I realize in this very moment that when at home I take my free time for granted. It's late morning & the Autumn breeze is sweet with ripe fruit & sizzling steaks & made-to-order Beligian waffles. The Farmers' Market is busy, a shaken antfarm of serious produce-junkies. Children are scurrying around with little treats, rewards for decent public behavior...gelato, chocolate, crepes, pear juice...
There is a man playing music in the center of the market. He keeps forgetting the words to his songs & looks as if he needs a good scrubbing.
I came here with lofty plans to buy "one of everything" & go home to make the ultimate stir-fry. But now that I'm here I'm satisfied with a crisp apple & a cup of beet juice. My French companions, Piere-Henri & Laurene are out wandering aimlessly building giant mental salads.
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I decided this afternoon to pay a visit to the restaurant owned by the Craggy Range estate for a specially prepared feast. The place is something close to perfect. Its outdoor granite patio is nuzzled up against mindblowing steep & jagged peaks & is mostly surrounded by meticulously trained vineyards & poplars that seem to be growing birds rather than leaves. As I sit and patiently digest my lunch (which was stellar: salt & pepper squid w/ smoked truffles, pickled ginger & beet root, garden fresh beans, a bit of cilantro & red pepper, a heap of greens topped with capers, a seemingly endless supply of straight-out-of-the-oven breads, each small loaf different from the next, each delivered with a halved head of roasted garlic & butter so creamy it left me bewildered. Lunch.). So as I digest (and digress) I'm looking out on a large pond dotted with black-ish ducks who quickly poke their heads underwater to gather--whatever it is they gather--& then pop back up, pleased, splashing around maniacally for a moment. I don't understand what ducks are ever doing, but I find them to be relentlessly "cute".
I am surrounded by people cloaked in fur & Ralph Lauren sweaters hanging preciesly over shrugged, disengaged shoulders. There's doctor-talk left & right, & people going to the opera, & people who prefer to spend their Autumn here, in the beach house--one of several--while the weather is mild.
I do feel like an ousider here, but I'm entertaining myself with a game of "What Are They Thinking About Me?" I've worn my best pair of denim cut-off shorts & my sandy mop seems to be behaving itself, but still, I'm a young hooligan with purple hands, eating alone, with a small library of books & journals scattered around my table.
Ah, hell with 'em!
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4.8.09
It's midnight and I think I just ate too much ice cream. It's a flavor called "Hokey Pokey" & I'm madly in love with it. I'm not sure what its ingredients are but I'm certain it mostly consists of no-no's, which would explain why I could freeze the stuff to sub-zero temperatures & it would still be as fluffy as a cloud.
The night sky is illuminated by a staggeringly lovely moon. There's a strong and wind shushing up the neighborhood, nearly drowning out the gentle chirping of crickets. & here am I, belly full of Hokey Pokey, dead tired from the day. I had to take a brief moment to stop, though, & engage myself in the quiet magic hanging loosely in the late evening air. Tonight has a melody to it that I can't quite sing, but rather notice it, make a point of how it grabbed me somewhere in my core.
I will sleep with the window open.
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4.10.09
This week has been both a brief one & a vast improvement on the prior. I've been working every night (except tonight) & it's been good to be able to just dive into everything, keep my head under the water (like the ducks) & work for a bit--my hypothesis was, & seems to hold true, if I do so my world would be different when I pop back up to the surface. & a week has gone by...
I've been doing interesting things at the winery, all of which are a great distance into Nerdville so I'll spare you. I spend half my time building yeast cultures, the other half inside the press in water-resitant coveralls looking like a drowned NYC subway rat.
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4.11.09
(I actually fell asleep mid-thought there). I have greeted the morning with a strong press full of coffee & enough fruit to feed a family of twelve. I stepped outside to feel the sun and was nearly knocked flat by the Autumnal bliss all around me. It's cool and the air smells damp, but clean. A freshness, I guess I'd call it. The sun is soothing but I am bundled up in it.
I spent yesterday with Christian the Chilean Giant & the two Frenchmen Piere-Henri & Gil. We hiked around on the beach, along the sedimentary cliffs of Cape Kidnappers. The tide was high & this was all the more excuse to tear off my shoes & roll the trousers up & let the numbness of the Pacific cure my weary work-boot-ridden feet. We sat together quietly for a long while at the foot of a tremendous cliff--it was smooth and severe & looked like it was carved into the landscape with some enormous cosmic cookie-cutter. When the sun started its descent a fierce wind picked up & brought yawning waves closer to our bodies & we noticed small stones began falling from above. I looked up, "Christian, did you see that?!"
He seemed confused.
Another stone landed by his foot & then another & another. The wind was blowing rocks off the top of the cliff. We stepped back & watched as this great hunk of earth teased us, assaulted us, playfully heaving little stones in our direction as if to say TIDE'S COMING IN, BOYS. BEST TURN BACK. & that we did.
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We roamed about the vineyards of Elephant Hill, contemplated the soil content. It was gravelly, slightly silty & dry. The clusters of Cabernet were massive & very clean, like they'd just been rinsed under a faucet. The stems were a glow-in-the-dark green, almost luminous to the point that I wondered if they could harvest at night.
The sun was shouting out Last Call so we made our way up to Te Mata Peak to catch the last moments of daylight. Te Mata Peak is quite the spectacle with a haunting, ancient energy to it that I find impossible to describe. The Legend says that a famed Maori chief was challenged to eat his way through the mountain to prove his love for a woman of a different tribe. The dramatic peak on which we stood was the final fabled bite that choked & killed him. Maori people say the mountain then took the shape of the Chief's body & serves as a memorial to his unbridled desire for his lady (and is does look like a huge resting corpse).
We caught the sunset & roamed with some grazing sheep & with all the language barriers between us did so mostly in silence. The whole experience was peaceful.
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I returned home & made myself some supper & retired to my quarters to read for the remainder of the evening.
I didn't realize quite how tired I was until I woke up around 2 AM in my clothes, on the floor, half-a-plate of supper, candle softly burning. Apparently I'm narcoleptic. I woke with sadness all inside of me. I splashed my face with cool water & dipped into my prized carton of Hokey Pokey ice cream attempting to massage my spiritual ailments with good ol' fashioned sugar. But I was blanketed by melancholy & there wasn't enough Hokey Pokey in the world. I went back to bed & closed my lids & meditated on the things that were getting to me. It helped to simply acknowledge where I was at, to just be in a moment of blues knowing full well they were bound to pass, as all things do. I dove back into my book (thank you, Aaron) & read about an Indian boy who lost his entire family in a shipwreck mid-way across the Atlantic, along with his family's menagerie of zoo animals which were en route to a new home in Canada. The boy was the only human survivor & spent weeks curled up in a lifeboat with one companion--a full-grown (hungry) Bengal tiger. I drifted off to sleep again feeling renewed , lighter-hearted, knowing that I'm a fortunate person who still has his family, his friends, his purpose (thank you, Aaron).
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4.12.09
So I woke up this morning in a better place; still missing my home, still tired from work, but at least alive in the present & aware that any sadness only comes from a fantastic appreciation for everything I have across the sea (and not buried in it!), & that it is a good thing that I so long for it all.
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Today I will run some errands. I've just gotten paid & that comes as a relief as I've lived off of very little since my arrival. I've taken stock of my rations:
One package of noodles
Tomato sauce
Half of a block of cheese
One apple
NO Hokey Pokey
I think I'm due for a run to the supermarket, no?! I'll stock up on fruits & veggies, sandwich fixings, coffee & cheap beer (how/why is anybody reading this? Good grief, I'm blogging my grocery list!). Then a long shower & it's back to the slaughterhouse for me until later next week.
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Tomorrow is Easter & I'm recalling those of my childhood. Egg-hunts in bad sweaters, packed-to-the-rafters Sunday services at the Methodist church, aching teeth from too many chocolate bunnies consumed, embarrassingly huge feasts with family, little sister & me kicking each other's shins beneath the table. I will be thinking on these fine memories from the bellows of my wine factory & will smile.
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4.13.09
Well, work is a haze of monotony & barely worth mentioning. People are getting tired & loopy. This seems to happen every harvest, the crew starts losing it little by little when there's still weeks of work to be dealt with. It's deceiving because bodies & minds are "over it", but said bodies & minds absolutely must grin & bear it. As the infamous Drew Voit used to say:
"Keep it together, people. We've got a ways to go yet."
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4.15.09
Another mild sunny day in Hawke's Bay & yet another day off from the winery grind.
I've borrowed a guitar & computer from a friend & have spent most of the afternoon working on some new songs. It's strange to me that even without an instrument at hand I've been writing music--something about not being able to play at any given moment has given the space between my ears some sort of heightened sonic Spidey-Sense, like a mental phantom limb. Anyway, I'm enjoying not thinking about wine for a few hours.
I did step out for a bit to take my housemates to work, during which time I was pulled over by the local police.
My mind raced a bit, whatdidIdowhatdidIdowhatdidIdo?
"Hello, Officer."
No response...ooookaaayy. He stared at my passport (if you've never seen it, my headshot is nothing short of psychotic-looking).
"Was I speeding?"
"Nah."
"Oh........did I not signal?"
"Nah."
"Mmmmmkaaay....did I--"
"You're just not a real confidant driver."
He handed me my passport, "Just wanted to let you know."
"Alright, thank you, sir!" with a cheesy grin & high-pitched tone to my voice that only happens when I'm being pseudo-appreciative.
A cop has never pulled me over with the sole purpose of calling me a weenis before. First time for everything, I guess.
I hereby pledge to drive more aggressively from here on out. I'll honk my horn, tailgate, maybe even mow over an old lady or two...that's my promise to you, New Zealand.
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With a quick glance at a calendar I realized my time here is coming to an end very soon. It's a bittersweet relief on many levels. Harvest is amazing & excruciating all at once. New Zealand is lovely, but not my home. My friends here are fantastic, but they're not my best ones. At the very end I think I will feel more fulfilled than anything else. & I look forward to returning home, to a new chapter, one with a perfect Northwestern Summer in the city of Portland that I so dearly love.
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