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March 9 2007
Yesterday I read Jim Harrison’s essay in Kermit Lynch’s newsletter. Titled “The Spirit of Wine,” Jim Harrison has an incredible gift for packing detail and a depth of meaning in a meandering first person narrative, not an easy task and he does this while offering up chestnuts like, “Wine can offer oxygen to the spirit.”
Today, Indiana feels like the first day of spring has arrived. The weather is in the 50s, the sunshine has poked through nine weeks of clouds, and energy is almost stridently present in what just days ago was still a sleepy winter malaise.
As I sit and contemplate ‘oxygen to the spirit,’ I realize that friendship, wine, arm chair travel and warm weather gets me in the right frame of mind for shaking off the winter doldrums.
My wine mentor, Ed Vodrazka, known to most as ‘Easy’ is somebody who I’m happy to call a lifelong friend even though we’ve known each other for less than a decade. Easy also happens to be a wine lover of repute and a traveler of renown. A legendary California lifeguard in the state park system, Ed was the first person that eased me into my wine journey and is also responsible for the fascination I hold for both A. Rafanelli and Caparone wines.
Ed is a gifted writer. He has written many of his stories from traveling into short story form. On the heels of my reading a short story from Jim Harrison, and in the vein of arm chair travel, it seems only right that I highlight a story or two of his from New Zealand, a fantastic wine region. Herewith, one of Ed’s stories, presented in three parts:
The Adventures of “Easy”
The one thing I do exceptionally well is travel. I am, by nature, a traveler. It’s in my bones. I discovered early in my life that I seem to have the ability to open doors and allow people to open their lives to me. Being the son of immigrant parents, has helped me to be a bit more culturally sensitive to groups of people who may eat, sleep, speak, or behave foreign to me. This sensitivity seems to extend across the varied lines of culture and age. I feel equally ‘at home’ on the streets of Bangkok, the back alleys of Katmandu or in the line up with the surfers at Huntington Beach.
As we come to know more about the differences among peoples, we soon discover that most of those customs we find bizarre or foreign are really in the end our commonality. There exists in the fabric of all people in this world, many common threads. And those things that revolve around the heart are the things we find to be most often universal: a need to be loved, to be heard, and to enjoy the company of family and friends, to laugh and share joy, to behold the wonders of nature in all her splendor.
I am a traveler. These are the stories of my life.
THE SMELL OF A RAINBOW
Things always seemed to work out best for me when I wasn’t busy trying to plan the steps ahead. The more I allowed myself to remain open to whatever happened to come along, the more rewarding the total experience usually proved to be. In keeping with this frame of mind, I found myself once again walking down a two-lane road with my small pack hanging off my shoulder and the morning sun gently warming my face. I had no real goal for where I would end up, and the only choice I needed to make was to decide which direction I would turn when I reached the main road. I chose to turn south, and continued walking with a consciousness as open as the bright green fields that surrounded me.
My first ride was with a young doctor who was playing Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps”. It was a great way to start the day, and as luck would have it, he took me all the way through Auckland where I knew the rides would come easy. From there I got a ride to Huntley (population about 10) with a sewing machine repairman and another into Hamilton with an old Maori fisherman. Minutes later, a farmer picked me up in an old red pick-up. He told me he was on his way to a wool trading barn on the outskirts of town and invited me to come along. He had two large bags of wool in the truck bed, and said he had seven naked sheep back at home. The barn was huge and business was booming. I found it quite amazing to see all the farmers involved in the ‘middle’ part of the wool industry. In considering a simple wool sweater, I had never realized how many hands were involved in the transfer of wool from the sheep’s back to our own. I wandered back to the road and continued on, more or less heading south. The scenery began to change with each new ride, as mountains rose up around the roadway. The miles of rolling green fields behind us gradually gave way to shaded pine forests. The air turned cooler and the skies began to fill with huge white cumulous clouds. Once in the mountains, I walked away from the main road. The narrower road gently wrapped around the hillsides cutting an aimless path through the vibrantly green vegetation. Narrow bridges offered a chance to look straight down through the crystal running water of cold creeks and small streams. The solitude and setting of the lonely mountain road was well worth the trade off of the less frequent rides. Hours passed and I lost track of time.
It was springtime then, and the sun didn’t set until around 8:30. Right around dusk a dark green car pulled over, and the driver offered me a ride. He was an older man, with a sad but friendly smile wearing full length wading boots and a fly-fishing vest. Greg Flood was a soft spoken retired farmer who rarely missed a chance to fish. His wife had taken ill recently, and was convalescing in a local hospital. He was on his way back from his daily visit to see her, and had stopped off to dip the line a bit on his way home. He invited me over for dinner, and I gratefully accepted. I was thankful for a bed for the night and hoped I could cheer old Greg up a bit. He heated up some stew for supper, and then we went into the knotty pine den where we shared a few beers. In the dim lit comfort of the wood walls and the warm fire, I sat back on the big couch and became an appreciative audience for an old fisherman who slowly began to share his stories. In close to 50 years of fishing these waters, Greg had lived a fisherman’s dream. His stories were quite enchanting to me and as he remembered each one, his smile widened and his eyes danced. On my request, he broke out some of his gear. There was an assortment of reels in velvet pouches and each rod had its own case. He pulled out an immaculate split bamboo fly rod, one he had made over 30 years ago. His assortment of flies numbered in the thousands, each one hand tied by Greg himself. What impressed me even more was that he remembered exactly which fly he had used to land every great fish he had told me about.
We turned in early that night. As I lay in bed, I felt contentment in seeing how much the evening had cheered him up. It was also rewarding for us both to realize that two guys like us, almost 50 years apart in age, could still become friends. I closed my eyes and let his stories run around in my mind until I fell asleep.
Needless to say ... in the morning we went fishing.
To be continued ...
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January 1 2007
In honor of the new year, a time for resolutions and increased self-reliance, a poem celebrating wine from my favorite poet/philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Bacchus
BRING me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffer’d no savour of the earth to ‘scape.
Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root,
Which feels the acrid juice
Of Styx and Erebus;
And turns the woe of Night,
By its own craft, to a more rich delight.
We buy ashes for bread;
We buy diluted wine;
Give me of the true,
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curl’d
Among the silver hills of heaven
Draw everlasting dew;
Wine of wine,
Blood of the world,
Form of forms, and mould of statures,
That I intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures;
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well:
Wine that is shed
Like the torrents of the sun
Up the horizon walls,
Or like the Atlantic streams, which run
When the South Sea calls.
Water and bread,
Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.
Wine which Music is,—
Music and wine are one,—
That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;
Kings unborn shall walk with me;
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man.
Quicken’d so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.
I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls of use
Open and flow.
Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lote!
Haste to cure the old despair;
Reason in Nature’s lotus drench’d—
The memory of ages quench’d—
Give them again to shine;
Let wine repair what this undid;
And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the agèd prints,
And write my old adventures with the pen
Which on the first day drew,
Upon the tablets blue,
The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
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July 1 2006
Thin Blue Flame by Josh Ritter
I became a thin blue flame Polished on a mountain range And over hills and fields I flew Wrapped up in a royal blue I flew over Royal City last night A bullfighter on the horns of a new moon¹s light Caesar¹s ghost I saw the war-time tides The prince of Denmark¹s father still and quiet And the whole world was looking to get drowned Trees were a fist shaking themselves at the clouds I looked over curtains and it was then that I knew Only a full house gonna make it through
I became a thin blue wire That held the world above the fire And so it was I saw behind Heaven¹s just a thin blue line If God¹s up there he¹s in a cold dark room The heavenly host are just the cold dark moons He bent down and made the world in seven days And ever since he¹s been a¹walking away Mixing with nitrogen in lonely holes Where neither seraphim or raindrops go I see an old man wandering the halls alone Only a full house gonna make a home
I became a thin blue stream The smoke between asleep and dreams And in that clear blue undertow I saw Royal City far below Borders soft with refugees Streets a¹swimming with amputees It¹s a Bible or a bullet they put over your heart It¹s getting harder and harder to tell them apart Days are nights and the nights are long Beating hearts blossom into walking bombs And those still looking in the clear blue sky for a sign Get missiles from so high they might as well be divine Now the wolves are howling at our door Singing bout vengeance like it¹s the joy of the Lord Bringing justice to the enemies not the other way round They¹re guilty when killed and they¹re killed where they¹re found If what¹s loosed on earth will be loosed up on high It¹s a Hell of a Heaven we must go to when we die Where even Laurel begs Hardy for vengeance please The fat man is crying on his hands and his knees Back in the peacetime he caught roses on the stage Now he twists indecision takes bourbon for rage Lead pellets peppering aluminum Halcyon, laudanum and Opium Sings kiss thee hardy this poisoned cup His winding sheet is busy winding up In darkness he looks for the light that has died But you need faith for the same reasons that it¹s so hard to find And this whole thing is headed for a terrible wreck And like good tragedy that¹s what we expect
At night I make plans for a city laid down Like the hips of a girl on the spring covered ground Spirals and capitals like the twist of a script Streets named for heroes that could almost exist The fruit trees of Eden and the gardens that seem To float like the smoke from a lithium dream Cedar trees growing in the cool of the squares The young women walking in the portals of prayer And the future glass buildings and the past an address And the weddings in pollen and the wine bottomless And all wrongs forgotten and all vengeance made right The suffering verbs put to sleep in the night The future descending like a bright chandelier And the world just beginning and the guests in good cheer In Royal City I fell into a trance Oh it¹s hell to believe there ain¹t a hell of a chance
I woke beneath a clear blue sky The sun a shout the breeze a sigh My old hometown and the streets I knew Were wrapped up in a royal blue I heard my friends laughing out across the fields The girls in the gloaming and the birds on the wheel The raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay Cicadas electric in the heat of the day A run of Three Sisters and the flush of the land And the lake was a diamond in the valley¹s hand The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts They were coming together they pulling apart And angels everywhere were in my midst In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed I wondered what it was I¹d been looking for up above Heaven is so big there ain¹t no need to look up So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air Only a full house gonna have a prayer
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July 1 2006
Jeff’s/Good Grape Note: I’m on a 10 day sabbatical from writing posts for Good Grape, returning over the weekend of June 16th/17th
In lieu of wine-related posts, I’m taking the opportunity to pull a page from the, “To know a man, look at his bookshelf” school of thought, but instead of my bookshelf, I’m highlighting an RSS feed a day that I keep up with that is non wine-related—grist for the mill, so to speak.
See you back, recharged, invigorated with headspace de-gunked in about a week.
The Blog: Church of the Custmer
Site URL: http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/
What I like about the site: In business everything begins and ends with the customer. This site covers not only customer experience, but also the rise in citizen marketing & content. For insight into a seismic shift on the way we –consumers- want to be interacted with, this site is a great asset.
Posted in, Influences. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
July 1 2006
Bacchus
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose taproots reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffered no savor of the world to ‘scape.
Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root
Which feels the acrid juice
Of Styx and Erebus,
And turns the woe of night,
By its own craft, to a more rich delight.
We buy ashes for bread,
We buy diluted wine;
Give me of the true,
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven,
Draw everlasting dew;
Wine of wine,
Blood of the world,
Form of forms and mould of statures,
That I; intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures,
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well.
Wine that is shed
Like the torrents of the sun
Up the horizon walls;
Or like the Atlantic streams which run
When the South Sea calls.
Water and bread;
Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting;
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.
Wine which music is;
Music and wine are one;
That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far chaos talk with me,
Kings unborn shall walk with me,
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man:
Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.
I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls ot use
Open and flow.
Pour, Bacchus, the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine;
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lot.
Haste to cure the old despair,
Reason in nature’s lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;—
Give them again to shine.
Let wine repair what this undid,
And where the infection slid,
And dazzling memory revive.
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the aged prints,
And write my old adventures, with the pen
Which, on the first day, drew
Upon the tablets blue
The dancing Pleiads, and the eternal men.
Posted in, Influences. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
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