It starts in darkness and ends in darkness. It is short and uncertain. At this point. There is hope and there is fear. And it will be quick.How else could it be, here in my own private Ireland?
We All Live in a Yukon Gold Submarine
Snapshots of dreams, some while awake.
A snake descends from the ceiling, hovering over my neighbor’s bed, looking down over his plump little body. The snake has no fangs but he reaches out for his arm and draws blood anyway.
A cat and a squirrel play with each other, chasing each other around a back yard and into an outside brick oven. The two disappear inside and are not seen again.
Black birds circle the restaurant. Gold and Sapphire Jaguar convertibles, with their tops down, are valet parked in front. A man too busy with his Blackberry sits down in his, on a pile of bird crap.
The four-legged and two-legged animals are doing strange things, these short days and long nights.
The View from McCain’s Suite in the Hanoi Hilton
I had been wondering for a day or so if perhaps I had really died and this was all some Monroe-vian dimension where one doesn’t realize they have died and were trapped in some nether land between life and thereafter.
Time to open a bottle of Barolo or Amarone, something heavy and dark, moody. Something to get us in the groove for the next few days of crossing over into the new season and beginning that long endured cycle of pulling up out from the primordial slime back into the light of day.
There I go, There I Go, There I Go Again
Someone leads you into a private room and pours you a glass of Champagne. To get you to stop complaining. What, isn’t Dom Perignon Rose 1990 good enough for you? Or would you rather be waterboarded?
A couple of days ago, Drew Hendricks, the head sommelier at Charlie Palmer, brings over to the table a nicely aged French white, from his Next Vintage wine shop. Just a little something to go with the Diver scallops on artichoke pesto. It happened in darkness, under the shadow of Pegasus.
Twelve hours later in another urban setting, hundreds of miles away, sommelier Antonio Gianola grabs a Fumin, tears off the capsule and places it aside. He then opens up a Pinot Noir from the Vallé D'Aoste. A sip and a sensation. A slight pain is crawling up inside my skull towards the monkey brain. What happened to that bottle of Fumin?
Eight hours after that, a crisp Chablis is sampled; again we are in the pitch black of night. Black birds, all of them, this time with firm acidity to go with tabbouleh and seared tuna. Animals and dreams, darkness and wines.
Pardon My Elbow
Yesterday, on the plane coming home, I hit a woman in the face. It was an unplanned moment, a mishap. We were just too jammed together, and there wasn’t enough room to put my jacket on. I have had it with travel, until after one last Argentina. Time to settle in for a day or so, while the longest night approaches.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal baby.