|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:54 pm
He had reached for the blue, because he was for some reason thinking of Rojand, and of saying: hurting is important.He reaches for the cup although he does not want to and he is aware, dimly, that his hands are not shaking. He sits on the floor of the shelter, cracked concrete under the humming halogen lights, and someone snorts when he retches visibly over the pile of secondhand clothes through which he is supposed to be sorting for something warm. The floor is damp with melted snow stomped off dozens of pairs of boots and insufficient shoes.
He has fifteen dollars in his pocket. There is absolutely no reason that he could not simply walk to a thrift store and buy a jacket, something probably-horrible but warm, and clean, or at least cleanish. But he does not spend the fifteen dollars on a coat for the same reason he has not spent it on food, or razors, or mouthwash, or even socks despite the cracks in his freezing callused feet.
He doesn't spend the fifteen dollars because it is not enough for what he needs, but it is the beginning, and it is enough to build on if he can find some wallet to abscond with, or some compassionate person whose reaction to the snow is to tuck a dollar bill into a cold and shaking hand.
He's figured out the best panhandling sign. Always a moneymaker. It is: "GOT JOB NEED WORK SHOES AND HAIRCUT GOD BLESS." Every word of it a lie, especially the last two. And it's been working, but the freezing grip around the city has killed foot traffic, and the income has slowed to a trickle, so fifteen dollars is all that is left.
He picks up a heavy sweater of dubious intended gender, and tentatively lifts it to his nose. It makes him gag. He'd kill for a cigarette just to drown the stench but there's no smoking in here, or so they claim despite the cigarette burns in the walls and the flat, hard beds.
A family of four, silent and stoic, is carefully sorting through the pile across from him, and he cannot make himself look at their faces. He formulates the terrible things that might perhaps lurk in their histories that have brought them low, but nothing seems any worse than what he's done, especially not in the little girl, who is maybe six years old and shivering but uncomplaining despite her horrible lot. People throw the word sickness around, sometimes--his mother does--but he doesn't believe it. Lack of fortitude. Lack of willpower. That's it. The little girl gingerly lifts a shirt out of the pile, ratty sequins still half-spelling PRINCESS across the chest, and her mother mutely nods, and they fold it up.
It's the season of generosity. This is when the best things are in the shelters. And some of them still reek of piss, but most of them aren't covered in mysterious brown stains. He wonders what Tuesday will get for Christmas, and the thought hurts but only in a dim, unfathomable way: a pain too great to be felt properly.
He has fifteen dollars in his pocket. His mother has money, though. She'll handle it. Fifteen dollars could make Tueday smile, maybe, if he wandered into the mall, or a toy store. Hell, zero dollars could make her smile, if he showed up at his mother's house and put his arms out for her. She never forgot him. He hadn't thought a child so small could remember, not with the long gaps, but she always did. He called her some nights, and let her babble at him, and ask when he'd be back. He always said soon, soon. And when he kept his promise she'd forget the broken ones and run into his arms.
His shaky arms and their tell-tale histories.
Mechanically, he lifts a brown jacket from the pile, the pocket hanging off on one side. It has no visible stains, and when he lifts it to his nose it smells only like the inside of an ancient closet, and someone else's cigarette smoke. It'll do. He shrugs into it right there in the chilly room.
He looks up, and the little girl is watching him. She is absently chewing on the end of one long blonde curl, staring at him, and her parents too distracted by the awful chore in front of them to remind her of her manners. He smiles at her out of instinct, and her face does not change, and he feels the smile crack and break. He buttons the jacket cuffs, pulls up his hood, and creakily gets to his feet.
At some point you outgrow the shame. At some point you're just a bundle of impulses and needs, driven from one relief to the next. And he's been there. But right now, in the wet-floored room with the little girl staring at him, he feels shame that hurts more than grief, more than betrayal.He looks down at the teapot in his hands, bewildered and aching.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 9:28 pm
Tea Guest Log  Colour of Tea Tasted: A mute, tasteless gray. Description: Loss, regret, shame, and hints of humiliation. Your commentary on its flavour: This wasn't something Coyote could relate to, not in this manner of extreme. It hurt her core to watch it play out, and there was no word nor action that came to mind that would make anything about what she saw less.. Raw. It was the hard, bitter, and all too real side of life that everyone tried so damn hard to hide away, too keep secret, or to avoid. And all Coyote wanted to do was look away, pretend he hadn't seen it, and pretend that the world never got that cruel or dirty.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 9:37 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Silver (Light Gray) Description: Survival, Life, Choices, Regret, Shame. Your commentary on its flavour: The memory starts out cold. It's so cold. Vaneda circles her arms around her as if to fend off the chill but it spreads, from her toes to her neck. her stomach hurts in a way she doesn't understand. It reacts when she see's the man of the memory lose his on a pile of ratty clothes. Her heart aches because she feels something. She's see's a flash of a child that outstretches her arms. She remembers broken promises but they aren't hers. She feels the shame but the necessity of the lies. And that he has to lie to himself to accept the lies is a even bigger shame. And the little girl that reminds him so much of Tuesday, who doesn't smile at him as he digs out a coat hurts. She feels it hurt. The judgement of himself. Of the little girl. Of the Tuesday she knew didn't. Shame. It hurt and floored her.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 10:14 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Light Gray Description: Struggling. Mute resignation. Numbness, excluding a hint of shame. Your commentary on its flavour: The girl's expression was grim as she set the teacup back down, eyes downcast as she stared into the tea. To be out there in the cold, and to scavenge for whatever is available...Her chest hurts, and even though she doesn't think the man in the memory would appreciate it, she can't help but feel pity. Pity, and not sympathy, as she's not so certain that she can sympathize with him. Was her life anything like his? Though she knew very little about herself, something told her that she had never had to struggle so hard just to survive. It was a fact that made her feel a hint of shame just by sitting in the presence of this tea. Ixy wanted to know what happened next--she wanted to hope for a happy ending, an ending where this man found a warm home and company to take him in--but there was no use trying to ask.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 10:26 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Dull Grey Description: Shameful, dreary, broken, cold. Your commentary on its flavour: Axel was very much put off by the memory - scrounging around in the dead of winter for an old coat, a family with small children shivering in the dank weather of the place. He could only shake his head in pity, no sympathy or empathy from the man. He couldn't remember ever having been in such a shameful place, but he could only pity. Pity never helped though, did it?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 10:32 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey Description: Pale, bitter... so bitter. Your commentary on its flavour: This one is so different from all the others... empty, thin, and so bitter... love is a wonderful thing, and not having it is terrible. To have other people look at you like you're an object, or worse... like you don't even exist? No wonder this person felt so horrible, so ashamed... it hurts, but in a way I didn't know you could hurt...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 10:52 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey. Description: Struggle, survival, choice, ice, shame, and regret. Your commentary on its flavour: The need to survive flavors this tea, as well as the feeling of shame because of the choices he had made. The other feeling Decyl could feel was cold, ice cold. Something he was familiar with but not to this extent. He flinches at the broken promises as if he himself knew how those had felt, and just sat the cup of tea down. He can’t tell if he could truly say he had felt this man’s pain but, he gives him his pity and a wish that things turn out well at the end.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:53 am
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Silver Description: Anger and shame. Your commentary on its flavour: Her lips were drawn in a thin line as she relived this memory and drank this tea. She had never had to experience such a life as this, but it made her hackles raise. How could someone be so... so, well. Owl couldn't think of the word. But considering this one didn't have much money to start with, couldn't he have been a little more lenient in the circumstances? And what of the poor child? What would she have thought of him? Owl shook her head. She hoped that she never had to go through what he did. It was too depressing and... made her ache. She set the tea aside.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 1:13 am
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey Description: Solitary, cold, acceptance. Your commentary on its flavour: The coldness of the memory reached her to the core. Like putting on a pair of wet pants after they had been sitting outside in the cold for hours. It seemed lonely and quiet here. To watch the figures come and go, sorting out what meager items they could scrape together from the piles of dirty clothes. The shame in their eyes, their hearts and their minds. But she also felt a sense of longing and caring buried deep down inside. Something hidden away that was only privy to those who were most important. Ralifa was curious if these kind of places were common though. She knew the concept of not taking things for granted. Though she had never lived through it as she had want for nothing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:27 am
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey Description: shock, shame, guilt. Your commentary on its flavour: Kin staged back after watching the scene unfold in his head, the emotions so strong it crippled him for a moment, he didn't understand. He still was not enough himself to react as he normally would to a situation like this and he felt the shame down to his core, it broke his heart that had been made fragile through the tastings and memories and Kin simply stood wide eyed, mouth open with his clawed hand clutching his chest.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:45 am
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey Description: A flavour who's main ingredient is shame. Shame and bitterness, mixed with a cold chill. Your commentary on its flavour: It was hard to watch the memory of this tea. Sonja could hardly believe the poverty he bore witness too, and seeing the family...His gut wrenched in sympathy for them. There was at least something good in here; the man still kept in contact with his mother. Sonja had thought he had been having a rough time..at least he hadn't been out in the cold.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 1:42 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Grey Description: Shame, pain, grief, melancholy. Your commentary on its flavour: Reap sipped the tea and like the others, let it take him where it would. There was something grimly familiar about the sights he saw, second hand clothes and no money, familiar but impossible to tell from where. The memories are resigned and sad, and sometimes offset with a counterpoint of unbearable notes when they touch upon the echoes of a child, reaching a crescendo of discomfort and regret as the eyes of a child end up being more penetrating than the eyes of the subject's own mind. When it subsides he shakes his head. No. It was far from nice to experience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 5:25 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: A tepid, neutral gray. Description: Desperation, resignation, hopelessness, and overwhelming shame assaults Remye's senses. Your commentary on its flavour: Watching the memory from the outside seemed to add to the tragicness of this particular memory. Remye watched, feeling shame and desperation waft off the memory as the man roots through for some source of warmth in the frigid winter. The feeling of shame from the child's watchful eyes made Remye cringe, and she set the cup down, fingers lingering on the cup briefly before she stepped back.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:41 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Gray Description: Emptiness, shame Your commentary on its flavour: The people in this memory had so little, were so forlorn, and Mnezara felt herself sigh. And yet, they got by, on lowering themselves just so that they could live, just so that the owner of the memory could fulfill a promise. Another bitter, sad smile formed on her lips and she wondered if life ever got better for the owner of this memory.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:59 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Pastel grey Description: Bitter. Bitter. Bitterness that came from self-loathing and shame. Also regret. Your commentary on its flavour: He wanted to gag from all that bitterness, but Eir chose to shut his mouth close and swallowed it. The memories of someone who has nothing. The shame that accompanying it. The self-despication...it's something that he never see in this world, where everyone acted like they please. Writing something on he Guest Book, Eir noted this one on his Log and walked to taste the next table's brew. The small letters reads 'Be proud.'
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
