Defining a day.

Today is dark soup of rain and early evening. It is scrubbing pots at home and not getting a wage. It is also reading a purloined copy of The Art of Eating (that I swear I will return on Tuesdays) and realizing more and more that this is the sort of writing I might be good at. An article about globalization in viticulture and vinification sat bookmarked on Peter's desk and I took the bait. Now, having read most of the mag, the thing that strikes me most is the following quote, lifted from a review of Cooking Weeds: A Vegetarian Cooking Book:

"Some of the most vexing weeds are not wild plants invading our gardens from without. Rather, they are plants that have evolved in partnership with humankind, and they depend on us to disturb the soil so they can thrive. When I leave my fields and walk on the empty rangelands surrounding my farm, I can't find most of the weeds that crowd my vegetable crops. Many agricultural weeds are, in fact, feral heirloom crops that society has forgotten."

What does that mean to me? Last night I met a black woman who was a model. She talked about losing weight and how much she loved food. It was Halloween's eve. We talked about liminality and discrimination. We talked about driving black and beautiful, eating cheeseburgers despite our handlers' wishes. She ordered a salad and I ordered a pizza dripping in cheese and grease, each of us eating as much of each as the other. The group grew and we talked about the guilt of seeming to be a gourmand. She let us know she went as a recruiting agent for the KKK at a Halloween party. We talked about Sherman Alexie. We talked about tricksters and idiots.

And then I launched off. Difference is important. Acknowledging difference is more important. We cannot be complete humans if we do not acknowledge that this is different than that. We ignore every principle of modern academic thought if we don't see that we build meaning by knowing that this is not that. Fork is not Spoon. Round is not Square. We have nothing if we don't have difference. But as moderns we shy away from tasting, seeing, feeling too much and having voices about what we find.

Too often we get caught in the short story, a fear that if we see too much difference, let alone know how to recognize and express it, then we are discriminating. I am here to say that discrimination is good, so long as it is informed. So long as we use our senses, use our minds, use our rhetoric and are held in check by an equally critical group of peers, there are few fears worse than what is happening currently in America. We are not the same, things taste different, places have different cultures, kids can be good and equally bad.

I used to run through cornfields barefoot when I was a kid. Between the rows, arms raked by sharp leaved stalks, my eyes were always on the turned soil one step ahead. Rocks popped up, I avoided. The times where, step by step, there were no thorny bits of geology, there might be thistle, there might be ugly plants. Mostly there was my adolescent indifference to whether I killed what I thought was a weed. My feet went fast, the tassels blurred.

Now I also remember the times where I was not running, where I would sit and rub pasty flowers in my hands and smell liquorice, hazelnuts and strawberry. I remember the lemon of sorrel years before I went and found it and used it in a dish. I remember the spike of an errant step on some nettle almost like I remember my first taste of nettle.

Mostly it means that I would like to know better what are weeds, so I can try to get to know what they are about.

My life as a dishwashing consultant.

I would like to thank the good people of Nostrana for constructing what is likely the greatest dish-pit in the industry. Thanks to their kindness and attention to detail I no longer have dishpan hands, a direct result of David’s purchase of Ivory dishwashing soap. Plunging my hands into fetid, food soaked water has never been as pleasant, freeing my mind from complaint and allowing me to move into a constructive phase of meditation. But alas, I cannot wash dishes there every night. So last night I decided to go there for dinner with a newly acquired friend.

It turns out there form does not always lead to function, as my replacement for the evening was buried beyond his head in plates, utensils, bowls, cups, cutting boards, cheese graters and Frisbee like pizza plates heavy enough to drop a troll if properly employed. I am here to rescue.

I consider Cathy, one of the owners, to be a friend, and I know that if she asks me on one of my nights off, when I am wearing pinstripe pants, a tie, and my nice new black sweater, to go back and help, she really really needs it. I am a dishwashing consultant.

The poor kid back there is just out of his mind with how much work he has to do. He can’t fathom how much longer he will be there.

The dishwashing machine is not running. That’s bad. At the end of the night the machine should never stop. Ever. As a dishwashing human, you are at the bottom of the chain. You are the last person to leave and people walk where you mop. You have nothing but your scrubby and your wits, except, of course, the only thing that reports directly to you: The dishwashing machine. It is mechanical, it cannot react and think for you, but when you press that button, it starts to assist you in the effort to get you done and sitting at the bar, your fingers slowly drying.

His hands are corpse-in-the-water white. He is washing silverware while there are literally bowls stacked over his head. Silverware is last, let the waitrons deal with it tomorrow. Bowls, cutting boards, sheet pans are your friends. You throw them in and press play. Clean, organize, meditate, but don’t ever let that machine sit idle.

A waiter comes in and dumps the last plates of the night in the heap that remains, leaving scraps of pizza and salad behind. Silverware not even casually tossed towards the five overflowing bins he hasn’t gotten to. When you are that far into the weeds, you get no respect and it works like lawn fertilizer, getting you even deeper.

“Listen kid, a place for everything and everything in its place. That son of a bitch shouldn’t be able to get away with that, but you are so fucked right now he can look you in the eye and screw you over even more. If you had trained the rest of the place to respect how you are doing your job, he would make damn well sure he scraped the plates himself, and put the plates in a neat pile. Even I can’t help you tonight, but if you have a job tomorrow, cultivate your stink eye early on.”

The pizza is the best I have tasted except for maybe two far-flung exceptions. The porcini are perfect, the company is good and the space is flawless. I have a good night and a new career: I am a dishwashing consultant. Thank you Nostrana.

Black Sweater II.

I found my black sweater. It is already covered with dog hair.

Seattle.

I was in Seattle yesterday. I like it there. The dishes are not nearly as dirty and the water is harder, making clean up a breeze. I was done before I started.

I went to a wine tasting and have to say that most of the reds had tart berry fruit and the whites had remarkable acidity. I stayed at the Ace Hotel, which I am told was much cooler years ago, and offered a woman $100 to leg wrestle some putz at the bar. She refused, which in the end I was happy about

I ran into an old friend of mine I was regretting not knowing how to get a hold of. I have her card now.

This morning I woke up sleeping like Michael J. Fox in back to the future, something I used to practice as a kid. In that flick he had his arms behind his back, knees neatly askew. I didn't quite pull it off, my face pressed into the arm of a friend's futon, leaving a dent and welt that is only wearing off now. His daughter was playing video games and his dog sat on my head.

Now I am sitting at a coffee shop drinking coffee that tastes like dishwater. The worst part is that the coffee here is notorious for it, but I bought some nonetheless. It is my medicine.

If you ever get a chance to go to Salumi you should, but be warned that you will sweat pork for days. Le Pichet is one of the coolest restaurants I have been to, and I still wonder why I haven't gone to Harvest Vine. The Greek place we supped at was excellent, and I love that, like any good town, there is an "old guard" in Seattle that looks out for each other.

A fat man just ran through traffic twice because he forgot something very important in his car. Soon he will be drinking coffee that tastes like dishwater.

Black Sweater.

I think it was in Dharma Bums where a woman that Jack was seducing said something about him being "a nice sweater boy." I always thought the "nice" was him, and the sweater was a sign. I have no sweaters these days, though they used to be the pride of my wardrobe. So I went to Meier and Frank looking for a black sweater. Simple, crew neck, nice material. Even, perhaps, cashmere.

I look around, see only cashmere v-necks in off-black. A beautiful CK sweater with diamond designs. A hopeful, but ultimately disappointing little number that has a blue stripe where I really want flat, unflattering black. Black. Black sweater with a neck like this . This is what I say to the saleswoman, who refers me to the English speaking salesperson, who looks confused and refers me to the head English speaking salesperson. She totes me around the store showing me the same sweaters that attracted my initial interest, then shakes her head in disbelief at each one.

"I'm sorry, we don't have any black sweaters."

"I am glad to know I am so out of fashion."

"You should try the Gap."

Now, I am at the mall, a place I find myself in rarely these days. I woke up doing cost benefit analysis. I am unemployed, I need to look good. I will parlay the money in my pocket from washing dishes into the trappings necessary to get a job that does not require washing dishes. I need a sweater, and maybe the mall is the place to go. I like to wear black sweaters over white collared shirts and a tie. It makes me look like the drug-dealing teenager from American Beauty but I sometimes dig on the dance of plastic bags and it makes me comfortable.

The smells of the mall do not wash across the senses like those you find on a scooter. They linger, they reek, they infest. It is one curse I have found of my job. I smell things. Most often me. And though I don't often smell very good, there are many things in the urban world that smell worse, get catalogued and show up in my tasting notes. Mall massage table man, arms extended and I even think he took a shower today. Donuts frying having wafted over an indoor ice rink, suffering reduction and a spritz of digital energy from the cell phone counter.

And then you have the human traffic. The human traffic at the perfume counter overloads my brain. I am wearing sunglasses and earphones plugged into nothing and wishing I had latex gloves and a hampster bubble that would let me get where I am going without any possible sensory contact with my environment.

No dice, I am at the Gap. It smells like tissue paper made for wiping away adolescent tears wrought from showing up at school wearing the same clothes as the cool girl and getting hazed for it. I want to leave. I am my own vehicle.

"May I help you?"

"I need a black crew neck sweater."

"We have this one." It has a blue stripe where I want there to be black, unflattering black.

"I left my keys in the scooter" as I turn to go, taking in embarassment and simultaneous pride as I realize the hole in the ass of my pinstripe pants is probably glowing my skinny white ass for the skinny white ass I am walking away from.

Updates later on the wardrobe. But for now, buying a plunger was easier.

Putt-putt.

I am riding a scooter to work. I am pouring wine today.I don’t have a job.

The air smells like marbles and water when it is undisturbed. I like riding the scooter for the other scents that come my way. Detergent by the corner car wash, hair product on the corner where everyone stands. When you pass the area most un-locals are funneled through, it smells like fast food, making me throttle down.

I don’t know what acacia smells like, but I smell acacia. There is something bacterial and wrong near Burnside, leaves in their death throes in the gutter. Portland is beautiful, the rains come and go. I’m carrying a jacket I don’t need and arrive safely everywhere I go.

I pour wine, everyone is great. A friend comes and kills his day with idle conversation. I eat a pizza with a beautiful stranger, eat rotisserie chicken out of a Ronco machine. I am working but not working. Conversation flows, the ride home is easy and still jacketless.

Why does this town keep doing this to me? Thanks, regardless.

2003 Cameron "Arley's Leap" Pinot Noir

It’s got tart berry fruit. That alone should be enough to sell you. I want to walk into my next job interview and say just that. Nothing with tart berry fruit can be resisted. But what sort of fruit you might ask? Pinor Noir grapes. This wine is 100% grape juice. The thing that makes it different from other wines, also made from grapes, is that the constituent fruit here was grown in a particular place and fashioned into wine by a particular person.

His name is John Paul and I either love or hate his wines, the way a father might love or hate a son’s actions. When the wines are bad I have no problem saying so, despite the stomach-wrenching and emotional quandaries I might feel the night before. When the wines are right, they are the best the world has ever seen, are going to Harvard and will one day be a doctor. The funny thing about that last sentence is I am contradicting myself from last year’s perspective on this wine. Funny how memory works, I just dug through old emails and found this, along with many skeletons:
Notes on Arley’s (2002):

What do I mean when I say a wine reeks? A couple of things, some good, some bad. Talking about John Paul’s (AKA Cameron’s) wine I definitely mean the former. This wine stinks like cheese, basements and nasty mean old barrels where the wine has been laying in wait for you. Alcohol storms your nose, retreats, and then forms a healthy alliance with all that is right in world of Oregon wine. These wines smell like roses, violets, bails of hay before they’re taken back to the barn and simple old black tea. His wines have class, but they speak like they went to an Ivy League college and then said no. Hello, my name is and I went to school with the heir apparent to the Saudi throne, and though you are the father he might wish to secede, and your offer of a weekend at the palace is generous, I have some time to spend on my own. No easy ride, no coasting. No professing to be great, just being great. No falling back on anyone else’s vision.

Like few humans, let alone wines, Cameron’s wines have noble and thirsty roots, but humble visions: they only want to speak for themselves. Cameron’s wines reek of Oregon, not just the place, but also the people. Maybe it’s the New Englander deep down in me, but these wines encapsulate manifest destiny, not by simply being great because the great father of wine says they should be, but in struggling and striving to actually come to terms with where they are made and what they can become. So many times people in the Oregon wine business speak of their product as being Burgundian. Trying to spin us around and make us believe we’re getting a good deal on a sidewalk Rolex. This wine is Oregonian and tastes like Pinot. Some people might be able to sit around and debate which slope in Burgundy it is familiar to. Familiarity has a close relationship to proximity, and with this wine open next to me, I want it to be a part of my home, my day and my life. Drinking wine that comes from where you live, you want the wine to speak like you might, be it on a good or bad day. For what it’s worth:

Good bright acid rounds out the finish, creamy strawberry and bitter cherry fruit on the mid-palate, a mouth-feel that comforts and beguiles at the same time. Alcohol? Alcohol, but alcohol that depends on the time the bottle has been open, and how your mouth has been treated that day. It’s named after a dog, has a dog on the label and what, do you hate dogs? I’ll admit I sometimes hate tasting notes.

So, what up with tart berry fruit? I’m sitting in the middle of the Reed College canyon, ducks quacking, spiders spidering, dog being so well behaved I can’t believe it. This started with a ¼ bottle of Arley’s next to me, the intention to taste and look and kill time. Instead I find myself in Oregon, truly, for the first time since I’ve been back. Tears well, the sun sets, memory flows over me like I owned some land.

I still taste the same barrels, perhaps a little older, as I did in the previous vintage. Maybe that’s not true, and what I have come to associate with barrels is really the cellar, the place, the yeast, the flaws. Whatever the case, my jeans smell like dirty dishes, the same way they did years ago when I got interested in this food and wine thing. A heron flies by, a duplex framed under the tent of its wings, ambulances, moving some 2 and a half blocks away, sound.

It has persistent acidity.

This wine, and many other things, makes me want to survive here. I want this to be my home. What would that entail? Polishing the few things that each of us has: character, nerve, intelligence and balance. I learned something about each of these with this bottle.

This is a wine from a different year, but definitely the same place. It is harvest wine, it is day of the dead wine. Ghosts move through it like they do any place worth haunting. Here is something worth drinking.

Dedicated to Memory #2.

Or, why I didn't survive law school. I think the assignment was to describe a grievance. I can't even remember how the dust from this barrel smelled at the time.
______________________


Eros, a professional dancer residing in a medium-sized mill town in Oregon, complains of what seems a timeless antagonism with Psyche, an emeritus professor retired in the same small town. While unable to articulate any concrete grievances, Eros’ complaints seem to establish a pattern of persistent mental abuse from Psyche. Foremost on this list of grievances is Psyche’s constant dismissal and ignorance of Eros’ voice, his apparent disgust with her changing appearance and a lack of faith in her means of livelihood. Psyche, for his part, insists the burden falls on Eros. She is emotional to a fault and unable to communicate in a reasoned manner, her fancy leads her unsustainable situations, and her behavior in the company of Psyche’s cohorts often has negative effects on his reputation and career. Yet, despite these conflicts, they continue a mutually dependent relationship. Seen everywhere together, they at times seem to live in harmony. Unfortunately, perhaps because of the duration and intensity of the relationship, or perhaps as a result or irreconcilable differences listed above, a severance seems desirous and inevitable for both.

The Chronicle of Wasted Time.

Someone cross-linked! Living out of my car and washing dishes has not allowed me nearly enough time to explore her blog, but what I have read has been great. Except for the White Sox shit. Read on.

Dedicated to Memory.

The primary piece I am working on right now has moved from the Wu-Tang to memory. Last night I was handed a notebook I had entrusted to a friend with the hope that he would burn it. Now I am flipping through it burning, remembering things I wrote in the 2000/2001 period of my life. I found the following piece and it reminded me of a couple of things I have written here recently. I think I meant this as the start of a short story.
___________
The drive was long and the thought of a cold beer had been with him since the turnpike. A moment or two after the cars had pulled into the awry driveway he rubbed his temple, saw a pine needle curl on the heat of the Chevy's hood. Soon a can of something domestic was limp in his hands, soon he was finding a convenient ledge to set it down as everyone moved around him.

There were bubbles in his throat, there were brown bags of groceries in white arms with tatoos, endorphins numbing his throat, people he knew with gym bags. He looked around, found the water, his fishing pole and more beer with one look. There he cast and drank one. It was four o'clock, the lake roiled with boats. Boys floated on plastic tubes, men sat around their docks talking about or working on their property. He cast towars a raft, knowing it too far to reach. Girls and women were in the sun, the sun was in the water, the water caught the cast and held it.

Math.

I learned today that my half-sister, who I barely know, fell off of a roof and broke two ribs. Our mutual father shared this with me, telling me that the email he learned this from sounded remarkably upbeat. He tells me this as I drive home, my drive to work occupied by the thought of 9.8 meters per second squared.

See, since I arrived in Berkeley I have felt like I was falling. Math has always given me comfort and I have been trying to work this angle into some schizophrenic piece I've been composing about terroir. Chemistry, though it is what I should be focusing on, does not have an explanation for this unless we dive into my brain and any potential imbalances that may have arisen. I feel comfort in this freefall. Perhaps the sister I barely know shares this physical trait.

Most people I know tell me that the pre-sleep dreams of falling that wake them upright are disturbing. Yes, they disturb me too, but apparently I like being disturbed. I would love to fall, free, over a perfect plain, forever. I spent that much time with math in my head. I see tron as a corrupted grid. Let me swim with no terminal point.

So is the love of a speculative physics biological? I don't know this woman and she is my sister. I can imagine her getting to the point where she climbs on a roof to do some work. I can feel her embracing a life in the country with animals (dad was vague about what sort of animals, though I tend to assume domesticated) and a ladder, or a chimney or some stairs she built out of milk bottles. The roof she stands on looks out over something so beautiful or horrible that only she could describe it with a whisper and only those who haven't seen it would give it a shout. She definitely has a hammer that she wails with, Hendrix style, on something. Shingles? Beams? I don't even know if they should be beems or beams in that case, but I am the math part of the kinship.

We learn to fix a car. We ride bikes across traffic in a dangerous place. We find this out of the way place in the middle of everywhere that has something good to eat that no one has noticed. I hate her when she hates me, but we always remember who we are. We buy a band-aid, one of us gets hurt and then realize the change used to buy the band-aid belonged to the person who wasn't hurt. Even if we are a country apart we still look for the same things in our pockets. We forget ourselves as we fall.

Me, I don't have two broken ribs, but I wonder what that would feel like right now. I wonder if it would feel like this.

It's like an onion dude....

Mom, Dad, I need to tell you something.

In order to watch the Red Sox game the other day I went to Applebee's. I know it sounds bad, but they say they are an Italian joint, and seeing as how we're not Italian we're supposed to respect that, right? Well, I've been listening to Italian language tapes this whole time I've been down here, and the entirely Mexican staff they had seemed to be doing a good job of at least speaking something close to Italian. I just, maybe, got caught up in the romance of the place.

But so I'm sitting at this bar and a guy walks in. No joke coming. Frank. He seems shoulders and boulders, just this rolling face and body seems necessary that he's my seatmate. He has a buddy that disappears before he walks in the door, all talk says "let me tell me about myself."

I'm the only other one on the bar and he seems to be talking to me. The red sox are 23/27ths from losing for the last time this season and I hear about his diet. He lost 24 kilos in the past three months. "Do you know how much that is?" Yeah, 2.025 pounds to the kilo you son of a bitch and do you know the acceleration of kin falling from a roof? His diet? Hiking some mountain he can't pronounce in Afghanistan, ravaging teenagers in South America or getting locked up for his improprieties with some "hot young thangs" in Southeast Asia depending on when you slice into a branch of his words. He is crossing betweeen stories seamlessly, crossing time, crossing beams, blowing up the stay-puff man. Despite myself, I start talking.

"Sorry, not trying to be rude, but do you mind taking your phone outside?"

"I'm not on the phone, I'm just talking to my friend here."

"Oh, sorry. You were just yelling and I assumed..."

He turns away but talks twice as loud. The Red Sox are still losing and I hate him.

Bartender comes on shift. Frank assumes she's worldy, that's how she would have hiked the same mountains he can't pronounce. Frank thinks she couldn't possibly be married, her being so young and fresh and the way she throws her eyes at him. Frank thinks that she would be great in one of his all night adventures with four or five young girls, all in descending age propped up agai....

I laugh out loud, shooting my beer onto the poor, confused bartender who is wishing Applebee's had audio to complement the four video cameras on her as this guy's lips aren't moving enough. Forked tongues speak softly. I apologize loudly.

This is his cue to talk directly at me while I finish my beer and actually wish for the 150+ games of baseball I have watched this season to mean nothing. I want this over, I want to go home now, wherever that is.

"Do you know what your problem is?"

I've heard this before and it makes me cringe. It makes me expect a kidney punch. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what my problems are, and they are many, but I generally need to avoid the odd diner/bar stranger espousing what he (always he) thinks they might be.

"Yes" I say, both to him and the bartender, "I don't have my check quite yet."

My brief time in Romania offered me a chance to meet a woman who spoke not a word of English except for this: "The first night you spend in a bed offers you the dreams of your future." Honest to god. I spent three nights at her house, her son translating the rest of the time, and this was the only English language shit she pulled out.

So this is my translation of that, at least for me:The drunk asshole at the bar has something to say, even if you do your best to keep it as far from you as possible.

"The problem with you is you don't know where the hell you are."

Rightly said him, I pay my bill and leave, entering the traffic stream of the freeway almost immediately. There is a plasic stackable chair turned upright on the side of the road that I swear for a second is a cartoon creation dead fawn. There is a styrofoam cup that defies physics and bounces twice off the hood of my car, the first farce the second tragedy. I pass a cop without breaking the speed limit, watching in the rear view as an entire hillside of headlights backs up behind a grandma driving, power having son a bitch. The outlined swerves and wavers of tires stand out on the Hercules stretch, a reminder of something horrible that happened yesterday that held me up for a few minutes. There is the stink of those tanks, there is the smell of new, fresh, human-corrrupted bay area around the corner. My car cuts that and every other corner with precision.

Where am I going? What's for dinner?

This is a poem I wrote a couple years ago, offered simply as evidence that I am good at finding a fight, no matter the time zone.

_________________________________________
drinking beer i hear
his voice come over the loudspeaker
that is his mouth
"legs up in the air spread so wide"

see the old couple
from just before route two merger
cringe, bob, stumble for conversation.

drunk trucks, big men weave
prejudice themselves palms spread
down on the bar

turn young women
fleet as barn swallows
sober to avoid

texas state "that's where i'm from
call me texas two house four boat
mackinaw indian fuck."
tex is big i write

he points at my unwatching eyes
filtered din of glass bottom mugs
sitting standing and the trod
of tenders "fuck him" fork scrapes

"one i worry about"
untethered locals and the chop
of this place slapping their hulls
hammer braking Kenworth

texas is upon me
simple. "wanna hit me?"
all i say is
this is michigan
oregon to new hampshire
to hit a drunk
behind the wheel i think i did.

And the weasle goes pop.

I've had structural pops before. When I was in high school I had a bad knee that I became accustomed to nursing. When it suddenly locked up mid stride I would fall on my face and reel in pain for a moment, realizing after a few seconds that I could shove the cartilage into place by pulling my knee to my chest. A satisfying pop would let me know I could stand again as soon as I wasn't dizzy from the pain.

I was pushing barrels into the winery yesterday when my legs started to get waxy. I felt like I was walking through the slow drip of making hand made candles. Slowly, towards the end of the ascent into the barrel room, I felt a pop in my right hamstring. I haven't had that much pain in a while, and I have never felt muscle do that. Cartilage, yes. Muscle, non.

I got through a few more barrels, limping on my right side, before I tried turning a barrel that was full of water. I squatted, I used my knees. I compensated because I suddenly realized that I had an ineffective hamstring, and now my back pops.

I need to go home.

Home is the Acme, a bar that lets me smoke and sells me $2 beer. I go there to avoid the weird lulling-highway-ensuing-local-rush on the streets. I spend an hour there and get home before I would have if I went straight off the freeway. There are people there I have come to know. There are people there that remind me of Portland and I trust them. One of them gives me a half a Vicadin that I take when I get home. I sleep like a baby, waking up to the sweet sweet pop of my back falling into place. Hammies are sore, calves feel like steamrollers did their jobs on them, but I can walk again.

Tripod.

The plunger was a good idea. In fact, I have subsequently bought two more. I have no chair and no desk, hell I have no furniture. This is all fine with me, and Papi has offered as much as I need. Seeing as how I'll be leaving soon it seems silly to move anything in here. The inspiration for the plungers was pirating wi-fi. The strongest signal comes in at the end of the apartment in the bathroom. Toilet seats are seats, and I found myself typing there for the past two days. Admiring my new plunger, I realized that it came to a perfect height for a laptop stand. I bought two more, and now I have one tripod. It is stable in a wobbly but anchored way, and most importantly, it is beyond 'functional,' it is 'highly functional.'

Merlot or "We are in love with snails."

If there is something I hate more than being asked if I have seen Sideways it is being asked if I hate Merlot. I hate Corvina, and I chalk it up to an allergy. Every grape, besides that stupid variety that makes me gag, me granted, just me, can be beautiful. Still, without entering the debate on whether Merlot has any redeeming characteristics, I can assure you that it does not when a bird shits in your car. I know the birds, I get a lot of time to watch them fly around, and I observe their eating habits. This particular bird has some ankle bracelets that make me wonder where the local lock up is, and how far exactly he is supposed to be straying from home, an issue I was willing to ignore until a warm drizzle appeared on my arm after a long day at the winery, seconds before I began my favorite drive ever. This bird frequents the Merlot block. It's easy enough to spray off an arm. Fine Swedish leather? Not so easy.

Take note Cali wineries, this might be the best tasting merlot the state has produced, but I will not be the one to taste it. Email for an appointment. Very few bottles produced, let alone cases.

Contemplating my First Plunger

Big Papi is kindly letting me stay in his garage apartment for a few weeks, letting me figure out what I want to do when harvest is over. It is a nice but simple space, with plenty of light and a warm feeling to it at night. That said, the previous tenant moved out leaving behind a clogged toilet. Nothing ghastly mind you, most likely just cleaning supplies that backed up the line. There is, however, no plunger to remedy the problem. Too much time has passed for me to say "Papi, the toilet has plugged up when I got here, is there a chance I could borrow a plunger?" That just seems like an unnecessary falsehood, even if it would be the truth.

So, I am thinking about buying my first plunger today, though it seems kind of odd. Here I am, 28, and I have never once had the need to buy a plunger. The occasions where I have needed one, it was simply there. Now that I am at my most nomadic, it seems a strange item to acquire. I don't think one takes plungers with them when they move, and even if it is customary to do so, I don't think I want one in my car for any extended period. During a messy breakup of a communal house I was in, I do remember one woman carefully wrapping a toilet bowl brush and holder in a plastic bag justifying what seemed eccentric to me then with "well, I paid for it." I think this was more spiteful than a matter of frugality.

Which is the next thing. I don't really know how much a plunger costs, but for an item I will likely only use once, and considering my modest means, it might be a big outlay. Surprisingly I have not been able to find any plunger price quotes online. This may be a business opportunity. Sure, the economist in me should start factoring in the value of indoor plumbing, the face saving of not moving out with a still clogged toilet and the ability to have a beer before bed without worrying whether I will have to go to the local Y in the middle of the night to relieve myself. There are also no "do it yourself" plunger plans online.

I am going to do it. Dog food, contact lens solution and a plunger. I'll buy them all today after I post on craigslist offering to purchase whatever embarrassing items anyone in Berkeley might need. Douche? Condoms? Wart cream? I'm going to be walking out of Safeway (they sell plungers at Safeway, right?) with a brown wooden handle sticking out of a plastic bag, so if anyone has some unmentionable they need me to buy, mention them now. $5 surcharge per item. I deliver.

Playing catch up.

The initial zeal may appear to have worn off. But it is not true!

You can all eagerly await Contemplating My First Plunger and The Wu-Tang Clan and Terroir in the coming days.

In the meantime, my mood is significantly better than during my last post, and the grapes continue to come in. Barrels should all be set today, and despite some dire predictions, the weather is holding in a nice way.

Yudhishthira

Mueller doesn't know it, but I slept in my car in front of the winery last night. It became obvious to me around two in the morning that I wasn't getting a call back about the place I was supposed to be spending the night. Dog and I drive to the winemaking facility and sleep until about 8, then off to Starbucks(!) for coffee in the beautiful town that is not Richland. I am crusty and cranky but at least have the Times when Mueller rolls up. I introduce him to dog.

Passive aggressive he waits until I have some barrels outside to work on before he lets me know dog can't be there. It's an industrial facility he tells me. Liability. No mention of the other dog that hangs out there. He would feel worse than I would if something happened to him. Not, though, if he was a cat. He has two dogs. Maybe I could tie him up.

The logic of knots is eluding me at the moment, most of my intellectual capacity consumed by figuring out how to shove a bottle of wine up this guy's ass in the most painful manner possible. I imagine something similar to a medieval catapult with spikes, just so it looks tougher.

Now, the background. I was already seething, trying to figure out what Mueller had against me. I learned last night that he had approached Papi and told him he had smelled marijuana on me, but that he couldn't be certain. Maybe I was wearing a t-shirt from my high school days, and it was his honest mistake, but seeing as I haven't smoked the stuff in a few years, I became confused how he might have thought what he thought. Then I got pissed off. Rather than approaching me, he did the end-around and went to the big guy first. Classic passive aggressive.

Instead of making an attempt with the wine bottle, I wipe away the tears of rage that have formed, grab my water out of the refrigerator and drive to Starbucks, embracing the affront that is having to suffer Starbucks more in one day than I have in ten years. I am 40 minutes closer to Portland than if I were in the city. I am about to drive home. Home being Portland, home being unemployed and white and angry.

I call Mueller and ask him what his problem with me is. It's not me, he says, repeating the industrial facility and liability lines so many times that I have sworn I will never drink a wine from a producer that makes more than 20 thousand cases in a year. Industrial facility without a dog. Wines you can't trust. I am thinking about starting a label that only brokers wines made by dog friendly wineries. He tells me it is about risk management and that no bottle of wine is worth anyone's life. I couldn't agree more, but the reality is that his scared, sterile perspective is so illustrative of what is wrong with Western Civilization right now that I want to throttle him. I want to grab him by the neck and let my bacteria laden saliva speckle his face as I yell, "there is nothing sure, there is nothing safe. You might die in a minute, don't spend that minute immobilized and controlled by fear." Instead I hang up on his sniveling and drive back to the city.

The good to come of it is this. Part of my interest in coming to California was to see if all those who insist that my perspective on thoughtfully made, small production wines is naive had a point. "Go work in a winery" they said. "It will give you a better perspective." Well, I've got one. The only use I have for a bottle of industrially made swill has everything to do with Mueller's ass.

Laughing before coffee.

"I'd go back and invest money in the past if only I could afford gas for my time machine in the present."
--Things
You Would Say
If You Had a Time
Machine and Lots of
Financial Problems.

By Lynette Cain on McSwseeney's

Drive by.

I had a hard day trying to find a place to live, and seeing as Mike is due back tomorrow, it was essential that I find a place today. No dice, and the moral of the story is I should trust my instincts.

I have next to nothing for a memory. What I do remember, however, is every twist and turn of every piece of land I have navigated across. Put me in the backseat, my stats go down. However, wherever my beemer goes, you know that I'm driving. The bay area is like a ghost for me. I've been here before, I've almost always been driven, and I recognize every little pocket neighborhood I've been to so far. The problem is putting them all in relation now that I am finally, fully, behind the wheel. So, I hate to admit, I have been using mapquest to help me find directions to houses with rooms to rent. Don't do it.

The listing said to drive by and then call. Just from the address of a street I didn't even recognize, it seemed like it would be a good ways away. Mapquest says: .7 miles, in a line that would let me walk through the farmers' market. I'm game, the yankees have just won the division and I need a distraction. Market is winding up, no one will discount a $6 tomato for me, and I keep walking. And walking. And walking. It's a cool enough day, but now, with my backpack, suit jacket and too-thick-for-you-socks I am actually thinking that $3.10 a gallon is not that much to pay. I walk by a high school football game where an ambulance is sounding off and dready nat heads heat up beans and cheese from gallon containers.

After some confusion I find the place. I shudder and keep walking. On the way back I see some kids and their adult playing baseball. My back hurts, my feet hurt, the hot flashes I've had all day continue. I ask if I can play.

She says yes and I am the new pitcher to a 9 year old and an 11 year old. Only guessing. I don't get shelled. I bat and get to unleash one good righty line drive, pulled, over the shortstop, straight to the monster. Even the 11 year old is trying to antagonize me about the Yankees winning. He wants to be Mariano Rivera next time I bat. Even I can't bear the thought of a 28 year old true lefty unloading a shot that would lose the ball forever. Okay, I bore it for a second then dismissed it, walking away with a "thanks for letting me play."

Baseball was my familiar territory for the day. Mapquest changed its story when I got home:2.75 miles. Each way. Son of a bitch.