Always reach for new knowledge and stories, life and sight.
Broken from work, distracted by two, actually three, really four, people I met while in wine’s full wheel. The first person walking up to me, gently interrupting my types, a girl who worked with me while I was full-time at FFW, then a club member of Dutcher Crossing and his friend, then my really good friend JK. They all arrived at the same time, and I could only talk to them, hear what was new in their story. And that’s what wine is, the connectedness, you’ll see them again and again, over years after the last time you see them. Wine and its industry, especially here in Sonoma County, can do that.
Heading back home in a second, rest of day with family, and maybe a nap at some point. No time soon after this small latte I ordered. My own wine business world, thing, character and perpetuation… so, start with the day. With the wineries I visited today, the people with whom I spoke and tasted. Writing wine is putting on page the life and lives you experience in its world.
Was told that I need focus and self-contain and be singular in my written reason and narration. So now, 17 days and 4 months before turning fucking 41, I decide to be attached wine’s ideas, her forms and stories, geographies and travel. Writing only wine and the reactions to it.. my wishlist of travel spots, starting in the state just above me, the across however many miles to Spain, Bordeaux, Austria, Hungary….. The people that “interrupted” my pages actually strangely centered me, putting my figure and fixation further into a firm singularity.
Not in the tasting room, but my head doesn’t leave, my pages only speak in a wined and time-aligned way…. Vines right now in dormancy, and me unable to walk the rows from all the mud. Well, I could, but I don’t. Tomorrow back in office and I carry this with me in a peripatetic insatiability. So, then, before I leave write it again… WINE.
And more…
WINE WINE WINE.
The only thing I’m to write. Book done before month’s end. Gives me 19 days. Doable. Ray Bradbury wrote ‘451’ in 9 days I think, in the basement of a library. This current beat I’m listening to tells me to remember wine’s music…. Write more music into wine, and write the music in wine, be it jazz or hip-hop, rock, ambient, whatever else. Wine… start with her, then fly, come back, transcend the possibilities with writing and what’s looked at as unattainable. That’s what you should reach for, what you should write.
Two of the Chardonnays I tasted earlier, not my style. So whose are they? What is the audience, what is the music in that bottle, and the other one? What does it say, emancipate? Either way, me of wild weal today. And from Mom’s instruction to contain and singularize the pages, to a book, to a one-voice shape and shake, to convoke my composition.
I want to take on the industry, if you must know. Challenge it, have it answer to and for certain specific transactions and occurrences. Friend that came in earlier, years ago fired from a winery with no cause, no explanation or compensation adequate, or anything said. He wrote the then-CEO, and all the ivory tower sog-slouch could say is “I wish you the best…” or some bullshit.
I’ll start with pay. Why don’t they fucking pay?
Why don’t they encourage you go after what you want, rather than tell you you’re better for this, or that, or some other thing.
Took all clutter and STUFF from car. Mostly kids books and running clothes. But less of everything is starting to be an emphasis at my age. Less… not so much shit just laying around. More than minimalism, but a simplification of sight, of movement.
9:10 and thinking of what else I can disconnect from. What else I can throw away. Be more a moving creature and less a re-arranging or filing one.
Drinking a latte, just back from a Starbucks drivethrough run with the kids. Already feel electricity, the veritable voltage from the first two cups I had, so I don’t know why I ordered this. Probably for the cinnamon. I love cinnamon. Have I told you that? Do you need such knowledge? Is that even knowledge?
Don’t wait to
be allowed to love.
Just
LOVE.
1/5/20
Youth.
You’re young.
Create…. and embrace your youth and loving lunacy.
In
written
mood
and
Mode.
Going in, but at 11.
After a morning of some of the most intense sibling skirmishes I’ve seen since having two littles and both could actually altercate with the other, I have time to self. At the old Windsor coffee spot. Last night, Hitching Post Pinot. Can’t remember the last bottle of HP I had. Was a while ago…. WAIT—After or actually during the fires when staying at Uncle Mike’s house in El Dorado Hills. HP of course reminds so many of Sideways, that movie… you know… Pinot Pinot PINOT, but for me it’s not that. Not anything bad being associated with fires, but just something different. The not-knowing… the something of something having to do with life. Wine is the unpredictable and the whim, both dangerous and delightful.
Had to move seats. Only one open was the little table by the napkins and shakers and other shit bar. So I came to the seats I used to hate writing in. I can tell, I’m thinking too much about what I’m writing. Second-guessing self and getting uncomfortable in seat, feeling a mood approaching, already disrupting my work. Writing about wine, and how again I don’t see a wine bar or shop for self, but some resource for wine drinkers, no matter their “level”…. But then I back-pedal on that as well. Just write wine, same as when my sister told me that if you’re going to make wine then just make wine. Don’t think about it. She said, as I’ve written so many times before, and quoted conveniently, that if you second-guess yourself you’re never going to make wine.
Another quote, from my grandmother, only days before she left, “It’s YOUR life… you have YOUR choice.” So what do I want, I’m this morning asking. How should I know… I do, a bit. Don’t I? After submitting grades yesterday, or the night before, I very much am convinced that the adjunct thing has run its course. I still want to teach, I guess—or not “teach” but offer ideas. By way of essay. Like this one, this piece, this article, whatever the fuck this is… going in later so I can have some fucking time to self. To collect, think about my mission, and how much life I have left. You never know. So where you are and what you’re doing has to be defining and absolutely declarative in its progressions and steps.
With wine, as metaphor or no, I’m told to respond to conditions around me, favorable or not. The fires, 2017’s, obviously not hoped-for but still present. Winemakers had to deal with them. Work with and around them. More with than around. The defined the wine of that year, much. Even if the clusters were pulled before the blazes initiated and flew and grew as they did. Wine… definition-prone and aided and slated by everything not-controlled. I start to see…. Something…. Defining wine. Or characterizing her. No, something… not sure. Wine and character. What everyone keeps telling me to do. So why do I ever stray from what everyone hopes I write, DO? Frustrated with my handle of my own pages so I convince self to challenge the same self in writing ONE world. One character, language.
Wine wants us to be puzzled, wants us to have to contemplate next directions, just as she did. She demands we listen, be more observant, more connective and connected, composed and by the moment towed. Today I’ll taste through the flight, a couple times I’m sure. Write everything she says to me… make it personal, and wine should be personal. At times moody, confusing, a myriad of varying and unpredictable echoes and dialects. The Pinot last night speaking differently than the first HP bottle I had years prior. That’s the music to it all, in wine or anything else entailing life and promise, some dream, some chance and happenstance, a reactive and spontaneous dance. If I do open a wine shop, it has to speak in this language of spontaneity, of artful reaction, of a lick of luck. Traveling to other countries and streets far away to gather bottles for the shop…. Ideas, from her, wine. In the convex consideration of my reflective armament. What am I doing but walking with her, in the step of steps, not so much divine or even delicious, but decided.
Rootstock, Vine, Then Wine
Emma playing in her room, with doll house and the Frozen tent. ME just observing. Telling self I’m not sick, and I don’t feel sick just a bit tired. Sipping latte and thinking of what I want from the day…. Business, budgeting, having this first sizeable commission check do something. Course the more I think about it, the less I’m getting done. Fact, I’m not getting anything done right now. Well, this entry and the amusement from little Ms. Austen voicing words and conversations for her dolls.
Want to pick up some wine at some point, for writing and more prompt and discussion invitations for the 3v blog. Thinking imports, Spanish and Bordeaux. Tired of American wines…. Or maybe not tired but, need to be more exploratory, more wild and scattered, all over the globe. Brother-in-law Jim telling me I need to put more into my wine writing, when having a glass of that Duckhorn SB and he that champagne… you know the fancy kind that everyone has, and that I enjoy when I can, with the orange label. I know what it’s called I just don’t know how to spell and am too lazy to google it.
Day, WINE.
Even when you’re sick,
you can write a couple words, trap a couple observations, contribute to some project.
PROJECTS.