Osip Mandelstam

"The last star-pricks are dying out painlessly
As morning, a grey swallow, raps at the window.
And lethargic day like an ox woken in straw
Stirs from long sleep across the rough haycocks.

When the moon takes a walk along urban avenues,
And slowly lights the impenetrable town,
And darkness swells, full of melancholy and bronze,
And wax songs are smashed by the harshness of time;

And the cuckoo is weeping in its stone tower,
And the ashen one alights to reap lifeless worlds,
And quietly scattering huge spokes of shadow
Strews yellowing straw across the floorboards"...

(Tristia, 121) 1920

Colette, from The Evening Star

It is scorching springtime, which stunts the grass and the spears of the wheat. An east wind, no dew, the rosebush drops its unopened buds, the cherry-tree its wrinkled cherries, the young garlic and sensitive shallot swoon away-- pity the winged pea-flower which begs for rain to transform it into a pod...
(159)

Most.

Weight lifted. NEW NEW NEW. Sound of trains, planes through clouds, quiet hum of emptier space, outer city space,,,, not thinking so much, internal, safe, (remembering the two days I spent in Sorrento, surrounded by lemon groves). Remembering the waxy dark green of gardenia leaves, the sour warm smell of tomato plant leaves rubbed between my fingers.

In short, coming full circle, only, warm, and ringing like a perfect chord.

Vergano 'Americano' Chinato

My goals regarding wine have to do with precision, details, buoyancy (of mind to absorb), softness, laughter, and serious resolve. I am trying to focus. I am trying to be more precise and set, more exact and less general, less poetic. I am eternally grateful to the people around me that know more about wine than I do. I am trying to raise my knowledge and communication in ways that are crystalline, that are set in facts, that are scientific.

This, however, as a day that is ending, as a day that is an END, as a quiet and reflective day full up with emotion, I give myself the gift of blurred vision, edge-vision, a full-sensory passing through my day. And I am trying to just let it pass,,,, let the day pass,, let the day end. I am wading through the difficulties of what Rilke called Evensong, the hinge between day and night, the rising panic like smoke from the plains, the liminal moment that opens to dark.

I am trying to be quiet and arid, to remember the edge of desert towns where I have lived, and let myself become free.

I am sitting in an almost empty apartment, it is getting dark outside, and I am waiting for two last hours before I can leave, and go to my next home.

I have never felt more homeless in my life. In the midst of this, and the silence, the refrigerator hum, the lowering dusk, the panic around the edge of my day, I am deeply comforted.

I didn't realize that when I finally opened the Vergano 'Americano' Chinato (grignolino, import Louis/Dressner) it would taste like Home. I didn't really know what to expect, but I was not prepared for the rising of old scrim slideshow scenes, for the loud whirr of my grandfather's slide projector, the plastic smell of the slides and the rising dust in projector light. I was not prepared for old Christmas shades, yellow from the opened oven, yellow from the candles on the table, steam from brewed coffee, smudged smoke, laughter.

Nose: Cold mandarin orange, powdered red sugar/spice, orange peel.
Palate: Light syrup morello cherry, clean orange, white plum, orange blossom, cold oil, cinnamon bark, nutmeg, star anise, and whiff of something darker, ground bark, sandlewood.

There could not have been a better day to open this phenomenal chinato. It has the subtlety of projected color-light, it is quieter and more complex than I could have imagined. It is these few quiet and cold days of January, marking the death of someone I loved dearly. It is not the loud brash brass of Christmas Day, it is the after-image, the faded photo in the sun, it is liquid emulsion lifting quietly into air.

Thank you to my friend who gave it to me, and thank you other invisible shades surrounding. Here is to precious things, to discarded things, to dust in the wind, to pollen, to herbs drying on racks, to wind through sieves, images on the backs of our retinas that still burn.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

(2)
When wandering alone, parted from loving friends,
When the shapes of mine empty thought-forms dawn upon me here,
(May the) Buddhas, exerting the power of their divine compassion,
Cause it to come that there be neither awe nor terror in the Bardo.

(7)
When the roarings of savage beasts are uttered,
Let it come that they be changed into the sacred sounds of the Six Syllables;
When pursued by snow, rain, wind, and darkness,
Let it come that I see with the celestial eyes of bright Wisdom.

(12)
In all various lores, great, small, and intermediate,
Let it come that I be able to obtain mastery merely upon
hearing, reflecting, and seeing;
In whatever place I be born, let it be auspicious;
Let it come that all sentient beings be endowed with happiness.

(Appendix)

brought from beyond

....embedded glint of pyrites, like the dance
of light on water, or of angels
(the surface tension of the Absolute)
on nothing....

(amy clampitt, 21)

new, NOW.

I have been reading back through these past couple years of writings,,,, and find it extremely poignant and reassuring to find common threads, recurring obsessive subjects, lists of rocks, minerals, soils....alchemical formulas, shards, pieces strewn, bits collected off of the path.

I have found all areas of interest concentrated (the last couple of years, but sudden NOW) in WINE, of all places. I have found an equal response of pressure and resistance between this subject and my WILL. I want to isolate the parts of this subject that resound,,, the parts that are commensurate with my poetic nature-- not even nature exactly, with my specific, and poetic recognition of minutiae in a glittering world.

I am willing to step off of cliffs, and drop into this new dark. I am excited about the landscape that is constructing in bits around me,,, I am excited about mica schist, about the kimmeridgian crescent of shells and fossil chalk soil, about licorella and light off of mica in black dirt.

These are beautiful things, and what I am building on right now. I am not a weak or silly person. I am not stuck with my head in the clouds. My feet are on the ground, firm, and I am focused with a shale-edge of intent, (JUMP)ing into the new landscape of my LIFE.

kimmeridgian soil

champagne soils, white chalk soils; "chalk crescent, the area that spans from the British cliffs to Champagne was the basin of a vast prehistoric sea some 65 million years ago. When the water receded, it left behind minerals like quartz and zircon, fossils and sea urchins, sea sponges and other sea animals,"---producing vast quantities of (CHALK). (wine bible)

marine molasses

The ground at Beaucastel is marked by the violence wrought by the Rhone river. It consists of a layer of marine molasses (sandstone) of the Miocene period, covered by alpine alluvium. The presence in this topsoil of a great number of rounded stones, known as "galets", bears evidence of the time when the Rhone, then a torrent, tore fragments of rock from the Alps and deposited them along its course.