man escapes peaceful tea café incident

On Friday afternoon – drizzle and all – the Eleven ducked into a tea café in Burlington for a pot of elixir. We’d successfully ditched the older folk and given the kids most of the cell phones before sending them scurrying about the promenade. The plan was to meet around 7pm for the annual feast at A Single Pebble. The tearoom was smallish with only about six tables and another area that housed a double set of remove-shoes-sit on cushions-ponder the universe-like tables. We missed out on one table as a philosopher of sorts slunk passed X as she waited for me to pop back in after sorting out adults and children via cell phone. Our slippery philosopher was wearing glasses indicative of either a deep love for Georg Anton Friedrich Ast, Christoph Gottfried Bardili, or afternoons spent debating the merger of Schlick's Vienna Circle with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle. Upon sitting at his stolen table, he opened his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of kosher vellum, a quill of raven, and a porcelain mosaic inkwell and began drafting either music staves or his life story spent on the cusps of Burlington, Vermont. Of course, just about everyone sitting in a Burlington tea café is by some account pondering the depths of life and/or the newest Radiohead CD. After another ten minutes or so a couple got up to leave and we worked our way over to the table as the “waitress” (what do you call a waitress in a tearoom?) was clearing the ceramic mess and took our seats. Unfortunately, the process of sitting at a table is no indication of past or future performance by our tea girl. Things were not going smoothly, or peacefully, by this time. I eventually got up and headed over to the tea laboratory area and ask her for a menu. Her response was to hand me a tattered tome and a small bell. Right. Which one can I smack her with? I know, it’s not very tea-like. What I began to wonder is this: do people in Asia ever just have tea to pass the time? Must the representation of the tea culture in America always be some monochromatic series of hippies, deep thinking, dreadlocks, and shitty service jammed down my throat? Just saying. We managed to order a pot of Russian Caravan that brought with it my desired dash of lapsang souchong black tea. (I just noticed on wikipedia that the smokiness of lapsan souchong is comapared to “…the smell of a campfire or of Latakia pipe tobacco”. See what I mean? Latakia pipe tobacoo?) The tea was perfect and everything began to simmer down a bit. Our Germanic philosopher didn’t seem so Germanic. Our server seemed to smile a bit more after getting a “hit” from “her friend” to remedy her “headache”, and we offered the other half of our table to a couple standing at the door. X‘s offer of the chairs and half table was met with a sarcastic “What? And interact with other people?” response as they settled in the chairs. We had a very nice get-to-know you conversation and found out that he designs energy-efficient buildings and she ran computer simulations on energy-system designs. Don’t get too carried away; both moved to Burlington from other places and settled into the scene years ago – massage therapy and whatnot – but the difference was that they were a perfectly lovely couple that greatly enhanced the experience and deadened the ‘deep thoughts’ vibe that tends to crush the life from these places. I’m pretty sure that just about any other set of people in the place would have had the personalities of a picture frame. That’s what too much worrying and thinking does to a person – turns you into furniture and furnishing accessories.