Not from drinking it, tasting it, even nosing it.  But from the origin of wine, from the earth… the practical and metaphoric, reaching consideration of Life.  You’ve probably heard many say “wine is life” or something to such a bend.  But he sees everything from wine.  Teaching, being a father, a runner, a thinker, Human. The growth, the care, the constant monitoring of progress.  La vie, la vie, la vie …. Everything is life to him.  Wine, when he does have some, extends from the thought of being here one day, and not another.  From looking around the café and seeing people older than him, thinking they’re considerably more aged than him, a distant vintage, but as well understanding that one day not so distant he’ll be that bottle, on that shelf with them, even if they’re gone.  He’s a wine writer, but not the same wine writer you read in doltish publications that merely dumb down wine to simplistic tags and dopey descriptions.  Wine to him is the lens, the paradigmatic symbol and reminder of brevity, life’s curtness and brief movement, revolution.

Wine.  He is wine.  He embodies life as few around him do.  Nothing is insignificant.  He continues to age, grow, develop, think and realize his immediate play, place and voice on the planet.  It’s more than analogy, symbol, or even metaphor, but an actualization of belief.  We are mirrors of what’s around us, he believes.  And what more obvious orator than wine, those vines.  Today at work, he’ll be in thought mode, noting everything… wine as the speaker, on all topics— history and mathematics, science and philosophy, literature and grammatical matters.  He need not even use the word, wine.  As everything is. The older lady throwing her coffee cup away, the younger man sitting down by himself and taking off his shades, taking out phone and doing whatever.  Living… in-moment sight, realization, belief.

(3/25/18)