Life is short. Like the finish of a cheap Prosecco. Like the
memories of the young, and the time between an old man’s trips to the bathroom at
night. But life is also long. From the time you begin to read this until the
time you finish, life will have seemed to have dragged on forever, and you will
have felt like Dante was your guide here and not me. Life is both short and
long. A midget with a large dingdong. We straddle both lives, like a gymnast
working the parallel bars—even for men, uneven for women. A man works a woman’s
bars at the risk of his very salsiccia. Yes,
life is a midget with a large dingdong. Show him respect.
Where the hell's the bathroom? |
People, so many people in this wine game. The young come to it
filled with ideas, certain of their conviction that their ideas are new. All
ideas are new when you’re young. I know. I once had ideas myself. But it’s been
many years since any ideas have appeared to me. This is the folly of youth.
Ideas drive them. But age teaches. Age is the great teacher. I had a great
teacher once, in my youth. He taught me the wine business in just a few words.
“Alfonso,” he said to me, “leave a little something of yourself in every wine
you drink.” And now all those somethings have reduced me to what I am today. A
couple ideas short of nothing.
Emptiness, where I walk |
Twice is a word I like. It’s like “ice” with a “tw” before
it. I like twice because I like people to read everything I write twice. So it
finally makes sense. Like tradition makes sense. Without tradition, what are we
left? Emptiness. The feeling I try to leave you with here. The tradition of
emptiness. Like writing about ratings. Ratings have no tradition, no memory;
ratings are emptiness. I contradict myself by writing about ratings when I
express that writing about them is emptiness. Words folded into words, this is
my luggage on the wine trail in Italy.
American Tourister—my role in the wine world of Italy, and my luggage. Folds within
folds.
My Life--full, or empty? |
Where do we go from here, the young and the old? Life is a
midget with a large dingdong and no ideas, only luggage. If you think about
that long enough, maybe read it twice, it will start to make sense. Where will
wine go? My beloved Italian wines, where will their journey take them? Will it
be a short journey or a long journey? Both. Short for the wines that court
emptiness, like Soave and wines in fish bottles. Why do they put wine in a fish
bottle? Just for the hali…but I digress. Long for the wines that speak of the
people and the country where they are made. The wines of my dreams and my
nightmares. My dreams, my loves, my desires. My nightmares, my fears, my… What
was I talking about?
Age. Ideas. Folds within Folds. The emptiness of my luggage
on and on and on and on and on and on and on the wine trail in Italy.
Dammit! Every time I read, "Fold" I kept picturing a midget's penis.
ReplyDeleteI can die a happy man now (or just die, dammit).
ReplyDeleteI've been roasted by the Hosemaster.
That's way better than just reducing me to an essence...
Right on, Hosie! see you soon, with green deckshoes on
You forgot the fershtunkener Sicilian grandfather
ReplyDeletethanks Strapps!
ReplyDeleteMy Gorgeous Samantha,
ReplyDeletePenis? Oh, I see. No, I meant dingdong as in doorbell. Midgets with big doorbells. I should have been clearer.
Alfonso,
Damn, I hate it when the spoofed take it so well.
Is there a more pretentious, uninspired crap parade than Vornography's Essence of Wine series? What a buffoon. The Ted Baxter of bloggers.
Strappo,
I just decided to do Alfonso's rather convoluted, fabulist, philosophical voice, which always makes me laugh. It's this sort of mournful, yet optimistic, voice that drones on and on and on making the sort of connections that owe more to Lewis Carroll than Burton Anderson. But I think because it was done with admiration rather than contempt, it's tamer than most of my blog parodies.
But "fershtunkener," man, that's a great word. Sicilian?
Laughed so hard on this one, which is not the same as saying it gave me a hard on. But then, life is one big hard on. If you feel around long enough you'll know what I mean...
ReplyDeleteThomas--
ReplyDeleteAh, all those memories.
So funny,and Alfonso the perfect foil, with his sense of humor and love of words.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine what Hemingway would have sounded like had he been on the Wine Trail with Ace.