Forty minutes of silence and one cup of tea.

The whisk made a sound like a small bird. She turned the bowl twice before she gave it to me. I turned it twice before I drank.

Chanoyu — the way of tea — is older than most countries. The choreography is a series of decisions someone made a very long time ago about what hand goes where, what cloth touches what, how long the silence between things should be. The point is not to be impressed by the silence. The point is the silence. [^1]

The matcha was bitter and bright and entirely without ornament. It came with a single sweet — a wagashi shaped like a flower the season had promised — and the sweet, eaten first, made the bitter taste like the only thing in the world.

Forty minutes. One bowl. I have thought about it ever since.

[^1]: Sen no Rikyū formalized the ceremony in the 16th century. He was, eventually, ordered to commit seppuku. The ceremony continued without him.