reading the leaves

Hot wisps of roiling tea carry on up past my nose, headed for dissipation while I steal a sniff along the way. Jasmine-scented green tea - the smell always takes me back to my few months in China in 1998.

My friend Kim took me and a few other friends to various tea shops while she shopped for tea and teapots throughout Beijing and Nanjing. We would sit in the air-conditioned interiors, resting on thin cushions that adorned the dark, smoky wood interior of shops that were more comfortable than ancient, more timeless than archetypical. Little old women would serve us tea while Kim browsed and we engaged in small talk that was muffled by blending scents from giant glass jars on the shelves. We never spoke that much, as it was an odd adventure of the pleasant variety which proved entertaining enough in it's own right. Kim had the knowledge and the gusto to seek tea and pots, and it was amusing to sip hot teas all afternoon in the steamy, exotic funk of Chinese cities in the summer. The cold dry tea parlors always had an initial bite when you stepped in, but the tiny wrinkled smiles of the women and the nostalgic feeling we all get around Oriental carved wood designs were always enough to fight off the chill.

Today I sipped the tea, reminiscent of my past olfactory escapades, and perhaps for the first time fully realized that I'm living my life right now. Beyond my heartbeat, pulse, and brain functions, I'm choosing things all the time and these choices make up my life. Why is this thought significant?

I think we are told that so much of our lives is the time leading up to our lives - that after some point it will actually begin. Is it the B.A., the B.S., the Ph.D., the MBA, the J.D., the Salinger, the MSW, the MFA, the diploma of any kind? Is it moving away from home? Is it finding the person you are going to get hitched with? Is it when we make real money? Is it when we carry debt and prove that we can pay interest on it regularly? Is it when we suffer and therefore discover some of the Facts of Life?

I have no answers to these posited possibilities of lines in the sand. I do know, however, that it felt different today to think of my life. Liberating, scary, warm, introspective, and many other things as complex and simple as the tea I sipped. It's not going to start in the future. It's starting at every moment, and carrying forward into the future like ripples on the surface that are consonant or dissonant with the ripples of everyone else in my life and in the world. Today I took life with no cream or sugar, just hot and clear and full of the aromas of the journey across the Pacific and North America to my teacup. Tonight I hold it warm in my hands against the cold stars in the sky, and look at them both a little differently.