RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,123
(hearsay isn't always heresy)
I knew a girl once who lived
way out in Connecticut, off past
the usual stops on a train, past
New Haven and New London
to. Out to where the houses were
mostly on stilts. Flat fields, a
causeway, and some solitary
houses. It was a pretty long
ride, and, train-ride's end,
it involved about 17 miles of
bus travel too! I always can
recall the way she phrased it:
'Farther out now, where the
air is ten times saltier, and
has a green top note.'
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I've never heard anything like
that since; not even on a bottle
of wine - where they usually
say silly things like that. Hint
of blackberry; undertone of
zinc; a presence of azalea.
-
That's some pretty nutty stuff;
wine talk is. Back in my days,
I never knew any of that. All
that wine stuff only came later,
when a friend in California
had gotten deep into 'wine'
and began talking about those
things, as I've just mentioned,
the oddball names and signifiers
of the varied grapes and varietals
and all that. Until then, I didn't
know Zinfandel from Muhammed
Ali, nor Merlot from Madagascar.
He even brought us to a few
wineries - Sonoma, and Napa,
as I recall. He had a girlfriend or
an ex-wife or something who
lived big-time in some Napa
wine estate. I don't remember
any too much about it all; it
was pretty boring, but the
wineries and the wine-guides
and all were always bragging
about cisterns and catacombs
and all that old Spanish-Mission
style stuff that many of these
latter day wineries were made
up of. Father Junipero Serra,
something like that - the
priest or monk who had left
an established monastery at
every place he stayed along
his way up from Mexico,
trailblazing some Christian
wilderness trail in what later
became California. In certain
spots, their dedication to 'Spirits'
in latter-day California led to
the religiously-established and
very reverential wineries. Such
as I was visiting. If you did it
right, listening to their spiels
and getting the free 'samplings'
they gave out, over and over
enough, if done well, it could
bring a nice winetaster's buzz.
The only 'hints' of this or that I
ever got were hints of stumbling,
staggering, or stupidity; and then
maybe a 'hint' that I had, ahem,
'had enough.'
-
Spirits? I guess. Now it's like that
with beer too - more stuff that I
had never heard of. Pumpkin beer?
Cherry? Cinnamon? What ever
happened to freaking Piels, and
with a ladle? Like calling Guinness
a 'hint of bread.'
-
None of that really threw me off;
this girl I mentioned, from Connecticut,
she ran an art studio there, and later
an art gallery too; she even got an
article about her once, in the NYTimes;
some sort of thing about a trip to
Africa, where she had elephants walk
on canvas, with paint on their feet
bottoms, or whatever they're called
on elephants, and the resultant
'Art' canvases were framed and
exhibited, back in Connecticut,
in her gallery, as freaking Art.
Elephant Art, I guess. I, at that
time, hadn't seen her for years,
and I was glad of that because
I'd have probably brained her for
that stupid idea. But the local
art-peoples of fair Connecticut,
and New York too, loved it; raved,
muttered, toasted, and bought.
Dumbest idea I ever heard of,
but as I recall too she had it
covered by turning over certain
of the proceeds to some cause
or foundation that was involved.
The 'Save Elephant Artists Fund,'
most likely.
-
That's how crazy this whole world
is; people can be convinced of
anything, if it's couched correctly
and phrased rightly. The dumbest
tidbit of anything can be made
to serve a 'higher' level, if some
low-baller like P.T. Barnum. or
the Wizard of Oz behind his
curtain, can manipulate the
deal rightly enough. Sure, I
see it everywhere - veterans,
teachers, the diseased and
the malnourished; they can
all be used to serve another
purpose. But, elephants? As
a support group for the cocktail
crown? I'd at least figure they
could masking-tape a brush to
the elephants' trunks and have
them, at least, dip the brush
into a paint can first. Boy,
think of the money that could
bring in.
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Anyway, back to my meager
beginning: Isn't 'Ten times
saltier and a green top note'
the coolest thing?
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