I did want to disown myself. I wanted to learn about purity, about earth purity and divine purity, by rinsing the body clean of the buildup and the constant furious input.
The only truly pure things are air and water, and even then, I must equivocate. The air has to be good clean light mountain air, or the puncturing hot air of the empty dessert when there is no wind, no dust to interfere, or the strong ocean air, not of the beach, but in the middle of the sea.
With water, it’s even harder. There is so much we don’t know or see and so much we can’t control. The most pure waters, fresh rain from a clean sky, hot springs, or melted snow running in a clean and clear riverbed, can’t always be found--can almost never be found in my life--and the water from cities has unknown chemicals and additives. "Chemicals and additives" is something we hear about a lot. We don’t know what it means, what they are composed of, but we’re quite afraid of chemicals and additives.
Still, even city air and city water are more pure than hamburgers.
I went ten days without hamburgers. I went ten days without any food at all. I had coffee, which is probably the least pure of all the semi-pure drinks. And I had bottled, colorful, calorie-free drinks from companies I’ve never met, made by people I don’t trust. Those are not pure at all, even though the labels have pictures of beautiful slices of fruit. There is no fruit, and the lie makes it even more impure. I had tea, which has a different kind of purity. Tea has the purity of being, in the leaves and their scents and oils and greenness. And I had water, which has the purity of non-being.
I had to teach myself the art of fasting. I first didn’t eat for a day, then two, three, five, seven. Finally, ten. This seemed a stretch. How did you do it for forty and in the dessert, not in a home with a WiFi enabled thermostat, memory foam mattress, and a water purifier? I felt weak and dizzy. My stomach churned in anger, resentment, and confusion. My legs were heavy, my spine slouched down into itself as though all my energy had fled to the four corners of the earth and I was the center of all gravity, caving in on myself. I lay on the floor and told my husband I might vomit. He looked at me with concern, but he didn’t say to stop. He didn’t say to keep going. He told me to listen, to think, and to do what is right.
It’s so hard to know what is right.
I ate again, and then I didn’t. Three square meals a day felt foreign, like an ancient American myth. Funny, I thought, how people used to believe in that so long ago.
Womanhood and food are complicated when mixed in the same bowl. The apple and Eve both tempted Adam. We have curves, flesh that is ripe for biting and suckling. I think the most pure meal might be a raw mango eaten whole, when you let it drip down your chin, onto your breast, the pulp clinging to your throat like a strand of hair. There is woman in the mango. I’ve always felt close to food, especially fruit, leaves, stems, and roots, like these are my cousins, and I have to keep them close.
A woman eating is a woman being a woman. A fruit being eaten is a fruit being a fruit. So what am I when I am not eating? I find myself genderless. Disinterested in sex, like everything is too holy to touch with my body. Only the tea leaves still dance in my heart. Everything else is in silence, waiting for the fast to break.
In ten days, I saw my body shrink away from itself. I saw my skin hang from my bones like a damp sheet on a line. I felt miserable the first time, but it felt better than being full. I only know how to be full or empty, nothing in between. Empty is pure, and full is a different kind of purity, a different kind of commitment, one that demands self-sacrifice. It is a demand that you stretch yourself to meet. The second time I fasted for ten days, I learned how to take care of my body while fasting, and I was less tired, less dizzy and weak. I drank more tea and water, less marketing and packaging and chemicals and additives.
I continue to fast often. I am a woman who has a complicated relationship with food. I feel too close to it. Sometimes, I just need a vacation from it. I restore the purity of my body by fasting. I let my human urges go unsated for a while, and when I return to being fully human, I am more in control.
Today, my husband sick in bed with a virus, I rose, and I performed the tea ceremony without him. We used to sit and do this together, but not often enough anymore. We always say we’ll get back to it, that it’s one of our foundations. Pour the water, count the seconds... tip the pot… blow… sip.
Pu’erh is an ancient tea that was once so valued, it was used as currency. It was carried by nobles and kings across China, aging, fermenting, growing dark and mild like a strong old warrior. It has purifying properties. It is a good tea for a person who hasn’t eaten in seven days.
I rose, and I made the tea dance with my hands. The pot is brown Yixing clay. It sits on a tray made of slatted bamboo. There is a glass pitcher, called a fairness pitcher. It is used by amateur performers of the tea ceremony to ensure that all who come to sip receive an infusion of equal strength.
In the tea ceremony, you drink the tea many times, pouring the water seven times, maybe eight, until tea is nearly just water again. It is a cycle of birth, life, and death.
First, you rinse the tea, and throw away the first infusion. It is a short infusion, a few seconds, to let the tea bloom, shake off the dust, and prepare itself to give its best. It is a mother’s water breaking, the first sign of new life, the precedent. We live for the following eight infusions, the following eight decades. Each steeping, an age. The first is light, youthful. It hints at what maturity will bring. It tastes like itself, but it is not yet itself.
You smell the underside of the teapot lid before you first sip, and this reminds me of new love, a nose nestling close behind a paramore’s ear, catching a scent of perfume and shampoo and musk, the sensitive skin sending messages that even better sensations will soon follow.
I think the tea knows that more is expected of it.
The second steeping is an abundance. Over-eager, masculine, and far too forthcoming. You only have a moment to pour it out, or else it exhausts itself by giving too much, and you ruin the strength of the remaining six infusions. Carefully, you take the adolescence of the tea, begging it to hold something back, to not let everything be revealed before its time.
The twenties are also rocky, but more moderated. The journey now depends on the character, the quality. The thirties, the forties, the fifties, they are smooth, some ups and downs. You get to know the bitter edges, the sweetness at the center, and the nuances of each note. There is cocoa, coffee, smoke, mulch, the scent of a forest floor after it rains, even sometimes pine, amber, and ocean. It all depends on where the tea came from, and where it has been until now. The final infusions are gentle, sweet, faint. They don’t rush out. You have to wait for them much longer.
I’m turning thirty soon. I looked up the other day my age on Mars, and learned that if I had been born on Mars, I’d be turning sixteen soon, just a month after my thirtieth earth birthday. I find this comforting. I also tell myself that it’s quite a coincidence that I am about to turn thirty and that I live in a culture with a base-10 numerical system. The number means nothing, if I am not of this world. But I am of this world.
This is why I fast. I cease to be woman, to be American, to be twenty-nine, to be beholden to the conventions that put lines on our forehead and expiration dates on our vitality. I have long conversations with leaves of tea that live their entire lives in the course of a morning, so selfless that they cannot help but overshare, like a loquacious socialite who spills bubbling secrets into your ear on the dance floor. You find yourself feeling like Ruth at the helm of a pot of pu’erh, noticing in astonishment that the harvesters have left behind too much grain, that your gleaning is being made abundant by a benevolent source.
You probably never drank pu’erh when you were on earth, but things that you never touched can still be holy. The sound of the canopy of a Costa Rican rainforest. The light in early morning in the Sierra Nevadas. The first snow of winter. A cake of pu’erh that travelled from China, to Seattle, to me.
I’m not sure when it becomes holy, but I know that it is. Set apart. Dedicated to worship. Glory to the divine.
My husband and I consecrated our marriage with prayers to you, the name of Jesus, ancient Celtic rituals performed quietly away from the crowd, and a small cup of tea passed tenderly between us. It was hot, light, and hallowed. A protestant pastor stood by, his first marital tea ceremony underway, smiling, blessing us.
Sometimes I want to ask your pardon for inventing new rituals to honor you. Sometimes, I believe that is what I was put on earth to do.
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