mine

This morning I am tired and blinded by the too-white light coming in through my window. The traffic hum, intermittent, the horns, the buzz of Nassau St down the corner. I am hungry, silent, center-kept, but all-in-a-whirl. I am also angry. But this is more for me, not for the day or the writing.

I need directness, less drama, less, up/down, less ridiculousness, more focus. So do it. Fill your mind with the things that are accumulating, that are adding up to something real, that are based in deep-roots. Think about the way that Coralie from Grange Tiphaine told you that the roots of their vines have to go so deep because the soil is poor, the water is held on swatches of local grass and herbs (tastes like wild thyme in the chenin), but it keeps the vines from getting watery, and concentrates the flavor and intensity of the grapes.

This is not my original idea (thank you Jesse), but it is ringing in my ears this morning: New York is the only place that gives you the courage to LEAVE New York. Being here focuses your interests and skills in such a brutal blade-thin way, that there is no other way to adapt but to become the expert in that central thing that you are. THE WINE THE WINE THE WINE. It has obviously grabbed me, appropriated the strands and firing neurons that were lit on French Art Deco, Boulle marquetry, Japanese influence on American late 19th-century Silver, ornate French wallpaper.

Two years ago I was poised to funnel myself right into the life I had imagined: working in France, studying in France, working at the Louvre, becoming an export in Boulle cabinetry, ornate Rococo. And I did that. For a while. I lived in Paris, I spoke French, I studied at the Louvre, I bought my roasted chicken and saucisson from the local butcher in my just-this-side of the Periphique neighborhood.

I drank wine in my sublet sculptor's studio with a huge weeping willow tree in the courtyard. I listened to French radio, and waited carefully for that moment of evening, of dinner-time in Paris, when I heard the clinking of glasses, the opera record, the crying, the laughing, the yelling, all in stereo coming down through my courtyard. I kept inviting people over and then cancelling because I jut wanted to soak it up, soak up the atmosphere of a place, a space that I had created for myself, by myself. The artist that I rented it from told me 'you will never be free until you make your own living by yourself, for yourself, you won't know what it feels like until you do it.'

I finally know exactly what she means. It doesn't have much to do with money, it has to do with the true owning of one's interests, the worrying them out, and then following a path that may be disastrously difficult, but a path that feels like it has already been worn.

There was something that happened after I came back to New York, another break or switch in my studies. I will save this for later, but only this morning did I realize that that break from my earlier established idea of a French life (to a reclamation of my home landscapes: CO, NM, TX, both actual and conceptual), was actually parallel to the questions I am entertaining, the vacillations, the contrasting interests, the opposites, and the forever pull in many directions.

My mind this morning is drifting back and forth between that Parisian courtyard, to a red dirt found only in the high deserts of New Mexico, and the way it smells after it rains in the high desert (chamisa wet straw smell). I am feeling the harsh light of New York this morning, but I am remembering the way that Texas creosote smells like rain when you wet it, and how I used to keep a jar of it next to my kitchen clawfoot bathtub.