, and public transit). The munus, mutual gift sharing aspect of a community (Latin munus, gift + Latin cum, gathering together) isn't fostered in a restaurant or cafe so those venues aren't being considered for communi-teas. (We need in-kind donations like bread (local bakery anyone?), jams, cheeses, and printing for flyers.)

9/9, Sunday, 1-3 p.m. Community Garden, Shotwell and 23rd Street, San Francisco, CA

9/9, Sunday tea (evening), thinking another part of SF, or Oakland

9/10, Monday tea (evening), thinking mid-Peninsula

9/11, Tuesday noon, maybe Palo Alto area

9/11, Tuesday tea (evening), either my backyard or the local park. I'm near Cupertino/San Jose border just off I-280's Wolfe Road, email this blog's name @ gmail.com or twitter me for directions.

Bonus: Complete snippet from Tea Celebrations: The Way to Serenity (totally adore this book): "While other social gatherings might make some people nervous, a tea party should be relaxed. The host or hostess or tea-master is Zen calm. Tea is peaceful. Is it possible that the tea party brings out our truer nature? Do we open ourselves up, let go of conflicts and problems, and experience our lives as part of a larger whole?

The tea party is an opportunity for metamorphosis.

Ontology, the science of metaphysics, teaches us that there is far more to each experience than our limited knowledge and understanding allows us to see.

When participating in a tea ceremony in Japan, you enter through a three-foot-high swinging gate, so low you are forced to bow and be humble. Symbolically, one gives up one's ego. The required waiting station or machiai allows guests to make the transition from everyday life into the spiritual dimension of tea. This interlude prepares the guests to appreciate fully the quality of the tea celebration...

One of my readers from Denver, Colorado, who had spent a few years in England, wrote me that the tea custom had changed his life:

There is an environment of kindness here which I never experience in the States. It is not my work per se, but the way of life which matters so much to me...When I return to the States, I plan to institute chez moi the Sunday afternoon teas of Gertrude Stein's vintage -- where it is not the High Tea of British social strata, but the "salon" of the French-Italian Romantic period: a place to cultivate the arts, to talk over ideas. Want to join us?"

Comments

[Tiago Silveira]

Hi, Evelyn! Have you seen the almost spontaneous YouTube micro-movement "make art not war"? It was initiated by the user littleloca and it has very little to do with your original post, but I thought it might interest you, specially the part she says something like "there will always be cheaters and there's nothing you can really do about it, so keep doing what you do." It's like someone finally translated the old wisdom into a language that teenagers can use without loosing their "coolness".

All the best,
Tiago

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks, so much Paul for your kind words!

Tiago. Thanks so much. I listened to littleloca's vid, and a few others. I do think it IS related. (My thing: I'm into experiential art more so than art as object. Even this "writing" into a blog, or anything lasting is secondary to what I do.) I expect that we'll be writing poetry, or sketching in notebooks at the teas - especially the ones in gardens. The disarming of conflicts start within us, ripples to those closest to us, and keeps on keeping on until it reaches the shores of the Middle East and beyond.

This morning I awoke to escalating yells of a spat between a father and his daughter in the neighborhood. Iraq starts at home, right HERE, right NOW.

So I recommend, everyone, littleloca's ART, Not WAR vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmY0H4-aYH0

For context, it seems like there was a bit of a spat (guessin' there are always flamers and mockers - I've seen it firsthand too) from what she alludes to.

"Why is everyone tripping over, like, all this drama? There is going to be cheaters out there."

littleloca says she enjoy coming to YouTube and its community to get away from the "war" out there [she ain't talking about Iraq], she uses YouTube to chill, it's her "little haven." She showing a canvas bag with screened on letters that reads "Make Art Not War."

"That's why we came here for," (YouTube, blogs, etc.)..."Use the fuel that everyone has right now in this e-war to be creative with, please."

"We're one big family out here, so let's act like it."

Check it out. Thanks again Tiago!

[kevin]

thx for the kudos

fyi, spelling in Worcester

[the lost_poet]

A very well written and presented blog, I really liked it. What I liked the most is what you are saying to the world.

Adding you to my blog's link list, hope you don't mind.

[ROG]

You have a beautiful blog, which I hit upon looking for - of all things - the worst day of the year to fly, and I landed on some 2005 post of yours.

Tea, not war. Yeah...

[hardcore gay fetish]

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