The rebuild is forced into a dauntingly luminous velocity.
Back to work…
thought
So many thoughts on drive up here. From business to personal, to educational. Everything. Fitness, running…. Ev.er.y.thing. Sunday night put a new lens in front of me, something for…. Not sure. Growth, I want to say, but who can be sure. Meditations and thoughts, self-education and deliberation with everything in front of me. Less, less…. Consolidate. I got it, now.
10/14/17,
Back in Sacramento. Just touched down, unloaded some things from car. Tired of this fire nonsense, already. But a project will come out of it. I’ve been instructed and further reminded of life’s fragility and brevity. So, a book soon. From this blog, my life in wine and how wine teaches me that it’s only a minor factor. It’s the people, the communities, the families, the stories. The wine is ancillary, at best.
09:43. Still have some clothes to unload, want to clean car a bit. Hoping to get in a run around here, around this El Dorado Hills area. We’ll see…
Done with all this fire
news. Like my sister said the other night, watching something silly, something ridiculously, stupidly funny.
Sipping some of the Oyster Bay SB. Think it’s Oyster Bay. Either way, more relaxed. Not thinking about it— but about this wine.. slightly spritzy, grapefruit and wild grass, herbs and thyme. I’m just in the floor, sipping. Just what the wine warrants in this time, post f—e. No, not writing it, either.
Writing my way to some realization with this glass… 16:22. The wine tells me not to care. She tells me to smile, be thankful, laugh, and watch something like you said, something obnoxiously comical.
Wine is here for me. She relaxes me and talks to me in her chords and echoing vocal colors. I compose and listen more to the white Bordeaux cove— smitten and enamorius with her emotional topography. Making the day and his time better, more rich and disclosing its tones and narratively music-set shifts.
10:57. The quiet in this house hurts.
My family should be here, but they’re not. Some could say this house shouldn’t be here, but it is. On the side of the San Miguel tracks, there are
no thoughts like this. The houses are gone. Couple seconds ago I was bothered with the prospect of taking a cold shower. There are no showers being taken on that other side, or along Coffey. So I humble, I silence, I meditate and conceive what’s before me, a writer of wine.. so much life and in that life there is less than “little time”. Wine isn’t just about celebration, it’s also about appreciation, acknowledgement of life and how invaluable it is. That morning, Sunday, with the winds at 60+ MPH, and smoke notes and visible glowing pieces from a structure or structures floating our way, pushed by those gusts, I had no idea what to think. Had to remain composed for babies, show some strength or sternness. The quiet broken by the train and a car driving on our street or the one over. Don’t want to be here, but I should want to be here. I have a home. East San Miguel can say nothing such. Try to enjoy what’s left of my coffee, in my Coffey Park studio/home/base/heart where wife and kids eat, sleep, play, love and learn and grow. My coffee cold, but not like the shower. Now’s a time to write, record, be quiet like the house. Don’t think about work, business, selling, wine. Concentrate and somehow measure and inventory how lucky you and you family, your street, are. I write this on the floor of my bedroom, sipping coffee, after a shower, collecting musings and measurements. The sound void does sting, but it as well sows, sews. New visions, scopes, hopes, decisions. For me, family, the story’s entirety.—. Fuck, why were we, am I, so lucky?
Can’t think like that.
But I am.
The loud quiet here begs it.
(10/13/17)
18:54
Beer, sitting on sister’s front steps. Air cleaner.. zen.
Huge fire visible from this stoop. Goddamnit. When is this going to end?
Still In It
16:32. Got my car, saw the house. And, the neighborhood. Horrible. Sobering. No words. Had a late lunch, still need to shower, left laptop in Dad’s truck. Still stressed and scattered.
There is no break or pause in this. New fires keep sprouting. Need another break…
More high winds anticipated. When will this end?
16:57. Restlessness sets in. All those images of the neoghborhood, the smells, the smoke and little flames… Still can’t mentally accept this is happening, and why were we, Alice and I and everyone on our street, so lucky? Just working with the moment, moments one at a time.
Spending another night at Katie’s and hopefully heading to SAC tomorrow. Guess little Kerouac’s having a tough time with all this, and being away from me.
17:31. Beer 1. Taking my time, tonight. Not liking the way World News Tonight’s David Muir reports from my neighborhood. So dramatic, self-serving, animated, produced, manicured. Paunchy flap-mouthed giglet. Can’t talk about it anymore, will only anger me immeasurably, even more.
Don’t want to talk about these fires anymore. So why am I? ‘Cause I can’t believe it.
The sky clearing, hoping this is over soon but— No. Not talking about it anymore. Putting a dent in the book tonight. Wine, how it answers everything. And you don’t even have to drink wine. Just walk a vineyard, visit wine country, talk to the people who live out here. “What do I do with my life?” Someone could ask wine. Be open to what wine’s world says.. it’s people.. take in everything. Work in a tasting room, even part-time. It will show you something, many things about your story. Only now, after these fires, going back and forth from Santa Rosa and Sonoma do I understand this.
Wine speaks in understandings.
