THE END.

She typed finality across the center of the page and closed the laptop with a snap.

What would it be this morning? She turned to her tea cabinet and opened it quietly. Maybe a green jasmine. She could tweet about it later and make Megan smile. Megan would have tweeted something about a new Earl Grey, and they would share fantasies about each other’s kitchens and tea cups. Or did Megan use a mug?

This would explain it. Why she typed, “The End.” This lack of attention to detail. Shouldn’t she know by now what Megan took her tea in? Hadn’t she read a few hundred tweets or more, about English Breakfasts and new green blends, a white tea for afternoon, and a cataloging of how many cups Megan had drunk by 9 pm? She had. Over and again, she had.

But she could not recall Megan’s imbibing-receptacle-of-choice. A novelist would remember these things. She would even be willing to research about tea, wouldn’t she? To create a believable character based on Megan? An authentic character who knew her basic pekoes from her golden tippys?

Novelists were like that. The real ones, anyway. The ones that Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa wrote about in Letters to a Young Novelist. Flaubert, Proust, Thomas Wolfe.

She hadn’t made it past page 5 in Proust, had gotten hopelessly lost in his detailed descriptions and a vague sense that maybe he was in love with his mother. Really in love. Like maybe he would like to nurse again, but not quite like that. This could be wrong. She could have heard that somewhere and not picked it up by page 5 at all.

And had she even read Wolfe? She couldn’t remember that either, beyond what Vargas Llosa quoted, which she had just read on Monday. Thomas Wolfe likened the life of a writer to being infected by a worm that fed on his insides.

A worm?

It got worse. Vargas Llosa loved this image, had thought of it himself and was simply quoting Wolfe to say, You see? Being a writer is like having an insatiable parasite inside you.

Vargas Llosa’s worm was a tapeworm, and he had rolled out a few anecdotes about real people with real worms, including a few nineteenth-century ladies who purposely swallowed tapeworms that would eat their insides out, for the sake of social effect—along the lines of impressing the in-crowd with their stunningly slender waistlines.

She hated worms. Her own German grandmother had strung them on fishing lines, turned them loose by the hundreds in her garden, even smashed the “bad” ones between her thumb and middle finger, until their green insides popped out like a bilious pearl.

Laura put her hand to the edge of the granite countertop, feeling suddenly sick. A light sweat broke out across the back of her neck and a warmth spread through her limbs.

She’d better sit down on the floor, right here. Maybe someone would find her dead a few months from now, when her bills went unpaid and the repo guys jimmied the door.

Her laptop was plugged in, though, and the Word file was still open on the desktop—a single page of a novel she had never started, with the words “The End” typed smack in its center. As she sank to the floor, she managed a laugh. “The End.” They’d think it was a suicide note, wouldn’t they?

And there she’d be, where she was now, finally, thankfully. Cheek to the cool oak floor, having died of a worm.

“If you are a writer, stop whatever you are doing, unless you’re actually writing, and read The Novelist. From page one, Barkat dives deep into the writer’s mind as it really is… At times I felt I was reading the book and listening to the radio in my own head, and the words were identical. The Novelist soothed this writers soul, made me laugh, and uplifted my confidence. Hemingway said, ‘Writing is easy, just sit at the typewriter and bleed.’ Barkat covers all the in between moments so creatively. I thoroughly enjoyed The Novelist.”

—William Y., Amazon reviewer

 
Read a Rumors of Water excerpt
Read Making the Perfect Cup of Tea
Read Re-Covering Time

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Dip into the spoon of an oak
where emerald air steeps an inward morning
and you read the covering of leaves as home

—Bethany Rohde

Says Bethany, “I was inspired by How to Write a Form Poem, and decided to craft a freeform found poem. My source material is three articles at Emily D. Tea Traveler. I made minor [grammatical] alterations to three of the words. The three sources are…

Your Emily D.
Making the Perfect Cup of Tea
Re-Covering Time

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I will catch up with you next week.

Because it is true. There is excitement and work. Sorrow, deep sorrow. Birth of friendships, or maybe just deepening.

I will have tea with you then, I tell her.

I am overwhelmed.
 

Then I see this at April Harris’s Life and Times. She is writing about tea …

But it isn’t just the drink itself that is important, it is the ritual round it. Not that we have tea ceremonies like in Japan or anything, but the simple act of boiling water, pouring it over tea and serving it, is very centering. You see, whether you are making a cup of tea as a celebration, as commiseration and comfort, or to calm someone, the way you make it is the same. So even if your life is falling to pieces around you, or someone in an impossible situation has come to you for help and you have no idea where to start or what to say, making tea is something you can do.

April is right. I will catch up today.

Because I want to make tea, for the Haviland cup that Ann gave me.
 

I put water in the stainless steal teapot. I boil it. I measure Creme Earl Grey into a ceramic container with its little nylon tea basket. I smell the scent that says, “Celebrate” and, on the other hand, “I am so sorry.”

I run my finger along the fragile line of the tea cup. It tapers to a fine edge. I can feel that it is indeed antique.

Light comes through the cup where it thins.
 

Remembering another friend’s tea journey, which centers on the outdoors, I choose to sit outside to drink.

Now the sky and autumn rides on the surface of Creme Earl Grey. Colors of both hope and sorrow.
 

But tea is something we can do.

So I am doing it today.
 

New photography with modified reprint from my first writing blog.
 

 
Read a tea reflection: Recovering Time

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Forget complicated instructions.
Ignore those who say you must try this you
must do that.
Buy tea that sounds yummy. Brew it.
If you like it sweet, add sweet. If you don’t,
don’t. You are not under surveillance by the tea police
as you top your fine English breakfast with Reddi Wip.
Sip.
People across this blue-green world drink with you.
Breathe flavor. Today — Joy.
In a few minutes, the leaves unfurl
and so do I. The laptop anticipates
my next move.
Most days the tea runs out before the words.

—Megan Willome, from Writing Rituals: Starting With Tea at Tweetspeak Poetry
 

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Read Making the Perfect Cup of Tea

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Mine is cold.

I look out the window, see oak and maple leftovers strewn across dead grass. Two dark brown leaves hang from bent stalks in the rock garden. In summer, these were the orange tropical plants, with flowers that looked like pearly goldfish, mouths open to blue skies.

Where have they gone to now? What seeds, like silken-coated ambassadors, might be ushering them through darkness to find Spring on the other side?

Inside, I turn to the task at hand. Making the perfect cup of tea.

It is said that the Japanese emperors used special water for tea. I can’t remember exactly what kind of water it was. Maybe something about dew gathered from cherry blossoms or water melted from snow.

My water comes from the tap. It will have to do. It’s important to use this water only once. Reboiling reduces the oxygen content, makes the tea less tasty. And besides, I like the idea of drinking air with my favorite teas.

I used to think that all teas were created equal. Not so. Loose tea is far more flavorful. The larger the leaves, the greater the quality. (In general.) Even though I grew up as a Lipton girl, I don’t foresee ever going back. Not since the Creme Earl Grey from Kathleen’s. Not since the French Bagatelle and Christmas teas. Or the Mariage Freres Wedding Imperial, which leans towards the flavor of coffee with its caramel and chocolate undertones.

Here is a list of what to do with beautiful tea…

1. Put hot tap water in the teapot, while waiting for your tea water to boil. Measure out 1 teaspoon of tea leaves and set aside in the steeping basket.

2. Is the tea black? Bring the water to a rolling boil. Pour it over the leaves immediately. Steep for 5 minutes.

3. Keep the teapot cozy. Tea likes to stay warm through the whole process. That’s why you gave it a head start by warming the teapot first. That’s why you’ll want to wrap it up. I use a towel. Or a charming old-time French scenes tea cozy rimmed with emerald velvet and gold, that Sara made for me.

4. Is the tea green or herbal? Catch the water before it reaches a full boil. Pour. Cozy. 3 minutes for green. You’re working with a more tender situation here. 7 minutes for herbal.

Letting the tea steep too long makes it bitter. You won’t do this though.

You’ll set a timer, gaze out the window for five minutes, or seven, or three.

You’ll get the cream from the fridge, think of orange tropical flowers, or Christmas which only comes in the season of dead leaves. And thinking of leaves, you will turn back to your tea, its leaves yielding to water, to the morning.

This is a modified reprint from my first writer’s blog.

Read Re-Covering Time
Read Becoming Emily

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It is fragrant in here,
behind the diamond-shaped
glass, under the white tin
cover, spiraled to finality
(at least for now). Black leaves
nestle curls into curls,
brush against lavender
and pearlescent petals, suspended
until a hand brings water
and vanilla-hungry air.

— L.L. Barkat, from Top 10 Best Tea Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry
 

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Read Becoming Emily

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