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Learning to Notice Tea
A sample field note about attention, taste, and the difference between consuming and noticing.
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At first, tea was mostly a binary experience: I liked it or I did not. Then somebody asked me what changed between the first steep and the third.
I had no idea.
The question made the cup larger. Temperature, texture, aroma, bitterness, sweetness, and the strange mineral feeling left behind all became things I could pay attention to. The tea had not changed because I learned new words. My experience changed because I had more places to look.
Attention is a kind of equipment
This is one reason I like becoming a beginner. Beginners are regularly shown that the world contains distinctions they had been walking past.
The distinction does not have to make me an expert. It can simply make an ordinary afternoon less automatic.
For now, I am trying different water, writing down very little, and noticing what I want another cup of. That seems like enough of a practice to begin with.