A vineyard walk often solves everything.  Shows you everything.  Gives you everything.

Easy to understand, as the vineyard IS everything.

At least today.

So I’m going out there.

To walk the blocks.

Smile with leaves and grape clusters,

saunter in colorful soil texture.

Wine speaks to me, as a consumer and just lover of the stories and the juice.  While walking the Petite Sirah block, looking at the morphing complexion of the bunches.  Last night’s Chardonnay still on mind, would love a sip, or taste, glass?  Need to chase, chase the bottles and their stories— in a mood to only research, become not just a more fervent consumer but a hunter of stories.  All creative, wanting to create something for their families and people with whom they can share that story, what’s in the bottle— more than sipping, or feeling of effects.  But an envelopment in wine’s sensory atmosphere and phenolic music.  I roll my eyes sometimes when I hear people conveniently using the Robert Louis Stevens quote, and I think I finally know why.  As much poetry as I read and write, teach to English students, wine spans disciplines, is more than verse and establishes its own discipline in our worlds, becoming inter-dimensional and intergalactic, defying natural laws and going to spaces in our existences that indubitably teach us more about our existences.  Like my vineyard stroll earlier and anything connected to wine and its development and elemental assembly, where I am now at my desk, staring out at the Sauv’ Blanc block, gifts me innumerable lessons.

The vineyard is definitely everything in this world.  Yes, there’s the wine and anything connected to consider afterward, but only afterward.  I had to walk where it starts, the ‘before’.  Going to the tasting room for a second, to taste something, taste a vineyard, a story, an effort, a project, an expression.  Just a taste, no glass…  And when back at this desk, I feel more for wine.  I can only grin— I’m here, in this world, seeing people come from so far away to where I work, live and leisure, where I create, everyday.  It’s humbling, more than anything.  Educational.  Enriching.  Spiritual.

I’ll educate myself more, more, the wine will help.  Wine, the professor.  Vineyard, a dean.  Me, waiting for the next assignment.

This, is Liberatory Pedagogy.

(7/14/16)