Cup XLV: Smoke in the Water

Tea: Lapsang Formosa Alligator

Music: Daylight's for the Birds, "Worlds Away"

Time: Morning(s)/night

It's the rarest of posts for this tea-infused rambler. That's right -- it's about tea.

Scents and tastes take us back to where we've been. I smell rain and diesel together, and I don't care what my eyes and ears say -- I'm in London and it's 1986, about to turn to 1987. Lilacs and honeysuckle put me in the back garden of my childhood home. No matter where I taste it, a gyros sandwich reminds me of Missoula, Montana (that's where my sister once lived, and we were visiting her when I first tried it).

Man. Now I want a gyros.

Anyway ... all of the above, I understand. Scent (upon which taste depends) is the sense of memory.

But the smell and taste of this tea put me somewhere I haven't been before -- at least, not that I can remember. One taste and it's morning, autumn, in a pine forest. Someone has gotten up to make the fire, and the smoke hangs in the cool air.

I have no easy explanation for the phenomenon. That doesn't mean there isn't one. But ten hours after the last steeping, the whole experience remains vivid as memory, (un)familiar as a dream ... and the tea is gone now.

Tonight's story:

Ada Trevanion, "A Ghost Story"