Tea Rooms

Lazy, beautiful, wonderful. Days that fall into your lap like magic. Gift days. Days too beautiful to end.

Places, too. Years ago, I was in Chelsea walking from gallery to gallery alone. The art was not moving me and the day was muggy. Then it began to drizzle. I was hungry and worn and looked for a place to eat. I saw a small sign by an old elevated track that was now used as a pedestrian path. I was told there was a forty-five minute wait. I waited. The interior was small, almost tiny. I sat next to a coy pond by the window. Delicate music, non-intrusive, and the hum of low voices. Within minutes, I was seated by a woman with strands of colored fiber in her hair. I had never seen a dress like hers, some variety of Asian culture couture, I thought, mixing Mongol and Himalayan garments and colors. Each of the waitresses wore a variation of this. They, too, were variations on a theme, slender and beautiful as a dream.

I was given two menus that were art, pages of torn, handmade papers of different sizes and colors, stamped, written, and drawn. I ordered a Kirin and a Sweet Pea Puree Soup and was brought warm organic bread. I wanted to keep the menu, of course. Everything was enchanted and enchanting. Wild Lily Tea Room. A myth.

The next year, it was gone.

Another year, another tea room stumbled into in the Mission District toward sunset of a perfect day, bright and blue and wonderful. The tops of Twin Peaks were just beginning to fog, the temperature dropping. Samovar. The interior low, warm, and full of texture, a raised platform in the back with low tables, a Tibetan tatami. I order green tea from thousand year old trees and a plate of sesame sweets. I breathe in, breathe out. Nearby, I will go to a small room full of pillows and cushions to hear a man perform a meditative ritual, blowing Tibetan horns and playing Tibetan bells. A myth.

The next year, the tatami mats are gone, as was the Tibetan ritual. Myth.

I know, I know. You should have been there.