Forrest Fenn Treasure Q: Why so Many Tea Colors?

[Jenny]

In the Chapter 'Tea with Olga', Forrest mentioned different colors of tea:

They are:

"So we laughed and drank RED tea."

"....so we sipped BLACK tea and nibbled on Oreos."

"Olga was at peace at last and I suspected she may be having GREEN tea with her father."



Are these colors some of the Subtle Clues Forrest says are in The Thrill of the Chase?

[Jenny]

Are they Mountains nearby the treasure chest?

Road names?

River names?

or a bit of each?

[chad1968]

Colors in the blaze

[heidini]

Maybe it is a bait and switch. Maybe the colors are weird and draw our attention- but really there is something else in the story that we should notice instead.

[heidini]

Maybe we should also think a little bit. Like about the fly electrocution story. Lol. Electricity: black, red, green. Positive, negative, ground.

[kk]

Jul 17, 2019 11:33:28 GMT -5 heidini said:

Maybe we should also think a little bit. Like about the fly electrocution story. Lol. Electricity: black, red, green. Positive, negative, ground.

Awesome connection! (pun intended)     

This line of thought goes really deep.  

[kaotkbliss]

One of my thoughts is that one of the clues could be in the middle of rivers/mountains/lakes with those colors in their name.


*edit*

I'm leaning towards Green, Red and Black mountain.

So far I've only found 1 area that has all 3 color mountains in close proximity

[chad1968]

In short people, it's just types of tea. Get back in the box lol.

[zaphod73491]

Finance: in the red, in the black.

[kk]

IMO, I think this is why Heidini is accurate with her positive, negative, ground thought, as it relates to tea ceremony. I can see how this thought can connect and be applied to the poem.

From Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi can be defined as "the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the far West."[3] Whereas Andrew Juniper notes, "If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi."[4] For Richard Powell, "Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."[5]

The words wabi and sabi do not translate easily. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered". Around the 14th century these meanings began to change, taking on more positive connotations.[3] Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.

........Wabi and sabi both suggest sentiments of desolation and solitude. In the Mahayana Buddhist view of the universe, these may be viewed as positive characteristics, representing liberation from a material world and transcendence to a simpler life. Mahayana philosophy itself, however, warns that genuine understanding cannot be achieved through words or language, so accepting wabi-sabi on nonverbal terms may be the most appropriate approach. Simon Brown[9] notes that wabi-sabi describes a means whereby students can learn to live life through the senses and better engage in life as it happens, rather than be caught up in unnecessary thoughts. In this sense wabi-sabi is the material representation of Zen Buddhism. The idea is that being surrounded by natural, changing, unique objects helps us connect to our real world and escape potentially stressful distractions.

[heidini]

Jul 20, 2019 12:26:30 GMT -5 kk said:

IMO, I think this is why Heidini is accurate with her positive, negative, ground thought, as it relates to tea ceremony. I can see how this thought can connect and be applied to the poem.

From Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi can be defined as "the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the far West."[3] Whereas Andrew Juniper notes, "If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi."[4] For Richard Powell, "Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."[5]

The words wabi and sabi do not translate easily. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered". Around the 14th century these meanings began to change, taking on more positive connotations.[3] Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.

........Wabi and sabi both suggest sentiments of desolation and solitude. In the Mahayana Buddhist view of the universe, these may be viewed as positive characteristics, representing liberation from a material world and transcendence to a simpler life. Mahayana philosophy itself, however, warns that genuine understanding cannot be achieved through words or language, so accepting wabi-sabi on nonverbal terms may be the most appropriate approach. Simon Brown[9] notes that wabi-sabi describes a means whereby students can learn to live life through the senses and better engage in life as it happens, rather than be caught up in unnecessary thoughts. In this sense wabi-sabi is the material representation of Zen Buddhism. The idea is that being surrounded by natural, changing, unique objects helps us connect to our real world and escape potentially stressful distractions.

I meant all of that??? 😂😂😂

[kk]

Lol, I'm not sure if you meant all of that, and I am not sure if that what FF was getting at, but that's what I got out of it!

I had looked at the Wabi-Sabi before and the tea ceremony, but it wasn't until I read your comment that it made any sense to me. You sure lit a spark in my thought process!

I can see how it connects to the poem, and his story, but I have no idea how to apply it to the search.

[davebakedpotato]

It's the first odd thing I found in TTOTC. Also consider, if you asked for a bowl of mixed olives, what colours might you see?

[ILLUMINATINPS]

The colors could be representing mountains.. A good candidate is to the west of Taos Mountain, you have 3 mountains with all of those names. The colors also could be representing stages. Red being happiness and life, black meaning death, green meaning after life. These are the stages present in his 3 events with Olga. But whats most interesting is those 3 colors combined form the color Brown. And we already know FF says brown is neglected and not given its own spot on the color wheel. So if you were looking at a map like a color palette, brown would be where red, black, and green meet.

[Apple]

Thanks for the shout out Zaphod.  I've been away from the puzzle for a while and happened upon this post a few weeks ago.  I'll count this response as punctual.  To answer Jenny's original question, I don't know if it subtle clue.  But while reading the short story Tea with Olga I asked myself the question "why might have the author chosen to use colored teas?"  I approached this question by looking at the immediate context of the colored teas.  This seems like it should be counted as an in the (tea) box explanation.  I don't know the teas' significance (i.e. context), if any, to the puzzle--perhaps it's some named geographic features in the vicinity of the treasure chest; perhaps it's electrical wiring (Heidi, I do need to think more about the fly trap connection!); perhaps it's even the flag of Malawi through some six orders of separation sleight of hand.  In any event, getting back to the story context, like many of the latter TTOTC chapters, Tea with Olga is thematically paired with one of its neighbors, in this case the Father on the Banco.  Both chapters address one of the author's life goals, expressed elsewhere, that "we are all here only for the pleasure of others…[to] enrich those with whom [we] interact with each day and cause them to be better for my having passed their view."  In Olga, the author provides the set-up with the statement "somewhere along the way I learned that my cost could also show a profit."  Other pointers to this theme in these stories include the mention of "Banco," "home cost" or "mortgage," and Forrest's materially successful art gallery.  The accounting convention and idiom "in the red" refers to a net loss--what the author experiences as rejection in Olga and is mirrored with his father's mortgage in Banco.  Likewise, "in the black" refers to a net gain--what the author experiences when he comes to an agreement with Olga and is mirrored with his father's repayment of the loan in Banco.  Finally, while unconventional in accounting but certainly idiomatic, "making green" denotes extreme profitability, reflected in the cremation / scattering of ashes / "religious experience" at the end of both chapters.  My thoughts are explained slightly more thoroughly in one of my posts about these two chapters.

I was in Santa Fe last month for a long weekend and recognized Forrest's old gallery.  Perhaps that's why I checked in on this forum a few weeks ago--a nudge (I wish I had more time to play his game).  I was sipping some hot chocolate in the small, shaded garden outside a chocolate shop after visiting some of the Canyon Road galleries and the wall described in one of Forrest's stories was across the street.  It made me wonder if he really did have a neighbor named Olga.  Seems like that would be a fairly simple thing to fact check, for those who care more deeply about the literal truth behind his stories.