Leaflet No. 20

This week’s leaflet tea tastes like... railroad iron, pear, figs, hibachi yum-yum sauce, worn notebook edges

Feb 28, 2024

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 Beobab.tree’s 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.

**Please note this was written a few weeks ago; I’m getting around to transcribing the tree bark in full now! Hope there’s some enjoyment here.**

Hi, hello :)

As I write and release this leaflet, I am on a train bound to Chicago. I like saying it this way. When I think of the word “bound”, I think of the phrase “bound by blood” or “by honor”, which is to open up the meaning of what it means to be a railway embedded into the city, constantly providing trains the ability to leave and return home. Train stations, then, become a metaphor of a healthy love practice (the romanticizing of trains will shortly wrap up soon). I am on the way to spend time with my friend Laurie, who is very dear to me. I am in the stage of living where you find yourself making lengthy efforts (this one only ~150 miles) to be in the lives of people you love. It’s nice I get to do this.

Here is some found poetry, found when I was curious how the word gets bound to other words:

Anyways — with the tracks undulating beneath me, I wanted to write to y’all again. I’ve been wanting to do this for the longest time. With that, here is a bark transcription:

Enjoying:

🌺small ammonite fossil in my coat pocket, gifted as a birthday present

It stays cold and feels like an alien coin. I leave it inside my coat’s pocket because I like rubbing it between my pointer and thumb, thinking about how it—and the person associated with it—came into my world. Both here to stay. Fossilized ammonites, little mollusks of the sea now extinct, have been used as meditation trinkets, said to protect against snakebites. With my windbreaker, consider me majorly protected from the elements (snakes and storms).

“During medieval times in Europe, Ammonites that were discovered were said to be fossilized snakes and given the name “snakestones” or “serpent stones”. In the early 1600’s Saxon Abbess Saint Hilda was tasked with removing snakes from the area so that their village could build a sacred church. Her duty was vital due to their belief in the representation of the devil through the snake. Hilda was said to have cast a spell that turned the snakes to stone, throwing them off the cliffs. This tale was so popular that carvers would sculpt snakeheads into the fossilized Ammonites to further portray the lore.” (x)

🌺 Chapelle Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

I first listened to Chapelle Roan’s songs in the passenger seat of my friend’s green (They will fight that it is yellow) car. I love discovering music through what people play in their cars. It’s also in these moments where I feel so lucky to be within the intimacy that is knowing another person’s ear worms. Another friend, for a quick passage to the gym(?), created a 2-hour long playlist dedicated for me—how could I not soften by this ridiculous (said endearingly) act of love?

Anyhoo, Chapelle Roan: her album I makes me want to dance, to inhabit the most freeing energy state. It’s the music you karaoke loud; for professional choirs to get this album right, they would need to BELT and GASP and LAUGH and CROON. It’s incredibly indelible, electric, and dramatic.

🌺 pears, honeydew melon - great fruit after doing something that made you real sweaty

🌺 using non-traditional bookmarks: sugar packet, tea sachet, keychain

🌺faux fur boots that make me feel like a Belgian Draft horse

🌺This poem by Anne Carson: God’s List of Liquids

Here is some sweetness:

Inspired by Sally Wen Mao’s Ode to Emptiness

🎴My birthday happened early January and I am still riding off the love. To celebrate of us Capricorns, a group of us took me and Melina to a hibachi grill in the suburbs where I dodged pieces of cooked broccoli being batted by our chef. The staff sang to us with the beating of traditional Japanese drums, to which Mel and I tried to freestyle rap to. Another funny happening: everyone seemed to be on the same page in gifting me knick-knacks and lil’ toy— *ahem* talismans.

🎴I like catching the light on the little hoops that people wear in their ears.

🎴Joël, who’s teaching an undergraduate english class on epistolary form this semester, wrote me a birthday letter in which he shared to his class as an example. I love the idea of our friendship being studied by budding English majors and the physics kid who walked into the wrong room and decided to stick around. Do they know about our one-off baby-sitting biz? How we spent one finals week swaddled up in our respective fleece blankets in front of the computers peppered across the basement of the library? I wonder how much laughter or tears can be housed in a letter.

🎴 Reading my old diary/journal from 1 year ago: before I left VA to fly back to IL, i reread some entries I wrote exactly a season a year ago. This is always sacred business.

Sometimes I feel like, instead of writing advice for an older version of myself (the “Things I wish I knew…” prompt), I am writing for a future-self, the Isabel revisiting an old haunt, trying to make sense of what changed.

It is special to keep record. Not for the off-chance you are puzzled together by historians in year 5060. Rather, to be in communication with yourself. What I said then is comforting me, urging me, calling on me now. In many ways, Isabel from Jan/Feb 2023 is nudging me, “how are you still being accountable? Have you been eating right? Got any bitches? Are you moving in love?”…

Like the epistolary from, keeping a journal is novel writing (novel-ing, if you will) with low stakes (no amount of yapping is too much) and high stakes (your word is your word). More, what was novel to me then can still be novel to me now (another way of novel-ing, marveling). My greatest gift and greatest flaw is that I am easily enchanted -- I have no feelings on this other than acceptance/embrace.

I am reminded to keep the conversation going.

Images in the tree bark: