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 5, Santa Barbara Style

Day five was nice and slow. Patrick and Robin offered up their house for a pizza dinner party Monday night, but Monday day meant everybody working but me. I caught up on end-of-semester panicky emails from students and then left around noon for lunch with the wonderful company of Chryss and Barry Spacks. I parked at the beach and walked up to the UCSB campus, which I hadn't been to since I worked there at the end of the last millennium. It looked the same and strange at the same time, as though someone had reconstructed campus from faulty partial memories. The lagoon was where it was, but the Student Union seemed pressed into the wrong place until I arrived and looked out the window at the lagoon.

Then Barry walked up, whom I hadn't seen but very briefly last year, and Chryss, and everything fell back into place. Barry, who hasn't aged a day since I first met him, was wonderfully Barry, upbeat and sparkling. If he were fatter I might even call him jolly, but he's not, so witty and wise will have to do. Chryss and he joked around during our quickish lunch, and I filled them in on my weekend in LA and life in general (kids, Amy, kittens, etc.) and then I took Barry home, as Chryss had to get back to the job, and they I shopped for the evening's wine and ingredients for the homemade tapenade I offered to make to contribute to Patrick's pizza. I also found some Fontina Val d' Aosta and had to purchase just for the transmogrifying irony of it (I live in Valdosta, folks, that's in Georgia, where the favored cheese is Velveeta or other 'mer'can styles).

I headed early (though I was briefly lost) to Patrick's to help with the pizza, tour the new home and see its lovely hillside view of Santa Barbara and the ocean. But friends George, Amy, Chryss and Cattie, and Barry from the night before, along with old friends Tom and his terribly cute son and Madeleine and Bob and their lovely daughter Sophie showed up to enjoy the new home and the old friend (i.e. me). It's been nearly twelve years since I moved to Santa Barbara and met all these wonderful people and we get older and the kids grow taller and things in the body hurt more or there's less of it or it's changing color and we fumble for glasses we didn't need then and it doesn't matter because this night reprised what was best about all my time there--these friends on a warm beautiful night with food and wine and the casual poetry of hanging out and love. Thanks Patrick and Robin.

We made our way back down the hill, George, Amy, and I, and we continued a smaller version of the party until the wee hours.

(I don't remember all the wines we drank, but it would have been a fine list. I contributed an Emile Moro from Ribera, and I know George brought some fabulous wines. Remind me?)

Who isn't tired of the Pinot Envy pun? CA, pt. III

Not me, apparently. After "philosophizing" in Chris Buckley's backyard, I headed back to Santa Barbara, parked, and walked to the end of the pier that famously burned up in November, 1998. I know the date because it was my birthday and I was driving back from the airport after defending my dissertation at the U. of U. in Salt Lake City. I remember rounding a bend and seeing the horizon on fire. The entire city was burning, I thought, but it was just creosote-soaked planks and pylons spitting flame. (Months later, I arrived home and a sobbing voice on my answering machine pleaded with whomever he was trying to call to help him recover from the financial and artistic loss of his paintings that burned. He sadly left no number.)

After reacquainting myself with the sea air and the waves, I walked to Madeleine and Bob's condo to say hello. They didn't know I was coming, so it was delightful to surprise Madeleine (Bob, alas, was at UCLA) and Sophie and their guests, Lily and Lily's grandmother. When two two-year-olds are around, they pretty much determine the course of human events, so we sat around, played, read parts of books, talked between lulls in the perfect chaos. It was fun and especially wonderful to see Madeleine so happy.

Later, we all headed to dine with dear friends George and Amy, who graciously put me up for the night and who hosted an impromptu gathering in my honor. The evening evolved into a study of California's pinot terroirs (which I guess makes us homegrown terroirists [insert bad pun drumbeat here]), beginning with a 2002 Williams-Selyem Rocchioli Riverblock (rich nose, evolving complexity; opening with this is definitly going all in). Friends dropped in and we munched pizza and caught up. Patrick was looking as dapper as ever, and he still maintains his intellectual ferocity. Mookie and Nigel, the house greyhounds, towered over Sophie, who ran around the yard with them anyway. Chryss (one of those Santa Barbara poets) and her new husband Dan came by as well, and we talked about music and the woes at the News Press and kids and people and events and anything, all the while powering through several more bottles of pinot and three pizzas. George kept it lively, spinning cd's from one of the best music collections in the west (Eric Bachmann and Yo La Tengo covering anyone, among several fine others). The second bottle, the 2000 Dehlinger Octagon, was my favorite of the evening, perfectly aged (like all of us, I hope?), laser fruit and spices and a wonderful finish with a hint of smoke. A 2003 Longoria Bien Nacido, one of my favorites from my time there, followed that with its rich, ripe central coast earthiness. There was a 2004 Brego pinot from Anderson Valley that explored the youthful strawberry side of the pinot spectrum. I might have missed one, but by the third bottle, one sips more than one takes mental notes. All in all, it was a wonderful evening--what we live for, good friends, food, wine, an evening that tailed off into quiet comfort and restful warmth.

The only thing missing from it all was my Amy, but here's a toast to you, sweetness. Cheers.

(Thanks for the help on the winelist, George.) Fresno tomorrow, I promise.