of those extended prose progressions that I’d like to do, but I sit with wine, red, a single-vineyard Pinot taken home, only poured from a couple times and knowledge of certain winery operational specificities.  I think and think and think about my winery, the professor’s winery and how I’ll sell my bottles through narrative, through words, the radiant realism from the vineyard’s stakes, rows and cover crops.  I’m going everywhere right now, I admit, as this is glass 3, but I’m composed and writing where others might just vegetate in front of a screen, or just fall asleep or go to some bar— no time for such with my inner paragraphs that I can’t catch, that I can’t replicate, and I find I miss the weather, that weather we just had which Hem quickly dubbed as “bad”, I long for— the rain on the Autumn Walk pavement, and my travels to other states lecturing on literature and theory and journal practice.

I sip the Pinot, a ’13 Anderson Valley, and look ahead, just over the top of the laptop’s screen and see a bottle of the cuvée Blair and I made in ’12.. next vintage, my second Merlot, but I have to sell some of these writings, and yet no budget wiggleroom for printing— so, dilemma, crux of conflict and disposition of stall— what now, WHAT— my mood, favonian, but not for long, I’m sure.  I’m certain money and the reality of reality will have some way of scalpeling that from my sitting, walking or strolling through whatever block I tomorrow walk.  Had the vision of walking those crisped frozen rows on Wohler Road, off to left and right.  Why didn’t I stop?

Glasses and bottles today, a heavier crowd than any of us measured or saw coming through the doors, but it felt like a circle of sun around my senses being in the Room again, pouring and talking about the wines and the various Pinots and the ways they might talk to a sipper— the different sites reflected, and then again wine tells me to push onward, be both professor and writing, and winemaker, then the big brother in this writer shouts, “Yeah, teach your winemaker sister a thing or two…”

Both babies asleep, and I hope they enjoy, as I want them to be rested for the days they have to charm people in the tasting room.  And yes, part of me’s joking but the other quite punctuated in my purpose and purposeful poise in the end-game of a winery.  And so many call me crazy, even my sister, the other night when I asked her “So when are you starting your own label?” She back-jabbed, “Never.  I don’t want to pay my own bills.  I have someone else paying my bills now, and it’s nice.” I understand, she’s timid in the entrepreneurial wingspread, and so many are.  But not me.  I don’t want my little Beats to see me as a hesitater or some figure who talks but jamais walks.

This is more than I expected to write and I have to thank this Pinot and Arista, and Tony for letting me take this bottle.  These people don’t know that little echoes and ripple in the peregrination pond so much affect and push, shove the writer.  Especially a writer like me.  I stare at what’s left tin the glass, this Pinot.  Probably a 2-3 ounce pour.  And I just look at it, the low light of the office with Gothic suggestion and a certain grimly cloaked layer to its nuance roster, profile or whatever, and get lost in my stare.  And it marvels a certain sound, song, talking to me in its visual, and it knows I’m a writer staring at it, this ’13 Ferrington, telling me to walk the rows and see such frost and breath the Anderson Valley air.  Forget obligation and bills and schedules.  This is why wine is such a lens in my writing, and like today in the tasting room watching first-time visitors walk in and not knowing what to expect but are pleasurably confronted by wines that say something, that have a distinguishable voice and narrative, that tell a story and cement a certain savory thesis.  Again, more than I thought I’d be greeted with.  I peek around the corner, see my daughter resting on Alice’s chest.  The winery’s near.  I just need certain wheels to turn a certain way.  Then all from the dream’s to be obeyed.

But I need that rain again.

12/26/15