lies.

the sun is out today, right now. so are the clouds. it's a cold and blustery fall day. the trees are all magnificent reds and oranges, yellows and browns. the leaves are falling to the ground more each day. the sun keeps poking out of the clouds. i am sitting at a coffee shop in Mac. i have no work to do today or tomorrow. crush is over, but Felix still wants us to stay around for a bit longer to do some bottling. a complicated situation in itself. i am feeling a bit abused for my willingness to work. i feel aimlessness coming on towards me lately. the "quicksand of inactivity" starting to pull and tug at me--which always gets me thinking and pondering and writing. and poems and coffee shops and running and more thinking.

*****

(as usual, musings here inspired by the one and only mallory)

society, no, the world, our culture? whoever "they" are--they lie about two crucial things in life. the two most crucial things in life actually. love and purpose. i think so at least.

as we grow up, the fairy tale of cinderella and prince charming recedes into just what it is--a fairy tale. maturity comes along and our dreams of Mr. or Mrs. Perfect sweeping us off our feet and love-like-the-movies stops seeming a plausible reality. it's because of a lot of specific and complex factors--but it comes down, doesn't it?, to general disappointment that some other person can't read our brainwaves perfectly (an impossible, yet strivable, feat, no?). it seems this let-down (if we want to call it that....or is it really just life? of course it's just life!) has become generally accepted. that is: love doesn't end at finding the perfect person, marriage is not a life-long honeymoon, it takes work and compromise and pain and growth and all good stuff that.

So, yes. we (our world, these people around us who live as we do) seem to have come to expect that love will forever be a challenging realm of our lives. that it cannot be perfected, only struggled through and thereby enjoyed. (and what a great way to flip a sad reality. that we grow from finding out what "love" means. I like that. so very much. because it's what makes love a realistic part of life--it's unexpected and strange and always changing.)

but, no one tells you about the other thing in life that will forever be elusive: purpose. our world is set up such that we spend the first 23 years of our lives in school. every day has structure, every season, every year we go to classes, have summer vacation, go to camps, learn to play instruments, study. in this world (and maybe here, I can say specifically in the US it's most extreme, or at least in that bubble called the northeast US) there is a path that is "right." it includes elementary school, where after school hours are filled with music lessons, soccer practice, ballet classes. Summers are camp and fun with friends. then we go to high school--and get a little more freedom--but still we study and we practice when we're told to. Then we go to college, and the "right" thing to do is take all the requirements, major smartly, get good grades, and get the great internship after junior year.

then we graduate.

and suddenly there's nothing "right" anymore. nothing is ever absolutely correct anymore. and no one warns us about this fact before it happens. no one says, "by the way, after you finish school, the world will never tell you again what you are supposed to be doing. it will be entirely your responsibility to figure out what is right for you to do." which is, of course great, because you become totally your own boss. but it's also terrifying because how do you know what you're supposed to be doing. how do you know if choice A is better than choice Y? it's all on your shoulders and it's scary.

no one tells you that, just like you'll never find a "perfect" (how gross) love, you'll also never be *sure* (as in 100% sure) of what "you're supposed to do with your life." i mean, supposedly, after you finished 18 years of schooling, you'd think i could have some idea of what i want to be my purpose, how i want to contribute, how i think i fit, into this vast complex world. but nope. i'm not lucky enough to have grown up drawing and know that i want to be an artist, or drawn to medicine so i'm a doctor, or arguing (well, that's arguable) so i'll become a lawyer. what about us floaters? we don't have a prescribed path. or at least I can't see what mine is.

so. yea. lies when we're little: that prince charming exists and that we'll find the perfect career that miraculously makes us extatic every day to go to work, or even, just that we'll know what and how we are meant to be a creative, special, or otherwise useful contributer to the world in some way that's larger than just little me.

******

talk a lot about what makes me happy. about people being my thing. about experiences. about places and traveling. and about this question of people vs. places. a place might be all one needs. but a great place can be boring and lonely if you aren't with people to enjoy it with you. same thing: a place might be terribly uninteresting, but if you're with the right person or people, it can be an incredible adventure. so that suggests it's about the people, not the place. therefore, a "right" path for the floaters in the world (the floaters that follow this logic that is, and not everyone does, obviously) would be dictated not by what you are doing specifically and not by where you are, but by who you are with.

but doesn't this put too much pressure on those people?probably. because i can write poems and sit in coffee shops with my Gens and my Mallorys for a long time, but i can't do that forever, with no other purpose....

and so, oh, how unexpected! it's a compromise between the two. just like everything else in life. find people who make you happy. find some THING that makes you happy. find a place that also makes you happy. and do that thing, live with those people, walk around that place. and then. well, then i supposed you'll be happy.

tired

i'm exhausted.
and tired.
of sleeping with spiders
and the dog pooping in the house
and being cold.

recent events have included: a trip into Portland to visit our family friends, pumpkin carving, vespa riding, city exploring, and yummy yummy food eaten (like baby octopus!)

then back to Carlton where we've been continuing to press our wine, but have some time off: yesterday we went on a hike nearby the winery and after 45 minutes of walking we happened upon this open valley with vineyards below and mountains in the distance. it was a good time with a good bottle of wine. then last night we built a bonfire and cooked hotdogs and marshmellows on the fire.

right now:

"If you arrive in a strange land,

bow

if the place is bizarre

bow
if the day is utter strangeness
surrender--
you are infinitely more peculiar"
-Orides Fontela

(thank you for this mal)

im feeling so happy. and content. each day i know what to expect and i am feeling that i know what i am doing around here more and more, which makes me feel in turn that I'm doing a good job with my work.

the thought of WWOOFing, and the fact that I am doing these sometimes 13 hour days for free. well except room and board. it is an interesting thing to stop and think about. because it's a lot of work. and i wake up early and i got to bed late and when felix tells us to punch Bin 10 we punch Bin 10, and when he says, tile the shack and install dry-wall and a wood stove, we do just that. and yet, we are working in exchange for our roof over our head, food in our bellies, and an incredible chance to learn about wine-making from start to finish in an extremely hands-on way. So i don't know quite how to put what I am feeling except in adjectives: happy to be learning. tired every day. happy to be outside and using my body. tired from using my body. thrilled to be so much a part of each step of the wine-making process. gratitude towards felix for all that he tells and teaches us. irritated at felix for how much he throws at us without us know what we are doing. ecstatic for how much responsibility he gives us. it all has its flip side. which is, i guess, the way life is.

more importantly, the money thing: doesn't seem to be an issue. i work for food and sleep and the chance to learn. and there is something very peaceful and wholesome (i know, cheesy) about this kind of exchange. there is something honest and sincere about the relationship that develops between felix and us (ryan and myself) because we are not here for some sum of money and because of it...well i don't know what happens, but it feels somehow very pure. i can't explain it much better than that. except that it feels like a fantastic chance to experience and practice the philosophical, spiritual even, lesson of simply living--not for money or profit or the pursuit of anything except...living, learning, existing, eating, sleeping, laughing, cooking, building, and making wine.

on another note. i have been thinking a lot about how happy i have been in this life that is outside, working with grapes and making wine. each day goes by so incredibly quickly, and at the end of every evening i am fully pooped. but there are moments when i realize how mentally i am unstimulated. I miss school and the rigors of academia...I really do. I miss being challenged in my thoughts and beliefs and forced to use my brain to solve issues or think about difficult questions. Out here i am only utilizing a portion of my mind and a large portion of my body. i like that I have found something that uses even a part of my body--that must continue--but to be truly happy in the long run, i think I will need to integrate some aspect of mental, mind-work too. i absolutely love making wine and i am thrilled to be out here, and so excited to possibly be continuing this stuff in the winter in New Zealand...but i do feel that i have larger gifts, greater possibilities, and more that I could do in the world. perhaps still within the wine world, perhaps using communication skills, and especially if I could tie in an aspect of environmental advocacy into the wine-world in some way....that would be great. anyway, this all came from thinking about WWOOFing and the idyllic farm life that I have so much craved for years and years. now that i am living it, i realize that yes, it is wonderful, but not what i want to do for the next 20 years. once i'm 50 I'd love to have my little garden but for now i think I need something more brain-active aswell. In a way, being out here has allowed me to realize how my brother has been right all along: i have more to offer than an armful of organic vegetables. and yet, unless i'd come out here and lived this life, i would never have experienced it and so I'd never have realized that it is great...but not right for me at this stage of my life. at least, not in the larger sense.

not sure if this makes any sense. just thoughts coming out of my fingers at 8:30 in the morning on a wednesday in october as i sit at the family computer in Carlton, Oregon.

insulation!

yesterday we put up insulation in our shack! and we installed the chimney and tile for our woodstove. now we just need to fireproof the walls and we are ready for a fire....

it's all very exciting business.

today we take more fermenters to barrels.

so much wine

too much wine! so much wine!

in india people would frequently mix up "so" and "too." this meant they were often saying things like "we are having too much fun here" instead of "so much fun. Madeline, the 5 year old i live with, has this same problem. it brings back great memories and makes me think of Mallory on a daily, often 10-minute basis (!)

anyway, the point is that we are making too much wine! as in so much. the fermenting process, and the punchdowns 4 times a day are winding down. the wine has been sitting, we've been adding yeast food, punching away at it each day, and a few days ago we started taking some it to barrels! this means draining the fermenter of "free-run" wine at the bottom directly into a barrel. the rest of the grapes and skins and seeds which have been resting on the top as a "cap" of sorts, still has good juice in it, so we put on all-natural rubber boots (first we clean them off, make 'em smarkle. just a little.) then hop into the fermenter and hoist buckets of soggy grape-seeds-skins into the press. then we turn it on and a rubber bladder inflates and presses the grapes and whatenot against the sides and out pours "pressed" wine. which pump into another barrel. in the winery room downstairs, a sort of 2nd level down the hill, we have so far filled about 20 barrels with this years vintage. each barrel holds 60 gallons so...as i say, that's a LOT of wine. and we've only done the Pinot Noir so far! we still have about 9 fermenters to go of the other kinds of grapes.

so, we are busy. every day is still the same really. in a good way. wake up in the cold cold, convince ourselves it's really necessary to get out of warm sleeeping bags and into the cold jeans hung on my rafter beam, walk to the house for coffee and breakfast. we start still with punchdowns, and then get to pressing.

Lately, tho, other jobs have cropped up as well. for instance a few days ago Felix rented a wood splitter. an electric one, which i quickly learned how to use. I chopped SO so so so too much wood. ear plugs and the whole shebang. felt like such a lumber jack. i have no idea how people measure wood chopping, but i chopped for about 4 hours and its a lot of wood.

Or, even better was yesterday. Right before Ryan and I arrived here one of Felix's ewe's got out and was roaming the area. yesterday we got news that she was in the neighbor's property so we dropped our pressing work and went on a ewe-hunt. basically we had to try to corner her, but forgot to close the gate to another pasture so she got away, then it turned into this poor creature trying to escape between us and damn was she fast. finally, felix managed to tackle her and so we carried her home on our shoulders. that was quite the adventure.

anyway, life is great. busy and long days. tons of work, but great wine and great fun. we've been working sometimes late into the evenings which has been rough, but still somehow manageable because it's all really fun and i enjoy what I'm doing.

and being a farmer, well it takes a bit to get used to it, but it definitely is a comfortable place for me. spending more time dirty than clean, never getting the dirt or grape residue off your hands, wearing the same dirty jeans you wore yesterday, all of it--it's different from living in New York City, or Boston (not to mention India and Kenya..) and that takes getting used to at first, but now that I'm in it, and living it, I really am loving it and I'm so excited that I'm staying for another month and a half.

and im also excited that we are putting our wood stove into our shack today and tomorrow because it is getting really really cold.

happy birthday to me

happy birthday to me yesterday. great day.

apple pie cake.