Some time ago, my husband and I visited a truly marvelous tea shop in Portland. Far from being a ‘Republic’ of tea, this place is like a pocket dimension of tea, where nothing exists but tea and tea accessories. We had ourselves a lovely spree, on tea, tins for tea, some tea, and a few different kinds of tea. And, we realized, the problem was that we simply didn’t drink enough tea. So we bought paraphenalia to extend our tea-drinking into our places of employment.

And this is the occasion on which I bought the tea ball which now sits before me. It’s a darling thing, shaped rather like a diving bell, and made of chrome-plated brass. Its chain, broken by my clumsiness on its first day of service, is mended with a paperclip, which luckily doesn’t seem to affect the flavor of the tea. It nestles in its own little drip-dish, and is, in general, a very snug, cozy little item.

And, a few days every week, it goes diving. I fill my huge soup mug with water, to a point one finger-joint from the top, and microwave it for four minutes. Then I let it sit and cool for one minute, hopefully to the proper temperature for green tea (165° – 175° Fahrenheit), while I carefully spoon an estimated teaspoon of tea, green with bits of fruit and rose, into the bottom of my diving bell. The tea sticks, crackling, to the plastic spoon. I fix the top on my diving bell, and secure the chain to the handle of my Case Western Reserve University mug. The timer goes off, and I messily pour most of the hot water from the soup mug into the CWRU mug, and let the rest of the steaming water gurgle down the drain. I set the timer for two minutes, and let the diving bell do its work. Unlike those things which, in the water, undergo ‘a sea change into something rich and strange’, the diving bell, unchanged by the currents of water flowing around it and teasing open the dry green leaves within, works a change on its sea. And when it is done, water streaming from the rising bell, scent tickling my nose, I dissolve a sugar cube, fascinated by the play of translucency and density in my cup, and close my eyes to have that long-awaited sip.

Tea isn’t just a beverage. It’s a cliché by now, but it is true—tea is a ritual. It calms and centers, connects you to traditions and places far from here. The taste that was born on the hillsides of India or China has curled and lain in wait, and emerges sweet and new in this brief moment of repose. Tea is patience, cure, and meditation. Tea is a brief smell and sip of heaven.

I have swallowed the tip of a tine of a fork which was made of transparent plastic. Will it reave, will it puncture and cleave? Destroy my entire system gastric? Will I survive, will I live, will I thrive, or will the outcome be both dire and drastic?

As I sat in my dining room yesterday, enjoying the last of a frozen pizza, and the first of a series of recorded Rumpole short stories, a flicker of motion caught my eye. Looking up to the screen door that let a meager breeze in to cool our house, I saw the world’s most beautiful cat.

He, for my wild guess was that it was a male, was sleek, slender, and self-assured. He was a Siamese of the darker type, so that his tail, paws, and curious face all seemed to have been blotted with some brown soot in his wanderings. His eyes, startling and large, were clear clear blue. He was the most strikingly beautiful cat I’d ever seen. He looked directly at me, and walked up to the door with all the assurance of a monarch. He mewed a friendly hello.

“I can’t let you in,” I breathed, and he closed his eyes and rubbed against the door, purring softly, as if to say, ‘I’d much rather rub against your shins…’

“I can’t give you anything,” I said, and he rolled over on his back, exposing a darling white patch under his chin and on his tummy. He lolled and waited to be scratched. As this did not work, he sidled up to the door and curled up at my feet, against the screen.

I went downstairs and tried to get Matt to come and see, but he was absorbed, so I returned, to find my visitor washing himself to look his best for the second attempt. Now he tried some more lolling, then a little prancing around to show how lovely he was. Now and then the house would settle, and he would jump to attention, as if to say, ‘I am such a good mouser!’ He playfully caught at the door with his paws, just enough to express his dislike for it without damaging the screen.

I stood there looking down at him. He must belong to someone. I wanted to give him a name, but I knew I mustn’t. I knew I was allergic, and I mustn’t touch him, and mustn’t encourage him with a can of tuna. It was an unbelievable temptation to open the door and gather him into my lap. Finally, I crouched down, my eyes about two inches from his great blue orbs. “You are the most beautiful cat in the world,” I said, “but I am allergic and I cannot take you in, however much I want to.” As throughout the conversation, he seemed to understand. He slowly got up and walked away, pausing only to pose on our patio table to show me what a lovely cat I’d given up.

I still wonder what he was about. Just a neighborhood cat, out for a little stolen attention or extra treat? An abandoned pet looking for a new hearth? Or some fae in cat form, fishing for someone to give him the solid reality of a name…

The other day I had a dream where I was one of a group of dimensional travelers. One of our group, the dreamy one in fact, went on an errand to a dimension and got stuck there, so we went to get him out. The place was pretty bleak, and all I saw was young people, so I asked him what was going on—whether it was a [movie name] situation. He said yes.

When I woke up and wrote down the dream in my dream journal, I had to know the movie name. It was something with running, some dystopia where people only lived to 30. I had to look it up on the imdb (It’s Logan’s Run.)

Did you catch that? I had to look it up in a database, because I’ve never seen it. I pop-culture reference pop-culture I haven’t experienced in my sleep. I am sick.

They’re here. They’re everywhere. I thought the winter’d killed them, but they SLEEP TOO DEEP! Buzzing, buzzing, hovering, watching, sucking water like they SUCK THE LIFE FROM OUR WORLD! Swarming and crawling and getting into my car and dying on the seat so there’s this stripey Romulan spy carapace with a little upturned stinger just waiting to ambush me, waiting for me to sit down, or maybe to assume it’s dead so it can STRIKE and turn me into one of THEM, if its venomous nanites don’t kill me outright! Swarming on the steps where they KNOW I go every day at 10 and 3! There’s even a mothership outside the window, swaying OH-SO-INNOCENTLY in the breeze. Oh yes, I believe you’re just insects! I believe! Tell your pointy-shouldered masters we believe!

I had a very, very bad dream last night. And by bad dream, I mean, ‘someone I care about bleeding to death and I could have prevented it’ bad dream. The kind of bad dream, that, when you drift back towards sleep afterwards and, for a moment, begin a dream where you’re at work, the printer is broken, and there are locusts on everything, it’s a blessed relief.

While I can guess where some parts of the dream had their origin in the discussions and reading material of the previous days, some superstitious part of me wonders if it isn’t some sort of karmic smackdown for my presumptiousness in wresting control of my dreams into my own hands. Either that or the revenge of the Monster Department.

I like to make things. I really do. There is nothing like the exhilaration, pride, and power, of looking at something I’ve made. Clothing, short stories, drawings, dinners, analytical essays, pillows, footstools, cookies, whatever… I love to make things. To make something that is greater than the sum of its parts is a kind of primal magic, a way of working your will upon the world.

My only problem is, I don’t have time to do it all. Lately, I’ve made a baby dress, and I’ve been working on embroidering initials onto some pre-made hats for a pair of twins that is coming. Meanwhile, I haven’t made cookies in months, and I think I’ve made two pies, maximum, since we moved in November. I haven’t drawn very much for a while, and my correspondence is far below its stellar ideal. I haven’t practiced my oboe in ages, or played our piano, and I haven’t added much to my ongoing attempts at novels and short stories. I seem to be juggling, always (which is something I’m not particularly good at), and I’m always noticing something shinier on the floor than what I’m throwing about at the moment.

Is it a problem? I really don’t know. I enjoy myself, and things get made. But I’m trying, every once in a while, to step back from the new thing, and do something I haven’t done in a while. Therefore, this weekend, I am making pie. And, well, someday, I hope, I won’t have this pesky ‘wage-earning’ thing to do — and then I’ll be free to make and do with reckless abandon, and maybe, just maybe, finish a few more things.

The Weather listens, and It understands.

I am accustomed to say, flippantly and often, that the only ‘summer’ that can be relied upon in Oregon—in the sense of beautiful days full of sunshine and puffy cumulus clouds—is the first two weeks of August. I usually further add that the rest of the summer is unreliable, except that it will rain on the Rose Festival.

It is the first week of August, and it is grey outside. And SPRINKLING! FINE, Weather! I get it! Let’s see…It sure isn’t going to start raining money just outside the building! Nope! Not here in Oregon! No time soon!

The Grey City I
The Grey City II
The Grey City III
The Grey City IV
The Grey City V
The Grey City VI
The Grey City VII
The Grey City VIII
The Grey City IX

The light transformed the City. Its new face was not pretty, by any stretch, but its very prosy shabbiness was a relief to Carys, after the eldritch wilderness of the night. Rotten boards and broken window-panes had no beauty, but neither were they the terror of gaping eye-sockets and jagged half-seen teeth they had seemed in the dark.

They found themselves, now that morning was breaking grey across the the sky, looking down a fair-sized hill at the dwindling houses and shops, and the slime-trail of the river drifting down the valley, shackled into its bed by bridges of all sizes and sorts. The fog was less this morning, only reaching into a few wharf districts. By standing on her tiptoes, Carys could see the river flowing into the sea, and hungrily she gazed out to the soft horizon, pretending for a moment that she was home, surrounded by green smells, moist grass, and the casual bumps and nudges of the family sheep.

“Where are we going now?” Eirian said plaintively, and Carys pointed, as near as she could guess from the Inspector’s words. “There better be something to eat there,” Eirian said darkly, and Carys’s stomach rumbled its assent.

They slid and stumbled down the cobbled hill, and crossed the Ironbridge, now demystified by the morning half-light. Some beggars and tramps still perched underneath or gnawed on apples or bones they’d saved to break their long fast, but some beams were deserted, a rag or two hanging, either forgotten by an early riser or left behind by someone fallen in the night. The empty district on the other side seemed no more busy than last evening – perhaps the people there were asleep, or already out about some business – but the sound of haggling, of drays and barrows, cries and arguments, rose from the direction in which she judged the Southdowns lay, so Carys turned confidently east and walked along the stinking riverside.

Soon, Carys could tell they were approaching a more trafficked area. Though few women, as yet, were out with their shopping baskets, and few carts and no carriages rumbled up and down the avenue, the filth in the gutters and on the street – cabbage leaves and rotting straw, horse manure and even human filth – began to increase, giving every testimony of the press of people and beasts that frequented the area. Ahead there was a junction, and Carys’s nose wrinkled already in consternation at the idea of stepping off the footpath into the near-sewer of the road.

But she should not have worried – at the crossroads, a narrow strip of cobbled street stretched across, as clean as sweeping could make it, and the girls could see a figure little larger than themselves darting between the heavy drays and dodging the careless drivers’ whips, cowering over his broom.

Looking carefully for carts first, Carys drew Eirian into the narrow strip of clean street and crossed to the other side, where the boy with the broom was sweeping a new pile of horse manure out of his path.

“Good morning,” she said tentatively, and the boy looked up, startled.

“Mornin’,” he responded listlessly, eyeing her tatty clothes and returning his attention to the filth.

The girls studied him. He was pale, tow-headed, and thin, with various scraps of clothes tied or wrapped over a base of overlarge, coarse pants and tunic. “What’s that for? The letters and numbers?” Eirian said immediately, pointing to shapes stenciled on the tunic.

The boy looked up again, plainly having forgotten they were there. “Letters is me workus,” he shrugged, “numbers is me.”

“What’s a workus?” inquired Eirian before Carys could pull her away from the tired boy.

“Doesn’t know what a workus is!” guffawed the boy, finally finding the girls of some interest. “Yer really doesn’t know?” he added, almost wistfully.

“No, I’m afraid we don’t,” Carys said apologetically.

He looked from their dirty hair to Eirian’s filthy stocking. “Will soon enuff, I’ll wager. Iss where the Runners’ll put you if they catch you not movin-on.”

“Is it a prison?” asked Carys, alarmed.

“Oh, nuh…issa workus. Work, ’ouse,” he said carefully, “‘Ouse where they works you. Wimmen sew, an’ men turn the, whassit, treadin’ mill. An’ us, as is too small for the mills yet, we is allowed outside t’sweep the crossin’s.”

“Do they feed you?”

“If you can call it feedin’, yus, we’ve wittles. But we can’t even keep the pence the toffs throw t’us fer sweepin’ their way, iss all workus money as we’re workus brats.”

“Why don’t you hide the money then?” asked Eirian boldly.

The boy’s pale eyes widened. “Thass stealin’!”

“Don’t see why,” Eirian sniffed. “It’s your money, you worked for it. I don’t see why it’s stealing.”

“Don’t much siggify whever YOU see, does it, Miss ‘Pertinence? Only matters what the workus matron says to the Runners, and they won’t much care whever you sees when they ’angs you!”

“Hanged?” Carys choked.

“Hanged for a few pence?” Eirian echoed.

“An’ that’s jes’ if they fink you ‘portant enuff to ’ang. ’Aff the time they jes’ does you in, if yer a brat. Like mice we is to them. Wermin. Not wurf the ’emp.” And he pulled one of his neck-encircling rags skyward expressively.

At this tribute to the austere majesty of the law, even Eirian quailed. Hurriedly bidding farewell to the sweep, Carys backed away, pulled by her sister.

“Don’t cross the Runners!” he shouted after them, “Remember we’re wermin to ’em! Wermin!”

The Grey City XI

So today someone on an internet forum mentioned how a protestor at a Gay Pride festival had given him some Jack Chick pamphlets, but had refused to give him any more when he saw that he was enjoying them ironically and laughing his head off.

No one has ever given me any Jack Chick pamphlets, but I want to be ready should it occur: my plan is to throw it back at them, saying, “How can you hand out this hate-filled vitriol in the name of a God of Love?” Both self-righteous AND pithy. Wouldn’t be able to guarantee that if I hadn’t pre-planned, you see. Most likely just go, “Buh…buh…people actually hand out these things? Do you have a Dungeons & Dragons one? Cuz one of my roleplaying friends thinks I look like the evil Dungeon Master lady.” Funnier, perhaps, but less meaningful.

This train of thought, following long-laid track, led me to the consideration of how Jesus, if He really was the Chap we think He was, would feel about all of the stuff, some harmless, some really quite awful, that is being sold in His name. We all know what He did to those people in the temple yard, yes? So, what would that really involve these days? There are billions of people on earth, a global economy…how could He make that kind of statement these days?

And that’s when it struck me. He would have to be a computer cracker. Oh, you may laugh now! But you go ahead and bookmark a Christian T-Shirt website or something, and check it daily…and when the site is replaced with a victory message in Aramaic, you’ll know the Second Coming has occurred!