Leaflet Misprint no. 15
This week’s leaflet tea tastes like … cherries, crumpets & ceylon black, nylon construction, and honeysuckle blooms
Hello, everyone.
Tea Leaf Tech is a process in which I brew a cup of the Beobab.tree’s blend (its bark, leaves, its fruit, and a dapple of honey—of course!), which is a way to introduce settling and warmth into the day’s spiral of events. During this time of sipping and slowness, ideas and images collect at the bottom of the cup. The readings of the tea leaves laid to rest on ceramic glaze will be the basis of leaflets. From here, I invite you to sit with your own cuppa and peruse what sensations this week’s tea blend has to offer.
At the end of each month, I invite a guest who will have their fill of the blend and transcribe a leaflet, featured only on Beobab.Tree.
If home is a feeling in time, I always return home when the honeysuckles are in bloom. It’s June where honeysuckles are slow-baked in the sun. Home is June.
This leaflet is special in that it marks an earnest effort to reestablish consistency and share my growth. By growth, I mean all the ways I’ve branched out in how&what I think&share about things. The past three months hold much meaning that I am in the process of thinking about how I’d like to archive it.
One thing I’ve had to reckon with is that most ways we are delivered newness and information online (in the form of video reels, status updates, and advertisement rabbit holes) are not conducive for self-reflection.
How is the way I am engaging with this new bit of information shaping me as a person?
Self-reflection is integral to our collective archives because the archive itself is a reflection of the values, histories, memories, and dreams of its stewards imported into a (digital, physical, temporal) space. How are we archiving for ourselves—and what is in our archives—if we are being shown how to act, feel, and consume trends so accessibly, so incessantly?
Several people have written about how many aspects of our society, from architecture to fashion to faces, are homogenizing. The impulse we have to understand others quickly, under a desire for feeling intimacy and connectivity, often reveals how we use language to label—and subsequently “box”—characteristics of a person’s existence. Y’know: aesthetics. This makes it easy for capitalism to generate marketable experiences or products (#Cottage-core, #GORP-core). Any time, then, to figure out for myself the peculiarities of what I love, why I love it, and what I really, truly want to do for my communities is sacred! My fascination has come from exploring my Why.
I say all this as a prelude to an intention: I hope that this summer of leaflets will provide an alternative to something you consume that is no longer serving you. I hope that I continue to locate the things I consume that no longer serve me—and say “buh-bye”!
Part accountability and part table of contents, here are some things I’d like to write more about in the next coming months, in addition to our weekly leaflet transcriptions:
A series on de-sexualizing and decentralizing physical intimacy
The Scientific Method, one of the most lovely things I learned in school
Let’s keep transcribing what are our respective codes of higher alignment in our own sweet ways (Thank you, Wes Montgomery). Let’s keep smelling this season’s sunbaked botany and eating yummy things (some ideas: cherries, tacos with its tortillas made oily from frying on the grill, and spiced ice cream).
In the sun herself,
Isabel
