Notes Toward the Correct Preparation of Tea for Archival Purposes
I suppose I ought to begin by saying that I have boiled more kettles in this building than the Vorpel Foundation has granted research fellows.
Thirty years, according to my employment records, and yet not one of the “smart people” who occupy the offices above mine has ever asked whether I might prefer a different brand of tea, or whether the tin I keep it in bothers me in the way it rattles when I open it. They take the tea. They drink it. They return to their papers and their outliers and their epistematogenic inquiries without so much as a thank you that doesn’t sound like it was calculated by a statistical model.
Let me be clear about my method, since it appears to be the only thing in this building that follows any kind of procedure. The water must sit for three minutes before boiling. Not two, not four—three. This is not superstition; it is the time required for the water to shed its pipe-taste and acquire what I call “a certain neutrality.“ The smart people would probably call this “anecdotal calibration,” but I call it “not making tea taste like the plumbing.”
The kettle I use is cast iron, heavy enough that I have to lift it with both hands. It whistles three times before I remove it from the heat. This is calibration, not ritual—at least, not ritual in the way the In View Of editorial team understands it. They think ritual is something you perform while wearing a cloak and chanting in Latin. My ritual is waiting for the whistle. It is listening. It is knowing that the third whistle means the water has reached the temperature at which the gases begin their escape but before the water itself begins to degrade.
The tea leaves come next. I keep them in a tin that has seen better days, its surface pitted with the corrosion of decades. The tea is loose-leaf, not the bagged substitute the In View Of team uses when they are forced to make their own. I measure by eye, not by spoon—one heap for the pot, a second for the soul of the drinker, and a third for anything that might have been overlooked in the calculation. The pot must be pre-warmed with hot water, which is then poured away before the leaves are added. This is the ritual that Peter Thasselcroft, in his particular departure from correctitude, refuses to honor.
Thasselcroft works on something called “The Occult Resonance of Statistical Outliers: An Epistematogenic Inquiry.” I have read the abstract. It is about how things that don’t fit the model generate new knowledge. I find this both amusing and somewhat true, though I suspect Thasselcroft would prefer I did not say so. He prefers his tea tepid. This is, to my mind, an affront. Tea ought to be served searingly hot, the heat itself being part of the ritual, a physical manifestation of the care invested in its preparation. The steam rising from the cup is not merely vapor but evidence of the temperature’s correctness. To allow tea to cool before drinking is to undermine the entire correctitude of the process.
And yet, when I boil a kettle, at least one of them will interrupt me. Letters requiring transcription, archival boxes needing cataloguing, manuscripts demanding preservation—they will all suddenly require my attention, and they will all request that I make them a cup. I have better things to do than pander to their neediness, yet I try to oblige. The Vorpel Foundation has sponsored their project, and I am, after all, an employee.
But do they notice? Do they ask whether I might prefer a different tin? Do they wonder why I stand before the pot for four minutes, watching the steam, listening to the quiet of the building? No. They take the tea. They drink it. Thasselcroft sets his aside to cool, just as he sets aside the entire procedure I have followed to prepare it for him.
The In View Of team will knock on my door, asking whether the kettle has whistled yet, whether I might “just pop a cup over” for them. I ignore them. The tea must steep. When the four minutes have passed, I pour the tea into cups that have been warmed with hot water. The pouring must be steady, the stream unbroken, a continuous motion that demonstrates the preparer’s control. The cup is then offered to the drinker, who must receive it with both hands—a gesture of gratitude that acknowledges the labor involved. Thasselcroft will take his cup and immediately set it aside to cool. I watch this with mounting irritation. I have spent four minutes guarding the steep, three minutes waiting for the water to settle, and three whistles of the kettle to calibrate. The tea is searing. To let it cool is to erase all of that labor.
For archival purposes, I keep a log of every cup prepared, noting the time, the temperature, the number of leaves, and the drinker’s reaction. Thasselcroft’s tepid preference is recorded as an anomaly, a statistical outlier that threatens the integrity of the entire system. Yet I cannot deny that it exists. The record is the record.
The Vorpel Foundation has created an environment where tea becomes a site of conflict. The In View Of team’s neediness, Thasselcroft’s epistemological anxiety, my ritualistic discipline—all converge around the kettle. The tea is not merely drunk; it is contested. And in that contest, the archival purpose is preserved, not despite the disruption but because of it.
I will continue to make tea correctly. Thasselcroft will continue to drink it tepid. The record will continue to be made. And I will continue to stand here, in the same building as the smart people who couldn’t boil a kettle if they could find one, watching the steam rise and knowing that I am the only one in this place who understands what it means to prepare something properly.
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