Maybe this is more jumbled because of my illness(es), maybe it eventually makes sense, comes back around in a more coherent manner.
Everyone loves a comeback story, or so they say. The Shawshank Redemption is an easy top pick movie, so whenever its on, the remote stops. What a tale, all-time stuff. Movies are another escape from reality we often need, a way to appreciate creativity in this world, another form of story-telling and connecting reality with the dream. The point of a story, to remember, to teach, to share, to learn, perhaps inspire. And I learn (hope I learn) a little each time I watch Andy and Redd do their magic in the prison yard. Even after 100plus viewings. I also owe my presence on this earth to a movie, not Shawshank but a Roadrunner, odd as that may sound its true. As I’ve been under the weather with COVID, challenged physically and mentally over the last few days, the Friday night Shawshank was quite comforting to me in my maddening state of discomfort and insomnia. I also need a comeback, the virus has knocked my down pretty good, I underestimated that and now am dizzy, sore throat, ears infected and ringing, pulling myself up from the mat. Time for a comeback and to even the score with the virus, just as Andy did with the warden. Right now I am deep in learning the story and the message, so far from being able to properly tell it.
A Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island reference popping up as they outfitted the prison library, that was good too. Another story for another day, that one also. At a mental low moment that coincided with watching the movie, I took a couple positive thoughts and notes, inspiration is always near:
Time to get busy living, or get busy dying. I’ve spent too much of my life on the latter and need to focus more on the former, and climb that ladder (as Andy set in motion his plan to escape down a ladder and the sewer pipes to freedom and move forward)
I’ve been given more than 6 feet of rope – now will I make good use of it like Andy did, tying his essential belongings to his leg to facilitate his escape, or succumb to weakness and a different escape one last time, hanging myself with that rope just as Brooks did in the halfway house. For freedom wasn’t freeing at all for an 80 year old man, institutionalized for all of his adult life.
Keep going, appreciate the things happening around me that pull me forward, much of the time I’m just a passenger in the vehicle, and a vehicle for which inspiration stops in on and imparts knowledge. I hope to share some of that knowledge too, keeping it all for myself would be as horrible as owning a beautiful piece of art only to keep it under wraps for my own personal viewing (but we will get to that in the next story also). Inexplicable genius, like that explained from Elizabeth Gilbert in her 2009 Ted Talk – the creatives would be much better off embracing the external creative genius that flows into us and through us, inspires us.
Halfway through the movie inspiration arrived in a message from a close friend, enjoying a fantastic wine from Paso Robles CA, a Clos Solene, Fleur de Solene. A spectacular, beautiful wine, a better story about the winery and proprietors, and a simple yet powerful message from great friends who thought enough of me to send along a pic all the way from Puerto Rico. Much needed and timely, even though I have such deep, mixed emotions of Paso Robles, they are positive on balance, becoming more so with the proper perspective, for that I am grateful.
The movie completed, two friends on a beach overlooking the vast Pacific Ocean, enjoying what remained of their lives, finally free. Probably listening to a Buffett song while they worked on the boat, repairs needed for new voyages.
I gargled more salt water for my throat, thinking of the salty beach air and water I miss daily. Then it was back to the rough seas of rest on the air mattress in isolation, praying to sleep well. After another night of struggle, I woke up this morning in complete disarray. And wetter than I had been the previous few days, soaked in my own sweat to the point that the sheets, plastic air mattress and my skin were an amalgamation, sticky, salty, flaky, caky. Not pretty. But at the same time of physical disgust, I was powerless to do anything but grab my phone and capture my thoughts, they were racing like a locomotive. Many mornings I awaken not sure if I am still dreaming or not, and this was another case in point. That Clos Solene somehow weaved into my dreams and delirium and I had a lot in my head to get out. And I was fishing on a boat as I used to growing up so many days. The daemon, the demon or genius was shaking me violently to get up and out of bed, driving words and visions into my head such that I had to relieve the pressure and capture them before another loss.
The Clos Solene story, Shawshank, the Vietnam quote I read of Anthony Bourdain before bed, unwrapping a new piece of art that arrived via mail (hoping to use those words wisely), it was all connected, the Gaia again. We can take a SAMO approach and miss it, or do something different this time – but you have to appreciate it before its gone (thanks Al Diaz). If there’s just a shred of a chance all this pushes me forward in the right direction, it will all be worth it.
It will hurt if I swallow, but it also hurts not to. Perhaps more in the end. All of this surely is meaningless to everyone else on the planet, but so meaningful to me.
There was a question, as I struggled mightily to swallow.
Would she be more ashamed to eventually see me fail her in far greater fashion in the future or to just have me go now? That is a common question. I don’t know where I would go but that is inconsequential to the main point. I am so lost right now in every way, and the last thing I want to do is move forward into a comfortable existence and continue to weigh down someone who needs none of what I am and have to offer. Or maybe a shipwrecked boat that can be salvaged, only time will tell (and I know that is what she would say).
And distraction after distraction to keep it all going - makes me very sad also – moving across the country, a new dog and home renovation, new job, unfamiliar environment to mask or shadow what I really am and where we truly are. My wife is in a tough spot with me, and her heart won’t let her do the right thing, she is forever believing, trusting, with faith that is as large and has no memory like the Pacific Ocean. I am undeserving, ever since that first look and it brings me to tears.
It truly only takes one look, that first look. Or a single second to change anything, the wind blowing just right, picking up the pheromones, that inexplicable feeling that what you are feeling, seeing, smelling, touching, its beyond our consciousness. That’s when you swallow the hook. Reminds me of a great, perhaps one of the greatest Buffet songs ever: from Floridays, 1986 entitled First Look. More island escapism.
Amor a primeira vista Voce nao, quer que o insista
Buffett is a tremendously powerful lyricist, creative mind, author and artist than any Margaritaville boat drink, cheeseburger or flip flops in the sand would indicate.
Then there was the Anthony Bourdain article I read last night during the 2am insomnia and more salt-water gargling, more of that life-changing first look surfacing. For not enough of us know about Vietnam’s place in Bourdain’s heart and it only took a first look. On his first trip to Asia, after getting his travel/food television career off to a horrific start in Japan, everything changed when he arrived in Vietnam.
"Vietnam. It grabs you and doesn’t let you go. Once you love it, you love it forever."
She is my Hanoi, my Saigon and I am hers apparently, clearly.
“my place of dreams, my spirit house”, “my first love”
intoxicating…beautiful…exotic…dreamlike…sensuous”.
“From the very first minute that I came to this country, I knew my life had changed. My old life was suddenly never gonna be good enough. I needed a new one, where I could keep coming back here.”
"my first love; a place I remain besotted with, fascinated by."
Perhaps this is what fourth-generation French winemaker Guillaume Fabre of Clos Solene felt the moment he arrived in Paso Robles, CA in 2004. Like the lightning bolt moment he first laid eyes on his wife and inspiration, Solene. Similar to what I felt in a musty laboratory basement in the fall of 1999 and laid eyes on the love of my life, the feeling when I arrived in the foreign yet familiar land of Puerto Rico in 2004. Still impossible to explain and bipolar in so many ways. How I felt that first time I went fishing with my godfather. It was running through me so hard and fast I couldn’t keep it all straight, could barely keep up with typing it all out. But here is what it was, thanks to the creative genius or daemon over my shoulder, watching over me. Wow a 4 page introduction, I’m not getting much better at this. Any remotely or mildly-interested reader has surely closed the window, moved onto something else by now. From here is the unedited download from the morning sweat from 7:45am to 8:55am on August 20th 2022.
I’ve pried hooks out of the gills and bellies of bass, carp, bluegill, crappie, catfish and even a walleye. All at Ruritan Lake in the central Virginia hills, one of those first look places in my life. One of the few things anyone taught me, thanks to Papa Marsh my godfather I was a world-class fisherman growing up, his adopted son or grandson, somewhere in the middle. U never know what’s on the end of your line until you reel it in, you never what’s out there until you make a cast, all part of the beauty that is fishing.
I woke up this morning feeling a treble hook pierced in my right lung and throat, the barbs sunk in deep. Day 4 of COVID and not so bad beyond the horrific throat and ear pain, congestion down into my midsection. I had eluded the virus for so long but on a flight up to Boston I must have sipped or snacked at just the wrong moment. And now I pay the price. Gargling salt water and crunching endless lozenges and excedrins to no avail, my throat feeling like the paper-thin mouth of a crappie after pulling a few rooster tail hooks out - raw and shredded.
I underestimated COVID as it sunk into the mundane and background for all of us as the show of life must go on, only to be reminded the curtain should open for each act with care. A lesson again for me to process the parallels. Something to keep in the tackle box for another moment, a future cast.
I hadn’t slept well since the onset, due to the throat pain and heightened pitch and fervor of the tinnitus in my head. Its been bad most of this year, but now we are on another planet in terms of nuisance. Thankfully our government and the FDA are making hearing aides more affordable and accessible. However for me, less COVID and more a preexisting condition of weakness the most likely explanation, the ear and then throat issues the worst of it and dizziness, delirium has taken hold like a morning fog sitting on the lakes surface.
Other than the futile why and how long screams from within my head, I also had thoughts of Paso Robles this morning, carryover from bizarre dreams that have only compounded the situation these last few days.
The pass of the oaks, Paso Robles, I found myself there explaining to someone just how it all came about, another spaghetti diagram relationship visual I have turned to over the last few months to put some order into my seemingly chaotic and entropic thoughts. Sometimes they fall into a perfectly ordered yet complex outline or narrative, like a backlashed fishing reel. A cobweb of entanglement resolved after pulling out and untangling, rewinding all the monofilament onto the reel for another cast. Just takes a little time and patience.
When I explained it all to a faceless silhouette across the table in my dream, finally the face appeared and it was me, saying well yeah hard to follow in places but sometimes that happens. U can’t get caught up on the turns, just look around at the destination with appreciation. That’s how it felt the first time we stepped out of the car in the idlyic town square of Paso Robles in 2013, for that first memorable look. The feeling unmistakable and now appreciated to a much different degree. The way your true love just smells and feels right in every way, or so the wise Bourdain said (in reference to his favorite worldly destination Vietnam if I’m not mistaken). I get that, that first look, the lure dancing and sparkling in a manner that instinct takes over. U swallow the hook. It’s faster and more powerful than a bolt of lightning.
Over the next 7 years my wife and I visited Paso every weekend and moment off we could, familiar Friday nights making the three hour drive up the 101 with our dogs, IN-and-Out for dinner, more excited than we were, my wife’s tail wagging in anticipation as much as the dogs, many times friends in tow (well more accurately the 2.5 hr feverish drive when u r jonesin to escape reality to reach your happy place). Approximately 85 trips, u get to know the road and the destination pretty well, also appreciate the pull in a more mature light when the 85th time felt as or more special than the first. Like watching the Shawshank Redemption time and time again. Which is rare to say the least. And by appreciate, I only mean that in a romantic backwards gazing bipolar or diurnal sense, for I didn’t at the time, 0 for 85 a tough record to amass.
From PR to PR. The Paso Robles trips all started in Puerto Rico some 5000 miles away in 2011 at a special restaurant in San Patricio, Bottles. We happened to be seated next to the wall of wines u could only dream of opening, encased in a glass showroom, so precious the bottles on their racks had bungee cords to provide a secondary means of security. Many French first growth top cru offerings in a climate-controlled trophy case, some with scribbling to capture moments or dates on the bottles further enhancing the lure. Amidst all of that sat an uncommonly shaped and entitled bottle of wine on the same wall: Pharaoh Moans, the label for a 2005 Syrah from Paso Robles, $200 was the price, which wasn’t so bad considering the present company on the showy racks rose into the high hundreds and even four figures, all the more remarkable when you consider Puerto Rico was anything but a wine hotbed. Just a few years earlier a shipment of Prisoner to the Caguas Jesusland Costco was such a load the boat event u had to take a half day off of work and buy out the entire supply of 2 to 3 cases. Yet at the same time $31 for the cultish Prisoner back then was truly the upper limit, tapping the ceiling firmly. Prisoner, sure that was a cult wine, but Pharaoh Moans – what were they trying to do with this one?
In Bottles, as we ate our delicious berry salad and hummus, dumplings lunch earned after a hard mornings run, the Pharaoh implanted itself in my brain only to reveal itself in a few years time. I looked up the label a few hours at home and thought, interesting story and witty title to say the least. And a Syrah, my favorite varietal, from a place in Cali not far from our employers headquarters in the central coast, would be good to check that out one day. And when our company transferred my wife up to headquarters a few short years later, the pharaoh called me from the Caribbean PR Puerto Rico to a new PR, Paso Robles.
Pharaoh Moans was a tiny boutique operation at best, with 2005 being the first vintage, maybe 200-250 cases produced, a side project from a Napa winemaker and Napa restauranteur duo looking for a new challenge. Perhaps a new trophy?
The goal was to make the finest Syrah possible, so of course they went to Paso. The mission clear and the resources in place, not a cost or corner to be cut, the ride was a bit bumpy. The maiden vintage reviews were not spectacular in the 91-93 points range. A little unremarkable considering the winemakers pedigree and passion of the project architects. While not apparent in the limited tasting notes, the visionaries clearly indicated the birth and reign of a monumental Syrah from Paso Robles, fit for a pharaoh. Perhaps the nose wasn’t quite right in 2005, the pheromones off just a tad.
“The nose is the source of breath, the breath of life—the easiest way to kill the spirit inside is to suffocate it by removing the nose”
The reason why so many ancient Egyptian Pharaoh busts have the noses missing – targeted political and religious motivations at work https://news.artnet.com/art-world/why-noses-are-missing-from-egyptian-sculpture-1494550#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20nose%20is%20the%20source,photos%20from%20the%20exhibition%20below.
For all these years I’ve been cutting off my nose to spite my face – without acknowledging or realizing the hurt behind my self-destructive actions. Trying to even the score of some non-existent game only to put myself further behind, over and over and deeper and deeper. For the only opponent I was battling was myself.
I read about and was quickly entranced with the winemaker Guillaume Fabre, who either was chasing genius or was empowered by a genius as he embarked on a personal adventure or L’aventure relocating to Paso Robles from a deep winemaking heritage in France. Guillaume sought freedom to express his artistic desires in wine, unshackled from the old world requirements and out of the musty shadows and bureaucracy of the DOHCs and their unwafting stuffiness. A wine Prisoner no more, Guillaume began in Paso at a keystone vineyard of the appellation, L’Aventure and from there has fully realized his vision, now with a label and estate all his own with his wife and family, Clos Solène. Many likely considered his vision a pipe dream, but he never wavered, and now his vineyard formerly Pipestone (8 acres in the Willow Creek AVA they purchased from ruin in 2017), is alive again, rehabilitated and thriving under the care of a master and help of genius. Yet nothing can be taken for granted as the pressures and obstacles are a plenty, competition, climate, inflation, cork quality - factors that require u to be on your game each moment. Guillaume’s story is one of family and love, inspiration and following your dream or going where the genius takes you, on an adventure. I particularly remember this from the story of his love for Solene and their passion for the adventure:
“Un coup de foudre”- a bolt of lightning – Nothing could stop them...”
It isn’t all smooth and easy, an idyllic fairytale of winemaking bliss certainly, but Guillaume works still with the same passion as he did many years ago, his hands and sun-baked skin show that he is a dedicated man of his craft, who digs it out of the dirt each day. This genius driving him, which he claims is alive because the love of his life has faith and trust in him.
A tremendous ascent, another aspect of Paso Robles that has been so exciting and fulfilling to watch over the years, like Roman or Greek theatre - seeing dedication, skill and drive yield many positives from collectively elevating a region to many personal transformations from a farmhand or tasting room tour guide to becoming a master of your craft with your own domain, dug out of the dirt as so many have. A vintners Game of Thrones in a way, just far less violence and bloodshed beyond punching the grapes annually. And the fondest and most influential memories of my adult life originate from Paso and Puerto Rico personally, a winding story wrapped and knotted but finally presenting itself in the right order and light. Without question, no matter the darkness remaining within my own head and personal struggles taking hold or shackling me on some days.
Just sitting back with intent you can see so much beauty in Paso. And reflecting upon it very powerful, overwhelming. And the disappointment also overwhelming, hopefully to the point of providing knowledge and wisdom to take to the future, to learn to better appreciate the moment and the fruits of life openly. But I fear I will continue to only look at the other side of the coin, slipping further to no avail. Too many Vicks vaporcool lozanges and my mind is zapped.
For I only hope now in this moment that this virus takes a deep hold in my lungs and ends my self-created misery once and for all. The only worse feeling will be the harsher and more frequent defeats of the future vs an early exit here. However, I am appreciative of what I’ve been given, regardless of what my actions may have screamed. Ready to be wrapped in bandages from head to toe, necessary to hide all the self-inflicted wounds and be buried away in a cave. The diurnal inside me runs hot and cold, what can I say. Either produces sharp vinegar or smooth blends fit for Pharaohs.
It’s funny to me how all these parallels pop up - of late I’ve been studying up on ancient Egyptian dynasties and language down to the hieroglyphs and images of thousands of years ago. Another fixation, to understand what the word AOPKHES means, something that spoke to me recently as a riddle needing solved. And here I go back to a tongue in cheek whimsical bottle of wine about a pharaoh and times that I can only explain as another life.
AOPKHES appears in more than a few of JMBs works from 1982 (4 in total by current count), his magic year, his pinnacle, likely unbeknownst to him just as those years in Paso were for me from 2013 to 2019 (that I am just now realizing, with the hopes that I am not too late). Basquiat’s reign short and majestic like many of the Egyptian rulers, only to be overtaken by an undeniable force - an intruder of one or many sorts, famine or deceit, a disease of more, the worst of all plagues. An emperor and empire inexplicably built up and destroyed, overrun just the same.
Perhaps AOPKHES, thought of as a make-believe Pharaoh or emperors name is fitting, when u look into the Latin, Greek and Roman influences intermingled with that of ancient Egyptian times. Perhaps it’s far less obvious or simple as that, for again we bestow far less genius and credit on JMBs capacity and brilliance, the depth of his being and struggle. Fishing on the surface is always so much easier. But I will come back to Aopkhes and Basquiat, as I have much more research to do there, ERNOK.
Well my diagram or roadmap of madness here is complete and I can go on gargling more salt water and keep punching, embracing the genius, deamon or demons that enter my mind each day.
It will hurt if I swallow, but it also hurts not to. All of this surely is meaningless to everyone else on the planet, I just pray to the gods it becomes meaningful to me. The genius driving me forward to guarantee a better future than past, making a better mark. All because of her, for her, my genius. And somehow incessantly spiting my face by cutting off my nose, over and over again, I am still here – so I must keep going.