Sunday, March 13, 2011
biodynamics!
"Spring is good for us," he continues. "For a vine, spring is the victory of the sun forces over earth forces. In autumn, the law of death comes into force-- the law of gravitation comes into force and the leaves begin falling. Look how tired we get in the evening. On the first day of spring the days are a bit longer than the nights. The sun attraction is stronger than gravitation." (N. Joly, Science of Wine, Jamie Goode, 70)
Saturday, March 12, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, March 11, 2011
"A rich, golden wine, well-structured, with plenty of sap and vigor, it is amazing how slowly and beautifully a fine Vouvray develops with age because normally one thinks of it as a rather feckless wine. The best vineyards, those chalky hillside sites, invest it with the backbone to support such unexpected potential for aging.
Next, Loyau pours from a mold-covered bottle that looks like a champagne bottle, but what fills the glass is not sparkling. The robe is deep gold with glints of green-tinged amber......"
(K. Lynch, 43)
Next, Loyau pours from a mold-covered bottle that looks like a champagne bottle, but what fills the glass is not sparkling. The robe is deep gold with glints of green-tinged amber......"
(K. Lynch, 43)
Thursday, March 10, 2011
(old poem of mine: 7/2010)
Underwater, eocene,
the plains beneath us used to be ocean-filled.
My feet are mired at times
In same mimicry of softness,
I sink slowly, silently, through layers of unseen bog,
remembering when you and I burned sticks by moonlight.
the plains beneath us used to be ocean-filled.
My feet are mired at times
In same mimicry of softness,
I sink slowly, silently, through layers of unseen bog,
remembering when you and I burned sticks by moonlight.
(old writing of mine: 6/2009, Marfa, TX)
This is a magical place to wake up. Windows open, birds calling from all sides. My yard backs up against the vastness of desert—when I water my plants in the morning, I get the smell of carob as the water hits the hard dry desert soil. The rosemary bushes have doubled in size since I moved in-- their tough skins and fleshy leaves have protected them through all hours of hot yellow sun.
When I water the tree with drooping leaves like a willow, the smell of wet dust rises up to my face. Here in the desert the smells are easily distinguishable, one from another—there is nothing between them in the air to confuse their origins. As I pour water into the dirt well of the tree I look down my block—one block from the edge of town—one block from an open vista of vast desert. It seems strange to go about daily business as if I did not have this piece of knowledge—a raised topographical sense that I am teetering precipitously on the edge of something wild and large.
On our block, perfectly gridded, there are houses facing a dusty street—the ocotillo cactus have orange blooms at the top, and the barn swallows swoop in elegant curlicues down from the wires, looking for nest sites. The hot smell of tomato leaves in the sun is another reason to get up early—to watch the slowest of births from green to yellow flower- to what? I haven’t seen any farther just yet—all of my exotic heirloom tomato seeds died in the withering heat of the laundry room.
There is a purity to the air here—a lack of sensory noise—a dryness and sparcity made of sagebrush, wet creosote, rosemary leaves, and wet earth. To me it feels like a place where I can be anything—a brain of clicking wires, a soft body, a capable body. I feel like the mechanizations of my thought are visible here. I can wake up in the morning, replay the nagging shard of an awkward interaction last night, but can move past it, somehow, by getting back to the soil. I turn around this morning and bury the incident in wet dirt. I can breathe it back into the wind that whips around dry bushes in the field. I can open myself to the sky like the overnight cactus bloom-- a bruised and torn blossom that appeared one morning, sprung up the sides of the fingered (widow?) cactus outside the back door.
Marfa is not a difficult place to write about, the difficulty lies in watching yourself act in such stripped and bare bones of a way-- in unshaded outlines of movement and thought.
Marfa is a beautiful filament of a place, a facetted piece of quartz or clear stone, a central point that focuses and frames light. It is a lens, like the shard of heavy glass that I found on my first week here; packed with dirt on one side, shining green in the window dusk of falling afternoon.
When I water the tree with drooping leaves like a willow, the smell of wet dust rises up to my face. Here in the desert the smells are easily distinguishable, one from another—there is nothing between them in the air to confuse their origins. As I pour water into the dirt well of the tree I look down my block—one block from the edge of town—one block from an open vista of vast desert. It seems strange to go about daily business as if I did not have this piece of knowledge—a raised topographical sense that I am teetering precipitously on the edge of something wild and large.
On our block, perfectly gridded, there are houses facing a dusty street—the ocotillo cactus have orange blooms at the top, and the barn swallows swoop in elegant curlicues down from the wires, looking for nest sites. The hot smell of tomato leaves in the sun is another reason to get up early—to watch the slowest of births from green to yellow flower- to what? I haven’t seen any farther just yet—all of my exotic heirloom tomato seeds died in the withering heat of the laundry room.
There is a purity to the air here—a lack of sensory noise—a dryness and sparcity made of sagebrush, wet creosote, rosemary leaves, and wet earth. To me it feels like a place where I can be anything—a brain of clicking wires, a soft body, a capable body. I feel like the mechanizations of my thought are visible here. I can wake up in the morning, replay the nagging shard of an awkward interaction last night, but can move past it, somehow, by getting back to the soil. I turn around this morning and bury the incident in wet dirt. I can breathe it back into the wind that whips around dry bushes in the field. I can open myself to the sky like the overnight cactus bloom-- a bruised and torn blossom that appeared one morning, sprung up the sides of the fingered (widow?) cactus outside the back door.
Marfa is not a difficult place to write about, the difficulty lies in watching yourself act in such stripped and bare bones of a way-- in unshaded outlines of movement and thought.
Marfa is a beautiful filament of a place, a facetted piece of quartz or clear stone, a central point that focuses and frames light. It is a lens, like the shard of heavy glass that I found on my first week here; packed with dirt on one side, shining green in the window dusk of falling afternoon.
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