Last night I had a dream about tea. I recently published a page on Cazort.net outlining my philosophy of dream interpretation, and in the spirit of this page, I will share an interpretation. The setting of this dream is a place you can visit if you come to World Tea East, as it is right around the corner from the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
The Dream:
I was at an underground supermarket in Chinatown in Philadelphia, one that actually exists, under the building on the SE corner of 11th and Race, and I was buying tea there. In real life, I'm not crazy about this store's tea selection, and there is another store in Chinatown that I prefer for buying tea (across Race street), but in the dream, I was finding a lot of long jing (dragon well) green tea that I liked.
I suspect that the reason for the dragon well tea in the dream is that I've recently sampled two of these teas from TeaVivre, so I have been thinking about this type of tea. If you're curious, you can find my Review of TeaVivre's Organic Superfine Dragon Well, along with my Review of TeaVivre's Superfine Pre-Ming Dragon Well.
Back to the dream...in the dream I noticed some dragon well that looked very good in quality (it was a brand that I trusted) and was low in price, but when I put it in my shopping basket, I noticed that it was not loose-leaf tea, but rather, K-cups for a Keurig coffee maker. Frustrated, I put them back on the shelf and was looking through the boxes on the shelf to find actual loose-leaf tea instead of processed tea in a K-cup. There were few boxes of loose-leaf tea, but I found some.
My interpretation of this dream:
I suspect that the reason for the appearance of K-cups in this dream is that I have been reading about tea packaged in K-cups recently, and that I am not a fan of this idea, and have been considering writing a post on this topic. But, as I have yet to write the post, it looks like my subconscious created a story about them first.
In some ways I think this dream is symbolic of my struggle to promote loose-leaf tea, and food culture in general, and the way I often feel overwhelmed by a sea of consumerism, in which the products that I am working to move people beyond, still seem to be the dominant ones in society. K-cups seem to symbolize processed foods for me, as they're more processed than even tea bags, and they represent an even farther move away from brewing your own tea, and towards instant brewing, convenience at the cost of quality and sustainability.
Do you ever dream about tea?
Do you ever dream about tea? What do you think of my dream? Do you share my loathing of Keurig and K-cups?