Welcome to a Lunar New Year Tea

Happy Year of the Rat!

Lunar New Year was yesterday and is celebrated all over the world, but primarily in Southeast Asia. Along with China, I know that Korea, Mongolia, and Vietnam all celebrate Lunar New Years. Japan used to celebrate Lunar New Year as well, but changed to celebrating on January 1st in the 1870s. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the calendar cycle, there are twelve years with corresponding animals. The rat is the leader of the animals - starting off the twelve year cycle - and ends with the pig (last year’s year). Each year has its own energy with positive and negative traits. I am not able to go into detail on each year and animal here, but if you’re curious I do recommend looking it up.

There’s also a lot of mythology around how and why each animal was chosen for its year. The story I was taught had an emperor invite all the animals to a party. The clever and tricky rat told its rival the cat that the party was on a different day, thus the cat was excluded from the calendar. The rat then tricked the ox into allowing it to ride on the ox’s snout and this arrived first to the party. This is why the clever rat is the first animal in the calendar.

The anime/manga Fruits Basket goes into this a little more.

This year, my friend invited to a Chinese tea ceremony and then have Dim Sum after. A Chinese tea ceremony is very different from any other tea experience I have had. Tea is treated more like wine or whisky in how you sample it. 

Our tea master would show us the tea before we tried it. It came in big blocks wrapped in dried bamboo. Each tea had its own tiny clay pot that it was steeped in. You don’t drink the first time the tea is steeped. You need to let it open up and “breathe”. It’s the second time steeping that the flavors begin to blossom. Before taking a tiny sip, you’ll want to smell the tea - each time the tea is poured it may smell different. Then you take a small sip out of tiny porcelain cups and massage it around your tongue. Every cup of tea, even from the same pot, could taste slightly different. Everything depended on how hot the water was, where the water came from (filtered is better than bottled), which tea pot you use, and even how many times you steep the tea.

Packed raw dark tea

It took us a little over two hours to try five different types of tea.

A dark tea

And there are a lot of types of tea. It’s not just black or green tea. There’s also oolong tea, white tea, yellow tea, and dark tea. We mostly tried dark teas which have a very different flavor from teas you’ll find in a US supermarket shelf. We also tried a black tea and white tea. All were very different in taste and smell. My favorite was a dark tea that had some crossing with rice plants. It tastes sweet and resembled sticky rice. The other I loved was the white peony tea, which was light and delicate - my friend liked it to being the white riesling wine.

White tea

These were some of the most amazing teas I had ever tasted. The teas were never bitter and always had unique flavors. You won’t get the same experience from drinking tea from a bag.

I have a place I go to to buy my teas. I’m lucky that the guy who sells my teas knows how to properly prepare them and gives a lot of advice as to how much to use and how to drink the tea. The tea I make at home is pretty good. Still the experience of trying tea during a Chinese tea ceremony is one I don’t think I could replicate.

I hope that tea ceremonies or tasting become more popular in America. I think there’s a market out there similar to how people try whiskies, wine, and beer. Your focus is entirely on what you’re drinking that you can taste all of the different notes and flavors.

So, Happy Year of the Rat! May it bring you a new beginning and good fortune throughout the year. And if you have a mind for it, try a Chinese tea ceremony. 

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. 

Welcome to a Horror Revival

Movie award season is underway and I couldn’t help notice a lack of nominations for a particular genre: horror. I might be a little bias, I happen to write a lot of horror stories, but there have been a number of decent to good horror movies made over the past few years. I think some more than others deserve recognition.

Movies like Get Out, Midsomer, Us,  and the VVitch had amazing acting, were visually stunning, and  some amazing costumes (especially the VVitch). The new version of Suspiria was a little long and there were a few questionable choices, but the updates they made were creepier and more relevant than the original (the original is still my favorite because it is one hell of a trippy nightmare fairytale). I love watching The Ritual on Netflix on a quiet night and The Babadook along with Hereditary are emotional rollercoasters.

A lot of good horror movies came out this past decade, but few got the recognition I think they deserved.

The VVitch - currently on Netflix

I enjoy a good horror story for a number of reasons. Sometimes I need a creepy tale to get me thinking of what I might do in a similar situation. Other times it makes me think about the real life situations these stories are based on. Candyman has a lot of great commentary on class inequality and policing in minority communities (hopefully the remake will go a few steps further). Jacob’s Ladder, one of my all time favorite movies, has a lot of accurate and horrific facts about the Vietnam War. Maybe that’s why I like it so much - it’s a deadman’s dream rationalizing his senseless death.

The one type of horror I’m not super fond of is overly violent gore nor found footage. It’s one thing if it’s sparing and tastefully done, but the torture porn genre that emerged after the rise of Saw is not my cup of tea. I prefer atmospheric that causes a creeping tension with few releases of emotions. Minimal jump scares  and not too much found footage.

The remake is the better series of movies, but the original holds a special place in my heart.

I do have a few exceptions. If the story is good and I can watch the movie without feeling sick to my stomach, I usually enjoy them. The first Saw movie, though incredibly gory at times, has a lot of good twists and an excellent story. The found footage movie As Above So Below has amazing symbolism and use of layered story telling.

Unfortunately, horror movies and stories have a reputation for being terrible (and for good reason), but some of cinema’s greatest movies are horror. The Shining, Pan’s Labyrinth (yes I count this one as horror), Alien, and Psycho are all amazing and have had a major impact on today’s pop culture.

Even the more campy horror movies have merit. I love pretty much anything with Vincent Price in it and Christopher Lee is probably my favorite Dracula, but these movies aren’t always masterpieces and their shoe string budget occasionally shows. The Fog, Sleepy Hollow, The Woods, and even Halloween might have a few big plot holes and leave the viewer asking more questions than the movies probably intended, but the visuals, aesthetic, acting, and music really make the viewing enjoyable.

Evil witches and plants...yes please!

I hope that this next decade ushers in a new era for horror stories and movies. I want more movies with creepy atmospheres and lots of suspense. I want a good soundtrack that takes me out of the ordinary and let’s me live in a dream within a dream. I want gothic houses to explore and monsters that are never seen, but always lurking in the shadows.

An evil fairytale brought to life.

Bonus points if the stories have just enough answers to not confuse the watchers, but doesn’t hold their hands either.

Give more movies like The Woman in Black, Cabin in the Woods, and The Lighthouse. Plant the stories in both reality and in dreams. Let the mind wander and think.

And nominate some of these movies for awards.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please, like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to an Artist’s Hope

Story time guys:

For the better part of a year (possibly longer), I’ve started doing a poetry and art form known as Blackout Poetry. What this is involves taking text from a book, newspaper, or other source and selecting works to turn it into a poem. The other way to look at this is that I’m taking away the words that I don’t want to make a poem. Traditionally, you remove or “blackout” the words you don’t want and that’s it. However, some people take it to a higher level and add in designs and inked art to the poem.

Here is your first example of blackout poetry

I first came across this where I get a lot of my art ideas: Pinterest.

And I’ve been posting my blackout poems on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

My personal rule of thumb with this particular poetry and art form, is to only use text that is in the public domain or that I have permission from the author (which are mostly my friends). The two books I’m currently working in are Frankenstein (which is harder than I expected for multiple reasons) and Phantom of the Opera. I might add to this collection at some point, but these are the two books I’m working in right now.

Plus these books help me write some darker poems

I find doing these poems both challenging and relaxing. I have so many words I can work with and sometimes I can’t form the sentences or ideas that I want to. It can be frustrating when I want to use the word “was” and there isn’t a “was” to be found on the page. However there is something very cathartic in taking a Sharpie or felt pen and drawing all over a page.

If you are interested in trying blackout poetry, just make sure it’s in a book you won’t be upset drawing in.

I get a lot of these books for free or doubles if I enjoy the book

Now, here’s the reason I’m sharing this information and story with you guys today.

One of my friends has been following me on social media and has a daughter who is teaching in inner city schools. He shared my blackout poems with his daughter who in turn shared the idea with her class for their poetry unit. She took different pages from one of the books her students had to read, photo copied them, and explained the idea of blackout poetry for the unit.

The students loved it.

My friend shared a few pictures of the poems with me (sorry won’t show them since I don’t know the students) and the work was amazing. They were personal, raw, haunting, somber, and beautiful. Most of the students loved the ability to make their own transformation work that represented them.

I honestly hope that the students keep creating.

And I helped inspire someone to introduce this creative idea to these students. I feel humbled and happy that I was able to do that. As a small time artist and writer, I often feel that my work doesn’t matter. I write and create art to entertain my friends and to help me deal with my emotions. I like to hope that others are inspired by me.

And now that I know they are, it feels wonderful.

I can also work on my romance writing and self expression.

Maybe in the future, one of these students will publish a book of poems. Maybe one day, one of these students will become a famous artist or writer or both.

I’ll probably never know if I inspire someone like this, but part of me genuinely hopes that I do.

I wanted to share this story with you today because I think there are times when we don’t feel like our lives mean anything or that we haven’t done anything spectacular. Knowing that my blackout poetry was used to inspired students to express themselves in a new way has reminded me that, even in the small corner of the universe I wander through, I can still make a difference.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the 20s

It’s a new decade! 

Except for the people who seem to think that 2021 starts the new decade. These people seem to forget that years are counted as integers (that’s why BC years go backwards from zero like negative numbers) and that the first ten integer years are 0-9, not 1-10. 

Ergo 2020 does indeed ring off the new decade.

In the past few weeks, most of social media has been a buzz with reflections on the previous year and decade. Facebook especially seems to like reminding me of all the things that I have ever posted in the past 11 or so years. 

But the time for reflection is over. The roaring twenties are back - hopefully without the huge wealth gap (unlikely) and economic down turn at the end of it - and I want to focus on the future.

So here are some things I want to either experience, do, accomplish, or have happen while the twenties are still around:

• Bring back jazz and blues as major music movements - technically blues and jazz have never really disappear from modern music, but the two genres have been overshadowed for long enough. The Broadway play Hadestown is an excellent example of how jazz and blues are still relevant.
• Keep getting published - I have had a short story published and I will soon have a poem published. My family thinks it’s awesome and are extremely encouraging in my writing. I love writing and hope to have a novel out sooner rather than later along with other short stories and poems.
• Help the world - whether by doing more volunteer work or working in an industry that allows me to help the environment, people, or science in some capacity, I want to be more involved with the things I’m passionate about.
• Travel more - I want to see the world, meet new people, and experience new cultures. I want to document and record my explorations and inspire others to be open to new adventures.
• Go on an adventure - this one could tie in nicely with my goal to travel more, but adventures can happen everywhere, when I least expect them to happen. I live in the shadow of one of the most exciting cities in the world, so I don’t necessarily have to go far to find an adventure.
• Read more - recently I’ve gotten into poetry and I’m always up for a good cozy mystery book, but I also want to keep reading the classics, new authors - especially from communities that haven’t had the largest representation - and the occasional non-fiction book.
• Continue learning - I am a researcher by nature. I want to know things, I want to experience things, know how something works. I’m curious and a problem solver. I’m considering furthering my education, but as I’ve learned, nothing is set in stone.
• See more plays and live performances - since I live close to New York, I’m lucky enough to see a live performance. Last year I tried to see a play a month, and, while I didn’t quite make my goal, I still saw a lot of awesome performances. I’d like to include more dance and music shows if I can.

I admit that some of these things are a little vague. I do t even really have a set timeline for them. I just know that these are things I’m interested in. Some of these goals might take a little while longer than others. Some might not happen at all.

Writing this all down helps me visualize my goals. I feel one step closer to them being real. They’ll take time to accomplish and in a few years, I might change them around or add to this list. 

There’s a lot changing in my life and there are times when I feel a change affecting the world at large. Do you guys, my awesome readers, feel that too? What are some of your hope and goals for the twenties? I recommend writing them down or recording them somewhere. You don’t have to share them like I have, but it might help you live the life you want to in-between the parts we don’t like as much.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.