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Been a while since the last post. Hoping to get back in the rhythm this week.

A memory from Steepster Select’s first shipment, Iron Goddess Dark Roast sips harmlessly. But there’s a protective malice behind its stone-faced facade. Steam rises up. The water poured torments the tightly curled leaves. Bring your face close to the heat and divine steep. Little hands with tiny palms and grey fingers tear at your nose, seeking refuge and a home. Recoiling, grasp the mug with both of your cold, hardened hands. It’s searing – the emanating heat pierces your hands like tiny spears that soon withdraw. “Poor heat insulation!”, you decry.

The little fortress that is this Iron Goddess Dark Roast places divine emphasis on the procedure that is tea drinking. It reminds us why this little ritual is so important to our rote lives. A little respite that wakes us up: but truly awakens our eyes with those unconscious lids. Give Life Back to Music! Neglected by the world, Franz Schubert died at 31 with only a few close friends that were able to see his genius emerge and depart from that world. Romanticism is dead.

Schubert is not the only genius of our time to have died impoverished and neglected. Some crackpot Van Gogh of post-impressionism fame (not of the chocolate, cafe liquor variety) only sold 1 painting before he shot himself in 1890. Kafka wished for his ill popular work to be burned at his death. Jodorowsky’s Dune. I’m not sure who Emily Dickinson is so I’m going to skip that one.

What’s the point of immortality that is posthumous? Can art only achieve fame when it has laid down and died? With little, groping hands does living art rise up and try and wrest open our minds, yet we struggle, we instead almost unconsciously fight back with fists tender yet firm. After the work cools down, however, anyone can begin to consume the precious fluid that the Goddess had protected.

Iron Goddess Dark Roast is a thing of intrigue. Nutty to the scent yet sweet to the palette. Sometimes paradoxes are only truths that we have yet to comprehend.

As a caution, I wrote this while baking a sweet potato so I’m not sure how it will read in totality.