ancient chinese secret

went for a walk this afternoon, dragged myself out of my warm art deco dark wood cocoon

walked around aimlessly

wandered off to the liquor commission to see if I could find some vintage tawny port

walked past the market

walked into the Pharmacy R' Us (that place is my pharmaceutical play land)
spent 20$ on bath soaks and face masks - individual packets for my many moods

walked up the street to the Chinese grocery store
looked at all the strange "jelly" flavored cakes, cookies, and then actually "salted jellyfish"

walked past the stinky fish on display, slit open between piles of shaved pink ice
took a detour into the "dried things" isle and stood in front of the 1001 varieties of tea

The saying: "there is not enough tea in china to..." sums up the sheer mind boggling array of this beverage known to this part of the world. What I saw was only a nano-twig of it.

slimming tea, tea with catnip, tea from shitake mushrooms, white tea, green tea, gunpowder tea. Keeping in mind this was not one of those fancy pancy 'tea rooms' with ornate silver canisters doubling as decorations/ornamentations, I knew not to look for the more exotic teas such as the little flower buds that open up after a quick steep (but end up tasting like wet socks once you get to the bottom of the cup...) or my fave - dragon pearl tea so I stuck with looking for some interesting white. Found some in a nice little white tin box, wisps of Fujian mountains in the distance.

Ahh - a moment of tea.

walked back home, took out my cast iron teapot, threw in some leaves, waited 5 minutes and sat down to relax. Knowing that my mind trifecta would begin around 7pm, took 4 orange tablets of Anmien Pien.

My acupuncturist says it works - I trust him with those needles and my health/sanity.

We'll see what happens
see if I can walk away from this madness...