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Alex Lucksmith
Alexander Lucksmith (both a pen-name and an aspiration) was born in the foothills of Colorado in the 80’s. Feng Shui practitioners would discover that between the Platte and the plains was the perf...view moreAlexander Lucksmith (both a pen-name and an aspiration) was born in the foothills of Colorado in the 80’s. Feng Shui practitioners would discover that between the Platte and the plains was the perfect chi for nourishing the heart. Most of his youth was spent on hilly backyards digging for treasure, in basements playing Nintendo, and in schools blowing off homework.
His love for herbs came from long weekend roadtrips in the back of a yellow 70’s Vanagon. Aside from heady Argentine prose, the only reading material was a beat up field guide to identifying and using medicinal herbs. Countless days of plucking mint and hand-identifying nettles turned into a apothecary clerk at a Chinese pharmacy. Now, herbs were more than plants and roots, they were bug, rocks, energies, and mythologies.
A chance encounter with 2 nameless tea saints in Seattle gave Alexander the mantra “We may not be rich, or smart, but we can make a good cup of tea, and sometimes that makes all the difference”. So for a while, scorpions and centipedes were traded for sencha and ceylons.
Between harvest and houjicha were the islands of Japan. Like a swallow flying in coach, he returns every four years to roost. Sometimes he makes his home on the island of Shikoku, and other times in cheap Tokyo underpasses. Each time returning with a bit more nesting material.
And as fancy as this makes him all sound, in the end he is just a guy who smiles and makes haiku in the margins of newspapers.view less