vino
Lit

I remember my intentions with wine today– charging ‘good phone’, ready for notes on ’12 Mendo Ridge Pinot, and the vines.. where they are what they’re saying and how I’m to look at them. Last night’s Merlot opening suggested to me that wine today should just be written in dialogue form, no notes, no thick-witted daffy descriptors. No, today me as a novelist and short fiction writer introduces itSelf to wine, and offers to not so much speak for it but translate its visual nudges into line, lines.
My ’12 Merlot, especially the last glass, offered something to a lean of: “I want to be seen as a song, a set on stage, with this light assertiveness…” Last sip was a little over 10 hours ago, so I’m remembering what I can.

Little Kerouac next to me on couch now, ready for school, ready for his day, this Friday (which isn’t a Friday to me as I’m with my promissory morrow– the frenzying Saturday behind the bar, where people nearly have their iphones stolen (only happened once, and by accident, but the lady’s reaction was pricless, next to that drunk group, she saying to the reacher “Um, excuse me yeah that’s mine, thanks…”). And I’ll note everything, everyone today, in the spoken, the characterized.. characters, characters, in bottle and out. And there’s me, the adjunct, the writer obvious and then not so, not sure which I prefer.

Older photos from the last winery, some inciting me, others keeping me thoughtful, wanting to write that novel, finish it– the Massamen project, where I, or he, will disclose everything, everything about the wine world that people thinking of entering it on an occupational front MUST know. That it’s NOT fantasy. It’s a job, like anything else. BUT, you can make it your own, which now at the elevated age of nearly 36, I have decoded, mapped and staged.

Back from Jackie’s little school cruise down the Yulupa blocks. There was too much in my head in the way of wine and writing and the students, the Massamen novel, the final weeks of the term.. on the drive home, couldn’t concentrate on a thing, solely from the ideas, certain perceptive entertainments accosting me. Nearly ran a red, but here I am with the remainder of cup 2, left. Will try to take a picture every hour today, to capture my day’s moments should I not be able to scribble something, those notes I jot quickly, now more so just singular words and concepts/points for expansion (again, as I tell my students, 1A & B).. and I realize no wine writer’s like me, certainly no ‘wine blogger’, no hyperbolic glossy disingenuous rat of a somm’, that I know. But why take it in that direction.. they do what they do and I with my words and chapters and scattered Beat projects.

That quiet in the condo, that I experience occasionally, kindly confronts me, pushes me into these wine thoughts, the vinoLit approach to everything I sip.. just have to remember today: ‘dialogue’.. speaking, the wine speaking and what the sippers say in their momentary reactiveness. Can’t remember if I have to be at the vineyard at 10 or 1030 on Fridays.. I was given the option, just now, so I elect 10, or as close as I can come to it.. still have to get ready.. clock pushing and pressuring me.. but I don’t cower, I answer with more wording, more wine fantasy, more personification of my Merlot, and how it recited for me, to my ‘palate’ and senses all.. not sipping tonight, leaving rest for morrow’s eve, see how it fends off invading oxygen.. the writer provoking its intrepidity.

order no need stare
at vines and what they write so
i copy scribble

(4/24/15)