His Nightly Tea

The sound began, whining, hissing, cutting through the air with sharp, jagged notes – the record spinning, his head spinning, the world spinning. This was the beginning of his nightly ritual. His tea kettle began to sound in unison with the spinning world, the water ready for transmogrification. As Midge Ure began to wail over the synthesizers he realized that he neither wanted to dance nor to weep over a life gone by. He returned to the ancient phonograph, desperate to stop living out the memory of love that died.

Thumbing through a stack of records in the poorly lit kitchen he decided that nothing would sit well with his agitated soul. He turned the machine off. The air quickly recovered from the wounds that the Ultravox had inflicted upon it. In retaliation and with malice the air hung heavily about him, forcing his shoulders to droop in a familiar pose of submissiveness. He returned to his kettle and poured the water into his favorite mug.

Needing to feel connected to something, he latched on to the tea that was steeping in his mug. He thought about the untold billions of souls who had performed this ritual throughout countless generations. This thought gave him scant comfort. He watched in the darkness, marveling how water can become something else through this science, or was it magic? He thought of Jesus turning water into wine. He thought of Jesus upon the cross, accompanied by two criminals, abandoned by his friends, his family and his father. In that thought he felt a connection to the Incarnate God. Muttering into his tea, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” 

Like Jesus on the cross when he uttered those same words, he was met with immediate criticism. Unlike Jesus, this man, in his lonely apartment, was both the abandoned and the one who mocked his soul’s cry. In a fit and with a mirthless laugh he shook off the moment of communion he so desperately craved. Moving from the table to the fridge he opened the doors to find the milk, the final ingredient necessary to his nightly ritual.

The world was once full of mystery and ritual, he thought. Now that the world had been demystified, ritual has become mere repetition. Like much of modern life, this had left him feeling empty, dissatisfied. The milk, having hidden behind a week’s old bag of mediocre Thai food, took longer to find than he had anticipated. By the time he poured it into his tea the drink had become too cold, making the mixture less than the perfect cup he had been hoping for. As he had not bothered to turn on the lights, opting instead to remain in the natural darkness, his kitchen illuminated only by the outside streetlights coming through his small window, he had not noticed that the milk was even older than the disappointing Thai food. No amount of darkness could hide the sour taste that filled his mouth with his first sip.

In disgust he slammed the mug onto the table, breaking its handle. Rushing to the sink he spit out the offensive liquid, cursed the world, cursed the God he felt had abandoned him and sat down on the floor to weep. His tears were dry, hot and painful. They streamed down his cheeks like grains of sand, cutting as they traveled his gaunt and hollowed out features. A few minutes in this position offered him none of relief that tears often do. In resentment he rose, flipped on the harsh fluorescent lights of the kitchen and examined the mess his spoiled tea had made. Cursing God a second time he cleaned up the mess, threw his favorite mug away and decided to clean out the fridge. Midway through this cleansing purge, a ritual itself, he became disinterested, distracted by reminiscing on the day that had led him to such a pitiful state. Whether he wanted to or not, he was dancing with tears in his eyes.

It was a day just like any other in that life of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. In the morning he had risen after a short night’s sleep, returned to the management job he hated and gone through the motions of servitude. The world may appear to be vastly different to when some man like him had first changed water into tea, but this was only illusionary. Just like in that time immemorial there were still two types of people in this world. He was of the class that was servile in nature, one of the masses destined to kowtow to the underserving few who had the strength to command it. A strange thought occurred as he slipped into that abhorrent feeling of self-pity. If he was one of the masses, then why did he feel so alone? Spiraling, spinning into that mere repetition of woe he began to boil another kettle, determined to end the evening as he always did, with a cup of tea. It was a delusive and ineffectual attempt at beginning the process, and through transmogrification – was it magic or science, he wondered? – all things anew.

The tea was bitter without his customary milk. It was bitter in this mug that was not his favorite. As nothing had been reborn anew he found the situation to be sadly humorous, befitting of both the day and his current situation. As he sipped the tea, he became cognizant of the crushing silence of the apartment, the air having once again become heavy and menacing. To stave off the madness that so often came to him in these dark moments of the soul he turned on the radio. He wanted to hear a human voice, even a disembodied one from somewhere out there in the nothingness of the night speak, thinking it would be a comfort to him. 

As music had failed to lift his soul from its morass only moments ago, he tuned into the local NPR. A Jamaican song came wafting through modern speakers that sat atop the ones associated with the idle phonograph. “Son of a bitch!” It was already after eleven on that Saturday – NPR was playing one of the two hours of music it played out of all one hundred and sixty-eight in a week. A loud bang on his floor answered his outburst. In anger he spun the knob that sent the dial into a tailspin. Whether it was divine intervention, fate or simple dumb luck the knob ceased its careening motion, settling on a local news station. Two voices began to chatter incessantly at one another.

The men were discussing the approaching demise of the millennium. “Y2K,” one voice stated confidently, “is nothing more than a scam to sell something.”

“A false flag, maybe?” The other voice asked in the hope of shattering the confidence of the one who had truly claimed, as it turned out, that the whole thing was a scam. The voice was vaguely familiar to him. He tried desperately to place it to no avail. He stood, surrounded by both the voices of the radio and the minacious air of the apartment, gripped with that cosmic loneliness that so often plagued him in empty and crowded spaces alike.

“No,” interrupted the first. “That isn’t what I am trying to say.” Struggling with an auditory equivalent of déjà vu, he listened to the two men spout off all sorts of wild and esoteric theories for about five minutes, finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the thread of the conversation the voices were having around him. Hebrew letters, tarot decks divided into halves, the New Jerusalem, ancient Osiris machines, the reincarnated Christ in Mongolia, FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture, a clandestine mission to Mongolia to retrieve the aforementioned Osiris machineBill Clinton and the King of Chaos. Five minutes of this nonsense battered both his ears and the apocalyptic air, leaving both in a temporary state of mystification. What was this vaguely familiar broadcast, he wondered? His world was once again full of mystery. What ritual would illuminate it for him, unravel its secrets?

As if responding to his petition, a third voice answered. “You are listening to a rebroadcast of AM Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Tonight’s show is from July 7, 1999, with special guest….” Sniggering and smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand he failed to catch the special guest’s name. What did that matter anyway? The confusion and disorientation that had accompanied the conversation dissipated slightly as a result of the radio’s clarification. Sipping the bitter tea, he came to conclusion that as an unbeliever he would never fully comprehend it. Simultaneously, he concluded that this conversation served only one purpose, a cheap distraction from the terrors of the age.

With an aching nostalgia he remembered the hullabaloo and hysteria of Y2K. He remembered being forced to spend New Year’s Eve as a 16-year-old with his parents because they had feared something sinister happening on that evening when one age ended, and another began. He remembered his anger of the evening. Most 16-year-olds, when forced to spend an evening with their family when they want to spend one with their friends would be angry. Why should he be any different? His justification was swift. Sanctification was never to come.

His friends had gone to a party at Max Mueller’s house. Max’s father, a quirky Vietnam Veteran, regularly allowed Max to host the type of parties that parents fear. Maybe it was that this was common knowledge about town that had been the justification for his parents in their decision. Ironically, it had been Max’s cooky, old father who had introduced him to AM Coast to Coast. Mr. Mueller was an avid conspiracy theorist, often explaining in strange and vivid detail the many realities that existed behind the illusionary veil of a seemingly rational world.

The broadcast continued after the pause for station identification and the obligatory ads selling products aimed at its target audience. An advertisement for doomsday preppers had so fascinated him that he hadn’t noticed when the program had returned. Sitting down on the floor beneath the radio, sipping his tea and half-listening to the men rattle off theories that by 2022 had been shown false. There was no King of Mongolia, no reincarnated Christ, no King of Chaos, no Osiris machines blasting holes in space and time allowing for interdimensional travel. We were still a zero-class civilization, using fossil fuels to putter around our little corner of the cosmos. Mr. Mueller would have had an explanation as to why.

He chuckled to himself at a few of the silly things that Art Bell and his guest were saying. He remembered listening to this show fondly as a child, laughing at all these silly things that the crackpots would say about paranormal activity, one-world rule and the perpetually-around-the-corner-apocalypse. With that same fondness he thought of Mr. Mueller and his incredible capacity for fantastic unfalsifiable systems built around such nonsense. It had been entertaining to him then. Now in his late thirties, inhabiting a world where conspiracy theories are no longer the sole domain of crackpots on late night AM radio and crazy old men like Mr. Mueller, he found the show less humorous. Coming on the heels of this realization the air recovered itself and imposed an even heavier load on his shoulders. He slunk down, his back sliding against the kitchen cabinets until he was fully prone, looking up directly at the astringent fluorescent light that illuminated the kitchen with a ferocious tenacity.

The light caused his head to ache. He shut his eyes; but this was insufficient. Reopening them, he warily looked across the room at the light switch. Both physically and mentally exhausted, he deliberated on how to turn the light off without rising from the surprisingly comfortable floor. With a quick prayer to the God he fervently believed had abandoned him, he tossed his hat at the light switch, sacrificing his impromptu pillow. Whether it was divine intervention, fate or simple dumb luck his orison was answered. The offensive fulgent light was darkened. He closed his eyes once again.

Phosphene set in as his mind adjusted to the eigengrau that followed. He was alone again – just he, his cup of tea and the disembodied voices of conspiracy theorists keeping the menacing air at bay. His mind drifted towards the path of dreams. For the briefest of moments peace seemed to be descending upon him like a dove, a divine blessing that he so ardently craved. This mystical journey was cut short when Art Bell returned the conversation to the imminent arrival of the King of Chaos. “Can you just imagine if he is as media savvy as Bill Clinton?”

“My God,” the other voice declared, with exaggerated horror. “It will be hell on earth! The masses deceived to such great degrees!” With no hat to throw at the radio he was forced to stand up to turn it off. In silence he returned to his prone position, but his mind would not return to the pleasant journey it was on mere seconds before. Instead, it contemplated and concentrated fiercely on what that voice had said. “It will be hell on earth as the masses are deceived.” Was Donald Trump the King of Chaos, he wondered? Was Dr. Fauci the King of Chaos? His eyes were unable to close in relaxation, the eigengrau fading into a horrible shade of pure darkness. In angst he returned to a seated position, leaning his back once again against the cabinets. In dread he cried out a scream that was from the deepest part of his soul. Another more sustained pounding from beneath the floorboards brought him to his senses.

How long had he been screaming? He could not tell. His neighbors in the apartment below were always complaining about the level of noise he made, especially with his ancient phonograph. Normally his evening tea ritual was accompanied by some music, often loudly played in the hopes of blasting away the crippling banality of his day. They may have been quick to complain, but he knew that they weren’t always wrong. His neighbors were often justified in their grievances, and not only through the self-justification we have come to both accept in this new millennium of ours. How long had he been screaming, he wondered again? Rubbing his throat which ached, he surmised that it had not been for a short while. His downstairs neighbors were probably justified in their complaint on this evening. He sipped the tea, only to discover that it had grown tepid. Looking at the liquid that had lost its magic he spitefully quipped, “you are neither hot nor cold. I spit you out of my mouth!”

He screamed again, pounded on the floor in retaliation at the poor couple who were only trying to sleep. The tears began to flow again. This time large, cold and wet, intensely more painful than the dry and acrid tears of earlier streamed down his face in a ceaseless flow. Sobbing, heaving and broken he pulled himself up from the floor and moaned, without any sarcasm, “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani.” He repeated it over and over again until the mantra had given him the strength to rise from his seated position. Shakily he walked down the hall, away from the small window that let in the little light. Crossing into the shadows, walking past the hat which had been guided by the hand of who he had prayed to, he whispered again in bitterness, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.” 

In the morning he awoke in his bed, still fully dressed. After his morning ablutions he returned to the kitchen, picking up his cap and half-empty mug of cold tea. Gulping the remaining liquid down he readied himself for another meaningless day, making a mental note to pick up some milk on the way home from work. Exiting his apartment, he found a note taped to his door from his downstairs neighbors. He knew would have to apologize later, if only to ease his conscience. By the time he reached his car he had forgotten all about his neighbors, tea, Art Bell and his crazy theories, the note and about the milk. The sunlight had somehow dissipated all the gloom and guilt, the painful realizations and haunting nostalgia of the previous evening.

The car’s speakers pumped out some catchy hits of the 80’s for a few miles. Deciding that he was not in the mood for the happy and vapid pop tunes he turned the dial again to the local public radio affiliate. The news of the morning was even more depressing to him than the two decades old episode of AM Coast to Coast. It was only slightly less absurd. The unforgiving air had somehow escaped his apartment and accompanied him on his commute, applying its pressure, drooping his shoulders into their familiar wearied pose. His mind drifted inward as he drove, his body mechanically and robotically piloting him to the job he hated. For five peaceful minutes he sat in his car, parked in his spot before he realized that he had arrived. He killed the engine of his car, gathered his things and checked his pockets to ensure that he had everything he needed. Rediscovering the note, he opened it with dread.

Expecting to find threats, he found only beseeching and pleading to the man above. He once again thought of Jesus. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” he whispered. Tears once more welled up in his eyes. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” he wept. Pulling himself together out of habit more than necessity, examining himself in the sideview mirror he answered his own prayer in the hateful likeness of Gestas responding to Jesus. “Save yourself,” he spat vitriolically. The bitterness of the day only intensified as it progressed, culminating when he opened the refrigerator door to remember that he had forgotten the milk on his way home.