The world looks so peaceful from the top of a stack of barrels. The cellar looks quiet & clean & organized, hoses coiled just so, rows straight & even. At the top a cellar rat can look down on his work & feel a sense of pride, of ownership. & when a cellar rat takes a raging spill from the top of a stack of barrels one can naturally conclude that these warmfuzzy feelings are swiftly shot-to-hell. This is the best way I can describe the way my head hanged yesterday when I slid from my ladder & came crashing to the concrete floor from five barrels up.
There was I, topping some Chardonnay barrels, all smiles & cheer bound up in my face, gorgeous music vibrating through my headphones when I felt my boots slide across the rung. I flailed my arms frantically in a desperate attempt to catch myself Cliffhanger-style. No such luck. I hurled through the air like a comet from the heavens & crashlanded with a bony thud on my back. The back of my head even got a good solid smack (for good measure). Meanwhile, the valve on the discharging end of my topping setup was still wide open & caught dangling two barrels up from my now crooked, dead-looking body, showering me in a torrent of Chardonnay. I lay there for a moment, trying to both catch my wind & wrap my mind around this stupid shit that just happened, all the while mouthing untranslatable curses. And my thoughts:
Did I break my spine? Did my head just explode? Are there brains on the floor? Am I even alive? Is this heaven? Please say no...
I caught my wind & hopped back to my hooves for feet & shut the valve on the topping hose, cellar rat pride down the drain (along with several unnoted litres of wine & probably some blood).I felt foolish. I wanted to go home, curl up in a fetal posish with a teddy bear & spend the rest of the day suckling on my thumb. Instead, I took the "high road" & continued working as if nothing happened, wincing with every step & wondering if little pieces of my spine were scattered on the cellar floor.
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4.3.09
Oh, work is beginning to wear on my brains. I need to find a healthy balance, or simply the time to get outside of harvest-mode & inside my heart & head so I can keep writing down all the significant (and some definitely insignif) details that roll around in these cavernous spaces.
Pinot noir has been rolling in, which has been exciting for me. It's not exactly top-shelf stuff, but still it's good to work with something close to my soft spot. It is quite possibly the roughest looking Pinot I have ever laid eyes on: green & herbal flavors, no acid, loaded with botrytis & shriveled berries & I believe some of the clusters have a case of the Clap...we're still looking into that one.
I'm only a day away from yet another Sunday of personal freedom. This I greatly look forward to.
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4.4.09
(See this is what I'm talking about, I practically stopped DEAD in the midst of a thought & am only just now returning to said thought & have very little interest in continuing the soliloquoy about said thought. One of my French neighbors, Gil, a scraggly young ruffian who is both English-retarded & paralyzingly genuine & sweet stopped by for a beer & an exhausting dialogue consisting of mostly "how-you-say's" & "I-don't-unnastand's" & we wound up sitting in comfortable & restful silence looking at a picture book entitled Majestic New Zealand. And even just now, while I relax cross-legged in the morning light Gil came over to say "Bonjour" & a crippled, lame conversation followed, resulting in his throwing up of his hands and announcing: "I go to EGG now!"
"Beg yer pardon?"
"I go to EGG now!...BREFFASST!!!")
So as I was saying I have a day off tomorrow, one that I'd been greatly looking forward to & one that I nearly had burgled from me yesterday. An unnamed intern, a serious & recently uncaged UC Davis undergrad whom I'll refer to as Golden Boy, approached me in the afternoon.
"Hey, Adam, do you have Sunday off?'
"Yes, dear Golden Boy, I do indeed."
"Would you mind working for me on Sunday, & in return take Monday off?"
Here we had a problem. It wasn't that I minded working an extra day, but more that I was due for a vineyard tour in Martinborough with the winemaker that very Monday...another experience I'd been seriously anticipating.
"Oh, well," I politely respond, "the thing is I'm supposed to go to Martinborough that day."
Silence.
Then, with gripping awkwardness:
"Uhh, I was actually asked to go instead."
"Oh, I seeeee..." (which in my head sounded a lot more like "OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!").
Let me break this down:
1.) Golden Boy wants me to work an extra day this week so that
2.)He, GOLDEN BOY, specifically, and not I Bobo the Dancing Circus Bear/Juanita the Cleaning Lady (apparently) , can go to Martinborough.
2.)He, GOLDEN BOY, specifically, and not I Bobo the Dancing Circus Bear/Juanita the Cleaning Lady (apparently) , can go to Martinborough.
Is this doing a favor, or is it some fantastic slight-of-hand ego-rape?
I said, "Fine."
Cuz I'm soft.
But it wasn't fine, and as the day went on I felt it rolling around in my head like a big marble with spikes on it & soon this irritating feeling of being profoundly dicked-over transformed itself from a pungeant but solid & tidy turd of a quandry to absolute explosive diarrhea (in college we called that "Number 3", a horrifying combo of both solids & liquids & possibly molten lava shooting out of your ass). So with Number 3 of the brain I had to go to my supervisor to say "Yo, Soop! WTF?!!"
But before I could launch into it he stifled me with
"Hey, Ads, I got good news."
Oh?? Could it be?? Have the tables proverbially turned??
"Great," I replied, "I love good news!"
"Yeah, well you're back to your normal schedule."
Perfect.
"Man, I'm so relieved...I really have my heart set on seeing Martinborough."
Awkward.
Silence.
"Oh, well, no [Golden Boy] is going to Martinborough. I just meant you still have Sunday off, as planned."
Perfect.
"But you should definitely check it out after harvest...it's AAAHMAAAAYYYZING."
Number 3 makes it's triumphant return.
/////
4.5.09
This morning is one for the books.
The sun is soothing & pleasant, birds are shrieking all around me & the hypnotic whir of a lawnmower plays an industrial basso continuo beneath their feathered songs. It's anew. Anewness, can I say that? I mean it freaking feels like "anewness". And it is my Friday, at long last. I will let images of fresh Farmers' Market produce & an afternoon of Sauvignon Blanc & Bluff Oysters & stunning carved-out monster mountain vistas carry me through the day & into the night.
I said, "Fine."
Cuz I'm soft.
But it wasn't fine, and as the day went on I felt it rolling around in my head like a big marble with spikes on it & soon this irritating feeling of being profoundly dicked-over transformed itself from a pungeant but solid & tidy turd of a quandry to absolute explosive diarrhea (in college we called that "Number 3", a horrifying combo of both solids & liquids & possibly molten lava shooting out of your ass). So with Number 3 of the brain I had to go to my supervisor to say "Yo, Soop! WTF?!!"
But before I could launch into it he stifled me with
"Hey, Ads, I got good news."
Oh?? Could it be?? Have the tables proverbially turned??
"Great," I replied, "I love good news!"
"Yeah, well you're back to your normal schedule."
Perfect.
"Man, I'm so relieved...I really have my heart set on seeing Martinborough."
Awkward.
Silence.
"Oh, well, no [Golden Boy] is going to Martinborough. I just meant you still have Sunday off, as planned."
Perfect.
"But you should definitely check it out after harvest...it's AAAHMAAAAYYYZING."
Number 3 makes it's triumphant return.
/////
4.5.09
This morning is one for the books.
The sun is soothing & pleasant, birds are shrieking all around me & the hypnotic whir of a lawnmower plays an industrial basso continuo beneath their feathered songs. It's anew. Anewness, can I say that? I mean it freaking feels like "anewness". And it is my Friday, at long last. I will let images of fresh Farmers' Market produce & an afternoon of Sauvignon Blanc & Bluff Oysters & stunning carved-out monster mountain vistas carry me through the day & into the night.
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