tomatoes

I dreamed of tornadoes again last night.

As I child, I was so afraid of these whirling powers, I asked they be referred to as tomatoes.

I only went through one, in preschool, but there were several other drills and sirens that sent us into the school hallways, butts in the air and hands over our necks, or at home in bathtub, mattress overhead, worried about the animals.

And ever since, when there's breakdown/ chaos/ fear/ unresolved stress I pretend doesn't exist, I dream of tornadoes.




This dream was not shocking enough to wake me and I only remember one thin, white funnel... and panic. Then a gentle sense of angst when I awoke, so subtle.

It's not surprising. I am currently sleeping on a hardwood floor with a thermarest and two blankets for padding and it's cedar season, so I wake 5-10 times a night either sore or stuffed up. This does not take away from the deep gratitude I have for this opportunity to be in this room, surrounded by these great people, in this beautiful house, in this amazing city. But it does take away from my sleep and that always takes away from my sense of, well, sanity. Then there's the French lessons, French immersion, trying to appear professional for the wine world (and never really know if I've succeeded or walked away a total food), listening to wine podcasts, writing, learning now to bring traffic to a blog (not this one, thank gods), social networking, a big interview looming, uncertain future until February 10th etc and whatever.

I was going to keep listing seeming-hardships, but it's really not interesting.

What's been fascinating in this time are the questions that arise from the sort of stress that produces tomatoes, and whether or not it's worth it. Re-evaluating (as always) what really is important to my life.

I think one of the greatest pressures we put on ourselves comes from the myth that we are irreplaceable in our tasks, that we are the only ones who can do what we do, and if we don't do it, there will be a hole in the Universe. And, certainly, that we only have one shot. It's true that we all have our special talents and discovering those, then living them, makes for the best we can make of this life. But it's also true that the world does not rest on our shoulders, and if our original plans do not come to fruition, we still have plenty of options for complete and utter happiness.

I went to Fiesta Mart today to buy Manchego cheese. That store, and all its international product, is a magic wonderland in-and-of-itself and I was feeling a slight high as I stepped out its sliding doors into a grey-cum-misty dusk. The awaiting scene pulled the corners of my mouth into an involuntary smile. Grackles. I know they can be pests, but I don't care; I loved them tonight. Thousands had come to roost all over Fiesta's parking lot, building and surrounding powerlines. The trees in the lot were bare of leaves, but instead appeared to be growing birds from the tips of their branches. Grackles spread out in evenly spaced rows along the electrical wires, creating the strange optical illusion of floating black picket fences.

And the noise! Chittering, chattering, calling and screeching, they shuffled in their places to sing (or croak); every now and then, entire flocks, hundreds of birds, alighted into the grey to swirl overhead.

The air in my lungs became sweeter and I felt a sharp shot of happiness, straight up my body into the air overhead.

And in that moment, some small, deep part of me knew the pressure I was putting on myself was born from the fabricated myth of my own importance. That there is so much beauty in the world. And the greatest shame is missing sweet opportunities to bathe in it, and that those opportunities become evident when we realize what a small role we really play.

There's so much soaring freedom in this reality.

The Wine Roads of Texas... blog

www.thewineroadsoftexas.com

It's just another blog in the universe of information highways. But, man, I want to use it, do something with it, have it as an excuse to meet with people, do interviews, take pictures, feed fuel to my curiosity.

Because I am learning that really is one of my greatest motivations in life: curiosity. I got in trouble repeatedly as a kid for wandering off- across the alley to pick pecans, across the street to look at a neighbor's yard, in the grocery store to, I dunno, check the green beans or something. Then academically, and even in my personal life, picking a topic and needling the heck out of it, trying to find out what it's made of. And doing all these things on impulse with relatively quick results. It seems like this blog will be the perfect format for this energy- short entries based on a chunk of research, then the chance to move onto the next spark of mystery.

If you feel so inclined, please click above and, if you are really feeling generous, please choose to "follow". It would be great to have you there.

Foam

Please, let me introduce you to a close friend of mine.

My trusty steed.

She has about 160,000 miles, a radiator leak and a slight oil burn. She pulls to the right enough to hurt my wrist while driving long distances. She's missing two hubcaps, one on each side, so that it looks like gaping black holes over the tires. She was sideswiped on an Indian reservation during a costume party and has a huge gash on her passenger door; the key no longer unlocks it on that side. She was pushed into a ditch a month later and needs two people to open her hood; she has a crooked grin for the same reason. Her tags are expired and I've been jumping through hoops for months to get her registered in Texas. Her insides smell a little like shoes (that's entirely my fault). I've invested almost twice her purchase price in fixing bits and pieces, towing and legal costs.

She has a tape deck.

She also gets between 34-40 mpg and is almost unfailingly reliable (except for a strange battery incident no one can explain). And despite all the heck and neglect I've put her through, she starts, runs smoothly, makes it up hills and passes semis. I live out of her and have had more than one good night's sleep in her. If needed, she can hold pretty much everything I own outside of my parents' house. She made it to Montana from Texas, then to southern Colorado, back to Montana again, and a successful Oregon/ Montana roundtrip in 4 days and returned me again to Texas; all of this in 5 months. I even actually like her tape deck because it makes books on tapes a literal and inexpensive investment.

I have never been so attached to a vehicle in all my life. Only Ol' Blue has come close.



And I will be relying on her to help me complete the research for this book. She'll be an important character in the whole adventure and it feels important to introduce her now.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Foam.

mission statement

Good to see I keep writing about the same stuff over and over again.

Fear and love, the world's two great opposites. Tempting to say *one* of the world's great opposites, but this dichotomy is perhaps our greatest motivator as a species. One or the other seems to always been pushing our course.

It's handy to learn opposites and how they interact... like learning that water puts out fire. Then when a blaze is consuming your thoughts, you know some options for putting it out.

Earlier today, I mentioned to a friend the fears that been distracting and paralyzing me lately, specifically related to this book The Wine Roads of Texas. I'm certainly afraid of failing. Afraid not to have enough money. Afraid my approach to research projects in school isn't going to work here. Afraid of being revealed as a farce. Afraid my writing is just silly, pedestrian dribble.

"Have you written a mission statement, declaration of purpose, an argument in defense of your love?"

Good question, kiddo. No, I haven't. I've been much too busy throwing logs on the fire of this fear to bother looking for any water to quell it.

I have 10 minutes before work. What can be done with that time?

Why am I doing this? What is my love rushing towards?

1) I am here because I love people. I love talking to them, learning their stories, basking in their glow as they share their passions. This project generously provides those opportunities as I talk to winery owners and wine makers about what they do and why.

2) I love travel and I really enjoy it at the speed of a car trip on back roads. And, even as I long to leave this continent again, I feel extremely honored to be doing such travel in my home.

3) I want to write beyond this blog and its self-centered yammering. This project gives me the chance to write about others and to enjoy the process of describing them.

4) This project gives me the opportunity to write, period. I am tearing up with emotion as I state this because it is so scary and left-field: I love writing. I just really relish the process and even love how much I hate every frustratingly self-conscious hiccup and hand-ringing roadblock. I love that I hate what I write but I have to do it anyway, and that I don't even know why any of this is the case.

5) I love the people this project is enabling me to meet and the new rush of energy in my life, even though I'm not sure I'm ready. Even though I'm sure I'm not ready.

6) I love organizing research projects and the way one idea leads to 20 others. I even really like making spreadsheets and to-do lists and using them for a brief second before drifting off into daydream land again. Then returning to them and thanking my past-self for being wise enough to create them in the first place.

7) I am here because I love doing slightly stupid things, like taking a 1993 Mazda Protege on a really long trip, while living out of it on a shoestring. I think the whole thing is kind of funny and enjoy praying to the gods for any shred of luck they can spare.

8) I love that I am staring my own sense of potential in the face and begging it to forgive me and take me under its wing, to be gentle with me. I love how scary that is and how much I look forward to looking back on this fearful encounter as a memory.

So, mission statement:
I am here for my love of people, for my love of writing and of travel; here to test myself and not to judge on whether there is success or failure, but rather if I stick with this daring, lofty thing long enough to see one way or the other. I am here for the moment, but also out of curiosity for the hindsight that will follow in a year or so. And I'm here because doing slightly stupid things is entertaining in the long-run, even if just to myself.

Still scared, but no longer paralyzed.

heart surrender

Did you know in yoga, when you place your prayer shaped hands to your heart, you are symbolically surrendering to it? To your heart, you are giving up all your will and thought and knowing and you letting go? I just learned that this week, after 12 years of practice.

How beautiful is that? To surrender to your heart? How good it feels within your arteries and in the push of beating blood in your veins.

And how hard it is to hear that, and also know the world's rules.

Lately, this has been my miss-matched-mess lesson. How to balance that surrender, the purest happiness of my higher self, and its reception in the world. How this degrapsing frees me in my goals and dreams, and loses me to people. And to the process of "growing up".

There are games in this world. With rules. By rules, that means lines and you have to color between them. My crayons never make good marks within those lines and not because I am particularly rebellious. Just too busy looking up or at the world around me and sighing in awe. Have you ever done this? Been lost in your little private car dance and passed your exit ramp? Been too busy singing your new favorite song that you missed the ringing of an important phone call? Not sure perhaps if sometimes your private joy blocks you from something very important and concrete and "real"? Good heavens, which is more important anyway?

I feel like I am losing something this way, but I can't quite figure what it is.

If you tuned in right now to that operating system, that heart of yours that yearns for all those lofty, difficult things in life, what would she say? What is he really pushing through your capillaries? Are you meant to go to Greece? Should you be spinning underneath the great orb of moon on a dew soaked lawn, laughing and scaring your neighbors a little? Are you supposed to speak only the barest truth when recounting a chapter of your life to a stranger, no filter, no mask? What is that surrender to you? And what do you have to lose, giving in to this beautiful power of your most tender being?

There's so much I don't know about this life.

Please, come here and teach me.

grace

Let me tell you, I've gotten off track before. But never has it been so shocking as the contrast this time around, when I was so ON track before diverting. Peace, peace, focus and joy turned doubt, distraction, worry and panic. Just slightly, but even a speck of those emotions after such bliss is jolting.

There's one particular problem I've created for myself in this diversion that's created the most distraction and messed the most with my confidence. I've been searching for a solution nearly every minute of the last few days which is an awful lot more (useless) thinking than I usually experience. Every time I thought I had come to a possible solution, it didn't sit right with me and I felt the need to ask someone else for advice. I almost never do that for important decisions. There is a button inside me that just clicks and points me towards the right path.

************************************

My passenger side headlight went out today. But I noticed it too late to buy a new one before work, meaning I would have to drive at night when it was obvious. Which means I might attract a cop, who would surely notice that my car's registration has been out since JUNE. Which is exactly what happened not 5 minutes after I left work.

I saw him right as I pulled onto the highway and noticed that he slowed when I came into his rearview. I tried to stay behind him and looked for roads to turn off onto, but he just edged over to the shoulder, let me pass and threw his lights. I thanked every drop of water in the sky that the bartender hadn't bothered to serve me before I left the bar. Then I thought of my registration and knew my time had come.

I was very polite with him, using 'Sir' and looking him in the eye. He asked how long I had been in Texas and I told him, then told him I had been in Glacier National Park all summer, hoping it would help later when he noticed my registration. First he threatened to check if I had any warnings about my headlight; if I was lying to him about when I noticed it, I'd be getting a ticket. This told me he was serious and perhaps on a revenue run.

As he looked at all my documents, he noticed there were at least three addresses in use; he asked about each one and I actually apologized for not getting an apartment yet. I saw him glance around my car a few times. It definitely looked lived out of it tonight. My undergraduate research taught me you can certainly get in trouble for being homeless and I knew I looked all kinds of suspicious. Slowly he put together my story of moving here, trying to register my car, trying to get a Texas license, being transient, where I worked, why I was here. He asked for evidence that I was trying to register my car and I praised every kelvin of heat coming from my floorboard that I had paperwork for reordering its title. He told me he would be doing some research, then walked back to his car.

I felt so calm. My mind had stopped working on its silly problem and I just stared out into the rain. For a brief moment I thought of taking a picture of the lights behind me and sending it to a friend who hates authority, but I decided to just rest instead and maybe muse on how much my ticket would be and what I'd be giving up to pay it.

He returned after ten minutes and said he was giving me a warning for the headlight and one for the registration and made a point to inform me it would not go on my driving record. The next breath felt so sweet in my lungs. I thanked every cell in his hands as they passed me the sheet to sign. Then I thanked him directly, telling him I know he didn't have to give me a warning for the registration, but I really appreciated that he did. I looked him in the eye and I meant it. He stammered when he said "You're welcome" and I hope he felt the tidal wave of my gratitude.

As I pulled back onto the highway, the solution to my problem popped into my head in simple sentences and I felt no more need for advice. My mind shut up its yammering around the subject and a sudden flow of bliss coursed through my veins. This time, I thanked whatever it was that watched over me tonight, and thanked the officer again for his blessing. It was all the more motivation to get back on track and to do it with joy. So much grace in this life.

I win

It's the small victories.

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My favorite radio station is town is kgsr. My favorite radio station in the world is kgsr. When I lived away from Austin, I streamed it over my laptops, talked about it, fantasized about it. It's the station that points me towards my newest music crush and it's what I crank up on the way home when I am winding through this city's beautiful neighborhoods, hand out the window, letting it dance in the wind. When I arrive home during their 10-11pm new music hour, I sit in my car on the street for the last 20 minutes, engine off, eyes closed and head on the steering wheel with the speakers cranking, letting every note soak into my skin like tiny beads of water.

I like this station.

They are turning 21 years old next week. That's my lucky number. And they are throwing a huge party, featuring some of my new grooveshark favorites including Givers and Mat Kearny. I saw myself at that party all this week, like without a doubt. Every time "Hey Mama" blared out my speakers, I was in the new ACL Moody Theater venue, shakin' it like Africa, filled with the unblocked bliss that sort of groovin' can give you. And every time they announced the contest for tickets, I'd think, "Oh yeah, I need to go ahead and get those." It was going to happen. Period.

On my way to the coffee shop today, I decided to detour to the latest location for their ticket raffle. I brought in a book on Texas wineries and sat on a stool, drinking water like a Sunday afternoon prude and being approached by random people wondering what and why I was reading in an arcade bar. Had some interesting conversations, about writing especially, and just bided my time. As the minutes ticked by, my faith wavered. I admitted that I don't really know for sure that my gut feelings will manifest in reality...that my visions and inclinations are just that, in my head and gut. There were so many people at this bar and they were only choosing 10 winners. Who was I to think this was "meant to be"? Sure enough, though, soon after those thoughts elbowed their way into my quiet flow of fortitude, a text message on my phone lit up, telling me congratulations and I had won; please come claim my wristbands before 4pm. They took a picture of me with the yellow bands and reminded me not to lose them (an important reminder in my world).

Horrah!

This is happens so much these days. "Knowing" something in my gut and it materializing. Both good (and bad, unfortunately). But true nonetheless.

It all makes me think about to a conversation I had with this incredible 19 year old girl I've been close to for years. She told me that it was time for her to start taking her spirituality more seriously because she was ready to become a more powerful person in her life, ready to be able to make things happen. How wise is that?! I'm not sure if quieting the fluctuations of the mind makes it more possible to MOVE things in the world, or if it leaves the arteries of the mind and heart open, to HEAR possibilities. Either way, I'm pretty impressed with this little facet of the Universe.

Mat Kearney- Hey Mama. Heard it yet? If not, click that purple and get ready to do some seat dancing.

New Years Resolutions, one month warm up

I never have the steam to restart at New Years. The holidays, the amount I have to work during the holidays, the endless Christmas music, beginning of cedar season in Austin, all leave me plumb out of energy. So I'm starting a month early and giving myself something to work on during my least favorite month of the year, December.

It's good timing too, because I've been goofing off a little. Or maybe a lot. It's a natural self-destructive/ procrastination response I learned for myself in school. I secured an incredible life opportunity, and immediately went to scaring myself about not being able to finish it. That fear is helpful, in a strange way. The project itself is so wonderful and real and intimidating on its own, but I felt like perhaps I had to up the ante a bit. Spend extra money on buying new clothes. Spent my extra time meeting new people instead of focusing on the many, many tasks at hand. Indulging in some general ADD activities and not controlling my mind properly. And I think I did it just long enough to begin feeling of panicked and realize that maybe, yes, I have gotten something out of my system. These activities actually feel stale now. And I am ready to hit the restart button again.

Goals:
1) Learn one new thing about wine every day.
2) Write 3 blogs a week. My writing is so rusty, I don't even think to myself in its language any more.
3) Focus on the book. It is now my priority.
4) Be self-referring and fearless and faithful in the world.
5) Find French podcasts and listen to them.
6) Go to the gym or do yoga at least twice a week; Run at least twice a week.
7) Keep $100 in my checking account and put everything else into savings. I need to feel the loss of moving money from my goal amount, instead of just not having it there in the first place.
8) Maintain meditation.
9) Eat fresher foods for natural energy.

That's enough. A list I can look at every day, especially in these next 21 days, and create a new form in my life. I can't wait to see how it grows and morphs and breathes!