Year End

It's been a long one and over too quickly at the same time. Much has happened that I skipped because love needs me to for now or because I was too busy. Importantly, I failed to record my parents' 50th anniversary, which I attended in Fresno, and the trip to get there, which took me through Santa Barbara and visits with many of the friends and fellow writers about whom I've written previously in this forum--my hosts George and Amy and Chryss and, since it was Amy's birthday and she had a party, a cavalcade of Santa Barbara's elite (well, they're elite to me). There was an all too brief side trip to visit Chris and Nadya in Lompoc to deliver my tiny book. Then on to Fresno, a warm and lovely trip, topped off by my surprise arrival to the celebration that my sister Kelly organized magnificently, and which included many family members, cousins and uncles and aunts, including my brother Todd and his family, and even one old high school buddy, Mark Driscoll--some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Mom and Dad were radiant as I've ever seen them, even youthful. Then the next afternoon, I drank another bottle of wine and conversed with Peter Everwine (I wish everyone this new year the gift of a fine bottle shared with an imminently wise friend), and then briefly visited Charles Hanzlicek and his wife Diane and talked about life and politics and their war of election signs with their neighbor. In many ways, this trip was both time travel and another coat of laquer over the grain.

Time is weird. It passes largely outside of us, around us, because in this moment we feel largely the same, fizzing away in our acuities and abstractions, ebb as flow, so when we re-arrive into a bubble of familiarity many years later, its passing is writ in wrinkles and frailty on others and to them, I suppose, on me. But for me (and, yes, you), now is always now, and I feel much as I did back in school, a kid with a new piece of chalk or worried about Daisy Wallace and would she be all right after the fire that took so much from her. It never leaves, the senses of possibility and concern. Certainty and uncertainty swirl, and the un becomes one like Schrodinger's cat and you open the trunk and, looking right at it, you still aren't sure if it's dead or just sleeping. Yearning mediates each moment still, if not as uncontrollably, and loss accumulates irrepressibly, and to what end is always the wrong question to ask anyway. There's never an end. There's just stopping, and there's just going until you do. So, go.

Day 6,7,8 Reprise and Foxen

Having spoken with George the previous about wineries to visit on the way to Fresno, focusing primarily on other Paso Robles wineries, I surprised myself and headed instead up Foxen Canyon and stopped at Foxen winery, whose wines George said were getting better and better. Their pinots are become expensive and rare, and so I was disappointed the tasting room had none available to taste. The syrahs, cabs, and merlots were all good, and I sent some home, but they also whispered that they had 'a few' magnums "just in today" of their famed Sea Smoke vineyard and their Block 8 available, so I paid a ransom for one of each to add to the rest, and so I hope the government is happy that I used my "stimulus" check for wine that I hope will be very stimulating.

But much of the rest of the trip was a reprise of last year, and happily so, as I visited Mom and Dad and Haley and Hannah and Chase and my sister, who is still recovering from being slammed by a semi, my old neighbors Al and Lavonne, and, of course, the seco palms. We sat on the porch a lot. Watched the sky threaten rain. I shipped back some of my vinyl records even though I have nothing to play them on, but they're here in South Georgia.

I also spent another fine afternoon with Peter Everwine, and we talked again about poetry and life and friends and our work. And to my delight he is working. He remarked that he wasn't sure he had time to finish another project, but, leaving, I reminded him that Phil Levine predicted he'd give us another thirty years after he suffered a heart attack some years back, and I pointed out that you don't fuck around with a Phil Levine prediction. He laughed and said, "Well, I guess I have a few more to go, then." Many more, we all hope. We shared a bottle of Hartley Ostini pinot I picked up in Santa Barbara and we drank it into the afternoon, a sweet wine for sweet words.

Up early the last day to drive to LAX and home to grading and kittens after another good trip.

Turley and Everwine and Hannah and her Sister, Part Last

After a leisurely morning sipping coffee and groggily seeing George and Amy leave to walk Mookie and Nigel (or vice versa) and then off to work (and I thank them again for their wonderful hospitality), I headed up the coast toward Fresno, where I was born at.

I took the 101 to Paso Robles, where my mother is from and where my grandparents farmed almonds, zinfandel, and vegetables . My uncle, proprietor of Richard Sauret Vineyards, still lives there and grows grapes for Rosenblum and other wineries (congrats on inclusion in Wine Spectator's top 100 for that yummy 2003, by the way), so making a quick wine stop seemed appropriate. Since I've always been a big fan of Turley Zins (or a fan of big Turley Zins), I made that my stop of choice despite the temptations of many new wineries along the 101/41 corridor. A quick turn onto Vineyard Road in Templeton led me to the redesigned winery and tasting room (formerly Pesenti winery) and I tasted several new releases, including the powerful Ueberroth and their version of the famed Dusi vineyard. Very good wines, all, so I ordered half a case to be sent to me (isn't it Friday yet?), some I can drink soon (Old Vines) and some to hold, the Moore Earthquake--fond memories of sharing one bottle, 17.1% natural alcohol, with Kurt Brown and David Oliveira at the Paradise Grill in Santa Barbara--and a Haynes Vineyard, their flagship zin. Some don't like Turley style wines, especially James Laube, but I find the fruit extraction more than compensates for the alcohol. Generally, the nose is dense fruit with just a hint of briar (moreso in the central coast offerings) and spices more or less complicate it nicely or amazingly, depending on the source. They're balanced, portlike wines without the sweetness, and I can only compare them to Amarones in a great year, with roasted fruit flavors and enough acidity to make it friendly to strongly flavored foods or even with deserts. They make a port, but it wasn't available for tasting.

I arrived in the afternoon at the Williams "Estate" in Fresno, a green 50s era tract home in a lower middleclass neighborhood two blocks from William Saroyan's former pair of Fresno houses. My nieces, Haley and Hannah, were playing in the wading pool, while my parents fiddled in the garden. Dad's gone seco-palm crazy, and sprouting fronds everywhere make the yard an eye and balloon hazzard, but it was nice to be home and to see my parents in good health. Dad has lost 20 pounds and Mom especially looks much younger than her 67 years. It was also good to catch up with the kids' mom, my sister Kelly, and Chase, her oldest son.

The next day, my full day in Fresno, I planned to visit the homes of various poets I know there. Phil Levine was in New York, but I wanted to catch up with Peter Everwine, Connie and John Hales, Glover Davis, Charles Hanzlicek, Jon Vineberg and Dixie Salazar (David O. and I visited Jon and Dixie last year), and I made a contact list and headed out. I made it to Peter's and just never left. It was great to see one of my favorite teachers and one of our finest poets, share a couple glasses of zin, and hang out, talking about everything from mutual friends mentioned already, poets we liked (especially Bob Hicok, whom Peter likened to Bill Matthews in terms of his pure love of language), prose poetry, the book festival, and our lives. I enjoyed his classes because he was so efficient and yet genial. He cut through everything in a workshop or class and always said something that was both surprising and luminous. He'd pull us out of our cloud-of-dust verbal scrum and say, "Hey, look up, here." Then he'd show us. I don't think I ever would have pursued poetry if it weren't for him. I first met him through his work, when Thom Gunn at Cal pulled out one of his poems, "Desire," to show us what a great contemporary poem was, then later when I met him in Fresno as I pursued a teaching credential, showed him a little poem, and heard him tell me to my surprise that it was good enough for me to begin serious study. (I can't emphasize enough the word begin in the previous sentence.) It still took me several years to get into the program, since I had a young family and a new career as a teacher. But his encouragement helped many of us take the art seriously even as many of us were intimidated by his inimitable, underappreciated talent. To whit, one of my favorite poems of all time, currently available in From the Meadow: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series, 2004):

How It Is

This is how it is --
One turns away
and walks out into the evening.

There is a white horse on the prairie, or a river
that slips away among dark rocks.
One speaks, or is about to speak,
not that it matters.

What matters is this --
It is evening.
I have been away a long time.
Something is singing in the grass.


Peter Everwine