I have started a new creative venture. It is with a new group of people in a new environment with new ideas about wine and living life.  It strikes me how profoundly something brand new can feel as comfortable as a worn in sweater…the one you pull on on a cool Saturday morning, to read the paper and drink your tea … soft, roomy and just right. Mine is light blue and was my father’s who has since passed away. He had drawers full of these sweaters because we never knew what to buy for him and, when asked, he would ask for a blue sweater.

It is the concept of déjà vu, of all is one, of the realization that what you have come to stand upon was beneath your feet all along – a quantum jump from here to there, in place… here, again.

It is such with people we may meet from time to time. It is as though we have known them forever, or have been waiting for them and not known it. 

This is a poem by Neruda.  A bit lengthy but then again, like the person who has taken their own sweet time to arrive, worth the wait.

Besos dulces,

Elisabet

Ode and Burgeonings
by Pablo Neruda

The taste of your mouth and the color of your skin,
skin, mouth, fruit of these swift days,
tell me, were they always beside you
through years and journeys and moons and suns
and earth and weeping and rain and joy
or is it only now that
they come from your roots,
only as water brings to the dry earth
burgeoning that it did not know,
or as to the lips of the forgotten jug
the taste of the earth rises in the water?

I don’t know, don’t tell me, you don’t know.
Nobody knows these things.
But bringing all my senses close
to the light of your skin, you disappear,
you melt like the acid
aroma of a fruit
and the heat of a road,
and the smell of corn being stripped,
the honeysuckle of the pure afternoon,
the names of the dusty earth,
the infinite perfume of our country:
Magnolia and thicket, blood and flour,
the gallop of horses,
the village’s dusty moon,
newborn bread:
ah from your skin everything comes back to my mouth,
comes back to my heart, comes back to my body,
and with you I become again
the earth that you are:
you are deep spring in me:
in you I know again how I am born.

II

Years of yours that I should have felt
growing near me like clusters
until you had seen how the sun and the earth
had destined you for my hands of stone,
until grape by grape you had made
the wine sing in my veins.
the wind or the horse
swerving were able
to make me pass through your childhood,
you have seen the same sky each day,
the same dark winter mud,
the endless branching of the plum trees
and their dark-purple sweetness.
Only a few miles of night,
the drenched distances
of the country dawn,
a handful of earth separated us, the transparent
walls
that we did not cross, so that life,
afterward, could put all
the seas and the earth
between us, and we could come together
in spite of space,
step by step seeking each other, from one ocean to another,
until I saw that the sky was aflame and your hair was flying in the light
and you came to my kisses with the fire
of an unchained meteor
and you melted in my blood, the sweetness
of the wild plum
of our childhood I received in my mouth,
and I clutched you to my breast as
if I were regaining earth and life.

III

My wild girl, we have had
to retain time
and march backward, in the distance
of our lives, kiss after kiss,
gathering from one place what we gave
without joy, discovering in another
the secret road
that gradually brought your feet close to mine,
and so beneath my mouth
you see again the unfulfilled plant
of your life putting out its roots
toward my heart that was waiting for you.
and one by one the nights between our separted cities
are joined to the night that unites us.
The light of each day,
its flame or its repose,
they deliver to us, taking them from time,
and so our treasure is disinterred in shadow or light,
and so our kisses kiss life:
all love I enclosed in our love:
all thirst ends in our embrace.
Here we are at last face to face,
we have met,
we have lost nothing.
We have felt each other lip to lip,
we have changed a thousand times
between us death and life,
all that we were bringing
like dead medals
we threw to the bottom of the sea,
all that we learned
was of no use to us:
we begin again,
we end again
death and life.
And here we survive,
pure, with the purity that we created,
broader than the earth that could not lead us astray
eternal as the fire that will burn
as long as life endures

I have a feeling that if I set out to find the voluptuous, seductive, wine and kissing references in the writing of Mr. Jay McInerney, I might never return.  He is a kindred soul to all of us who seek a life that contains a wine glass in one hand and a bosom in the other.  I have known of Mr. McInerney for a time now. He visited an ultra high-end winery and caused harvest to occur nearly two weeks ahead of schedule.   ¡El poder! 

 Following is a Jay McInerney, author of Hedonist in the Cellar, piece for your wine and kissing reading pleasure…

 Speaking of Krug, he writes “’The soloist is the year, but the orchestra is Krug.’  The powerful, slightly backward ’88 and the monumental ’90 vintages are well worth seeking out and cellaring for a few years, even if, like me,  you can afford only a bottle or two. I once compared the  experience of drinking Krug rosé to a dream I had of kissing Sharon Stone; I suspect that drinking the 1990 in a few years will be something like kissing Angelina Jolie.”

 Besos,

 Elisabet

Besos,
Elisabet

Excerpt from Rock Bottom
by Michael Ondaatje

What were the names of the towns
we drove through

      stunned     lost

having drunk our way
up vineyards
and then Hot Springs
boiling out the drunkenness

What were the names
I slept through
       my head
on your thigh
hundreds of miles
of blackness entering the car

        All this
       darkness and stars
but now
under the Napa Valley night
a star arch of dashboard
the ripe grape moon
we are together

I love this muscle
that tenses
     and joins
the accelerator
to my cheek

Do you have someone in your life who has asked you to ‘break the glass’. Have you been that person for another? This is a lovely passage. I hope you enjoy it.

Besos,

Elisabet

Excerpt from By the River Peidra I Sat Down and Wept
by Paulo Coelho

His eyes gleamed. He was ready to surmount any barrier.

I took one of my hands from his and placed my glass of wine at the edge of the table.

“It’s going to fall,” he said.

“Exactly. I want you to tip it over the dge.”

“Break the glass?”

Yes, break the glass. A simple gesture, but one that brings up fears we can’t really understand. What’s wrong with breaking an inexpensive lgass, when everyone has done so unintentionally at some time in their life?

“Break the glass?” he repeated. “Why?”

“Well, I could give you lots of reasons,” I answered. “But actually,  just to break it.”

“For you?”

“No, of course not.”

He eyed the glass on the edge of the table — worried that it might fall.

It’s a rite of passage, I wanted to say. It’s something prohibited. Glasses are not purposely broken. In a restaurant or in our home, we’re careful not to place glasses by the edge of a table. Our univers required that we aovide letting gllasses fall to the floor.

But when we break them by accident, we realize that it’s not very serious. The waiter says, “It’s nothing,” and when has anyone been charged for a broken glass? Breaking glasses is part of life and does not damage to us, to the restaurant, or to anyone else.

I bumped the table. The glass shook but didn’t fall.

“Careful!” he said, instinctively.

“Break the glass,” I insisted.

Break the glass, I thought to myself, becuase it’s a symbolic gesture. Try to understand that I have broken things within myself that were much more important than a glass, and I’m happy I did. Resolve your own internal battle, and break the glass.

Our parents taught us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies. They taught us that the passion sof childhood are impossible, that we should not flee from priests, that people cannot perform miracles, and that no one leaves on a journey without knowing where they are going.

Break the glass, please — and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.

“Break the glass,” I said again.

He stared at me. Then slowly, he slid his hand along the tablecloth to the glass. And with a sudden movement, he pushed it to the floor.

The sound of the breaking glass caught the waiter’s attention. Rather than apologize for having broken the glass, he looked at me, smiling — and I smiled back.

“Doesn’t matter,” shouted the waiter.

But he wasn’t listening. He had stood, seized my hair in his hands, and was kissing me.

I clutched at his hair, too, and squeezed him with all my strength, biting his lips and feeling his tongue move in my mouth. This was the kiss I had waited for so long — a kiss born by the rivers of our childhood, when we didn’t yet know what love meant. A kiss that had been suspended in the air as we grew, that had traveled the world in the souvenir of a medal, and that had remained hidden behind piles of books. A kiss that had been lost so many times and now was found. In the moment of that kiss were years of searching disillusionment, and impossible dreams.

I kissed him hard. The few people there in the bar must have been thinking that all they were seeing was just a kiss. They didn’t know that this kiss stood for my whole life — and his life, as well. The life of anyone who has wasted, dreamed, and searched for their true path.

The moment of that kiss contained every happy moment I had ever lived.

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.

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.

Red Bird, a confidante, brought me this wine and kissing tale from modern troubadour, Townes van Zandt. I promised ‘Troubadours Part Deux’. This is a lovely song of wine and lost kisses.

Kisses,
Elisabet

From “Like a Summer Thursday”
by Townes van Zandt

Her face was crystal
Fair and fine
Her breath was morning
Her lips were wine
Her eyes were laughter
Her touch divine
Her face was crystal
And she was mine

If only she
Could feel my pain
But feelin’ is a burden
She can’t sustain
So like a summer thursday
I cry for rain
To come and turn
The ground to green again

If only she
Could hear my songs
’bout the empty difference
‘tween the rights and wrongs
Then I know that I
Could stand alone
As well as they
Now that she’s gone

Her face was crystal
Fair and fine
Her breath was morning
Her lips were wine
Her eyes were laughter
Her touch divine
Her face was crystal
And she was mine

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.”

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.

we were falling in love and
we liked it
bottoms of feet stained
purple
floor splatters mingled into one
beneath toes and
heals and
arches
we began to kiss again no
pulling away for breath
she leaned in and
I was done
a slow sweet pull from all
time amalgamed into
three hour lip face soliloquy of
all things wonderful and
human and
alive in
moment