Ganzaoye is an herbal tea in which wild jujube leaf is processed as if it were green tea. I’ve written about green tea processing of non-green-tea items in this newsletter before (and was inspired by the process in The Earl who Isn’t). 

 

One of the things I love about green-tea processed herbal teas is that it brings the complexity and interest of green tea to what would otherwise be fairly nondescript teas. There’s a hint of roastiness, a touch of caramelization, a sweetness, and a depth to this tea that is hard to find in a beverage outside of tea. It’s deeply comforting but without caffeine, and it allows me to drink something that has the feel of tea at four in the afternoon, when I would otherwise end up with caffeine-induced insomnia.

 

I have been thinking about green tea processing of non-green-tea things while planning my garden. I’m growing sweet potatoes not so much for the sweet potatoes themselves, but because the leaves are both edible and can be made into tea. There are a ton of things I want to try processing as green tea: things that are almost never made into tea of any kind, like pea shoots or pumpkin leaves.

 

I like trying new things: I like knowing that there are things left in this world for me to do.

 

Mostly, as I sit here and drink my tea, with an enormous downpour pelting rain in the ground and my plants still tiny babies barely poking up out of the earth, I’m thinking about future possibility: about things that might come to pass, and things I might be able to try.

You can get ganzaoye tea from Verdant Tea.

When I was much younger, and before I had any concept of the idea of “depression” or “ADHD” or “neurodivergence,” I remember telling a friend, right around the second time I was failing out of college, that I felt as if I were stuck in an elliptical orbit around hell: that I would have good times where it felt like I could get lots of things done, and bad times, where everything fell apart. 

 

I remember saying at the time that I didn’t know if I could handle more bad periods, and I needed to figure out how to reach escape velocity (which is enough speed to be able to escape a gravitational force). For years, that was the thing I kept saying to myself: I needed escape velocity. I needed to get away. I needed to stop orbiting backward into hell.

 

That was 26 years ago, and I have not stopped orbiting. I have, instead, learned to know and love my orbit. I’ve learned that when I have my good times, there are things I need to do (set up automation, save money) so that I’m set up to get through the rough times. It has gotten better, not because the orbit has improved, but because I know what to expect.

 

The orbit is part of who I am, and the way I love myself is not to escape who I am, but to expect it.

 

I have been thinking of this lately in the context of fascism. History, as we all know, appears to be in an elliptical orbit, and the far end of one of those orbits is around fascism. All my life, I heard a sentiment, usually repeated as “those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it” or something like that. (The source of this is apparently a matter of debate, but it’s attributed to George Santayana).

 

One of the things I have been thinking about for the last five or so years is this: when we get out of this period of fascism. I do not accept any other possibility: history continues to move on, and fascism requires constant enemies; it is therefore deeply unstable, because it forces those attacked by it to respond in kind.

 

Back to my point: When we get out of this fascism-heavy era, what do we tell future generations so that they can avert recurrences? What history do we learn? What mistakes are we making, and what things do we change so that they don’t have to do this again?

 

There have been several philosophers who have suggested that history could have an end—that once mankind achieved a certain level of government and/or success and/or wealth distribution, that we would realize the ideal form of humanity. I do not think this is possible, because humans are jumpy, emotional, reactive animals who are possessed of the false belief that we reason harder than we feel.

 

And so this last week, I remembered my own thoughts on elliptical orbits from my youth, and what I think about people predicting ends to history, what I have learned over the course of my life, and I looked at history, and… 

 

Let’s just say that I had to sit with the conflict of those two ideas in my head—my belief that we could teach people out of future fascism, and my belief that humans are a lot less rational than we think.

 

I think we may not be capable of avoiding history’s repetition, no matter what we learn. There may not be a way to keep from having hard times. This orbit may very well continue.

 

But what we can do is set ourselves up for as much success as possible, so that when times get hard, the tools are in place to succeed. Those of us who learn from history must teach others where the greatest dangers are.

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