Only hours away.  And my lovely over-thinking has me wanting the last glass of that Merlot, my Merlot.  But I’m thinking about the winemaking character, C——, who’s stuck in that office cube, revolving in sales initiatives, campaigns, stuck in the office when she’d rather be in the vineyard, in the lab, traveling with her bottles.  She doesn’t go out tasting too much, though.  She knows what she wants in a wine, regardless of varietal.

My allergies, attacking.  You’d think they’d give me the night before my 35th off, but no.  I’m stuck, and I blame the symptoms.  I do need that final Merlot pour.  No, not at all.  I want to wake early tomorrow morning, at the Hem hour.  I will.  I’m going to start over tomorrow.. RESTART, as I often write in these posts.  The novel will be finished, the one I wrote over the semester–  No, and that’s another 35 Law: no more promising, projecting, predicting.  Only executing.  I’m tired of the writer I’ve been since.. well, high school, that last semester senior year, 1997.  It’s retired tonight, that mold.  And here I am.. a writer who finishes every BOOK upon which he embarks.

Poured the Merlot.  Welcoming 35.. provoking it, celebrating any challenge it dare throw to my worded armory.  And this will be the only glass I have, as I want tomorrow morning’s session, more than likely in the Kenwood Market lot, to be rich, and devoted to a project, not just this journal–  Why do I keep wishing for a project?  I just finished one!  I have to edit it!  Print it!  Sell it!  See?  That’s been my bloody problem.. finishing something, and not truly finishing it, printing and editing and selling… well that’s done.  I’ll read through the semester’s novel, ‘Bells and Ruin’, working title, and write to what I find, what I want to fix.. respond to my book like one of my students to Poe’s work, or Hem’s, Plath’s…

Little Kerouac asleep.  His sentences become more precise and refined with each calendar step.  And he’s always smiling, always the optimist, the roamer, a fruitful penchant for action and reaction.

My sister the other night, looking tired, embattled by her duties– making wine for a corporate winery.  She said nothing disparaging, but I wonder if she wanted to.  Her approach to winemaking is hard to singularize with description or moniker.  Does she want to translate vintage, varietal, AVA, or is she not wanting to “translate”?  Not sure.  I think she’s just aiming to produce a dynamic and memorable wine, in the end.  Think I have two sips left in glass…  Time to bid adieu to 34.

***

It didn’t taste as she wanted it to.  But what could she do?  She’d tried so many percentage changes with the blend, and clonal interminglings that she’d lost track of where she was.  “Go with your gut, trust your gut,” Rosie told her when she did that first blend, at the seminar a few months ago, one of the moments that confirmed her winemaking promise, urges, or at the very least interest.  So she did.  “58 cab…23 merlot, 10 Syrah, 4 cf…  4 mb, 1 chardonnay”.  Looked odd, on paper, but tasted amazing.  Work order written.  Done.  But what would she call it?