Descriptor’d Downward

Who knows what the balance is in articulating nose, palate, finish, pervading palate presence.  Don’t look at me, I have no idea.  What I do know, or at least I think I do: wine can be euthanized by analysis surplus, tidal critiques.  Discussion should always be welcomed, solicited.  But to file at elemental significance is all but devilish, inhumane.  Why would one want to do that to wine?  Share reactions, and move on.  Or don’t, just engage in civilly enriching interchange.  I love discussions of that flavor.  That reminds me of my days as an English Instructor.  And yes, wine can have a depths like Literature.  No quite as interwoven, loaded, lively as a mastered manuscript, but still somewhat circuitous.  Think I may have finally calmed from the day.  Tomorrow morning, back on 12, East.  If I could stay here all day, waking normally, at 6:15a, and writing till I normally return to bunker, 6:40p, my book would be done.  I projected my book so, as to not entail years of editing.  Winemakers don’t have that luxury.  Nor do writers like I.  We write, and release.  What do I get on this ’07 Cab now?  No idea.  I don’t want to analyze it, deconstruct the purple puddle.  Not tonight. 

And I changed my mind.  Now, one nose: spicy floral dampness, smokey London bricks, French chocolate cherries.  Palate: chocolate cherry river syrup snow [something chilly about it, I think], taco spiciness, bell pepper spread (subdued).  Or, I just don’t what it is I LOVE in what I’m tasting.  Sonoma County Cabernets can every degree of dexterity as Rutherford or Oakville.  If you’ve tasted as many Cab Sauvs as I have, with mind exposed, you see similarly.  How could you not?  What’s in this glass is a persistent flavor ghost; encircling, haunting, mischievous, marvelous.

[6/27/11, Monday]

Taste Shapes

If all I want to do is write, does that make the grape scribbler sick?  Or just impassioned, fervent?  Why label?  Why categorize?  Some of the best wines I’ve ever sipped have been non-specific blends.  Sure, if you look at the bottle’s back you might privy Self to varietal specificities, or if you look up a tech sheet online.  But the focus should be on the taste, the moment surrounding that wine.

Looking at some pictures in my new camera.  I’ll never tire of just staring at vineyards.  The other morning, so glad I early left, took that right turn off 12 into the Carneros territory.  Was so tempted to call in to NWG.  But I didn’t need to.  Those ten minutes were all I needed to trap visually seductive seconds, for the page ...

[6/26/11, Sunday]

Free in Wine Writing: True Oenobellion

Studio’d, me.  Sipping freely.  Poetry with a sip’s sea.  Not giving anymore of Self to this social media kool-aid.  I write, recite.  Scribble and sip, at night.  People invest too much synaptic sequence in who’s their “friend” in these infantile digitized social sheets.  It’s humorous, to me.  At this year’s close, I put the blog down.  Books only, in 4ward.  Same with Facecrook, Twit-slur.  Both, time DeathSentences.  I’m a writer, artist.  Had enough of the wine “industry’s” drama.  My link lies in ink, paper.  These devils won’t push my pen’s tracers to vapors.  Me, colluding conflict.  I love the wine, people loving wine, Humans loving Humans loving wine.  Not the industry.  Ever.

And I’m going to be scolded for speaking with such upright and bright veracity.  Fine.  Dad told me, “If you don’t think for yourSelf, others will think 4U.” I want to be challenged.  I’m doing this for wine, for the Humble Consumers, like Mom, Dad, Sis.  The characters that simply love to sip, sit, savor situations.  Ones enamored with status, or any kind of elevation, should select direction opposite, as my vengeful selection is spawned and lit.  More of the ’08 Cab’s capital into my core.  Love to all that wine and its scenery love.  Obsession with currency, a digression to blurring breeze.  Not me.  4ever in wine’s poetry ... 

[6/25/11, Saturday] 

Favorite Untitled Varietal

Mike arrived home from NewWineGig voiceless.  He needed the stillest of stilled stills.  Looking at the pictures he took yesterday morning before work.  Carneros territory.  In chair, he sipped to vines.  He wasn’t ready to write.  He didn’t want to do anything but sip, see.  Breathe.  He didn’t have to write if he didn’t want to.  And he didn’t.  He felt autonomous in his inaction.  Peaced, advantageously paced.  Post to the blog, he though.  No.  Definitely not.  What would that do, but spoil his situational purity.  The screen canvas deserved no piece of peace.  Or pace.

More than ecstatic to be home, in his zone, writing throne.  He remembered how hungry he was right before lunch, writing like an escapee in the Comp book.  “I need something to fuel this battled being.  Wish I didn’t have to wait.  Save me, pages.”

12:04p.  Wondering what I should work on, tonight.  Didn’t post to the blog yesterday.  Didn’t really have anything to report, express, or even “say.” Might check out a tasting Room I discovered on my lunch walk yesterday, after work today.  Can’t afford to stock up on wine, which is antagonistically frustrating when I hear these people talk about how much wine--no, how many bottles--they have in their basilica-dimensioned cellar.  I’ll write my way to a cellar of mine wine.  House.  New car, need one.  A partial roster of what I scribble towards: 1) Paris revisit, 2) more wine; much, much more wine, BOTTLES for Self, family, 3) Unplanned Travel, much more Travel ... Want to add more, but I’ll wait, let the pages tell me what I deserve.

The Room became cold.  Mike didn’t mind, until a page was blown from his desk’s evenness, by the new summer at the window screen’s opposite side.  Again, his vision saw writing.  But he dismissed.  The immobility was far too gratifying for separation.  Opiate-esque, Mike estimated.  He sipped his ’08 Napa Cabernet, like one back from expedition.  But wasn’t he?  The weeks at NWG peeled his person, like scavenging packs with kills.  He thought Kelly would visit tonight, but wasn’t sure.  He thought of what she might be doing.  But, couldn’t conjure accuracy, even in fantasy.

Comp book, partially exposed.  He helped it, in exhibition.  Mike read.  Page 1, to 39.  He wanted the notepad full by August 3rd.  Six months precisely from when ink was first introduced to its barren sheets.  He wondered what he was thinking in some scribbles.  Others, he was glad he inked when he did.  As the Cab took different shapes, Mike decided to gift himSelf a new collection of lines.

This weekend, life a holiday set.  But it’s just a regular Saturday-Sunday couplet.  Tomorrow, blogging--yes, blogging, but also journalistically covering--an event in Kenwood.  Still agape over these photos I snapped yesterday morning.  Glad I woke well before my alarm.  I remember being tempted to sleep more.  25 minutes, additionally.  But some rhythm ordered me into Creative delivery.  Love continuances, such.  Looking at one: vineyard, vineyards; illuminated, bold, expansive; artful, truly Aesthetic, mysterious.

Sunday, no agenda.  Love that, the lack of plan.  Looking through this Comp’d manuscript, I find some screenwriting.  Forgot I even wrote this.  Wait, no.  I think I wrote this at the Napa Coffee Company, or whatever it’s called.  On a lunch break, when I started NWG.  Speaking of which, the repetition drains my coins of sane, if that makes sense.  Visual stimuli, utter deprivation.  But, I’m learning.  Accumulating material, more importantly.  Novels, over novels, there.  A note from the Comp book, carved 2day: “3:02p: Some guy just told me, ‘Go ahead, finish your spiel.’ Don’t want to be one with a ‘spiel’.  A wine salesbot.  This book better be good.” Love this note.  Why?  My conviction of challenging and demanding results from the Self serving health, here proved true.  But, I could be talking mySelf into certain sensation, elation.  Fabulous, this color of Self-fulfillment.

Flying, in motions pertaining to her.  Kelly wan’t there, with him.  But Mike found symphonic sequence in his currency.  Why?  The thoughts.  He could hear her words.  See her smile.  Appreciate her progression, even in the Room’s stillness.  He sipped again.  The 2008’s carmelized raspberry steps made him further lazed.  Delusions delicious.  Again, her.  His one always-and-ever-preferred varietal.  Kelly.  With her dark tones, innumerable perfections.

He heard the neighborhood cat whining from the parking lot, on the opposite side of his condo, from where the studio was.  Was it telling him something?  He thought.  Craziness, he terminated.  The Room, for another few frames, silent.  Still.  Peace.  Mike thought of twelve hours prior.  Antithesis.  Mike wondered if the office deserved him, his cognitive traveling.  They deserved better, he thought.  He was only a writer.  That’s it, he knew.  No wonder he was fired from the last WineGig, even if it was at the claws of an incompetent bipolar tyrant.  The only thing made for him, he knew, the page.  Fine was Mike, in a like light.  

“What should we watch?” Kelly asked, pulling the rustic red, slightly shagged blanket over her knees.  “Is there something you want to watch?  I’m kind of tired, I’m so sorry.”

He was torrentially relieved she was on the couch with him.  He took one more ’08 Napa Cab sip.  That was it.  He wanted to enjoy her character.  There.  Inches close.  Not away.  Not anymore.  The wine, powerless in any skirmish against her for Mike’s assiduity.

She descended into him, his nearness, his equal instability, centrality.  She enjoyed a certain stillness about that mise-en-scene.  “I’m calling in sick, tomorrow.”

“Really?  Why?”

“I just want a day off, at my wish.  Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I wrote my Master’s Thesis on that, are you serious?  Why do you ask?”

“I feel like the restaurant is like where Alice finds herself.  Nothing makes sense.  But to THEM, it makes compete sense.  It’s sick when you think about it.  Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

Mike sipped.  Smiled.  Smiled, still.  Stillness.  Peace.  “I do.”

Journal, 6/21/11, Tuesday [from Composition Book]

...Too many stars in the constellation.  Serious consolidation for this wine admiring scribbler.  Tonight, hot.  Not as forceful, though, the heat.  Crickets, below the window’s fly-occupied screen.  Can’t tell if they’re encouraging or taunting.  Either way, I’m annoyed.  Vacation, travel, all I’m thinking about.  Overseas cafés, lounges, varietals, characters.  Want Paris again.  I’ll stay there.  With...  Wine doesn’t entail enclosure, to me.  It demands, challenges, exploration, the unconventional.  The unpatterned.  Authors need escape.  

I am an author.

Wondering how vehement the temperature plans for morrow.  Need to charge cameras, as I’m hoping I’ll wake a bit earlier for a vineyard photo session.  It’ll be rushed, but I’ll get some favorable A.M. light for those green patches, rows.  Twelve hours from now, the photo session’ll be over, seconds trapped in the digital barrel rooms inside my cameras.  

Journal, 6/20/11, Monday [from Composition Book]

Another night, hot.  Just me, this 2010 stainless Chard, Sonoma County.  No Kelly.  Wondering how this weather pushes her art, those sketches she always discloses to me.  This blog, soon shut.  What from there?  Only books, hopefully.  I’ll have another blog, probably.  I just won’t allow it to eat as much time--as many words, pages, syllables, rimes, thoughts ... PAGES!--as mikeslognoblog.  This Chardonnay, all I need with this invading summer.  Learned that tomorrow’s frame begins the first day of Summer.  Before my camera knows it, it’ll house stills of tiny green grapes.  Veraison.  Then swollen purple puppies.  Was going to pop one of the ’08 Syrahs I have downstairs, but the crisp Burgundy begged.  Glad it did, that I gave in.

Gathering characters, this past weekend, in the tasting Room.  Especially at the event on Saturday’s eve.  How does wine make the occasion, give it a truly unrivaled set of strands?  Saturday’s events demonstrated, showed me, that my years-old stubbornness with wine’s significance, it, the bottles themselves, making an event a time bundle to cherish, never to release from memory, may be quite founded.  Too many commas in that sentence, but you see what I’m saying.  Wine, what makes me tumble with these words.  The characters sipping.  One guy, a wine club member, one of the nicest guests with whom I’ve interacted in years, coming out from Florida to visit his favorite winery, made me see much with characters, their connection to the counter.  To us behind its oddly green surface, pouring the pours.

Time for another pour of this Chardonnay, speaking of.  Lovely, still.  Crisp, clean, consistent.  Surprisingly flavorful, staunchly savory, for a stainless steel Chardonnay.  Not sure how my sister pulled this off, but nonetheless thankful.  Only missing element, scenery change.  With her.  Kelly.  Need to be on a cruise, or at some Napa resort.  With her.  Her.  OR, in Sunriver, at the lodge, looking out at a night soaked Mt. Bachelor.  This last pour, the night’s cap, telling me to escape, not to care if it’s the responsible or “professional” thing to do.  Sipping, listening to what else it casts.  What would she say?  Would would be Her words?

Sauv Blanc Night, Dreaming ... Vacation

Seeing the unfamiliar.  A hotel Room.  Me, writing, overlooking streets kissed by moon.  Far from here, let’s be clear.  Sipping this Sauvignon Blanc, I see sea, other terrain for me.  Just as people from out of state visit the valley, I long to stride away from my state, on hills, in unfamiliar valleys.  Had a fascination today while in the tasting Room, sipping a bit of this very Sauv Blanc, actually, of running on Spanish beaches.  Shortly after, to my hotel Room, overlooking those same sands, sipping some crisp Spanish white wine type.  Just want to be in the unfamiliar.  This St. Francis Sauvignon Blanc, its tropical notes, these new pictures in the camera, tell, PLEAD, me to flee.  For sakes of wine writing, poetry.  I’ll write my way there.  To escape.  No more constriction.  Wine shuns shackle.  Wine writing endorses whimsicality, such a Me.  See Self, now, with these crisp notes in glass, to Greece, Southern France.  Anywhere but regularity.  I blame it on, THANK, wine.  It wants to align itSelf with written lines.  My books.

Mike enjoyed the raised thermal of his office.  Did it help the writing?  Not really.  But the chilled SB certainly did.  Back to working, come morrow’s unrelenting morrow.  Not for much longer, Mike hoped.  With his book almost done, he leaned, oppositely.

“Are you calling in sick tomorrow?” Kelly asked.

“No.  What made you think that?” Mike said, setting his glass down by the printer, by his desk’s corner, only to pick it back up to trump his pivoting thirst.

“You look like you could use a day off,” Kelly mirrored, settling onto his couch.

“Really?  No, I need a vacation.  Want to go somewhere random.”

“Like where?”

“Far.”

“Me too.  You know what happened at the restaurant tonight?”

“What?  That manager hassling you about tipping out and napkin placement, again?”

“No, he got fired.  He was reported for sexual harassment, or something like that.  And they want me to take his place.”

Mike couldn’t tell if she was excited, humbled, scared, what.  “So?  What do you think?” Mike waited for reaction, response.  He sipped, knowing it could be a while.  He had not that.  He’d flee.  Hopefully with her.  Soon.  Was this some superlative cosmic invite, warranting intrinsically enlightening impulsivity?

[6/19/11, Sunday]