frogs and pigs

europeans, particularly those from areas with historically fluid borders, have interesting perspectives on identity. one of the more charming tags i've heard is that alsatians have the work ethic of germans, but the life philosophy of the french. tiny and lovely alsace changed hands four times in the last 100 years, so yeah, i guess pragmatism builds. those i've met, i adore. the region is one of my favorite in the world. even the gentleman caller was charmed!

but tonight i had a weird icky slap in the face of gene pool/subculture/chicken/egg.

my chef's most revered mentor is wildly successful and world-famous, and originally from alsace. he owns several properties, and was instrumental (along with my favorite clan from ribeauville) in bringing both the cuisine and wine to the states.

i introduced myself. he told me to pick the wine. he was pleased. one for me.

pretending a light tone, he quizzed me on my schedule. i said, "it's normally "x". well !! he was here on one of those nights, and i was not. inference? i don't work enough. gently, i countered with my irregular hours; he parried with also having been in on night "y". in 12 months, he has visited twice. yet, i know for my chef, the impression was made: she's never here. my 60-70 hours per week now count for naught. i might as well phone it in from the catskills. which is where i might be lucky to find a job emptying ashtrays.

he assented i could plan ahead for the red. "this, that..." he stared at my breasts. " i want it to be you know, round and generous. like a woman. something... you know... something i will like." i wanted to hit him.
within a very limited and supposedly light banter, he showed me the frenchman's propensity for bringing sex into everything and the german's capacity for offensive bluntness. but most sharply, he threw out the ugly rusty ax of celebrity chef *SNAP*, and i witnessed him swiftly instill unwarranted doubt in my boozy-woozy boss.

we have a fairly new celebrity chef community here, and most of them share one father. he has always been charming to me, but i don't doubt for a moment his jocularity stops at the kitchen door. these guys don't get to the top of heap by being easy-going. but the piling on of abuse? *it* has to be learned behavior. they can't crawl from the womb, tongs in hand, and instinctively behave as stupendous wretches. he tells newbie to make 10 pounds of carrot brunoise. budding chef wishes for a slide rule. it doesn't matter how perfectly sized the cubes may be, they still get ridiculed, rejected and tossed in the stockpot. it breaks the spirit, and demolishes ego. i've seen it countless times.

tonight, in a few minutes, i watched the elder pass the venom. it made my blood cold, and it will be a long time before i think longingly of flammekueche or choucroute.

it's my party and i'll cry if i want to

on the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself -- on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life...
~~simone debeauvoir

i never had anything that made me more free. yet now that he no longer is in the position of accepting it, i feel its prisoner.

although i'm still unsure why i spent hours on his birthday sobbing...

lost at sea

we are the city and coastline closest to europe. our fierce beginnings and quick prosperity both borne from the sea. it gave us whaling, privateering, and an expedient route of trade (triangular or otherwise). it made us self-sufficient and unafraid of the elements. men packed trunks, tipped their brims in "goodbye", walked up the gangplank and shoved off for however long. sometimes years. to this day, our deep-sea fishermen may be gone for weeks, and we still have a strong tradition of merchant mariners who sail for many months.

what of the woman left behind? no internet, no satellite, no transatlantic cable afforded easy comfort. she simply picked up her skirts and got down to life. uncertainty the only thing for sure.
she managed the fields, the house, the kids and the accounts. all the while, waiting. some scant and belated news might be had. a few crews might be docked in tora bora, share a night of rum and pass some letters. she'd know he wasn't dead, at least at the date of the note. so she'd keep the lamp lit, his robe ready. and hope alive.

surely some hateful shrews wished he'd not return, and the world being as wild as it was, no doubt more than a few sailors ditched the nantucket biddy for a balinese lover. what then, of the ship declared lost? over the decades, hundreds of boats vanished. hurricanes, pirates and sea-monsters all conspired to devour vessels, their men and their bounties. when she first fell in love with him, she always knew this day might come. she locked away that sad thought because her devotion was stronger than that pain.

so, in spite of the facts, for how long does she, well, long? weeks turn into months, yet she still sets the table for him. when does her yearning begin to dim? when does she at last douse the window candle before going to bed? is it a conscious moment of choice, or has her mind finally taken her heart in hand?

gotta light?

when did politicians first put down their law books and don nanny aprons? because they're at it again.

the complaint of ONE british viewer is causing a complete redrawing of cartoon history. from now on the bbc children's channel will show all episodes of touchstones like "the flinstones", "tom and jerry" and "scooby-doo" censored of smoking. unless, of course, it's a bad guy. even though smoking remains legal, and clearly was quite common during the periods in which these classics were produced (can't you still see *him*, lucky strike dangling from his lips, hands stained with india ink, scribbling over the story-board late into the night?) our children must be protected! nefarious mice and perniciously persuasive stone-agers cannot be allowed to lead our kids down the path of certain cancerous doom. heaven forbid, parents actually be allowed to provide context. where's the guy objecting to tom's tongue stuck in the mouse trap? violence! cruelty to animals!! it's august, so he must be vacationing.

my parents all smoked. relatives, neighbors, friends' parents, workmen, etc. all lit up, all the time. even though she knows how horrible it is, my mother still loves to smoke. as a kid the smell made me grimace, and i hated having to kiss goodnight anybody who'd just exhaled. yuk.

but still, i gave it a go. not because the road runner could blow up wile e. coyote with a cigar and a cherry bomb from across route 66. not because of the languor and longing in black-and-white hayes' code flicks, but because everybody i saw in real-life fucking loved it. they finished dinner, sat back, and that first inhale looked like orgasm. before i even knew what climax was, i saw first-hand how utterly enjoyable those tareytons and parliaments were.

i finally quit because i couldn't stand the smell of my hair, lol.

closer to home, apparently marshmallow fluff is ruining our childrens' brilliant futures. sure. cornstarch, sugar and peanut butter will be what stops junior from solving cold fusion, and definitely halt world peace.

stay off my plate, out of my medicine cabinet and far away from my bedroom. don't mess with my tivo.

please concern yourselves with the issues of macro-governing. pesky matters like the "the war on terror", healthcare and our crumbling infrastructure... anybody visited our new 3rd-world nation of new orleans lately? how about the terrifying, multi-fused powderkeg of the middle-east? our swan-dive of international influence? hello?

from here, let's please hear it for the notion of personal responsibility, shall we? you can smoke on my deck, if you like...

truth in labelling

there are many california wines that are an oenophile's equivalent of savoring unicorn confit. produced in tiny quantities, they often don't get new england distribution. however, i'm in a rare position of getting to try and buy lots of juice mere mortals never know. you read and hear lore and romance; misty memories from older colleagues who happened to be *there* just when. you hope a bottle may eventually find itself in your happy little hands. or at least on a table where you'll be dining.

writers wax rhapsodic, and everybody says it was the best thing since<***>.

well, i've got a bottle of one of those rare birds right here. it's from a legendary napa winery, celebrating a very important anniversary. the owners get all sorts of sentimental kudos for being pioneers in the valley. i could build a paper cabin with the piles of reviews slavishly comparing it to grand cru chablis.

i was excited and hopeful for my first taste. here's the thing: (quelle surprise!!) it tastes nothing like chablis. NOTHING. even if my tongue were excised, i would not be fooled. chablis is restrained and austere. even haughty. full of chalky limestone and tradition. the kimmeridgian soil in chablis is truly unique, and those fossilized ostrea virgula certainly haven't found their way to the substrata of california. wines from chablis do not present sweet toasty oak on the nose, nor generosity of spirit on the palate, no residual sugar... no need to go all geeky here. i have no intention of this being a cork dork blog.

so what i'm wondering is this: if it doesn't walk like a duck, why insist you heard it quack? why feverishly compare it to something it's not, nor ever will be? why not examine it on its own merits?

i've always thought one of life's great wonders was the diversity of the world. it keeps me curious, it keeps me interested, it makes me learn.

moving forward...

misery index

this afternoon a friend called to vent because her car (newly purchased, but not loved) is vexing her; required repairs unacceptably incomplete, but no rental car allowance in the offing. the inconvenience is putting a big damper on weekend plans of sunny wine-soaked leisure. and OH! the humiliation of a kia vs. a saab. ;) but she wrapped up her rant by offering that she then considered my sorry-ass state and realized she had nothing on me!(please note: this index ends in 2001. presumably #43 et al can't see their way to publishing a current chart...)

i shared the laugh and understood the spirit of what she meant (yup, everything for me pretty much sucks ass right now...) but damming my potential hysterics was a heroic feat. i never was that person dwelling under a black cloud. never. i was always perceived as in control, independent, strong. the friend to come to when *you* were having a crisis.

indeed the metaphorical tectonic plates in my world shifted and havoc ensued. (aftershocks continue to rumble, albeit at smaller measure on my personal richter scale.) most people think of that sort of unpredicted geologic calamity, and think san andreas fault. the golden gate bridge imploding, san francisco burning and mudslides rushing stilted aeries into the sea. out there, the plates move side-by-side, essentially smashing one against another. but here, we're closest to the mid-atlantic range, where the plates spread further and further apart, eventually causing collapse. a crevasse opens wide, and the earth as once known never is the same again.

mirror, mirror

as a very young kid, older cousins once took me to a small-town carnival. one of the old-timey attractions was the house of mirrors. my cousins were getting small, big, fat, taut, laughing and having a blast, while i was getting more and more freaked out. physically, i was tiny and obviously too young to understand refraction. no matter what, i couldn't see myself. i tried and tried, went to different panes, then started to panic. hell, i was only 4 years old. finally one of the cousins saw me crying and dragged me outside. bummer for him, i'm sure.

at first, mirrors were small and precious, available only to the most privileged of the wealthy and powerful. pointy-hatted sorcerers soon got left behind, technology raced forward and we got telescopes, the printing press, space travel and lightning-fast communications.

monkeys, macaques and chimpanzees all have recorded lower heart-rates upon seeing their reflections. does this imply same-species- or specific-self-awareness? jury is still out. if they are fornicating in front of a mirror, but somehow drift out of view, dolphins will stop and swim back into visual frame before continuing. their view of *themselves* both calms and arouses.

we in the 21st century presume a certain truth in our looking-glass, don't we? the image staring back, is what the rest of the world sees too, right? sure, some women will argue the mirrors at nieman's are more flattering than those at sak's, but all-in-all, all-around reasonable representation.

for years my worth was measured, my image and identity determined through the lens of another. inherently, *i* was of no value, except in relation to him. it was liberating, it was thrilling and it was serene. it pleased us both.

but now he's rightfully taken himself, his mirror and his measuring stick back home, where they all belong. to help refashion and rebuild one who saw a very different image. through his astonishing strength and personal alchemy she will once again be made whole and perceive her inherent goodly worth.

mostly now, i can't bare to look. i don't know who *she* is gazing back. conversely, i can't figure out who *she* is i'm considering. i don't want others to see, because it's too profoundly threatening. will they know what or whom that is, i am, even before i do?

when her minion of a mirror at last replied snow white was the fairest in the land, the evil queen had her rival banished to the forest for a vernal but grisly death. (not in the sanitized disney version, but the brothers grimm demanded a bloody heart as proof of the deed...) yet the queen never realized he made the judgement because he could see inside them both. when and what will i finally see?

"birds do it, bees do it..."

first came the shocking news that our swan pond icons in fact were not romeo and juliet, but rather two juliets. the only state that allows gay marriage now had an ironically apt symbol of acceptance right smack in one of our most popular tourist attractions.

today i happened upon this little doozy. so have they long been thought to be monogomous simply because they're usually kept aesthetically as mated pairs? paddling along with just one another, they've got no cake-eating options, now do they? but released and offered feathery temptations they just do it. cole porter was right about so many things...

although how he got away with this back then i'll never know...

I've heard that lizards and frogs do it
Layin' on a rock
They say that roosters do it
With a doodle and cock

the view from here

in my profession you witness lots of infidelity. both from guests and people on my side. for the latter, there's beaucoup des vins involved, many nights away from home and, i'll hazard to guess, a general propensity towards sensual pleasure. no study i know of tracks whether this industry (not counting hollywood, lol) has any sort of dubious lead in adultery numbers, but i can tick off many many colleagues currently or previously involved. open secrets badly kept.

one *rule* we often joke about is you don't bring your mistress and your wife to the same restaurant. ever. one guileless hostess could blow the lid off everything. there is a man who comes to my place in desperate need of learning this maxim. and he comes often, with both. he's a long-time friend of the owner, and also an investor. presumably, it's the second fact of proprietary interest that draws him in so frequently.

he and his wife just came in two nights after he'd been in with the other woman. his wife was looking at him with such warmth and undeniable love, her body language was so engaged, i had to leave the floor to not cry. i still can't decide for whom i felt more pain -- her, the other her, him... or me.

going, going, gone

to most, an august vineyard looks essentially like another, and another. but take a ridiculously privileged stroll (glass of veuve delicately in hand) through one (or 9 as i did these past few days) with an owner or winemaker of extravagantly priced napa wines and different perspectives emerge quickly. i really grok on the *farming* aspect of wine and dipped into more than one very dorky discussion on rootstock clones (the debacle of xr-1!!), trellising (ancient roman gobelet? brilliant!!), terracing, spacing, etc. (the sauvignon blanc vines at one place were so tight, i swear they must employ balletic elves for those rows.) the cellar alchemy is too murky and merlinish for me, so let's just talk about the 140 different types of soil in napa, ok?

the fields were mostly deserted, but we were there at what we cork dorks consider an exciting time -- veraison. the grapes begin to change color, at last reflecting their progression towards *perfection*. intense observation and management is ongoing. these precious berries are constantly checked by eyes, mouths, bees, dragonflies, the occasional deer and the highest of tech.

unlike the profligate spreaders of the central valley, these enchanted twiners are observed and tended to the nth degree. whereas the former may burst forth with 8, 10 even 15 whorish tons per acre, these darling little divas are cropped to about 3 or 4 bunches per vine -- less than 2 tons p/a.

yet the simple fact is, even if ONE acre costs $250,000 and planting ONE vine costs $35,000, this stuff is still a crop. a slave to mother nature and all her forces.this is early on during veraison. each grape treated with the care of a premature newborn, yet still each one going at its own pace. 2006 brought a drenching late winter, a cool wet spring, a record-breaking torrid 2-week heatwave about 10 days before my visit -- 115 degrees at 1500 feet... are you fucking kidding me? (yes, yes, pshaw to global warming #43!) all these "it's not nice to fool mother nature moments" made both the valley floor and hillside about 4-6 weeks behind. those at high elevations feared having to pick as late as november, risking frost damage and even smaller yields.

but with tender hands and watchful eyes, something like this fully realized cluster will abound throughout napa in 4-6 weeks. the badly performing lagging berries will have been dropped, the magic of napa nature will likely prevail (this year still, anyway) and those 4-digit bottles will get allocated with the same angels-on-a-pinhead-precision as ever.

lol, so what's this got to do with me? right? i just buy and shill. well, i'm struck by the synergy of it all. the necessity of interplay between bees, birds, dozens of brown guys, uc/davis grads and hippy wives, gold mine owners with private jets for whom this is a dalliance. all cooperate to produce the juice. yeah, it takes a village. but if left to its own devices, the vine's future is uncertain and perilous indeed.

as seen here

"se van a cerrar"
~~" it is about to close." (on a storefront)

"seguiremos subiendo"
~~"we keep on going up." (on a youth center mural)

perhaps not the unfortunate merchant, nor the boy who can't slam-dunk, but in my metaphorical world, one does have a choice, eh?

but this:
"utopia es pensar que el mundo puede seguir asi por mas tiempo."
~~"utopia is thinking that the world can go on like this for longer."

which brought my cat's zig-zaggy brain to do a quick etymological search, only to be reminded that the word utopia is formed from 2 greek roots: "no" (ou) and "place/land" (topos), thus meaning "nowhere" or more literally, "no-place/no-land". those proselytizers of the great awakening(s) surely saw "world" in a truer more macro sense, and endeavored to create personal and potentially larger havens of free worship, free economies or free love. but i'm feeling awfully tiny and internalized these days... and *that* cake-eating world with which i've been so intimately acquainted, the one in which i seemed most to fit, seems more and more on the other side of the gates.

make room for daddy

another of my mother's maxims was "don't fall in love with a man like your father." to my little girl eyes, he certainly seemed preferable to my stepfather -- an irascible curmudgeon with emphysema who was much closer in age to my grandmother. my father, on the other hand, was quick-witted, independent, inquisitive, carried a humorous and encyclopedic knowledge of many things (excellent training for my later role as raconteur), traveled extensively, and as an actor lived a very non-traditional lifestyle with *peculiar* hours and soho (pre-gentrification) friends. he took me to see eugene o'neill plays and shakespeare in the round. "west side story" on the big screen. (he cried!) we listened to sam cook and sun ra. we flew kites and went to europe.

i grew older, his narcissism and selfishness became more apparent to me. the looming financial obligation of college sent him into exile, and we began to lead a life of protracted silences.

in psych 101 i learned men marry their mothers. ack! i was too clever by half to succumb to my female equivalent! in animal behavior, i learned about imprinting and felt a twinge of anthropomorphic sympathy for lorenz's little geese.

my primary b/f through college was emotionally reticent, but i easily chalked that up to his laconic yankee nature. various partners came and went, and even i saw the pattern of me feeling more comfortable being held at a bit of an emotional distance. well, let's say, i recognized its mirror image of feeling suffocated if a man wanted to get too close. if, during dinner, he sat next to me on the banquette, instead of across the table, there was no second date.

many men, many years. those of any duration carried common traits, like wit and brains. they were all tall and mostly dark. they kept themselves at sufficient remove to keep me on my toes. never once did i foresee forever. not with a one.

midway through my 20s, i discovered quite by accident, that my father had a son and had been living with him and the mother since i was 15. right around the time talk of my upcoming tuition and his subsequent freak-out. unbeknownst to me, he had made a mental delineation of where he felt his financial and emotional obligations more truly belonged. there could be no further duality.

late in my 30s, i became involved with the *gentleman caller*. with seemingly little psychological fanfare, we both put aside the intrusive reality of his wife and children. he drew the lines of personal priority and i happily agreed to remain behind the one assigned to me. it was intense, it was boundless and sometimes terrifying. it was not the short-term fiery arc these things usually turn out to be. devotion grew, committment deepened. enthralled, i never felt stronger, or more free.

part of my *place* was to accept. his way, or no way. i understood that as an internal obligation to keep my mouth shut. some things if spoken of would blow down the house of cards with a mere whisper. did i cry over them? yes, but always alone.

almost immediately, he intuited my greatest and darkest fear was to be abandoned. soon, he admitted he knew my harshest fear was to be abandoned by him. i could not deny it. it became a powerful weapon in our dances of emotional sadism and psychological masochism.

as our time together progressed, i realized with absolute certainty i'd fallen in love with my father. yup, all the good stuff that made us laugh and crave each other's company. but also the tragic flaws whose manifestations i most desperately feared.

through consistently fierce psychological battering, he finally made me see forever. i saw it. and it was wonderful. i wanted it. i believed we would have it. not the picket fence kinda forever (he had that *over there* anyway)but just the right kind for me. for us.

no surprise to you, gentle reader, but the man most like my father is gone. he has closed tight the loop of the noose of exclusion and i'm left gasping for air. i'm repudiated, denied, minimized. he convinces her it meant nothing. four years of nothing. convenience. that's all it was. of no more consequence than a drive-through happy meal.

if i believed in portents, i'd be petrified right now. within minutes, the sky has grown black and a deluge of rain falls. but i'm no savage. i *do* know it won't rain forever. and i've still got the sense to own an umbrella.

mother knows best

mothers mean well. they aim to shape us and teach us. in their hearts, they dearly wish us to avoid the mistakes they made. (even if life already has shown them that's not very likely.)

problem is, most teenagers are arrogant -- that double-whammy of immaturity and optimism.

"love is never enough in a relationship."

she said it any number of times, but i could only see how it played on the stage of my family. she and my father had married right out of high school, for all the wrong reasons, then divorced when i was quite young. years later, when i asked if she had loved my father, she replied, " i thought i did."

finding herself in the then shameful and unfashionable role of struggling single mom, she based her next choice of husband on his ability to provide -- generously. growing up, i could see he loved her very much. it never seemed she felt the same, and i watched her chafe and grow embittered inside the big house and expensive cars.

i saw both their pain and unhappiness and i was determined my fate would be different.

"love is never enough."

most early "loves" really are more about lust anyway, so they're fairly easy to shake off and move on. they're the practice runs, and i never was foolish enough to walk down the aisle with one of them. i very much wanted love to be enough.

i met what seemed to be a keeper. friends liked him, he was romantic and thoughtful, ambitious and we wanted many of the same things. shortly after we became engaged, he began a ragged spiral into such an unholy hell of alcohol and lies that the police became a regular presence in my life. i thought my love could lead him to detox, knowing deep down he was a good man. if i stood firm he'd see his way to sobriety. but the grip of his addiction was too tight, and i feared for both of our lives. finally court-ordered him to rehab, and i was done. he cost me a fortune financially and emotionally. i knew i had let fly too many red flags before saving myself.

i also saw he loved me, but not himself.

"love is never enough."

at last, i met one for whom it seemed it was. he didn't want to, but he fell. so did i. difference is i continue to fall. for years, i swam happily in a warm unfathomable well of contentment. he watched me paddle along with a sense of proprietary beneficence. he always swore i'd reach a *bottom*, or some sort of plateau and each day i awake amazed at the endlessness of it. in this one thing, i proved him wrong. i feel helpless in its onslaught, but calmed by its reality, and empowered by its strength.

i finally began to think my mother was wrong.

she wasn't. (but you all saw that coming, right?)

i still hold it and take my center from it, but now my love can affect and change nothing. (could it have ever? not here, not with him, no...) its object is all i want, but he's sliding the lid on the well. lid gets nudged a bit more everyday, so in his mind i grow quieter, and in his heart i recede.

truly, i don't mind the silence and the stillness, really i don't. but if he pushes the lid into its final slot and hammers in the nails, how will ever i ever get out of the well? trust me, lassie will not come looking for this sodden wench.

oh, and my mother? i can't even tell her she's right...