Fame

When I stepped outside today, I saw the sunlight standing boldly on my porch. The air was warm for December, so I started some tea and took a book outside, my teapot, cup, and strainer lined up neatly on the porch rail. Across the street, a woman set up a tripod on the sidewalk in front of the fire station and I thought that a man enjoying his tea with a good book on a warm winter day would make a good photograph, maybe for one of those front page stories about the weather they often run in the paper around here. I started reading. When my tea was ready, I put the strainer over my cup and pored from the small read teapot, a nice looking teapot, simple, elegant, a good photograph–the amber liquor pouring into the cup while the man squints against the sunlight and holds a book open on his lap. She was packing her camera into her van by now, a large black van that looked like it might be one she used for business. I looked back at my book and tasted my tea with my right hand, the one that wasn’t between my face and the van. The tea was good; I’d made it just right. It happens that way with tea. Sometime you use just the right amount of tea, steep it just long enough, and the weather is just right. There’s a lot to it. Like photography, maybe. The light, the focus, the time exposed. Maybe the woman’s photo of the building would turn out perfect, like this tea. Maybe it took her so long to finally start her car, after she climbed in, because she was wondering if there was anything she’d missed. After the van left, I started paying attention to my book, the chapter about Confucius, and tried to figure out if Confucianism is best considered a philosophy or a religion.