Because it is bitter...

Coffee is brewing, but I'm starting this morning with liver-cleanser tea. I've set up my orange metal and tile café table in my room, for writing. The windows face west and north, so it's not a great morning room, but I can write without interruption here, [Housemate is chatty], and that's most important.

The tea tastes a bit bitter (dandelion), but its licorice, fennel, and ginger warm it up. Also contains burdock, milk thistle & barberry.

I got a couple ounces of this chunky mix at Tao Natural Foods, one of the businesses from the idealistic Sixties (1968, to be exact) that has survived by going upscale.
They serve kale massaged with EVO [extra virgin olive oil] and carry expensive potions and lotions. In their old wood loft, however, they still carry in bulk reasonably priced plant parts, now called "botanicals". You serve yourself out of big glass jars.
(This tea is $4/oz., and you can steep it more than once.)

I'd first bought this tea for a coworker who has cirrhosis of the liver, tried it myself, and liked it. 
I like bitter tastes--coffee, citrus peel, greens, tonic, etc.

Maybe I like bitterness?
I don't like feeling bitter. But it's a root emotion, and a touch of its honesty can be medicinal––an antidote to the cult of coziness I was complaining about the other day.

I like to BE cozy, but the marketing of coziness seems to be on the upswing, or am I just being crabby?

*googles hygge, Danish for "cozy"*

Nope, not just me being crabby:
"The Danish Lifestyle Trend, hygge, . . .  is taking the world by storm".

There you have it: Coziness is taking the world by storm...

Close-up of human eye Photo: Dimitri Vervitsiotis

Coziness should be comfort from the storm, not the storm itself.

I distrust things that deny the demonic storms of our depths. 
I'm thinking about this because I'm going with bink to see my auntie in Wisconsin this weekend.

I love my auntie, but I have to steel myself against her relentless positivity. Her "look on the sunny side" philosophy has served her well in her 94 years, and I wouldn't wish it otherwise for her, but I hate that it works like an emotional Procrustean bed. Any "negative" feelings get lopped off.

I only challenged her on it once.
She was saying that she believes people can choose to be happy, so if they're unhappy, they need to adjust their attitude.

I told her that I use my mother's life as a measuring stick for my beliefs, and the belief that we can control our happiness levels just doesn't measure up. I knew my mother for forty-one years, and I never witnessed her choosing to be so unhappy that she eventually killed herself...

This was met with stunned silence. My auntie had nothing to say in response, and we never talked about it again. 

There’s life power in resilience, which is not the same as this flattening positivity. 

I stopped my bike to photograph this plant ^ growing up through a bulldozed piece of land along a four-lane road in my new neighborhood.

_________

I've always loved this poem by Stephen Crane

In the Desert

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it

“Because it is bitter,

“And because it is my heart.”