I Want to Believe (8-412)(The Smoking Gun, Hawthorn Berries, Cardamom)

I Want to Believe was first created during one of my busier seasons several years back. One of the things that used to be a standard occurrence was that when DSN got exceptionally busy or things at home got complicated or my own chronic health issues flared and made energy hard to come by was that I would run out of my standard personal use teas.

This included everything from the foundationals that I drink the most of – many of the others count as “special treat” teas, which is a mental state I’m working on – to the herbal teas that I use to manage sickness and the aforementioned chronic health issues.

Thankfully, living in a place where setting boundaries with others is not only allowed, it is encouraged has led to me starting to figure out how to set boundaries with myself and my work ethic, so hopefully this will be a less common occurrence in future.

However, at the time I Want to Believe was first created I had worked my way through my personal use latchtins of foundationals until I had gotten to “The Smoking Gun” on my preferences list.

Cardamom and Hawthorn Berries are two of my most frequent random adds to tea when I am jury-rigging cups, as they assist with some of my more common chronic symptoms and they are among my favourite flavours, which makes them perfect for when I feel like a particular vintage of garbage.

It started with just one day where I made an “I want this but I don’t want to test a full bowl” cup. And then another. And then another. And…

…this went on for weeks.

Eventually I realized the tea just needed to exist and that I should probably set some sort of limit on how many cups of a thing I jury-rigged before I just gave in and made the thing.

January 20^th hit me hard. And the day following wasn’t much better, and as I write this, I am assuming that this pattern is going to continue for longer than I want to think about right now.

As a nonbinary human who cares about blanket human rights and would even if there were not a lot of trans people that I care about and love, the feeling that the TERFs had won and that that was just the start of the horrors being brought to life and the hate being given credibility by the strokes of a pen that was held by a man that less than 30% of the country decided we were getting back into an abusive relationship with – was difficult to bear.

Usually, the day would have been primarily a cleaning day, but one of the lovely forces from within Romancelandia had made the suggestion that we all avoid the “festivities” and pomp and circumstance of the day as far as it pertained to the presidency, and do one thing we loved and one thing they would hate.

I focused on writing and naming teas (a more complicated process than one might think) and knitting and my cats and stayed away from anything that could fall into the category of “knowing my place” – because, in my life experience so far that is one thing absolutely guaranteed to anger any bigot.

When 8-412 came to the top of the pile, my heart hurt a little. The original concept for The Smoking Gun series was a nod to the X-Files and The Lone Gunmen and ghost stories and tall tales – possibly even snagging some bits and pieces from Warehouse 13 and other shows and stories that play with the concept of the conspiracies and legends being real.

But after the wave of absolutely bonkers things, from Ivermectin to fight covid on through the rising tide of anti-vax sentiment to things that I don’t want to give the kind of credence that saying them out loud or typing them would feel it gave, that became part of the mainstream of belief for so many during the early days of the pandemic – reaching for any of those possible names felt different. Especially because that trend has continued.

It was hard to find the whimsy in it, hard to find the fun. When you’ve seen the absurd weaponized on a level where medical professionals have been abused for being unwilling to provide a course of treatment that would do all harm and no good, it’s difficult to remember that there were levels of similar absurdity that held more humour.

At least, that’s where I was, in the initial moments of staring at the tea process sheet for 8-412, and trying to decide on a name.

My thoughts flickered around a bit, trying to find something, anything, to latch onto that felt like it contained a granule or two of hope or joy.

And I kept coming back to the fact that cardamom and hawthorn are two of my favourite things.

And then I thought about some of my other favourite things.

And I remembered that one of them is our amazing capacity, as humans, for compassion and empathy and care and community.

We are the species that was so upset that we couldn’t pet dinosaurs that we made plushies of them so their ghosts would know they were loved. We have Stabby the Roomba as a floating mega-tale with many embellishments, and then there are the various versions of “they’ll make a pet or a friend out of anything” science fiction short posts and shared stories that show up on tumblr and find their way out into the other social media arenas.

On the more factual side we have all the amazing stories that come out of times when natural or political disaster strikes, and the kinds of things that we will do to help each other and the lives that are not human that we care for or that share space with us.

We spent most of our evolutionary points, as a species, on community and cooperation, and when we are at our best, we are glorious.

So, yes, the name of this tea is a salute to the poster that hung in Mulder’s office, because tea and geekery is still something I do and wanting to believe in something more, something greater, has been a theme for much of my life.

But the deeper layer of meaning for the name of this tea comes from that gloriousness we are capable of and that we going to need to access.

I Want to Believe… in us.

Now for the Basics

Organic Ingredients: The Smoking Gun (Russian Caravan Tea, Hawthorn Berries, Cardamom)

Batch Size: 5.1 ounces, 144 grams, 40+  servings

Containment: Loose Tea (5 serving sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag or Tin), Teabags (Single Teabag, 5 teabag sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag)

Shop Link