A little ramble for the rumble

Putting together now the pieces of a recent move, I’m thinking about significance and what constitutes a journal and a blog, and where do the routes meet and diverge, and why? You don’t need me to write about politics, yet I can say that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco has a lot of work to do to fight with the mandate of what we all have desired a voice for – change; however, if change does not come then it’s our responsibility to declare the honeymoon over and to start cracking even our Democratic Party’s skulls. You don’t need me to discuss the idea of Quality, an all-too-Pirsig-esque notion, yet a notion which continues to articulate itself from every nook of my surroundings on every part of the globe, never mind the fact that it’s not the best conversation starter on biergarten nights in Munich though talk inevitably arrives at the idea of quality when deciding where the best ribs are and how the lighting best makes our faces glow to the people across the table. But I digress.

I was part of the exclamation point on Ocean Beach a few weeks ago and I didn’t even know if I wanted the dude impeached, but it also had to do with walking a few weeks prior in Toronto for the 2006 Gulu Walk and standing up (and walking) for the need to understand Africa even a little better, a continent which continues to baffle and entrance me. If this is the year of change in this country… after so many years of sad reluctance of the unchangeable political heads screwing this country in its solitary place, and thus causing a massive shaking of heads, then of fists… we need to be less passive in our actions, but more importantly we must be less passive with our knowledge and with how we gather information to support that knowledge.

Informed awareness. Another good word(s) for 2007.

Drifts of Perspective and a word

The sun shines pretty hard these days as it works to fight off the cold that has gripped the Pacific Coast. Cold always wins, and all heat fleets, thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. I took a drive up to Ashland Oregon on the weekend to visit some good friends and meet new ones at a coastal house with a hot tub on a bluff, a journey that was decided upon one minute and began the next minute. Two cars left at the same time from two different states, planning to meet at a bar on a Christmas-lit street in the middle, in Ashland, sometime after midnight (Q: At what speed was car A moving?). Turned out it was a ridiculously quick drive in the end, which makes this entire country seem smaller and distances between friends far less, thank goodness for that. But we did hit snow in the high passes, a fact that brought out the SHIT HOLY SHIT YES's from my co-pilot the snowboarder, and instilled slight fear in me because the roads rode like mashed potato beds and the sky filled with shooting stars of white aimed directly at our windshield. Yes, snow certainly is exciting.

It will be a long December. There is much to say at the end of this year that I will never post in a blog, though my mind swells with thoughts and realizations, explanations and words that rise and fall like the wind or the tides. Only with action will better words come that move forward and take all the good of the worst of life into an unknown future. I'm thankful this thanksgiving for an 83 year old father who hears his son coughing from a few late nights in a row and silently lays a shot glass of schnapps next to the laptop, "for the cough." I'm thankful for friends and family who love me no matter how much I screw up and continually tell them about it. I'm thankful for perspective and the knowledge that it won't be the last time I screw things up, but also for the lessons that keep me from making the same mistake again. And I am thankful for hope and love which are all that stand once those words of emotion ebb and flow. I know hope and love in my heart, and no matter what the future holds I will have nothing else but that regarding her. Lots to say. Lots to be thankful for today.

I hope that December and 2007 to follow bring one thing to all of us - community - including but not limited to the neighborhood/political variety, more the wide variety of people that surround you in some form, in multiple forms. What else is there when you break down your joys and sorrows, and who is it that you most want to share these with? What keeps you from being alone whether you want it or not? What keeps you from destroying yourself? What is renewable, and what swells and shrinks yet is always there in some form? When you land somewhere on a lonely patch, what is the first thing you search for, and which searches for you? And if you were to comment on this and leave a one word answer, I know there would be about 100 funny and intriguing words, and only a few of them would be community. So go ahead, post 'em. (Yes, even you, Neil).

But for now, here's to our individual communities, and may you each be enriched and emboldened by the mere fact that people love and support you without having to tell you nor you asking for it.

Seriously...

Been too long a while since I blogged it up, but the treehouse is being remodeled inside and out.

I understand that there are serious and highly important issues to choose to write about, and with just some minimal thought and attention to the morning paper, your favorite under-the-radar information service, or your own inquisitive mind one can’t help but be stirred to act upon or at least write on one of the many pertinent, sad, hilarious, horrific, passionate, significant, triumphant occurrences of today and yesterday, with the hope to put another voice out there for the readers of tomorrow. Yet… I have to say that Tide with Febreze is a fantastic detergent.

As is Persil! But you can only get Persil in Europe, or maybe just Germany. And knowing how even the pungent odor of mildew reminds me of a few of my happiest childhood memories in rural northern California, there’s something to be said for this. My clothes offered up the most pleasant smell to any room after they were bathed in Persil, the green liquid kind, offering a smell that gently permeated the air around my clothing, even (EVEN!) when my shirts were tucked away in a drawer in Toronto a few weeks later! That’s some good pungent-ness. And while I couldn’t get Persil in Toronto, I found Tide with Febreze to be the next best thing, and my clothes made the apartment, the elevator, and even the TTC subway cars reek with clean. So now that I am back in San Francisco I have a problem, and I think it’s found in the dryer. My clothes, though washed with Tide with Febreze, continually smell like a clothes dryer motor, the same scent they always had when I lived in San Francisco, using the same clothes dryer. After the heat turns cool, the Tide with Febreze has been, well, erased.

We use scent to contact our memories. I remember smelling the blanket that Dorothy laid on the first night she came over to my place in 2002 to watch a movies, and it had her lovely scented perfume on it when she left, subtle but ever-present. The next evening a good friend came to spend the night and I purposely hid that blanket from his patchouli-laden body, but even the hiding place was eventually infiltrated with this hippie oil effervescence, yet I hoarded that Dorothy-scent for as long as it could last, until it seemed to be gone, though it would definitely not be the last time I would have her over.

But now, the Tide with Febreze is another scent with an attached memory, and I have been robbed of it by the motor of an ancient clothes dryer. For to have that simple smell around me over the course of a day makes me happy, in the car, in a room, just below my nose and chin, whenever I need it. It just feels like it fades faster than it should, and the dryer is the thief.

Flavor, scent, color, harmony and texture. Thankfully, the senses shoot an unfiltered direct line to the memory when it comes to importance and significance. And thankfully, there is nothing we can do about it.

Vino

Back to Slovenia for a long weekend, land of nothing but wine as far as I have written, and happy people drinking it and celebrating with it. Celebrating what? Oh nothing more than their view on the hill, one another, and their fortune in living here. Many of these smiling and sturdy people are staying for the long haul (January 1 2007 = conversion to the Euro). They like the tourists, who are few for now, and the feeling is likewise.

But if you have family in Slovenia then you are in for a whole other experience. And if you are hosted by the Slovenian family of my friend Margaret, then you are in for a very long and good ride (see … and a Wedding below). Luckily she has friends who can roll with even the most indigenous of her Slovenian bloodline.

We can talk about the first night when our two cars arrived at the border and the border police refused one of us for not having a passport. Then we can mention the ride over to the other border, which from our view in the rear car looked something like this: first car eases up to open border patrol window, slows to a stop, momentary flashing of brake lights and then 0-10 mph in .01 seconds, us gasping and our car lurching to follow, us seeing a thermos of coffee and cigarettes in the window where the nasty guard is supposed to stand looming, us continuing to glide into second and third gear with no lights or flashings or guns or dogs behind, and then stopping with the first car about 10 miles later at an old train station in the middle of the night to do a spirited dance and boogie celebrating our alleged border jumping. But we won’t mention that, and this blog will be posted long after we have made our return escape. We can also talk about how beautiful our apartment was that night at 2am, seven people comfortably nestled on another hillside filled with wine, and a refrigerator stocked full of the same stuff in bottles.

But when we arrived for breakfast the next morning at 8am at the vineyard of Margaret’s uncle, we had no clue. Or perhaps the skinned goat wrapped in blue plastic next to the unassembled spit and the growing wood fire was our first clue. Second clue might have been the filled white wine pitchers next to the piles of sausages and salami for breakfast. A few were shocked. I was giddy.

The morning took off as soon as the third wine glass was emptied, fittingly since the wine we had just drunk was being replaced by the wine we were about the pick. But as I now know, wine doesn’t grow on trees, sweet and lovely white and light purple grapes do. As we were enjoying breakfast with very young and very old family members under the tressle, more and more people had arrived, so that the orchard below had turned into a parking lot around the now be-spitted skinned goat. Then buckets large and small appeared and a wooden press was pulled out of the wine cellar below the house along with massive plastic drums. The oldest women began peeling potatoes and hauling red meat for lunch into the kitchen, and I was given a shot of plum brandy before a large old bucket was slung to my back and everyone walked to the vineyard top about 300 feet up a small hill.

There were about 25 pickers and 6 haulers, and I was the happiest hauler of all time. Tim and I walked next to each other with a vine row between us like a picket fence, 50 pounds of grapes on our backs as we trudged down the uneven land and sidestepped piles of juiceless grape detritus from last year. Waiting for us at the bottom of the hill at that picnic table under the tressle was a clear jug of wine and a few green bottles of sparkling water, and as a hauler emptied the heavy grapes into the red electric mulcher and then into the massive wet drum below, he would turn to face the hill as another hauler would come down the hill, and there would be a meeting at the wine table. One full clear glass of wine per haul became the norm as the sun baked us and the wine sat in the shade. The pickers, roasting in the sun and moving slowly down the hill with their latex gloves and little vine snippers, thought they had the easy job. But as the day wore on, the haulers had less and less ground to cover, thus increasing the frequency of the meetings at the wine table. By noon, there was no need for haulers, the pickers could just empty their buckets into the mulcher and the drum themselves only 20 feet awa from the vineyard base. Good thing too, because the haulers were very happy - four Slovenians, an American and a New Zealander - all sitting at the picnic table, sweaty and reddened, feeling very, very refreshed. The process a few feet below at the press was old world. The grapes, once mulched, were poured into a barrel press and capped with a nice sturdy piece of wood which was topped with larger ancient blackened 2X4’s and a car jack all squeezed under the top of a hand-made steel frame. The jack would be cranked and the grapes would be pressed down so that the barrel would bulge and juice would seep out the slats down into a reservoir and drain into a bucket, where a pump would be waiting to send the juice through a hose down into the cellar and into a wooden keg, where it would wait to become wine. Magic. As the new juice makes its way to the keg through the cellar it passes a collection of its juice ancestors’ exploits, including older presses with 100 year old wood, kegs full of hundreds of liters of Chardonnay and Riesling, aluminum kegs with wine ready to drink, empty glasses, half full jugs, blackened wine residue. Among all this are crackers, a radio, a crate of beer, a few books and some dirty ashtrays. As he leaned upon his cane, Margaret’s uncle proudly told us with hand gestures and a smile that this cellar is where he comes to get away from it all.

The vineyard houses are not real houses, they are like ice fishing shacks times ten, each one called a gorice. They are there to accommodate harvest time living because they hold a large indoor room for eating and a large kitchen for cooking and that’s it, except for the cellars below which range from the cemented dingy fermented-smelling holds to brick-inlaid modern-drained recessed-lighted secret bungalows. But all hold kegs of old wood and fine wine within. And you would be crazy if you didn’t come to your family gorice in the winter, fire up the wooden stove, drink wine and dance with a beautiful woman all day. This is also what Margaret’s uncle did to get away from it all, before he broke his back working and the cane became his constant companion.

When we had finished this plot of land we had another plot of land to sweep about 15 minutes away, a smaller plot on a steeper hill with the rows once more lined up and down but this time we began at the bottom and worked our way to the top. The grapes larger, the stalks heavier, the calls for hauls came quickly. Calls to the other pickers sounded as yodels, responses echoing up the hill in cackles like pig calls or Bavarian beer-laden cheers. We were told that in some gorices the pickers are made to whistle while they worked to keep them from eating the grapes. We were asked to eat them to our content. Sun high and hot, no telling if your stomach pain was muscular or wine-related, the 80 gallon drums were filled three times in less than an hour. The uncle, our host, sat in the shade, pulled up his baseball cap, and thought of dancing with beautiful women as he stared at the grass.

Another 15 minute ride back to the first gorice and there was a feast waiting in the shade of umbrellas and the tressle. The goat was a shade of its former self, chicken and beef on massive platters, warm noodle soup, and peppers from the garden dotted the parts of the tables not holding jugs of wine and bottles of that lovely sparkling water. Roasted chestnuts in a pot were handed out, picked from the trees above us and warmed on the goat fire. Different wines were carried over to the table, the men worked into the night to squeeze every dram of future wine out of the grapes, and the moon came up slowly in a haze to tell us that perhaps it was time to think about going home. No aching muscles, no aching heads, a few ripped shirts, some sunburned faces, and everything on us covered in dirt and smelling sticky and sweet. Once back at the apartment overlooking the lovely valley and in the distance a humming power plant, I tried to spend as much time outside to catch my breath in the growing wind. Windmills, designed to spin small blocks of wood around to scare away grape-eating birds, could be heard all around the valley like walking ghosts clanging pots in the night. We uncorked one final bottle of Riesling on the wooden benches outside, and listened.