Sit.  Coffee.  Ahead of clock-in time, which I set for set at 08:20.  Last night’s wine still on thoughts, like a storm just hovering over some already-drenched village or enclave.  But here I am, a day off which I’m using for work, of course.  The work I one day will ONLY be engaged in.  Today I show people I’m a tireless writer, the papa of all bloggers.  Material everywhere— young woman to right, doing some kind of math homework or assignment or probably final as it’s the last week of term, with her TI-whatever calculator out, here head going back and forth, as mine does internally with the ‘SLH’ Pinot.  What was that note?  Talk about a singular address as I’m always trying to stress to students…what was it?  Wild herbs?  Licorice?  But then later transmogrifying into maple or some caramelized berry, then back to that herb or wild standing-in-a-field-like tone.  I watch people walk in and out of this room, waiting for their coffee or mixed madnesses of choice.  New visitor, young lady with her daughter, daughter climbing all over the chair.  Can’t hear what they’re saying, listening to Hutchinson, but I heard daughter say “This!” What, I wonder.  Now they leave, she carefully climbing down from the chair, carrying her book which in multiple colors on the front, each letter a different chromatic form, spelling ‘PIANO’.  She looked a little young for lessons, but then what is too young?

Too old, I feel, sometimes, to have these dreams, these visions of me traveling, talking about writing, wine, blogging, creative.  But how can I let the father of my babies think that?  Looking at the time, still before clock-in.  I have plenty of time, plenty.  And I’m not old.  Or, not as old as I think.  Sip the coffee again and let the wave ride, or let the ride carry me to whatever with wine.  May go tasting tomorrow, somewhere I’ve never been with my second day to self.  Wine is about learning, I’m seeing more and more, and exploring, finding what speaks to you—  “Write only about wine.” I tell myself.  So I have to search more, like Ray and Japhy, climbing mountains and just seeing what’s out there.  That’s the only way to know wine, and even then you may not “know” it.  Just a romantic partnership, or some elevated accord or collusion.  Write about wine, write about wine…. What was that note last night?  Am I looking for a descriptor?  Well, I guess.  Maybe.  But I hate that word.  Such a pseudo-wine journalist speak.  I don’t want to sound like them, but like me, actually.  So was it an herb I’m unfamiliar with, or some flower, some foliage?—  Dried Oregon leaves, branches with clay soil-powder doused in raspberry swaths.  What?  That’s the thing, I don’t know.  With wine, you don’t always need to know.  You know?  Now I’m just having my fun, post-Pinot night.  Going to break from wine for the night, maybe.  Just let myself simmer and stir, quake in wined ideation.

Read somewhere that today is “National Wine Day”.  Huh, I thought.  So what do I do in reflection and code of such call?  Write about wine.  Weird, illusionary descriptions and personifications, thoughts and connections.  Whenever I go to a tasting room and the wine’s poured, then s/he just lists notes, I always wonder, “What?  Am I SUPPOSED to be tasting that, or is that something I might pick up?” Example: Woman pours me some Rosé a couple years ago, in Kenwood, small tasting room, says, “Here’s our Rosé of Sangiovese… cherry, mint, white pepper, lavender, floral, waxy…” And then she stopped.  “Waxy?” I thought.  What does that mean.  And what am I supposed to do with all that stuff you just said?  No one else was in the room, and I know her, have known her, for years…. And she knows I’m ‘industry’.  Why did she recite the script?  And even if we didn’t know each other and I wasn’t ‘industry’.. even if I was in horrible need of “wine education” (a phrase which I think is a king joke of jokey-jokes), why couldn’t she just talk to me?  Pour me the wine, then ask, “So how’ve you been?” Or if she didn’t know me, “So where are you from?” Or, “So how’s your day goin’?” Why the obsession with these grocery list “descriptions”, which aren’t bloody descriptive at all?—  Then I’m hit… forget the note in the Pinot from last night.  Who cares what it is… what did the wine say to you, Mikey?  …. “Wildness, electric forms and directions to unknown cosmos, calculating without numbers, traveling and on my own exodus to redefine Pinot Noir, Burgundian perception…”