The road to Nirvana is loud, real loud. The kids are playing the Doors as loud as I played the Doors when I was a kid. It was my first rock and roll album.

I am trapped in the back seat of a Harley Davidson themed Chevy pick up truck returning from a week in the spiritual Disneyland of Sedona, Arizona. I may get to Nirvana soon, but I won’t be able to get hear the angels sing when I get there.

In the process of visiting this Coney Island of the Soul ( a tip of the tea cup to Mr. Ferlinghetti) my four year old soul was retrieved by a Mongolian-Ute Shaman from a cave guarded in my subconscious by Roy Rogers, my muscle reflexes guided my holographic re-patterning and my future and past lives were revealed to me by Tarra, a true clairvoyant.

I was the best man, maid of honor and the photographer for a spiritual wedding on a cliff overlooking Sedona at sunset. A homeless Yaqui Indian guided us through a sweat lodge experience and we meditated every morning at the Buddhist Stupa at the base of Thunder Mountain. We sang together in a tee pee after the sweat lodge; the kids are musicians and rock and roll performers at that, so the guitar and duets were marvelous. The lady of the tee pee ended the evening playing a large crystal bowl and singing a long and serene medley of Celtic mother earth songs. It was magic, mellow and deeply moving.

Oh no, the kids are now playing Prince at 102 decibels. I may have to hitch hike out of Arizona. I should have brought my own car. I did bring my own tea. Help me out if you see me on Interstate 8. I can barter loose leaf tea for gas at the Shell station, no problem.

This is a tea blog, so I won’t disappoint. I had tea, Kukicha tea with a spiritual con man. We were hustled out of time, patience and money by a fashion designing, full blooded Havasupai medicine man. This was not the homeless Yaqui Indian who lead us to the Seven Pools where the tribal babies were baptized in the shade of the mountains.   This was Uqualla, “Havasupai Medicine Elder”.  This was not the Yaqui Indian who asked in the sweat lodge that we pray for our service people in the war  and for our “so-called” enemies to all get home safely.  No, this was Uqualla, a self described “Indian walker of the land ” in his elegant home in Sedona.  

Uqualla’s little white car was named marshmallow; the Yaqui lives in his van. Uqualla is full figured, the Yaqui is thin like Gandhi, and may be the reincarnation of that humble soul. The Yaqui also had the scars on his chest from the Sun Dancer ceremony where the skin of the chest is pierced with wooden hooks and the supplicant is raised upward toward the sun in a purification and vision quest ceremony.  Thankfully, Uqualla kept his soft chamois shirt with  matching elk horn buttons on. 
 

Uqualla did perform the wedding service admirably for fifteen minutes. He even handled a very thoughtless interruption by a professional film crew.  They were nearby and filming   the VH-I, “Tough Love” show.   They thought Uqualla was so unusual they filmed him and then asked him to sign a release during the wedding ceremony.  Typically the film crew missed the unfolding big story. The musicians getting spiritually married are on the verge of a big career; and the film crew did not even glance their way.

For five  long hours prior to the wedding service we drank over-sweetened  tea served with creme puffs from a local bakery. We said nothing.  Uqualla talked, pontificated, changed his story, lectured and actually insulted us all individually at different times.  I gave the gift of tea to all of our guides in Sedona, including Uqualla.  He did not acknowledge the offering. Perhaps one of his spiritual guides was having a reaction to all the sweetener in his tea. We suspect his other spiritual guides may have had their fingers in their ears.

Kukicha tea is known as Japanese twig tea. It is actually the stems, twigs and leaves from the processing of Sencha. Kukicha is carefully prepared in the early spring and is a clear, bright yellow-green color with a fresh, herbaceous aroma. It is a mild and subtle tasting tea; a delightful tea.

Kukicha is not tea to be served as if it were a Victorian garden party with cubes of sugar and puff pastries to mask the bitterness of an English tea.  But that is what my friend Uqualla served us. I wondered what past lives Uqualla had lived as I forcefully swallowed this ruined Japanese tea. I  fantasized I was in a country manor outside of Kent at a ladies tea party during the height of English dominion over the world.  The  lady of the manor  was carrying on about the dreadful state of the manners in the uncivilized world.  This vision  must of been the effect of the over sweetened tea on me. It couldn’t have been the nearby vortex, or the sweat lodge, or the soul retrieval,  or the holographic re-patterning or the meditations at the Stupa or the visit with my past lives that had any thing to do with my vision of a stuffy tea party in the English country side.  Nope, it was Uqualla channeling one of his past lives.

 In closing, however, I must say that Uqualla’s feathers were perfect.

The music just stopped with a crash; I think I can stay in the back seat, peering through these black-tinted windows for a while longer. I am surviving on some fresh purple bamboo green tea from China as we ride westward. May your journey be quiet and sprinkled liberally with good tea.  Tea does not need to be over sweetened and your spiritual guides do not have  to wear feathers.

 If  you call, please speak loudly.  It has been loud, very loud on the road to Nirvana.

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Tags: Kukicha tea, Sedona, weddings

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