Tea and sympathy

I caught up with a friend yesterday, I call him "Zen Josh" because he is so zen and I know a few other Joshs. The plan was for us to drink a lot of tea. I was running late because my brain was retarded yesterday morning, in the extra time he had to wait for me he decided it would be a good idea to go up the road and buy sake and absinth. I got there, running late, no breakfast, and was greeted with a little cup of warm sake, followed by a glass of water and a walk up the garden path to a sheltered bit of the garden, we listened to some zappa and had some burned-sugary absinth, followed by wormwood tea in little tea cups from a matching teapot with japanese characters on the side that said something to the effect that "the steam escaping from the teapot" was what "life was about"...wormwood tea is incredibly bitter and the sensation of chasing the already not entirely pleasant taste of absinth with wormwood tea was akin to there being a party in my mouth and someone setting fire to the curtains.We listened to explosions in the sky, after me deciding I felt like I was made of cotton wool and him deciding he felt like he was made of wet clay, and then copper wire we made a break through the rain and brewed some different tea, collected watermelon, cashews and grapes and headed back out to the garden. We listened to Kyuss and watched out breath leave us in hazy wreaths and giggled as the combination of things we had so far imbibed settled in our stomaches and got to know each other, while we got on to the business of reminiscing and giggling at nothing in particular.We had a bunch more absinth and made more tea, then realised that water was incredibly necessary and we should really bring some out with us. It was decided that seeing my recently exed boyfriend to return his stuff would be a less than good idea due to the current state of my body/brain reaction to the chemicals I had given it. I left Josh's wasted, wondering if I would munt on the way up my mother's house. She had refused my suggestion of her giving me a lift even though it meant a 20 minute up hill walk in the rain for me and a two to four minute round-trip drive in a dry car for her. I got to my mother's house and gave my little brother his birth-day present, he Just turned nine. Then I lay on the floor for a little while and recovered. I visited my older younger brother and lent him some cds to burn. After leaving mum's I realised that I'd left the string-quartet-does-tool cd that I'd just borrowed, with my brother, sans case... I caught the train home and tried very hard to make my room warm after finding that the houseguest had left all the doors open.