KJPcreations

Listening to an old song in a new place, Waiting On An Angel by Ben Harper. The cottage is still cold although the PG& E bill I received in the mail today would have you believe The Heat Is On by Glenn Frey is in fact, on all the time but really, I flip the switch only when I’ve seen my breath for too many consecutive hours. I got it! I got it! I will have some firewood delivered since The Pony can’t haul like a good ol’ country truck can. Maybe a strapping young fellow will deliver me wood. (Did she really mean to write that?) Sorry, folks, this is not a PG rated blog. I have so gracefully decided to release one of my illegitimate children out into the wild and have included a short story entitled, Legal Aphrodisiacs. Be careful as this little rascal is a tad feral. I dedicate this story to Randy Hyde, whose love of corporate forced birthday cake is unparalleled. Look forward to next week’s blog where I explore, “The Things I’ve Learned About Wine Country, Grapes, Tourist, Firewood, Friends, Tires And Other Stuff These Past Nine Months Or So.” This is a working title, of course.

A morning on the porch: a lukewarm cup of coffee with not enough soy milk threatens to get colder as I ponder this exact moment and all the moments leading up to it. Here I am, on a porch overlooking acres of Riesling grapes sunbathing in clusters and enjoying their last few weeks of life; hanging out on the vine until they incarnate into another form of life in the bottle. Harvest season is around the corner. My birthday is around the corner— a few eves away to be exact. While I have no cluster around me here in wine country, I do sometimes sunbathe, inadvertently, while I am on a run or on the run but these days I am convinced I have cancer as some form of it threatens to go there on my forehead. Perhaps it’s just an age spot but I am too young for such a sign of getting too old. And my birthday is around the corner, a few breaths away and my coffee is nearly cold now. My favorite winter mornings in Manhattan were spent walking through central park on my way to the dance studio with a hot cup of coffee, hazelnut flavored, and a bagel with veggie cream cheese in tow. (That was my lactose period.) Some times I walked by the pond (the one you see in those Woody Allen movies where fashionable families play with their sailboats) and other mornings I walked by the big field that on summer days is filled with all those antics involving throwing and catching and activities involving picnic blankets. The beauty of the walk through the Central Park from the east side to the west side was the infinite number of paths to choose from. And on those cold winter mornings, I felt the infinite possibility of life and my coffee remained hot. But today I am older and I have a different sort of relationship to nature; I relate to the grape, contemplating my next incarnation because a certain amount of life has passed and a certain amount of life is before me. I’m wrestling it all out in the page and I am not wholly convinced of what is staying and what is going but the harvest season is around the corner. I celebrate my birthday nearly alone and with a certain amount of fear as to where this wily adventure in Napa will bring me, but for now I embrace all there is to hold onto…my cold mug o’ joe and an enchanting view of growth.

“It’s not necessarily awkward but perhaps so…in a greasy sort of why,” he spoke in slippery tones between sips of his blended organic green tea. He divulged, at length, his thoughts about okra much to the chagrin of his tablemate. They met a few minutes ago at the Fresh’n Squeeze juice counter. He bought her a frothy carrot-beat juice pure hoping the gesture would forgive his fowl thoughts and his missing toes. She was too polite to say no and contemplating the gaps ostentatiously framed by the straps of his Birkenstocks she thought, “it would not hurt to share an organic beverage with such a guy. Openness challenges us at the least opportune moments.” She tightened the hemp scrunchy clasping her voluptuous locks and gently let him know that okra reminded her of snot. They drank in the earth and silently celebrated the gifts of the overtly farmed soil surrounding their homes.

It’s harvest season and I hear the word crush several times a day along with other words like brix or fermentation and fruit; perhaps, fruit is the one I hear the most since it’s time to pick the grapes and the vines seen along the highway are kissed by fall’s brown, yellow and tawny lips. The vines are ready to release their ripe companions and rest. The early evening breeze wafts with a nip of winter and while I relish these small signs of the seasons changing, (it has been years since I’ve felt such tides) something inside of me mourns. Even my favorite run has changed and what began as a brightly sunlit dipped trail is now cast in shades of blue and black and as I run alongside silhouettes of cactus, tall birch trees and rocks I too, become a silhouette. I find comfort in the darkness because it is difficult to tell where I am going and what is behind me and I release either impression, sinking into the shadows of the revealing fall evening. The fruit no longer hangs along most of the vines seen alongside the highway. They are experiencing yeast and releasing CO2 gases in a French oak barrel or a steal vat somewhere in Napa - a less romantic setting - but maybe they have already forgotten their former shape and place of being. Does it really matter anyway? Tonight, I feel myself disappear into a trail ensconced in the hills of wine country; a hillside populated with black figures and what does it matter what form any of us take on? We all take shape in relation to one another; it’s all a matter of perspective. Tonight, I become the dark and I become the fruit and I become the time vanished or the time sought and I become the winter and I die. It’s harvest season and tomorrow I will hear the word crush several times.

A kitty will chase off a jackrabbit. A dog will chase off a kitty and most likely kill a jackrabbit. A dog, if given the opportunity, may even be inclined to kill a kitty but such slayings are not encouraged nor in fashion, at least not audibly so, here in the land of vines. A jackrabbit, if given the opportunity, will host a most fabulous tea party with the vineyard dragonflies. The jackrabbit is always rushing off to the event of the week, a most excellent soiree he is late for or maybe he is hoping to be the first to arrive. Either way, these jackrabbits don’t mind being chased because they were running like they were being chased to begin with. Some days I feel like the kitty, other days the dog and most days like the jackrabbit; but I like to fancy myself the vineyard dragonfly, sipping on a cup of freshly steeped tea, enjoying the stillness of the growing grapes.

I’ve give up, giving up on love. And sometimes it’s better to stay home and drink a bottle of wine than go out there and put yourself on the line, one more time. Some things are just as inevitable as the rain you hear crashing all around, outside. Tonight, this particular night the rain is comforting. It takes away the heavy weight of silence that wraps itself around the cottage and makes me think demons are after me or there is a slashed-up body hanging in the washroom behind the funky, orange accordion doors in my bathroom. I am too exhausted to start a fire and too frightened to go to bed and dream of Beelzebub so I sit on my only sitting thing, a stool, at the kitchen bar and listen to the rain tapping all around outside; I am wrapped in an elegant black evening shawl, a green puffy coat I call the fuzzy greenie of life, a flannel blanket folded around my legs, red fingerless gloves and pink slippers my mother just sent me, underneath a long blue pajama top I am convinced makes me look fat. It’s been less than a three-weeks and I have a new place to live, my relationship ended, my laptop disappeared and I nearly lost my best friend. And my only friend in wine country declares his love for me and, subsequently, needs to withdrawal. Tonight, like most nights, I am alone. But I’m really not some complaining bitch…another wounded woman venting. Silence can weigh heavy but certainly can’t keep you warm at night. For warmth, you need things like hot baths, warm soup, and a crackling fire. You need happy things like people around to remind you to not give up. I give up, giving up on happy things. And tonight, I think my only options are to sit here and type these words and drink my wine and pretend I am warm and that I love the rain’s clapping company. I’m really not some complaining bitch…another wounded woman venting. I fought the good fight and I’ve made a damn fool of myself for love over and over, for years and years, but in the end, I find myself here in a charming, creek side cottage in Sonoma, alone with a bottle of cheap wine; my only company is the silence of solitude. And sometimes it’s better to stay at home and drink in the solitude because it means something the next day when you walk out in the world and you wear the solitude like a brilliant, bright moon in the midnight sky. This is my beauty. This is my gift. It’s another winter morning in Napa and the vines are losing their last bits of color; quince, sienna and auburn turn to black. I get out of my car to gas up, cursing the price of oil and the time it takes to fill my tank and there he is. He stops and looks towards the payment kiosk. And you could say in an instant, it was love. It was a moment of tiny gesture. He walks all crooked and palsy with kangaroo paws and knees knocking. He slips the credit card in and out and taps in his code with his thumb. When he is finished, he looks back at his partner in the car, proud, and he smiles a perfect, toothy grin. When he smiles, he is beautiful. The music on the radio is incongruent with this moment. And in that tiny moment of gesture, I know love is crooked and palsy and there is no perfect. I give up breaking the perfect fragile moments you can never replicate. Tonight, I admit to myself I have no stories to write. I suck at story and indulge in seconds of gesture, the cathartic stillness of truth. I have to pee and think about this. I love the small, beige tiles in my bathroom mostly because it’s my bathroom and there is no one here to make demands of me or remind me that I mean nothing and to give up on everything. And I look at the vagabond reflection of myself and I love that I look ridiculously hopeless and all puffy because tonight there is no one to impress and no one to let me down for not impressing them enough. The silence is thick and right now, I feel warm and held. And tonight the reflection of the fool in the mirror reminds me that I give up, giving up on love. There is love in the eyes of that silly, maudlin gal looking back at me with the pink slippers and red, fingerless gloves. I am convinced there is love in both raindrops and teardrops; you just have to listen soft enough to the silence of solitude.