"Why did I flinch? I loved you. And in the downpour laughed"

Poem
The Mad Scene - James Merrill

Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry.
In it, the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
Onto moon-marbly boards. We had just met. I watched
From outer darkness. I had dressed myself in clothes
Of a new fiber that never stains or wrinkles, never
Wears thin. The opera house sparkled with tiers
And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,
Trained inward. There I saw the cloud-clot, gust by gust,
Form, and the lightning bite, and the roan mane unloosen.
Fingers were running in panic over the flute’s nine gates.
Why did I flinch? I loved you. And in the downpour laughed
To have us wrung white, gnarled together, one
Topmost mordent of wisteria,
As the lean tree burst into grief.

Beverage
Water with a Liquid IV, tart cherry juice, and chia seeds

For someone who loves a beverage, I am basically always dehydrated — there is no good explanation for this, but it is true. A long time ago, over ten years ago, I was extremely into adding chia seeds to basically everything, and I think I might have been on to something. I do think they actually help with staying hydrated if I have them in water? This is something I learned on the internet 100 years ago, approximately, and I will not being doing additional research.

In the past, I did just water and chia seeds, and later I did the same but with the addition of lime and cherry juice. I didn't have a lime on hand, but I did have my major hydration staple of Liquid IV. This would have been an even better beverage with lime, and I have an agnostic opinion regarding the flavor of the Liquid IV. But I really think I can optimize a single beverage into not being dehydrated. Do not disabuse me of this idea.

Scent
Soft Services Theraplush "Hold"

I have purchased many Soft Services products in the past, but I couldn't justify the cost of the bedside night cream for hands despite its beautiful container. But then Soft Services hosted an event at my yoga studio last week, and when I came in for my workstudy shift on Wednesday morning, there were a variety of open products left for staff and volunteers to take home. The event had been a release for the "Hold" fragrance of the hand cream, and so there were plenty of those left. I took one home.

Despite my usual dislike of powdery notes, this one is so subtle that it melts into the scent of skin. There's a really soft musk to it, and it's comforting while still clean and easy. I appreciate that it isn't a lavender scent, like so many sleep-aligned fragrances are.

I don't think I would personally spend the $62 for this product, despite its beautiful container that I really love on my nightstand. But that's a "my budget" priority issue because I really don't use hand creams and instead just carry them in my purse. For a real hand cream person, I would wholeheartedly recommend. Lovely scent, not greasy or heavy, delightful packaging.

Now playing via Spotify "daylist"

Other notes

For the past three weeks, I have sat down to write this newsletter after going to "meet the winemaker" events at Manny's, a really lovely wine store in Stuyvesant Heights. I first went to a meet-the-winemaker there to satisfy my urge to go to Karakterre. The first time, I went because it was fairly convenient to where I was returning a rental car. The others — less convenient, but worth it.

I am writing this on Thursday night. I never write this newsletter early. Which is why, sometimes (often), I don't send one at all. I write it immediately before I send it, no edits, no reread. Terrible habit. I am breaking that habit right now because I got home from the wine shop, and I wanted to get a few things down. But I do absolutely promise this will not be edited before I send it.

This week, Cait and Nadir, the owners of Manny's and also a perfect little Yorkie, brought in John Wurdeman from Pheasant's Tears, and I was a little starstruck by the winemaker, the importer (Jenny from Jenny and Francois), and the natural wine writer (Alice Feiring) whose work together really has changed the whole look for Georgian wines outside of Georgia.

It was another version of my favorite conversation: art and craft and culture and creativity and tradition. But this one opened with the kind of anecdote that only a gifted storyteller could invent, unless it's true. And I think it's true.

Here's the story:

John Wurdeman is sixteen and skateboards into Plan 9 Music in Richmond, Virginia. The year is 1991.

(Plan 9 is right down the street from Can Can, a French restaurant that I went to once with my parents when I was on a college tour trip in 2007 and which lives really permanently in my imagination, but I digress.)

John sees a used CD in Plan 9's narrow World Music section, purchases the CD, and hears Georgian polyphony for the first time. He is transfixed.

A few years later, John goes to Georgia. He is studying painting in mid-90s Russia, a vegetarian eating "the most boring vegetables prepared in the worst way," and he arrives in Tbilisi to a beautiful meal and an endless jug of what we (we, annoying people) would now call orange wine. In the middle of the meal, the host brings in a musical ensemble. The ensemble is the same group featured on the CD that John had found and loved in Richmond as a teen.

"Eldar, is that you?" John asks the group's leader. "I think I'm your biggest fan from the U.S."

It is Eldar. But Eldar can't imagine he has any fans in the U.S. He has played outside of Georgia once — a show in Berlin, for which 300 CDs were produced. But one of those CDs had managed to get to Richmond.

If I had to guess how — the American military, American covert services, American government — but that's not the story.

The story is that John ends up buying a home in Georgia, that he begins to do deep ethnographic work in the country, that the home he bought — like all Georgian homes at the right elevations, it's the oldest wine culture in the world, after all — has grapevines in the yard. That John asks his neighbors if they want the grapes, and they tell him to make wine, like everyone else, like everyone normal, what is wrong with Americans that he doesn't know, just put the grapes in a bucket and cover it with cheesecloth. That these old women who are John's neighbors are right, and that he learns to make wine in his yard in 1996. That John spends the next decade doing ethnographic work in Georgia, and then in 2006, he buys a vineyard with a friend and creates Pheasant's Tears, a vineyard that will change the international conversation about Georgian wine.

While planned Soviet economies and hypercapitalistic American economies alike drove toward a reduction of art in viniculture — a focus on high production in Georgia's sunny Khaketi valley doesn't differ on a close look from Napa's fixation on Cab and Chard —Pheasant's Tears has carved a space in wine that feels almost as serendipitous, as synchronistic as John's own encounter with Georgian polyphony.

"Something as unpoetic as commerce allowed grapes to reclaim their homeland," he said, as he explained how demand from abroad encouraged winemakers to encourage vines to return to the slopes and terraces of Georgia's more challenging wine regions.

Both planned economies and "late stage capitalist" production models drove toward a reduction of art in viniculture — and I have an inelegant argument forming about art in other forms as well. But the question remains: How do we build systems in which art can thrive in all its forms?

We might be drinking Saperavi — but that's the exact grape the Soviets thought we should be drinking from Georgian production. What about the other 500+ cultivars indigenous to this region the size of West Virginia?

To be clear, by West Virginia, I mean the American state. By Georgia, I mean the nation in Central Asia.

There's this whole other question about integrity in art, which is elegantly illustrated by Phylloxera, a global wine pest. Like — what are you willing to compromise in your craft to ensure that your art exists? Sulfites in your bottle? Grafting onto non-native rootstock? But let's not get into that here. I could write ten thousand words!

Something, though, that I do want to touch on is something John said about learning from the past without becoming mired in "museum conservationism."

Wine is inherently a living art. Vines are cultivated, grapes are grown. Fruit is harvested, juice is pressed, wine is fermented, bottled, sold, consumed. Wine cannot be consumed from a page or a record or canvas. I want to consume music and visual art and the written word in this way, but that is only possible with transcendent experiences. Literally transcendent, ones that occur outside of our daily, individual interactions with those media.

But wine always exists in the multi-sensory realm. There is a reason we default to metaphor to express our experiences with wine — metaphor can cut across our sensory experiences. A wine is bright, structured, lively, green, full-bodied, high-tone. I mean, I can explain what that tastes like, maybe. But the shorthand metaphor is easier.

Okay, anyway. If one isn't becoming mired in "museum conservationism," one is creating something living, something moving ahead. The Pheasant's Tears labels are different now than they were a few years ago. The wine is different.

"It's important that creativity and tradition don't contradict each other," John said.

He had more to say that I wrote down. ("Within the spectrum of natural wine, you can find Bach, Led Zeppelin, and the Sex Pistols. [Tension in the wine] can be the result of pushing something to its limits or the result of bad decisions." And comparing color to musical overtones to notes in wine. And about making wines that speak Georgian when they're on tables around the world. And making art toward an ideal versus making art toward a reality.)

But what can I add, really, except to state my real belief that anything that can spark an idea, anything that leads a person to the next thing, anything that asks for a leap beyond what's literally at hand, anything that begs a deeper connection — that's all art.