I see my own face staring back at me from the teacup. Am I Narcissus? The water is deep. The well is full. Shallowness is depth in this world, and depth is peace. On the bottom of the cup, small pieces of leaves form a pattern, not unlike the one we all saw on Pluto yesterday when New Horizons met the outer rim of our galactic tea cup.

Orbiting this tea cup in front of me is a tea strainer, brand name: FORLIFE. The best thing to do with a tea strainer is stick your nose inside of it. Try it. Go on, I dare you. You may never come back. People have lost their whole selves smelling tea leaves. But seriously, you can’t beat that fragrance.

Often when I eat great food I have a transcendent experience that results in weird emotions like joyous anger and triumphant frustration. These emotions only exist in contradictions and opposites. You would think they would be impossible but they aren’t.

When I drink great tea, it makes me want to run out of whatever room I’m in and just stand out in the hallway for no reason. These are the things that love will make you do. It is unexplainable.

When you drink a black tea, it starts out dark. As you drink it, the color lightens as the depth shortens until it fades into the white of the cup (my cup is white, I recommend white for it’s ability to let you see the tea more clearly). Boundaries fade and the tea becomes infused in the room and I know that’s crazy but tea is all about infusing something with something else, something beautiful and kind and calm.

The infusion goes deeper than the water. It infuses the mind, the body, the very moment and space of here and now, until all boundaries fade.

I no longer see my face in the cup and I wonder if I have faded too. If I have been infused, or something has been infused in me.