Tag: Thoughts

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autre

06:38.

Up. Thinking about a lot, this morning, sipping the coffee I had the sense to make last night and put in old tumbler. Not so moved by last night’s Pinot. It was a book, a narrative, but not one I’m sure I’m pushed any one way by. But that happens, oui? That’ll happen with wine, with books, with any expressive thing. I had one glass, then another, and I simply couldn’t … do anything. I wasn’t coerced to write about it even though I’m sure I will, part of the thousand wines project which I’m thinking of killing as one hope for self this new year was to drink less wine, certainly not more. Why… do be different than anything last year. Sitting in couch thinking about what I have to do at the winery today and I’m unmotivated, slow and sluggish, pained by indecision. 39 this year, 3 days and 4 months. Horrible, this aging curse. Yesterday’s run, even… noticed I was not as swift and set on the treadmill as I used to be. 5 miles in 50 minutes… I find that sad. Maddening. Not sure if that old man running was the result of poor sleep or that I didn’t really eat anything before, or both. Hear a cough, then what I think is a street sweeper outside. What am I doing here, right now, and what will this writer do today? I better know, as today is here, now with me. Get in shower, shave, teeth brushed… take little Kerouac to school then me to work. And then what? Just another day? All these people that started their own wineries or small labels, like the guy whose Pinot I last night met, broke with something. Drastically changed their every-day. So what do I do? Has to be today. What do I do with my label, ME, that pushes me toward something New? Something surprising, something… that street-sweeper again. Did hyphenate last time? Think son’s awake. 06:50. Will get in shower just before 07:00. Sweeper again… that had to be a metaphor of some twist for me. Clean up. The act of sweeping. Streets, what an entity utilizes for traveling from one locale to ‘nother. Have to interpret. Measure and analyze. My electricity this morning, not so present. How do I elevate? What does someone with a small label do? Ignore how you feel… just stay moving, do your job like the sweeper. Keep your connectors clean. No, pristine. Wine writers and bloggers shouldn’t feel like this… they should only write about wine and be joyous and bubbly and smiley all the time. They shouldn’t have real thoughts and think about life, their life and where their going, their significance. Just write about wine, no?

No.

I have more on inner tablet than that.

Time for shower. Ready for day. Take coffee upstairs with you and be on your mission. What is my “mission”? To live. And wildly. Madly. Pummel pattern into its own void.

When at work I find someone in the office, after finding no coffee was made by winemaking team.  With my mood still sharp, but a bit revived after finally locating the Plath letters Mom bought me for xmas, I sit to write and I tell self that I will hit 3000 words today, or else.  Or… else, what?  Not sure, but it won’t be good.  Have a little bit of coffee left in tumbler.  Take the hugest of huge glug-chugs.  Have to use restroom but ignoring my vessel’s demand.  I’m going to write my way not just out of this mood, or whatever it is, but through it and to a point where I dominate everything today… however many tastings I do, to note-taking on people and each wine, what I see, and how I see literature and teaching, eduction in the tasting room.  Up early this morning I noticed self getting agitated with prospect of being in the room today, and the way to coat and cure that sense is to see it as more than a room of tasting wine.  See it as a canvas— no, trite.  See it as a stage, a film, see it as a chapter… each day a chapter and the day itself is the author and I’m the translator.  Not speaking to other human in office with me now, not to be rude I just need this.  This separation from everything except my page and Plath’s pages.  08:45.  Have about 45 minutes of collection.  For this year… books and books and books.  From this blog and other writing motions, musings… in-the-moment jots.  What can I do but write.

Not wanting to indent, as I want every space and step on this page.  Today is mine, in all its… everything.  Plath looking out into the sky or some field on the book’s cover.  Last night’s Pinot may have been her, or something poetess, poetic.  Maybe it was a manuscript that for whatever reason didn’t connect.  The wine wasn’t flawed, and I can right now recall the flickers of cinnamon and cherry and like a spicy, rose… richly rose-honed potpourri quake.  Why wasn’t I as impressed and into it as I wanted to be?

Today I’m free.  Poetry.  Writing one alongside this entry.  Need to read more, put my work out there more for the world and all worlds and tastes of worlds… the woman in the office with me leaves, goes downstairs.  Maybe to restroom use.  Yes, can hear the door close.  I’m staying in the chair, not moving, refusing to slow in my prose row.  Have to be in front of mics, crowds.. show self a s poet and prose molder.  Wine isn’t bottled poetry.  It’s poetry, freed.  The bottle is inconsequential.  Not at all a gravity.  Not at all a pulse.  The life is in the wine, not the glass that it holds.  8 lines in poem.  I need more read.. be seen as a poet.. the tasting room’s my stage.  Have to set stage in cave, today.. pour wines, make those godforsaken cheese plates.  Fixate and form from and within the words, I tell myself.  On 12th line… this is more than poetry, more than wine, more than work.  It’s a letter, written with her, maybe.  That’s in my head.  Made up.  Made real.  Colossal.

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autre

First of year new.

img_0337And my first thought, “So what?” Opened the Merlot I bought from St. Francis the other day, looking at the color and pairing it–if you could call it a “pairing”–with the pulled pork from last night. The year, bold and unapologetic. Wilder than wild… tonight I do intend to have a bit more wine and have it speak to me. She wants me in some new modality. Sitting next to my son’s bed as he somewhat fades into his sleep, but really not. Not sure why he’s so awake… maybe the whole new year tilt, he saying over and over to his mother and I, “Happy New Year.” In the wine shop, always music, of all forms, like my kids with their ever-revolving interests.

Still taste the Merlot, after tasting it ten or so ago-minutes. Quiet in the studio, and I vow to wake at 03:45, demain. Tonight, I’m leaping into my most wild whirl of wine writing.. Thinking of the Lioco Chardonnay I had a few weeks ago at the Inn, the Pinot I had at the restaurant just the other night in Windsor. Wine is everywhere around me. In all the moments that don’t include wine, wine is dominantly present. Reminding me that life is more than short… that I don’t have any more time surpluses. I never did. When young, I was a dope and thought “Oh, I can just do it later…” or something of such sort. No… this year is and itch. One violently scratched.

Think he’s asleep, my little beatnik. Tonight, my enemy of enemy-enemies, is sleep. Why lay down and close eyes when you have so many books to write, so many wine and vineyard photos to skip and skim and sift through… no sleep. Well, okay, maybe a little. But as little as possible. Plausibly I’ve finally changed, this writer… Can only think of the Merlot downstairs, open in the counter. What it must be thinking, what it’s doing, how it’s taste shaped take another shape and tell another sake. Hear some tick-tock here in son’s room. What is that? Is that a clock? Maybe I’m just tired from the day, from talking about wines in the tasting room and selling them, talking about heir characters as I do and getting more into their respective puzzles and intoned enigmas.

Dying to know what the Merlot wants to say to the write… Is she going to keep with this confident octane, this jazzy bravado and loudness, or will there be more a softness, a soft-spoken step to her and how she communicates with me? Who knows… only way for a wine writer to find out is to find out. Wine isn’t a formula, she’s not an equation… she can’t be predicted. I have to leave my son’s room, go downstairs and see what she feels so fire to tell me. And maybe there’s no dire haste in her night’s paragraphs. Maybe she’ll softly sing, jazz in this Coffey Park house that was nearly no more.

img_7323

Reconnecting with the Merlot downstairs, to the left of the xmas tree, telling self that it’s just a new year, be like the Alchemist narrator, just pushing through my story, finding reason not only in the wine but all the lights around me and the quiet of this downstairs flat.  Hear wife cough… can’t get sick.  This Merlot connection pushes me back in time to when I called Mom from San Ramon, asking her what I should buy for a dinner I was hosting at my San Ramon apartment.  “Blackstone Merlot…” She voted.  I went down the street to the Alberton’s or whatever it was and bought a bottle.  Paired it with a crab or shrimp salad which wasn’t a “pairing” at all now that I tilt my head back and think, but even … that was the beginning.  Of something.  And this Merlot, from St. Francis, the winery that lit this whole new page surge for my family… I can only write.  Only be here in quiet, next to the tree that embodies gifting.  And I’ve been gifted.  By wine.  By St. Francis.  By this county.  My life here in Santa Rosa, living madly writing about wine and I thin tomorrow with my “day off”, which isn’t “off” at all having to grade this last semester’s final submissions and upload final grades.  Will need a tasting somewhere, after that.

She now pronounces and defines tones of lavender smoke and and something reminding me of an incense, or some potpourri of shapes and flavor arrangements.  I’m beyond or maybe behind any interpretive attempts at the moment.  22:13, flirting with the idea of sleep but I hate sleep and all it does to a writer… robbing me of my day.  Just sip the last of this glass and keep writing, I tell myself.  Wine is all about self-notes, self-education and self-selfness.  Not that I’m selfish, I don’t think.. The Merlot says ‘no’.  So I’m composed.  Writing with her notes and sequencing, knowing this new year is a contoured contrast to all that before came.

Last sip—  oscillations of violet and plum, voltage-prone cherry and talkative chocolate, dark.  I need more Merlot in my story.  Merlot is what started all of this, I feel.  Even before St. Francis— Well, that’s not true, as when I called Mom that night from San Ramon she was on-call at SFW.  I’m merely intoning this goes beyond any winery, and even the type of Merlot.  This is wine, ME, here on the floor writing after the turn of year.  Lights on my now-empty glass.  This is my night, in this new year, with the wine thoughts in this wine page, this newly wined wine-me.  All along and in my nerves I’m wined.. criminal and rebellious in my vino musings and jots.  This is when I have ice-cream… but won’t.  A new year, radically resolute.  Me.  On the floor writing, when I was so tempted to just be lazy… no loathing, I’m fearless, hoping soon to be there, in my There, and everywhere.  Not one apology.

Categories
autre

Wine is always

showing me things about the Earth, Sonoma County, why I’m here, what I’m to do.

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Health/Wellness

Wine on Christmas is

obvious for a writer like this. But, the thoughts are unexpected. Now I begin measuring and drawing the new year. A year anew. More paths unexplored and never before boasted. There are answers and questions and questions that answer then questions… only knowledge and further folds in this sight– Thanks to wine.

Categories
Health/Wellness

morning vin’d thousand

Day before xmas, I’m at work and not writing in the office.  I’m done with the office and any predictability from me.  Today, wine tells me, teaches me, Truth.  More about it and how wine is the singular most truthful thing I’ve encountered, ever.  Driving through Coffey Park—San Miguel, Santiago to Barnes, saw a man standing atop what looked like a piled of tall tree pieces, or stumps.  His hands were in his pockets and he looked down, with pensive structure and stance.  Couldn’t see his face, just his right side and back.  The truth of what happened in our neighborhood, inescapable.  This fire, fires, were more than “wine country fires”… they were something else.  Some animalistic and a reminder of life’s empirical truth.  That we are all vulnerable, that time is not assured—  Wine reminds us how short life is, and that all turns, blinks and breaths are something to be recorded.

Much of this morning I spent anxiety-tied as to what Mike was going to write.  And, the drive, Chalk Hill Road especially, told me to be truthful.  Be wine.  Be all that wine is in its enjoyable fasted and sounds, the hills and how they extend upward behind this building, occasionally seeing one of the bison slowly stroll from one little feed to next.  08:51, and I have plenty of time to collect.  Maybe not as much as I’d like—sure I’d love to have two hours at least to write and go through pictures, write a couple verses, and whatever other creative flicker I can form—but I have what I have.  And in that I fly.

Can’t believe tomorrow’s Christmas.  Time scoring another victory but myself as well, seeing my urgency to write intensify.  Sipping coffee, already a temperature decline.  Quiet in tasting room, hoping it stays that way for most of day.  But who knows.  There could be people in from out-of-town, just salivating at the prospect of going WINE TASTING.  I see it every week if not every day.  Someone either tasting for the first time, or tasting in Sonoma County inaugurally.  OR, never having tasted at Roth.  That is their truth.  It’s around them and in every utterance from their mental seismology.  The morning, intent to propine me with this sight, these thoughts, the truth that I’m here, working on xmas eve and I don’t mind even microscopically.  I’ll taste through the wines when Hannah arrives, then note, note differently, see what truths the wines wrote for their writing admirer.  Feel like Kerouac, now.  Like HST.  Like Shakur, Hughes, Plath, Poe, seeing everything around me as much more than wine and far beyond what it visibly narrates.

I pause for a second to assemble but throw self back at the page, this screen.  Hoping for something with this new year, then telling self don’t hope for a thing.  Just go get it, hungrily.  Angrily.  Truthfully.  I’m truthfully frigid in this room, typing at the long polished piece of redwood tree.  Then I hear the heater ignite, and the writer forwards more.  Hearing the wines call to me, like students, or teachers, both.  I’m looking at the seats around me, the one where I now station and situate, type, where my friend Brad yesterday tasted through the wines with his wife and this crazy wine writer.  Wine is everything— she this morning telling me to calm, “Just be truthful about where you are and what you’re doing, what you’re feeling.  What I feel… the book need be done.  Ten days.  Ten days, and ‘wine i’m here’ is done.  Just a working title— but then I think ‘me wine pages and pages’ is more suited.  Meditations catapults me into my day, further.. what is the book about?  Me.  Wine.  And there are pages and pages.  Résolu!

Just a step or two after 09:00.  The winery when quiet has the same sensibility as a church, or a forest, somewhere for thought, consideration and self-measure.  Just me, the heather and the sounds of the building, whatever sounds the tanks in the production area toss to my drums.  I’m here, alone, for my work, for my pages.  Wine….  You love me, it’s known.  But what do you want me to do with your story, my story?  OUR, story.  Everyone tells me how much they love my deconstructions and “descriptions” of wines, the poetry I can’t help but speak, tell, confess.  So do I do that?  Do I just go one wine at a time?  From the ’11 Pride Cab Franc that I had at Mom and Dad’s for Dad’s birthday dinner, or the 2015 Sonoma Cutrer Sonoma Coast Chardonnay I had at the hotel?  Or, do I just start with today’s offerings.  The SB, two Chards… Pinot, red blend, then mon amour des amours, the ’15 single-vineyard Cabernet.  Hannah who’s working with me today loves it as much as I do.  Maybe even more.  She sells just about as much of it as I do, and can’t speak about it enough.  Only a bit after nine, and I want to start writing about our flight, here.  I can always go back and jot about past bottles.

Empty barrels behind the glass, behind the bar.  What will be put in them, and how will the characters develop?  What will I taste if I were to taste from that barrel, when wine resides?  More questions than answers but then I see the questions as answers.  Or at least they lead me to them.  When I started in wine’s business, or industry, at St. Francis, I knew very little about wine’s makeup and preeminence.  I just knew I liked it, not even loving it yet, and could use my literary world and experience as a lens through which to communicate.  Whenever I feel any block approaching, if I’m writing about wine or something else (though anymore I only write about wine…), I’ll talk only in immediate truths.  Why couldn’t I see that this morning, stressing in the shower about what to put to blog and will I get to Mom and Dad’s on time tonight…. Life, curt, she tells us.  So sip, look, smile, speak—  More truth in yay-say than anything singing a nay.

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autre

vin axiom

She changes in the bottle, sometimes drastically, sometimes unpredictably—  At times, the wine won’t want to say anything, will be standoffish and confrontational, saying nothing, no matter how many times you annoyingly swirl your glass or how far you stick your nose in the glass.  The wine tells you to back off—  “I’m not speaking to you!” She says.

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autre

Day closes and

in the hotel room, same room as kids while wife watches some show, I think of tomorrow and what wines I want to target. Chardonnay, all three we’re presently pouring at the winery, or do I just want to focus on one of them, one of the three and note how it changes throughout day. Collect descriptions and deconstructions, and all the voices I sense and feel, taste and hear from it. Appealing, such a thought, and containment of wine travel and traverse.

Hoping to wake early, workout and write. Glad I didn’t have too much to sip tonight, able to wake early-early and work, get closer to the Road, my wine travels– Should really work on book, my NaNo MS that I haven’t touched since… too embarrassed to say. Promise to self: 5 pages tomorrow, proofed and done.

Imagining I’m in a hotel now on a trip, as I too many times do. Or maybe I don’t do it enough. Maybe I need to just get lost, so lost in my imaginatives. Wine is all about the imaginative, so of course.

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autre

Wine teaches me

that you just have to let the story show you the next scene. You can react, but control isn’t something over which you should be at all angst-contorted.

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autre

vinward jot

Fuck fruit flies.

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

Morning Winery Thinking….

After the morning thousand, I arrive to winery and feel odd.  Off.  And not sure why.  So, up to office, across the dark and spooky crush pad and production area, and here I am.  Writing that I’m not sure I should be writing, but then considering my attitude how to fix.  Find humor.  In all this.  “You work at a winery,” I say to myself, “how hard could it be?” I agree.  But the feeling stays, not able to shake it, I decide I don’t want to talk about the ‘I’ anymore.  Happiness is conceptual, but actual, and more actual and tangible if we want it to be, really.  You don’t have to see what’s around you the way you do, do you?  No.  See the day as a game, or a play, or some show evolving before your sight and you involve yourself however and wherever you elect.

Let the morning teach you.  Let it teach you everything you thought you already knew about the morning.  Let’s say you’ve already decided today’s going to be long, drawn-out, the usual humdrum doldrum.  Let the morning, the day following, show you it doesn’t have to be— that it won’t.  Take your mood and scrap it, trash it, dismiss it.  Don’t let it let itself stand up, develop or play its putrid song.  Actually, take it upon yourself to teach the morning what you’re not just capable of but what you WILL do.

More into my usual confident and loudly assured ride, stride.  Listening to music, sipping the hotel’s coffee, and wondering what’s going to be narrated from day.  What people will say in reaction to the wines, the property.  Onus…. What I every semester stress to students and now see I need more enact and actuate.  Re-writing… now.  ME.  The morning, day…. The wildest of wild yay-says.