Lughnasa Harvest Moon
Song of Myself, excerpt from Stanza 6
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Revised my presentation for Groveland UU this morning. It was better than I remembered, but still in need of some fiddling. It also needed some readings so I poked around on Poetry.org for poems on aging. Several good ones in addition to this piece from Whitman’s long poem, Song of Myself. I’ll post the others on the third phase page for poetry.
After finishing that, I took out my toothbrush, toothpaste and my newly acquired yixing tea pots. And scrubbed. With the toothpaste. The teapots. Odd, eh? Yet it’s the first thing to do in seasoning. Scrapes off the wax used to make them look good in a showroom, that new teapot look, you know.
After that they get rinsed off, wrapped in soft cloth, lid and pot separately to avoid damage and boiled for 30 minutes. Allow to cool. Rinse with lukewarm water. Then, if you want to do a professional seasoning, and of course I did, I mean why start the whole process without going all the way, you put three scoops of the tea you’ll be making in the teapot in yet another pot of boiling water.
Let it sit for 30 minutes, making a strong tea, then rewrap pot and lid in soft cloth, boil, you guessed it, 30 minutes, let them cool down and rinse off in the lukewarm water. Now I’m ready for some gong fu cha.
They’re still cooling down so I haven’t made my first pot yet. But I will tomorrow.
