Reading Tea Leaves

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

This passage is torn off the side of a Celestial Seasonings box of tea. They used to have a ton of quotes and passages, but in the last 10 years or so, changed their packaging.

In fact, I wrote to them once, when I noticed that the once-inspirational packaging was gone, to state my preference for the old, and also to make a case for the flavor Cranberry Cove, which had dropped out of production. I even searched Amazon and eBay for boxes people might have hoarded.

Growing up, I only drank Cranberry Cove tea when I was home sick. I would hold a mug bigger than my hands under my face, inhaling the steam and scent. My mom would stir in some honey, and it was comfort incarnate. When I went home to NJ to pack up my childhood home in 2011 when my dad was selling the house, I scoured the tea cabinet for any straggling remains of the boxes that had likely been there since the 90s. I found a much-bedraggled box about a third full, and brought it back to Oakland with me. I have 3 bags left now, and I only drink that tea under special circumstances, when I need my version of ultimate comfort.

I have in my kitchen cabinet a collection of passages torn off tea boxes, and a few fortune cookie messages. I found them again about a month or more ago, and going through them, I found the Thoreau one.

This was about the time that I was making my decision to focus entirely on acting and theater as my artistic and impassioned outlet (and source). I pinned the cardboard quote to my fridge with the San Antonio magnet I bought in 2010 when I attended a conference, and in fact, performed in a play with my friends.

I have a very specific style of the magnets I buy from airports. They’re these 3-dimensional, near-cartoonish representations of the city where I am. I don’t know why, but I love these best. There’s Singapore pinning up my “time plan” for the week. There’s New Orleans, pinning up a page from a magazine, a photo of a home with the word “yes” dotted all around it, on everything in sight. YES. There’s Sydney, holding up a small note to myself about how I want to manifest my gifts in the world, probably as a result of some “What Color is your Parachute” exercise: create, organize, implement, get messy, entice/encourage/invite.

There’s Maui and New York, and a magnet made of petrified wood that I bought at the Petrified Forest in Arizona while driving/moving cross-country in 2006.

Finally, there’s a magnet of the Serenity Prayer, and one with a Hebrew prayer that was a gift, and I don’t know what it means, but it’s pretty, and “spiritual.”

Under that magnet are cut-out words from the back of an Ashby Stage program: “Oh my dear; Who’s ever ready?”

Who is ever ready to endeavor in the direction of their dreams? Who is ever sure and confident that now is the time to begin? There is no starting pistol or cosmic alarm signal to tell me, Yes, Molly, Now is the time.

There are only these small messages, these scraps of encouragement and camaraderie culled from the pages of life.