work, knowing now, FREED
Pinot is there to ease me, sing and educate, provoke meditation and new sight, exploration of prior hours. She instructs the writer to not work as hard, not feel so obligated to fill a page. See the room you’re in, she says. Walls sing alongside her and the floral scape of her animated way.
In this.
Her.
No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.
Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.
Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.
I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.
No real pragmatism to it, it’s just what I pulled. The only bottle on the top shelf in my cellar, really closet. Long day as always on a Tuesday with the class I “teach” from 7-9, I get home have a little dinner and tonight the wine comes after. Again, no real planning to it, that’s just what happened. First sip, not that blown away, or into it. In fact, if you should know, I had to convince myself, talk myself into this note, writing at all. The wine helps. Wine seems to always help. Actually, not seems to but immediately does. Wine is my topic. What I come back to. Soon as home, after the day collecting data in Petaluma then 90-plus minutes of Plath lecture, I’m here. With an Argyle Pinot. Think a ’16. Too tired to get up and look at label. And who cares. I’m here with wine, just sipping with all ease and no analysis. No even much intricate consideration as I always do. Just me, the wine, this time. And all times.
Calling me.
Tonight.
Telling me to tell myself something.
Meta in all turns and sips.
This Cabernet is gentle, airy and rose-prone… teaching me I don’t have to appease anyone, honor any expectations… so I forward in wine’s bind, call.
I’ll more later write.
Merlot in tow, I measure everything. Seeing more of me, my future, forgetting about age for a minute which I know will make certain readers quite happy, but here.. now… right now with this wine, the grape that pulled me further into it all. Not much a writer, right now, after the taxing tasting room tale that was today, with my little vino sis Taylor. 21:25, should just clock out, shouldn’t I… watch some writer show and note in the Burgundy Journal, something. Something that will get me to the Road– fuck I’m tired of wishing. So stop. Do. Ceasing these types. Wine and ink, a page– now.
a show that a writer like me would like and always watches, sipping the red blend I took home from Roth, a bottle today opened, I’m here. Present. Thinking about what this blend says to me but then not, just drinking and thinking, meditating in the room I’m in, the Now of it all, quiet house with babies upstairs asleep, me still a bit hungry but the words and wine suffice. More than so do. Tired, and getting more so, needing to just relax and thinking I may give in to this pull to that writer show. Coffee for morning made, asked wife to wake me when she does for her ‘mommy bootcamp’ or whatever it is that has me more than emulous, in what she does— how she just gets up when her alarm goes off and drives to that studio when it’s still dark. Okay, seriously, more than seriously, more than merely “seriously”…. I’m doing it tomorrow, waking at 04:00 or whenever she does, and writing, like I do now, to music, to these beats, see my tasting room, corner, or “nook” as I earlier in the week wrote. The blend now assumes and percusses more a maple-sent send of a note. 2015, a vintage that had so many wondering where’s the yield, where’s the fruit, but what was pulled was prophetic and describing more a moment and character, conviction than those vintages that the wine “critics” and “experts” besieged you genuflect.
Exhaustion from a day in the tasting room catches the writer but he refuses to slow in fact he entertains getting another glass of the ’15 blend when this sentence is done. OR, maybe the paragraph. 19 days left in this project hat tis July ’18, and what a project, what a time to write wine, start my own label, invitation-only, asking family and friends only to come over and assure I comfort my hobby. And that’s all it is, all it should be… me consulting winemakers and somehow convincing Katie make the Cabs, Chards… two of each. Will start with one barrel of Cab, of course, then build or do whatever from there. Not looking to ask for any permissions or any invitation, promotion, or any such bar.
Closing the night, this writer. The blend now telling me to stop writing, to relax and enjoy the night and prepare for earlier writing as that’s where answers are, wine responses and solution, no dilution and only profitable profusion. My sight is in this sitting clear, a fitting fearing nothing…. The components of what I sip each autonomously actuate and dictate a juxtaposed take of my current slate. More to forward, more to the next line, and glass if I choose so. The wine now, just looking at me, with her darker than gothic add of an etch. Poe, in head, his poetic lectures, what I’m to do with characters that me unnerve or, and, insult.
071218
Completely a wine thing to say… defiance and independence, freedom in expression and practice. The same group of older humans at the table across from me, the long rectangular. One of the looks particularly worn today, tired and nearly ready for death it seems. Morning teaching me to live more freely, wildly… what are we afraid of? Just write freely, let wine’s memories and stories echo and play in your inner thought plates, plains and rains. With the journal Mom bought me in Beaune a couple weeks ago to my right, and a former student messaging me from England, showing me certain times of night and how they’re perfect for writing, this morning I’m particular intentioned, into what I’m doing right here in this seat, for my wined life. I’m not meant to be contained and compressed in that goddamn tasting room. But I’ve said that before, I know I know.
No tasting in the lab yesterday with brother Chris, as I’d hoped, so I just strolled around the crush pad and thought about my life in the industry, where I want to go, where I’ve been, the trek and seafaring of it all. From the first tasting room day to today working for a bigger corporation, with multiple properties, just wanting to sell wine but still confronted with unnecessary befuddle and kerfuffle, in a rumor puddle that I as I age have no more fortitude for. Tired of my equanimity being cut like a piece of paper in some workshop in my son’s kindergarten class. No such thing will materialize today, as I write from one end of the winery to the next, from one part of the schedule to day’s close. I’ll taste through each wine and write differently. Wine is not a symbol of pattern and the expected, but the random, the whim, the alchemical sight and sense of what’s around you.
Didn’t taste anything that exciting last night, just the remainder of the St. Francis Sonoma County Chardonnay, and the ’14 Claret. Can’t remember the vintage on the CH, I think ’15 or ’16, but I sipped only about a glass, all that was left in the Burgundy glass. I thought about Chardonnay and how my sister’s style of Chardonnay is much what not only persuaded me to enjoy Chards a little more and be more open to their characters and directions expressively, but built her career. Catch myself staring out the window of this Windsor Starbucks and thinking about wine and what I’m doing… if I didn’t write about it what would I do in its business, ‘the industry’? You’re not going to make that much unless you’re some executive, upper management, or a winemaker. But even with that, would I be appeased? My only choice is to write… about the wines I taste and what I see in the tasting room from employee interaction to what visitors say, to my seemingly aimless and senseless walks through Cabernet blocks.
Wine sings in and from everything I do this morning. With so many I know traveling, getting outside their boxes. Wine lassos me to mobility, to not being stuck anywhere, to not having to hear about what this person says about this one, and what management wants and what the sales goal is, what has to be done to inventory and… all of it. I’m in wine for the stories, for the words, for the recital of everything… Was sad last night when the Claret was done. Didn’t know how to feel, and didn’t want to open anything else in hopes I could get to bed earlier which I did and wake earlier which I of course didn’t. On a mission, notably with this month and all noted in the Burgundy Journal, for preeminent happiness. Noted a bit ago that I will have precisely the type of day I wish. It’s no one’s choice but mine, this morning teaches me, in concert with my 4-shot mocha. Ready to see more in wine, today. Exercise my defiance, my interpretation of each wine in 500+ word songs. The ’16 Pinot Gris, even, deserving of a track… the stainless Chardonnay and my single-vineyard AV Cab. Everything. Everything in a vino skip, today and forever. I know what wine is from being consciously aware of what she’s not. I know what my first sip’s to be, in terms of the poetic whip of it. The words, ready and eager to be on page.. not feeling the block or thought sludge of previous mornings. My writing has to perpetuate in a promising breath and breadth limitlessness. ‘Do it like this… Do it like that…’ You’ll hear management say. My response, what if I don’t in my pages? Then what? What if I write from the wines and not about them… or better, TO the wine herself? What if I stop calling wine ‘it’ and recognize her for what she is… Mythic, incorporeal, music… atmospheric, mystery, more question marks than declaratives? What would these other wine “writers” and “critics” have to say? Not sure I’m concerned, not this morning… go this morning to what I want, what I see overseas, in Paris and the Czech Republic, South Africa, Australia, everywhere.
Wine molds my consciousness and ethical composition, from kindness and invitation, free state of thought and immediate and meditative presence. Shared my thought again yesterday that nothing punctuates the brevity of life like wine, to 4 Texans that came to property for a tour and tasting, which included the wine-cheese thing we do (which needs massive improvement in term of the experience itself). See self getting older, closer to 40.. now I really act. Wine’s ordering me to do just that. Don’t accept the tasting room as any finality, don’t accept any finality in fact, in fact. That’s not what wine is. Wine is the last day working with your favorite industry person, sipping what you choose, and writing how the moment realizes itself, you, her, everything around you. As, it’s not forever. None of this is.
7/12/18
Hearing new music in wines I’ve always known. Reminding me why I keep with wine’s leap, am so eager for her to teach.