Broken Luck or Lucky Broken?

It’s always a bit awkward when someone breaks one of your most valuable teawares right in front of you.  Sigh….

This happened just this morning.  But I have been mentally preparing for this momentary blip for the last few months and years.  So, I think am okay with it.

I am of the philosophy that you should use and fully enjoy your best teawear every day.  The Art of Tea is a living art, a daily skill, a performance, a meditation.  It would be a greater shame, I think, to have died and not exhaustively used and enjoyed such a pot.  Because if it had just sat in a china cabinet or worst in a drawer how could you have enjoyed it to its fullest?  Would you be more happy being buried with it?  Or it being boxed up and sent to a thrift shop?  Or inherited to someone who is incapable of such appreciation?

And man, have I ever enjoyed this big one.  Look at its patina, luminescent like the sunset.  You can’t put a price on a patina like that… just beaming radiance!  Unfortunately, I no longer have the financial expeditiousness nor means to replace such things.  I think it might surprise some readers that because of my minimalist view point, I actually own very very few tea pots.

It had a good “Last Supper” at least.  It was filled full of Yang Qing Hao… If I was a teapot, I think that’s the way I would want to go… hahaha

Well, the last two weeks I have had horrible, horrible tea luck.  I have had developed an allergy to only a select yummy teas, had some sell out just before purchase, and now this.  There is a saying that bad luck comes in 3s so hopefully it’s up and up from here.  I think I have needed something to bring me down, to humble myself, in the tea world lately.  Don’t you think?

But really, if these are my tea problems, then I actually consider myself quite lucky.

I have made the decision that I would rather have my tea table accessible to my very very young children and enjoyed communally, as a family.  Then to have things tucked away, off limits, exclusive.  Sharing tea with my family, the properly delicious gongfu way, has brought me more joy than this very very expensive teapot.

I had always thought one of the little ones would smash it by pulling the teatable on to the ground or by picking it up and dropping it or throwing it.  Would have never thought the very pregnant member of the family would find it too uncomfortable to bend over the teatable so as to pour the tea out of the pot while standing over the hundred year old hardwood floor not the bamboo tea table.

When the lid hit the ground there was an awkward, “I’m sorry!”

But my reply was, “It’s Okay. Really, it’s Okay.”

Peace