Eager to prove

Well, if nothing else, I feel as if I have a new secret. And I do! I wonder how long I will be able to keep it. I have a weakness for weaknesses, you see. There was a time when I would write and re-write my posts, crafting them into whatever disaster that I could not muster the strength to prevent. Though now I do not read them a second time, and it shows. When I do go back and look at them they are riddled with typos and poor sentences, half wrought thoughts, too many commas. Never enough ideas and wit. What am I to do?

I spend the hours of the day working now. I took on a new role at work and there is much to learn, much to do. It is both vivifying and tedious. I do not yet know how to present myself. That uncertainty both tickles and mortifies me. I am eager to prove my worth but currently don't possess very much of it with which to prove anything. It is all in the doing. 

.

I am Bruce Wayne

In just slightly less than one month it will be ten years since I have written here. I have come back to hide, in a sense. Nobody reads here any more, so I am anonymous, at least in that way. I shut my other site down. I began to hate too many things about it - my persona, the persona of all others, etc. Hatred is not something that should be endured or entertained. I am trying to release mine back into the nothingness from where it seems to have emerged. 

You should be able to detect if I succeed. It's all embedded in the tone. Well, perhaps not all of it. Like the Batman, I have complicated feelings about "family" also. I would say that I share them, but who would ever share such a thing?

 

.

Primitivo Di Manduria, Epicuro, Red Wine

I am becoming what many warned me that I might, a wine snob.  I just poured two bottles of wine out as undrinkable.  I tried letting the first one "breath" by pouring it into a decanter, but it was beyond saving.  The second one still sits on the kitchen counter.  I haven't decided if I'm going to torture it before pouring it down the drain.

Trader Joe's is not a place to ever buy wine unless you know exactly what you're getting.  Several of the wines there taste like grape juice mixed with generous portions of vinegar and cheap gin.  The stuff that used to make people go blind.

Now there is only one bottle of wine left but I don't have much faith in it.  It might be drinkable if I was already very drunk and had no concern or consideration for myself any longer, but that's not the case.  The day is young and I want a wine that tastes accordingly.

It is shameful that a grocery store has better wines and better selection than Trader Joe's wine shop.  It will be some time before I forgive them, if at all.

.

Caretaker Pinot Noir, 2009

The experts say that Hemingway very likely did not ever say, "Write drunk, edit later," even in jest towards another.  He famously wrote and revised in the mornings and did not drunk until after he was done writing for the day. I have a book of Hemingway quotations, his wisdom concerning the act of writing. When I unbox my books I'll search and see if I can find a source for it.  Perhaps this time the experts are wrong and the internet is right.

The wine above was purchased at Trader Joe's.  I have tried to be a fan of the Trader Joe wine store but it is a very patchy collection offered there.  The wines either seem to be remarkably drinkable at $7 a bottle, or indigestible grape flavored Smirnoff at $10 a bottle.

But I can almost respect a grocery store that's willing to commit to bold lies.

.

Robert Mondavi, Pinot Noir 2008

I have reviewed this wine once before, sort of.  Instead of writing about the wine I wrote about my reactions to the flat mockumentary, "Mondovino."  I have more to say on that subject but tonight I will write about the wine, alone.

Wine and wine culture are impossibly pretentious.  It really brings out the secret snob in many. The overt wine snob is beyond consideration, unworthy of print.

I have tried to write about my wine experiences here, but it is difficult.  Drinking wine and writing do not always produce readable results.  A friend sent me a quote from Hemingway today.  I will have to do some research and see if he actually said it, or more properly, wrote it.

The internet eagerly says so, but we know about trusting that correctionless sphere of www. error perpetuity.

The quote came across as, "Write drunk; edit sober."  I did a search and also found, "Write drunk, revise sober." which sounds more like Hemingway, but I am not the expert.  We will ask one of them and then we will see.

In the morning we will all be wiser.


Ok, I had truly hoped to write a post for this site tonight, it's been more than a month now.  But it was not meant to be.  There are other forces at work.

Greater forces, further even than the demonic Mondavi.

To them I now retire.


The sleep of seizure produces, haunts her. - Go'ye

.

Dashwood, Pinot Noir, 2009

splash

the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep.

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great,
victorious,
hearing the music,
being the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

Charles Bukowski






.

Sebastiani, Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

Life is hard.
I offer few answers, tonight... none.

Each step is an ever-increasing stride into the backward maelstrom of eventual regret and sudden disbelief.

Or, is it only a backward winding stairway to the heavens.


As I said, I don't have it all figured out...


I seek only truth, and not especially your version of it.



The best way to tell who really loves you is to love them.

.

Firefly Ridge, Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

I read an interesting article about taste recently, here it is.  It doesn't say much new, but it is worth the quick read.  It posits that music affects how we feel about the wine we drink, how it affects our "taste."

It would be great if a great album would make average wines taste much better.  Perhaps they do. The sense of smell still controls the tongue, however.  It is true, of course. There is no sense in drinking nice wine when you are congested, though some might say that one shouldn't be drinking at all when sick. But it is truly a waste to do so when you can not smell the richness of the wine.

So tonight I am drinking a cheap bottle of Cabernet.  It is passable at best. I enjoyed the wine from last night much more, for the same price.

Well, speaking of the things one is not supposed to do... I have eaten a Vicodin because I am in pain.  It is somewhat preventative when it comes to writing.  I will go now and watch Ugetsu.

My readership has fallen somewhat dramatically since I've started writing this wine blog.  Perhaps I will start a foreign-language film-blog and cut my reader-base in half again.

Soon I will be back to just writing emails.
C'est la vine....

.

Robert Mondavi, Pinot Noir 2010, Private Selection

At $6 a bottle I'm not sure what qualifies this as being from the "private" selection, unless you consider a grocery store a place where private transactions occur.  But the wine is okay.  Ok?

It does not have the depth or richness of the 2008 Pinot that I reviewed previously, but it is neither arrogant nor misguided. If this wine gets its own domain-name one day it might really compete with Google Sauvignon. But right now it's conducting itself in much the same way that a teenage runaway does... overstatement and hyperbole, gross exaggeration of fact, of experience.  I should know, I ran away from home many years before they finally kicked me out.

I was thinking... so many things can be ripped unseen from the hands of industry... so much media, so much content, can be just lifted from the aether.  Why not wine?

I want to remodel an internet in which great bottles of wine might be torrential.


No, scratch that.

I have an even better idea...

Fight for a greater depth of information, a semblance of the analog, a whisper of the whimsy.

Let's rob the blanks, empty the drawers, sniff the panties of eternity.
Let's grab the cash, let's hitchhike askance, take pictures of far consequence.
Let's fear neither rock nor roll, less dance, let us stance.

.

Viansa, Arneis 2010

White wine is nice.  I don't know why I don't drink it more often.  It is pleasant and refreshing.  Also, one need not drink an entire bottle of it in a single sitting.  It will hold for many days afterwards in the refrigerator.  I might have to shift my focus towards some whites. White power, etc.

I've been told that I can also let many reds sit opened, though re-corked, in the bottle for a day. It can actually improve the taste of certain wines, it's been said.  I have an unwritten policy that I will finish any bottle of red that I've opened, and as quickly as possible.  A dangerous and willful policy, I know.  But what can one do, really?

I'm certain that this bottle was a cheap bottle.  It was a gift from an SFPD cop.  Nope, I just looked it up.  It's about $20...  No ordinary cop, I guess.  He must be getting kickbacks. I should have his rotten ass thrown in prison. But what can one do, really?  He used to work undercover in the bathhouses in SF, he would probably squeeze right into prison life.

Ok, buy this wine.  I recommend it...

Never spend more than $25 on a bottle of white wine, until directed otherwise.

.