Wine and Kissing

“yes, in spite of it all”

– John Keats

Hola Bellos,

How many kisses are enough? When would that question present itself?  Perhaps on a first date? Perhaps on the third or fourth date? Maybe the question would come up after a marriage of seven years? There comes a time, whether it be in a marriage of fifty years, or for a couple after 50 first dates in 14 months, there is never enough… los besos no se puede limitar.

I share with you a poem from Catullus (c. 84 – C. 54 BC). William Harris (1926 – 2009) Professor Emeritas Middlebury College www.middlebury.edu/~harris writes of Catullus, “…if you get into his writing early and sincerely, there will be enough artistry and brilliance there to last you the rest of your years. One changes gears over the years, and some early favorites pall as time passes. It seems safe to say that if you once really “perceive” Catullus, his poems will stay with you for life. Crede experto.”

To me, Catullus seems to say that when there are enough, we are no longer able to count, or perhaps no longer need to.  I believe him.

Besos,
Elisabet

How Many Kisses
by Catullus

How many kisses satisfy,
How many are enough and more,
You ask me, Lesbia. I reply,
As many as the Lybian sands
Sprinkling the Cyrenaic shore
Where silphium grows, between the paces
Where old King Battus’s tomb stands
And Jupiter Ammon has his shrine
In Siwa’s sweltering oasis;
As many as the stars above
That in the dead of midnight shine
Upon men’s secrecies of love.
When he has all those kisses, mad-
Hungry Catullus will have had
Enough to slake his appetite –
So many that sharp eyes can’t tell
The number, and the tongues of spite
Are too confused to form a spell.

Does everyone dream of sailing, or just a few? To float on the open sea like a dream awake.  Diane Ackerman asked Roger Searle Payne, “What is the most beautiful encounter with singing whales you can remember?”  “Oh, that’s easy,”  he said, … “Lying in the cockpit of a boat at night off Bermuda with a faint gentle breeze and the mast sweeping across and clouds of stars above you, listening to the sounds of whales, which are sort of flooding up out of the ocean through the earphones you’re wearing as you become part of the same rhythm that the songs dance to. The songs are set by the rhythm of swells in the oeans. “   I thought of that image of lying in a boat, listening to whales singing, when I read one of my favorite poems of love and the sea.

Buen viaje,
Elisabet

Drunk As Drunk
by Pablo Neruda
(Translated by W.S. Merwin)

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made out of flowers
Feasted, we guide it – our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal –
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Oh my soul… Rabindranath Tagore paraphrased by Pablo Neruda translated by M.S. Merwin with mention of lips and wine. 

Paz,
Elisabet

In My Sky At Twilight
This poem is a paraphrase by Pablo Neruda of the 30th poem in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Gardener

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud.
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon’s
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depths of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.

Is baseball everything? It just may be.  Here is a lovely wine and kissing tale that gathers an exotic Arab prince, new love, long lasting love, the same love,  kissing and baseball.  First read the lovely tale, then then click on one or all of the much loved baseball 7th inning stretch Kiss-Cam tunes. Kiss me.

Besos,

Elisabet

Kiss Me (music video),  Six Pence None the Richer

Kiss Me (music video), New Found Glory

Kiss Me, The Cranberries (the best version, you find it)

By Darryl Vennard
From the Gundlach Bundschu Poetry Contest

“You have to come to Gundlach Bundschu for their 135th anniversary”, Gibran Jabboorri demanded matter-of-factly. “I cannot” was all I had to say. Never, I mean never, negotiate with an Arab Prince.
There I was at Rheinfarm when I saw her for the first time. “What is the story with the beautiful blonde?” I queried. Jim Bundschu interrupted, “The story is short: She is out of your league.”

I had struck out from not the batter’s box, but from the on deck circle. Not for the first time, the last. We danced to The Bone Daddy’s, kissed beneath the Sonoma moon, and fell in love.  16 years and three beautiful sons later, I never read the jacket cover, never negotiate with Sheiks, never believe the reviewer… And step up to the plate.

Oh Rheinfarm, it’s not merely your Cabernet and Gewurtz that has passed my lips and filled my soul.

To a Lady on her Transaltion of Voiture’s “Kiss”
by Thomas Moore

Voiture:
“Mon âme sur ma lèvre étais lors tout entière,
   Pour savourer le miel qui sur la votre étais;
Mais en me retirant, elle resta derrière,
   Tant de ce doux plaisir l’amorce l’arrêtoit!”

Moore:
How heavenly was the poet’s doom,
To breathe his spirit through a kiss,
And lose within so sweet a tomb
The trembling messenger of bliss!

And, ah! his soul retunred to feel
That it again could ravished be;
For in the kiss that thou didst steal,
His life and soul have fled to thee!

Diane Ackerman is a modern priestess of love and nature. She weaves tales of extraordinary beauty based on the natural wonders of this world. She has written of the senses, kissing, whales, the planets, bats and many other things, focusing on the natural world.

In this passage from A Natural History of Love, she write of chilvary and troubadours. How do we convey our emotion and love in a way that rings true?  It is a personal endeavor, a personal art. It can never be wrong as long as what is truly in our hearts  is not left a secret.  If a troubadour brings a tale of love and longing, may we all bring such a message clear and true.

 Where is the wine, where the kiss? To be continued…

Sweet kisses of harvest,
Elisabet

 Troubadours
By Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love

When he returned from a spotty career in the Crusades, William IX, duke of Aquitaine (1,071 – 1,127), began composing songs of love and yearning, which we now recognize as the first troubadour love songs. He may well have been inspired by Moorish writers, who sang of love as an ennobling force and women as transcendent goddesses. Arabia and Spain regularly exchanged artists as well as ambassadors and their culture spread into southern France. Best known was the Andalusian poet Ibn-Hazm, who wrote in his classic The Ring of the Dove (1022) that “the union of souls is a thousand time more beautiful than that of bodies.” His attitude was deeply Platonic as well as Muslim, especially when he spoke about the need to become one with the beloved. It was a natural need, common as sand but powerful as radium, because love is the reunion of souls that, before creation, were made from the same primordial stuffs that became divided later in the physical universe.  “The lover’s soul,” he says, “is ever seeking for the other, striving after it, searching it out, yearning to encounter it again, drawing it to itself it might be as a magnet draws the iron.”

I’ve been thinking about Mae West.  What words, sights, scents, sounds come forth when we think of Ms. West?   ‘Bold’, ‘feathers’, ‘heady’, ‘sultry’?  In nature she would be a male peacock or pampas grass. In this life she was Mae West, breaking boundaries of puritanical America and rescuing Paramount with her 1993 film ‘She Done Him Wrong’ with Cary Grant, 10 years her junior.  She departed in 1980 and I did not have the good fortune to make her acquaintance in my lifetime, but I have a feeling she would have looked me right in the eye. I would have hoped for a sly wink. 

This evening in seeking a wine connection to Mae West, Lord knows there would be no shortage of kissing connections, I would hope to share these fun as fun can be Peel Me a Grape videos.  ¡Escúchelos, por favor!  My recommendation would be to start with the sexy ’60′s version by Dusty, then slow down with Diana.  The lyrics suggest that we ought not be hesitant to throw in a few instructions…  Skin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillow.

Besos,
Elisabet

by Mae West
“I have found men who didn’t know who to kiss. I’ve always found time to teach them.”

Music Video: Peel Me a Grape by Dusty Springfield

Music Video: Peel Me a Grape by Diana Krall 

Peel Me a Grape
by Dave Frishberg, Songwriter

Peel me a grape, crush me some ice
Skin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillow
Talk to me nice, talk to me nice
You’ve got to wine and dine me

Don’t try to fool me bejewel me
Either amuse me or lose me
I’m getting hungry, peel me a grape

Pop me a cork, french me a fry
Crack me a nut, bring a bowl full of bon-bons
Chill me some wine, keep standing by
Just entertain me, champagne me
Show me you love me, kid glove me
Best way to cheer me, cashmere me
I’m getting hungry, peel me a grape

Here’s how to be an agreeable chap
Love me and leave me in luxury’s lap
Hop when I holler, skip when I snap
When I say, “do it,” jump to it

Send out for scotch, call me a cab
Cut me a rose, make my tea with the petals
Just hang around, pick up the tab
Never out think me, just mink me
Polar bear rug me, don’t bug me
New Thunderbird me, you heard me
I’m getting hungry, peel me a grape

Lovers, friends, familia:

What allows gentleness to pervail?  It is the ability to slow down, the appreciation of all of our senses, the possibility that the kiss may come from an unexpected place — from a child, a Golden Retriever, a Grandfather, a waitress? If we open ourselves to the love of the world, to be ideally a lively ‘supplier’ but at a minimum a gracious ‘receiver’, might we be more forgiving and gentle towards those closest to us?  This is a lovely poem of mi hermana, Rabia, food, marriage, gentleness, wine and kisses.

Salud!

Elisabet 

Dinner at the Shish Cafe
by Ronnie Hess
published in Alimentum, The Literature of Food, Issue Ten

 My husband surprises me over dinner by asking Rabia, our Moroccan waitress,
If she’s heard of Rabia from Basra Rabia al-Alawiyya,
The eighth century Iraqi poet, the holy woman born into poverty,
The visionary who when freed from slavery chose a lifetime of prayer.
My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude,
And my Beloved is with me always.

Muslim mothers give daughters her name. Of course, Rabia knows.

She takes our order — Syrian salad with artichokes and feta cheese.
Pea soup with potatoes,lamb and string beans stewed in tomato sauce.
She sits with us while she writes the dishes down on her pad.
She speaks English, French and Arabic. She is studying to be an architect.
She holds our wine glasses by the stem, not the lip.
The lamb comes with rice mixed with pine nuts and pomegranate seeds.
She kisses me goodnight on both cheeks.

My husband says listening to poetry is hard work. Poems are dense.
Sometimes, I let him read mine. He sits quietly. He studies them.
He edits in blue ink in the margins, he writes words like
Good, nice image, not quite right, and meaning unclear.