lunch wine page

Wine calls me back.  Back to work.  Back to exploration of its lively and ontological, thoughtful throws and beyond and simplistic sentences one wine critic or self-assessing “expert” may echo.  Wine sipped earlier, older Pinot, ’13, telling more vintage story than the vintages bottled that it surround.. charisma and charm and stellar voice from its paragraph map.  Wine… she orders me back to my wild types, tells me to not separate then to separate, consolidate with thoughts and ideas, theses, then be tangential.  Telling me to exact in wild prose while being demonstrative of centeredness and collection.

A Saturday in the tasting room, scattered and frantic, fanatical and not allowing even second-long sabbatical in thought, attention, holds me, allows wine to convert me further, convey her instance, insistence.  In the office now with laptop for lunch, but with mind in the glass, in the Silver Oak I opened the other night, what I might open tonight and jot a few jots, fly inwardly with my wine wildness, be on the Road soon speaking to whomever about wine and how it’s influenced my prose and appreciate of life, how I tell my story and how imperative and integral, intrinsically immediate she is in my day-to-day.  And this day, more than others, wine to me speaks, sings, tells me not to be tackled by complacency’s tempt, to be a bull with my wined pages, to scribble tireless in the tasting room while these tourist talk in their talks, speak about the wine and give me that “Oh can you imagine this with…” Love that.  That’s what I want.  More life and more Nowness of it all— the stage that wine sets for me, she knows what I need for this book, for the other, and the other which is verse-laden meaning many are scribbled after glass 2, 3, more?  I’m in my proverbial and utter Beatnikedness, phantasmagorically forced me from dormancy.

Cabernet, Pinot, even the Pinot Gris today speaking to me as I took a couple shots of the bottles on bar— she tells me to try everything, consolidate and blend all steps and scenes of my writing and teaching life.  It’s all wined, in one find or ‘nother… beatific muster of memories when I first started in this industry, pouring beyond St. Francis’ long, aircraft carrier-length counter… pages and page, me life then and now me now in this Now, older and seeing more in my writing and when wine constricts me in her intended realization that there are more atmospheres and theses to offer, see and study.  This office isn’t an office and this winery not such but a mediative and collecting center for my bottled sight, this bottled ox, more set and sown to his pages.  She has me, again.  And more than in other entries, posts and pages.  She tells me to laugh, not be systemized… to defy and re-try, re-write, release everything.. from the odd wordings of what people taste to the notes to me disclosed when glass is lifted to lips, when she me has in kiss…

15 minutes left in break, and I already taste the first offering of tonight… No idea what, red or white, but it’s HER— wine.  What’s taught and shown, direct direction and narration, the encircling properties of her metaphysical map.  Wine tasting is wine hearing, feeling, listening to all notes and chords, crescendos and de-.  I’m past where I was, but back to where I was, where I was when I started my wine page mission and curious chords and voyages.  New vortex from bottles poured, tasted…. She tells me to disobey the clock, to disobey myself whenever discouraged by the wine industry being too much industry and not enough wine… not enough life and love, creative and narration, not enough literary, thought, philosophy, not enough me.  She reminds me that she’s here for me, on that hill at Chalk, in AV, Sonoma Valley at St. Francis, still, where my sister now heads their winemaking walk.

New wine pages, pages and pages and what I hear in the class translated by me the literary bloke, behind the bar and seeing people walk to the front door, wondering what they’ll ask me first, what they’ll like, what they’ll want at their table, in their home.  The insanity of it all lifts me from the lull I was in, from what wine had to me rescue.  Not sure what had me down weighted.  Doesn’t matter.  I see the glass, I see the Sauvignon Blanc lot, and whatever pulled me away from her will be given no address.  No space in this break’s page. Just her.. she with her humor, with her suggestion that I be more a joker with wine, mention what people say about the finish…. “Oh.. and the finish on this one…” a lady said the other day, “…it tickles, it’s like a cotton candy, you know, tickle!” I nodded my head but thought about how I couldn’t wait to write that, somewhere…. Wine has me back.  Swear I’ll never leave, again.  Not that I left, but I broke.  So, this lunch break is a gavel.  Me, returned, forever, and with the wild, giggly yay-say of Mike Madigan… a wild wine writing chap, who now more Sees in wine’s be.

(4/28/18)