What I want
to say is, well fuck I have no idea where or how to start saying or sharing all
that I want to say. I’ve been gone so long I fear, no it’s not a fear it’s a
fact, that my voice has become lost amongst the chatter of the interwebs. My
blog was, is, never really relevant within the wine community, writing,
blogging or otherwise. Not sure it ever was but my lack of content and desire
has pushed me further down the rabbit hole and the slide down has left me a bit
chaffed…and with a fiercely uncomfortable wedgie.
I’ve had some
personal struggles last year. My post about my brother exposed some of that,
but there were plenty of other nut grinding situations and dramas that sent
this historically buoyant knucklehead paddling to the steps and climbing out of the
pool. Hate it. Like really hate it and find that the longer I’m away the angrier
I get, at myself. Some sort of weird teabag of self-punishment not allowing
myself to seep and marinate in the warm bath of peace I find when I let my
thick nails fly across my keyboard, making my thoughts into rudimentary crayon
drawings for the nine people that come here to share time with me. Not sure
what kind of sick ass emotional cutting I’ve been doing but not being here, the
scars are getting thick in that ugly and shameful kind of way and I’m really
over pulling down my sleeves to cover them.
I’ve had
about thirteen posts partially written, both in my head and here in my Word
documents. None of them worth much, I mean, come on we are talking about wine
blogging here, but stuff I sort of wanted to say but fell short, either in my
estimation or imagination, in keeping with that whole shit giving enough to
even bother finishing. Again this could be a symptom of my fed-up’d-ness or an
actual fact, can’t tell but the not bothering to finish or complete something
has ended up adding to the irritation but now, now it’s starting to feel less
like a healing wound and more like a itchy, prickly rash. Fuck you silence,
I’ve had enough…
So there’s
all that dealing with shifts and twists and then there is the having a couple
ideas, like solid ideas that I truly feel need to be said but they’ve been
bobbing around in my head, so close together that they end up mashing together
and banging bodies like rowboats tied along a dock…the collisions cracking
holes so big in each other that the repairs hardly seem worth it, or are too
massive for me to begin patching together at the end of my already taxing days.
This cycle, well it has been vicious.
My plan for 2016, aside from spending a month in
France, increasing French wine sales by 10% and Champagne sales 15%was to get a
post written and up by end of day on the 1st. After such a trying
year emotionally and physically for me I had my eye on the prize, that magical
flip of a new year and a fresh start. Sound too whimsical and group think
coming from me? Yeah, I thought so too which is why I just went ahead and
fractured my right leg, like literally, before 5:00 PM New Year’s Day. How’s
that for taking the New Year by storm? “Fuck you, I don’t even need both my
legs to handle this shit! Rawr!! Um, but, mother fucker OUCH!” whimper. I was a
bit shut down by the 2nd, couldn’t walk, wash myself, had to call
into work and leave my staff and bosses hanging but it was that blowing out of
the light in the tunnel that just socked me in my puffy gut. Goddamnit.
I was a blob
of unwashed deflation on the second day of the New Year, wishing I could sit
long enough to type even a little something and wondering who is holding the
voodoo doll in my likeness. Leg on ice and elevated on the couch I ran my dry
tongue across my even drier lips and felt a thick slap of spent skin, my eyes
empty and glued to whateverthefuck program I was not at all actually consuming
and I gave the lip scab a tug, rolled the dried bit of flesh between my
fingertips and gave the same kind of roll and flick you see when people hang
their hands out their car window to discard a freshly picked booger. Noticing
how dry I was I reached for my water glass and took a long, throat coating tug,
put my glass back on the bookshelf that is my new desk/table because of my
gimpdom and noticed a thick swath of blood where my mouth had been. Whimper.
Thirty
minutes, two ice cubes and three drenched paper towels later and the bleeding
finally stopped. I looked down at my swollen leg, over at my empty laptop
screen, hopped to the kitchen to chuck the lip tampons and waddled off to bed.
I didn’t have to change as I hadn’t washed. I felt especially gross and let
down or emptied, leg getting worse and knowing that an urgent care visit was
coming. I brushed my teeth with an extra furious desire to feel at least a tiny
bit clean and in charge. Hop-hop-hop to the potty, nighttime piddle, tear off a
piece of tissue to blow my nose, dispose of the spent tissue and that was when
I felt the trickling stream of warm blood come running out my nose. I just sat
there, wiped, jammies around my two different sized ankles, mouth twisted into
a knot as I shoved wads of toilet paper in my nostril on the verge of crying. I
felt my face twist, my head drop, my unwashed ass still pressed against the commode,
my eyes closed and before I could even process it all, I started laughing. Broken
leg, (although I had not been x-rayed yet, I just knew) bloody nose and lip and
not one word written, happy fucking New Year right?! It would suck if it weren’t
just so damn cartoonish, and so Me.
It was that
crack in my armor, the laughing when everything I had been planning, thinking
about and even walking had been whacked off my forecasting table, on the second
day of the New Year, that was when I felt a wonderfully familiar scratch. The whisper
of, “Just, let, go” and I knew, it is
time for me to just leave the strategizing behind. I mean don’t just run like a
4 year old hoped up on Skittles through life, but let the things that happen
just happen, don’t take them so fucking personal, or worse act like there is
some ominous cloud of shit following you around, because guess what, in the
scheme of things, you ain’t really that big a deal….I mean, other than to those
that love, want, need, miss, and wait for you.
It’s here
that I found a part of me I never knew was lurking about beneath my skin, and
it is here that I can count along with The Wine Country, with my tiny, (but
growing…oh, my, gawd am I madly in love with my new niece Emily. She is perfect
and I am now her servant) family, my vinegar, lemon, white wine and beef fat
scented kitchen, the importers that bestow upon me the honor of trusting my
palate and this, (you) tiny band of folks that let me just talk….like me either
because of what I say, or in spite of it. It is here that I have this one thing
that is just me. I’m done punishing myself because as I sat on that toilet
seat, twisted wad of Charmin shoved up my nose and flicking the new scab that
formed over my bloody lip, and I tried to figure out how to stand, flush, and
shove my fat, un-washed ass back into my needing a wash jammies, that I
realized, I am the one holding the voodoo doll. I’m the one keeping me from
being me and it isn’t you guys that are waiting or wanting…..
It’s me.
11 comments:
What to say to that? Welcome back. Sam at her raw, honest best. Been missing you, Girl.
Hope things are better physically and that pouring your soul on the blog will help heal the heart... well, that and big doses of Emily.
My Gorgeous Love,
I have to say that my heart started pounding when I saw your name had jumped to the top of my blog roll, that you'd published a new piece. It's one of my wishes for the New Year, that you get back to writing regularly. It's selfish, I just love to be smothered in You.
There's a lovely truth here that will stay with me. We're all carrying our own voodoo dolls. It's one of those creative truths that you've expressed perfectly. I know that I spend too much time sticking pins in myself, convinced that it's someone else. The world, after all, is full of pricks.
I love being here! You on your worst day is better than almost everyone else writing wine blogs on their best.
I love you! Welcome back. Now let's find somewhere private...
webb,
Thanks for missing me! Nice feeling that and more Emily is such a good thing, I just love her so! I got a cast put on my leg this morning so to cheer me up my sister kept sending me video messages, from Emily of course, screw pain meds, that was the best I've felt in days!
Ron My Love,
Thank you Love, you support and care for what I do here means far more to me than you will ever fully understand. You inspire me, you let me be me and love me for it...how fucking lucky is that? I love you too Ron and I forgot to post the picture of the map to our secret garden that I drew upon my flesh. Damn. Next time!
Call me a glass-half-full guy (perhaps the most cynical glass-half-full guy around), but maybe the leg break was necessary to get you to slow down and get back to the writing. If that sounds a little too metaphysical, I just ate a Frito chili pie, which tends to put one in a ponderous mood. Like, "why the hell did I eat all that chili and cheese and Fritos??" and "maybe Sam will start writing again if she breaks her leg..."
So, go break a leg, in the metaphorical sense. Heal the other one quickly, in a more literal, "busted appendages suck"-sort of way. Glad to have you back!
-Joe/Ed back East
LOVE Joe's comment in particular, and the others as well. I've got nothing very original to say, so I'm gonna cop out and paste what I said on the fb:
Your words are my glass of wine over the computer. Savored and enjoyed and a little bit pondered over. ANY time you feel like writing your words will be read and treasured! :)
Joe/Ed,
Hey my tall long lost amigo. I'd once again like to send you a big hug for the loss of our shared friend Benito. My meals with the two of you over those two days will forever be a great memory, and reminder of some of the wonderful things that can come from this impersonal internet of ours.
My boss said the same thing, saying this might just be a blessing in disguise, (hmmm wonder if he means he's been wanting to sack me?!) and it might be a way to hit my reset button, albeit a terribly painful and cumbersome one. As I said in this post, I'm sort of seeing it the same way. I was thinking about it everyday, many tomes a day but felt stupid to stunted about where to start, so I went full me, just blather and get it over with already. Thanks for the support my friend, I've missed you. Give those ladies my best too!
Dale,
I adored your comments in both places darlin. You are such a love and I truly love the way you feel me.
Ouch!
You forced me to respond--again.
You know what's more important than blogging? Well, just about anything, but what I meant to say is: teach your niece about food and wine, and you are sure to get to heaven someday.
Until then, walk softly m'lady.
Thomas,
Happy New Year my longtime friend. Teaching people about food and wine has been my purpose for the past 20 years now. That's what I love about retail is I get to see, face to face, the people I've touched and taught, the ones that have taught me and let me grow...hell my son is there now and I hear him doing wine pairings, that are dead on by the way, and I swell with pride. So heaven I think I've already found.
Now Emily, I feel like I have lots to give her. Her parents are both brilliant, funny, talented people so she's set there, I want to show her, if I can, how just being you, the honest real you, can bring you far more than hoping or pretending ever can. First gift I bought her was while she was still in the womb, an Amelia Bedelia book and on the inside I wrote a little note telling her that it is all of our imperfections that make us perfectly us. I cooked dinner Christmas Day but let everyone eat so I could just hold her tiny, sweet smelling body, rub her super fine honey blonde hair across my lips and whispered to her over and over again, "I love you more than you will ever know"...I hope she heard me.
Walk?! Now that's just mean. I am off my hoof in a cast for at least 4 weeks and they want me off of it another 4 after that. Now I know I won't be off that long but when I do get to walk...baby, I'm going to stomp!
baby, I'm going to stomp!
After you scratch like mad. Mark my words. It will itch like mad.
I was first hooked by your sensuality and then brought to the net by your sass. Now I'll be god damned if I'm not totally lured by your crazy ass metaphors..."buoyant knucklehead....." "teabag of self-punishment....." ....your mind is a lake of images that leave me flopping about on the twin shores of hysteria and pathos. Fisher of wine souls: you cast a fine spell and I adore you. I just wish I lived closer; I happen to know a really fine nurse who would be honored to be at your beckon call. More rudimentary crayon drawings please!
Reader number nine. WtE
Thomas,
Day 6, I think, and not too much with the itching. Everyone keeps warning me though, so I am getting anxious. When does it start?
Winey,
So lovely to see you. Yeah, I don't think I do vague very well. I think I want people to "get" what it is I mean so I try an make to picture as clear, and relatable as possible. I feel silly when I hear/read some of the things I've said, like when I describe Camille Saves Champagne as "a librarian in fishnets" or a specific domestic Pinot Noir as "This reminds me of when you see someone that is smoking hot, you can't take your eyes off their beauty but then, they open their mouth and they are dumb as a box of rocks" I find myself cringing, (although never enough to not say it) but I've found through the years that more people than not nod with wide eyes, like "I get it"....never sure if that translates when I write, so your words made me swoon. Thank you for that and I too adore you.
Oh and I'd love help! This cast is truly testing my resilience. The showering, the trying to get a glass of wine, lunch, being down one leg is way more difficult than I could have imagined. Even now, to write this, I have my laptop propped up on four cookbooks on my ottoman and in 20 minutes I've been here my leg is already beginning to protest. Ugh! I just need a balanced attitude, to take long deep breaths as I remind myself this isn't the end of the world....and an hour or two in a deep snuggle wouldn't suck....
Thanks for reading all and I promise, there is more to come.
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