Crickets and Rosé on a Summer Evening. August 24, 2011

Elk Cove Vineyards 2010 Pinot Noir Rosé from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, to be exact. Oh, and the crickets are from Salt Lake City. What brings them together? Summer heat and darkness. It’s a sultry evening in the Land of Zion. 

Lately, these summer evenings conjure up (at least for me) the arresting opening scene of the movie “Howard’s End.” [Yes, I’ve read E.M. Forster’s novel too. ]   I’ll never forget the beauty and serenity of that film’s opening. No dialogue; just sounds, light, colors, a mood. In that scene, Vanessa Redgrave, dressed in a Merchant-Ivory period costume, strolls slowly through the twilight in her English countryside garden just outside her summer cottage.  All the audience sees [as I recall…and this is my story, so what I recall is all that matters, right?] is the back of her Victorian dress, the light of dusk reflecting off the flowers and grass, and the orange glow of lamp light filtering through wispy white curtains.  All the audience hears is the rustling of her dress and indistinct voices and laughter emanating from the open windows.

Right now I wish I could revive the feeling that movie moment evoked. The rosé wine and crickets evoke the visuals [don’t ask me why — I have no idea], but not the hushed sigh of relief and the stillness that I crave.  There is beauty in the pink glow of the rosé, the line drawing of an elk on the wine label, the drone of crickets as I sit on my patio in the darkness. But I don’t feel it.  Why is what I crave so elusive?

Stillness. Perhaps that is what I most loved about that scene. The grace and stillness of a woman floating through her yard as the pink hues of a sunset gave way to the gray of evening. 

Lately I’ve convinced myself that “coming out of my shell” is the way I will find what I’m seeking.  I’m no longer convinced. I think I’ll go back into my shell. It’s safer there. Static, but safer. And, hopefully, still.

Salieri complex? March 24, 2011

I haven’t an original bone in my body. Yet I crave such a gift. Although it is difficult in today’s electronic-let-me-have-a-go-at-writing-because-I-can world, I think I recognize when someone else is blessed with such originality. Just like Salieri in ”Amadeus” (one of my favorite movies — Requiem anyone?). I relate to Salieri. I feel the urgent need to create, but I just know I am one of a billion dots in the night sky. Perhaps the process is more important than the product? Perhaps.

Today I followed my child on a bicycle through the winding paths of Zion National Park. We got sidetracked at a point where one is allowed to grace the banks of the Virgin River in this red rock phenomenon. I was ready to ride my bike. He, however, was ready to play in the silky soft sand. “I’ve changed my mind mommy. I want to build a sand castle.” I replied, “Um, okay.” [My thought: “He’ll be bored in three minutes.”]  Well, damned if we didn’t sit there for an hour under the gray afternoon sky with the constant sound of the gray river in our ears, as we forgot about everything around us. (There’s a reason why someone makes money off of miniature “zen gardens.”)  

I built a goofy-looking mound with terraces and a moat, decorated with twigs and pebbles of desert colors. We left it there for someone to “discover” or, more likely, a dog to trample.  Whatever. But, for the moment (once I got over the adult “Oh, my hands will feel like dessicated tomatoes when I’m done”) I lost myself in the damp, luxurious sensation that is riverbed sand in the southern Utah desert.

Eat your heart out Salieri.  It’s time to stop obsessing and, instead, live in the moment. I think I’ll go listen to some Mozart, stare at the desert night sky, and sip my California zinfandel from Ridge’s East Bench vineyard. Cheers.

“Ode to things” and the need for simplicity. February 23, 2011

Last week I experienced sensory overload in San Francisco. My first evening there, I bought the collection of Pablo Neruda poems called “Odes to Common Things” at the iconoclastic City Lights bookstore in North Beach. (Bookstores are to me what candy stores are to children. I have little self control.)  I’ve always liked the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and it felt good just to hold the slim hardback volume, the cover of which features a charcoal drawing of a salt shaker of the diner variety, rectangular glass with a round metal screwtop punctuated by tiny holes.

Since I bought the poems, I have read Mr. Neruda’s “Ode to things” over and over.  It starts: “I have a crazy, / crazy love of things. / I like pliers, / and scissors. / I love/ cups, / rings, / and bowls — / not to speak, of course, / of hats. / I love / all things, / not just the grandest, / also / the / infinite- / ly / small — / thimbles, / spurs, / plates, / and flower vases. /Oh yes, / the planet / is sublime! / It’s full of / pipes / weaving / hand-held / through tobacco smoke, / and keys / and salt shakers — / everything, / I mean, / that is made / by the hand of man, every little thing: / shapely shoes, / and fabric, / and each new / bloodless birth / of gold, / eyeglasses, carpenter’s nails, / brushes, / clocks, compasses, / coins, and the so-soft / softness of chairs.”  And on it goes.  The poem is a tower of short phrases and simple words (something I cannot graphically show you here).  One of the most lovely lines is where he says that the things he loves “all bear / the trace / of someone’s fingers / on their handle or surface, / the trace of a distant hand / lost / in the depths of forgetfulness.” 

I don’t profess to know how to interpret poetry, but whatever other themes weave themselves through the ode’s words, I love its deceivingly simple description of things that are actually quite complex in design and technology.  Things we now take for granted. 

I saw a bit of that during my walk through an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art called “How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now.”  Funky wineglasses and decanters. Winery architecture competing at all levels to “outdo” the others in cleverness or beauty or attention to the natural surroundings. Wine labels categorized. An “odorist” (I kid you not) who created an “exhibit” of microscopic capsules of scents created from her breath after drinking wines that had been given a perfect 100 point score.  (I passed on that one.)  All very interesting.  This link is one of many that describe the exhibit.  http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/406

Walking through the exhibit and then reading throughout the week about infinite wine events/people/places in that California wine mecca, I couldn’t stop thinking that the number of persons clambering to be wine specialists in this world (a by-product of the “modernization” of wine) create noise that, left unchecked, threatens to interfere with my experience of wine.  Living in a modern society has its obvious benefits, but if I don’t stop to savor the simple pleasures of life (like seeing the silhouette of a wine bottle, saving the unwrapped wire cage of a champagne cork, or feeling a sip of zinfandel warm the throat) I lose sight. And it becomes more difficult to breathe (in the metaphorical, and, truly, the physical, sense).

So I take some comfort in Mr. Neruda’s odes. Okay. Vent over. Go drink some wine. And read a poem.