He poured the tea with deliberate slowness. The laminar flow of tea into the cup contrasted neatly with the gentle swirls rolling the surface of the tea in the cup. Both motions were framed expertly by the stillness of the cup itself and the placement of the spoon beside the saucer.
He waited for the surface of the tea to settle before breaking my attention away with a silent offer of declined sugar.
“Why are you here?”
Steam braided itself as it rose from the reluctantly cooling cup.
”I want to know.”
“Oh, you don’t need me to help you with that. You have the Internet, now. You can know everything!”
I focus through the dance of vapor and see his face across the table for the first time since sitting down. “And the Internet is full of bullshit. Shit that I lack the wisdom to sort through. I’ve already come away with more errors than I had when I started.”
He tilted his head slightly to his left. “But with those errors, came learning, yes? And with that learning, came knowledge as you discovered and unraveled those errors. So why come to me when you can have all the knowledge you want?”
The slimming vapor twisted as my derisive snort rudely troubled the still hot tea. “Male kangaroos have double-headed dicks. That’s knowledge. How the fuck is that fact going to help me unravel the questions that can’t be posited in dry and practical words? I have access to a googolplex of websites pronouncing facts of dubious levels of truthfulness. Even if I can limit that to only the ones that are proven true (and I’m not gonna get into what is truth, not with you), how am I going to be able to sort them using criteria that cannot be written? Which font transmits the same intensity as ink distilled from the collection of a poet’s breath?”
I realized I was getting heated in my reply. The rules of hospitality govern this place, so I must not forget mine. I nodded to signal the end of my speaking, and punctuated the declaration with the soft cupping of the still warm cup.
He allowed me to sip slowly, and hold tenderly, the first taste of tea. Graciously, he studied my face as I silently expressed my wonder at the evolution of sensations across my tongue. Only after I let the moderately warm sliver of fluid invade my innermost did he speak.
“Then you do not seek to know. Why then, are you here?”
I took another sip to purchase time to consider an answer and to keep from blurting out the accusation of another trick question. I considered what I would ask if the tables were literally turned. When someone comes to me and I find their skill set for handing the situation… compromised… I don’t ask them what steps they think they want help to accomplish. I ask them what their end goal is. What would be the trophy they want to walk away with.
What is it I want to leave this table with?
I rest the cooling cup in my hands and rest my hands on the linen. “Wisdom. I seek wisdom. So much has changed, and yet so much hasn’t. Shit from the past that I thought was a one-off filler action has turned out to be seeds that are vigorously sprouting in what I thought was a scorched and lifeless desert. My environment has become unsustainable, both here and there, and what used to support me now can’t even support itself. If I’m to continue… regardless of what my intent may be… I need to understand how I fit in, where I fit in, what I’m supposed to be, and how I’m going to get there. And right now, I don’t understand a single god damn thing.”
I was surprised I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t surprised I was tired and emotionally drained. As I searched for the last ephemeral remnants of the cold tea, I questioned why I was telling this kindly old bookseller a thing that was savagely and deeply wounding me. When I lowered my hands, I felt no rage, but I shook anyway.
I placed the cold matte cup back on the inattentive saucer. The spoon, pristine and gleaming in its virginity, seemed to mock the fleeting reflections of light in the drying cup. How very much like the cup I seemed to myself. A vessel and a catalyst. Easily used. Easily forgotten after.
“The cost of knowledge, is time. The cost of wisdom, is innocence. You will hurt if you pursue understanding. You have to decide for yourself, how much is enough, and what you will do with what you acquire. There is no greater bitterness than a person who understands and chooses to do nothing.”
“And what lie will I be taught this time?” I dared to look at him squarely. The action was provocatively rude and the very fabric of space intertwined with our being rippled in chastisement. “Will I find the difference between an angel and a demon?” Why was that an important question?
“If you desire it.” He folded his hands before me, leaning in as I leaned away. His face is as kind as it is old. Wrinkles mapped the routes he walked to get where he is now. Scars conspired with time to trap me with my own observations. He relaxes his lips into a curve as he allows me to study him in ignorance. Something about his eyes bother me and I grimace.
My right eye floods with pain and I cry out as I cover it. His large hands engulf mine as he reveals my face against my will. As my sight returns, I see him again. My left eye, whole and unbothered, sees him as the kindly old bookseller in a kindly worn suit. Sees us sitting in a back room table late after hours in a shop that has closed for the day. Sees us seen only by each other in a private little room.
My right eye, pierced and unmade, sees him as a scarred worn traveler in road-gray patchy robes. Sees us sitting among the roots of a sky engulfing tree in a time that cannot be. Sees us seen by the past echoes of ourselves and the future wisps yet to be woven.
Where the empty teacup still sits, resides a small wood bowl, worn smooth by use and filled with a medicinal scented liquid. Something like pieces of leaves and flowers move in random motions across the surface. The shade-hatted man picks it up from the ground between us and holds it in place in the palm of my still captive hand. The bowl sits there perfectly, as if carved to fit me and me alone.
He looks up at me, and I see his disfigurement mirrors my pain. His left eye is shrunken and clouded and my right eye aches in jealousy of it. His own right eye holds me fast with his commanding sight as he seals the bargain I know I have already made.
“Would you know more?”