The practice of everyday rest & inspiration

Cub and I usually write our blog entries over a few days and give them a lot of thought and an edit or two, but this I am writing and publishing immediately. I am very tired, I find this frustrating because I feel a little disconnected from the reason for being tired. Like I am just being normal, not doing too much extra. A small survey of people that I know that do not know each other are in a similar position, suggesting that this is very common. So I would like to offer a passage from Luce Giard (in The Practice of Everyday Life Vol 2: Living and Cooking) brings me back to reality and a vision of normal. Though I’m not a 1980s French matriarch and our gestures differ a bit this mess of words that follows feels very lived in. 

And before you get to it (sorry) I do think about wine when I think about these words, the amount of errands and gestures and work that is work but also feels like busywork and perhaps isn’t even a winemaking technique that creates something that you experience. For instance, Brent Mayeaux who makes Stagiaire Wine wrote extensive notes about each cuvée we bought from him via Mac/EL Rancho Wine Co. Because of this Cub and I got to hear this story about Let’s Get Fizzical, a Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc pet nat he makes. And I will let Brent tell it: “The bottles were placed in cases upside down to allow the lees to settle to the cap for clean disgorging. In what was one of many frustrations this year, the caps started leaking. The cases got wet and were falling apart. And I was forced to do an early disgorging once my preferred caps arrived in the middle of harvest. That was just 2020.” And now Giard:

Inside: to the kitchen to prepare, from the kitchen to the dining room to serve and eat, getting up constantly to run and check the things on the grill or to fetch the mustard missing from the table; from the dining room to the kitchen to clear away the dishes; once again in the kitchen to wash and put things away. Outside: from the house to the market, to the grocery store, the bakery, the butcher shop, the wine shop, the back to the house, arms fun of shopping bags. On the way you pass a young woman even more heavily laden than you and who mumbles to no one is particular: “I’m just the family packhorse. all I do is carry, carry, carry” inside: to the kitchen to empty the bags, put away the groceries, wrap up the things to be put in the refrigerator, note down the expenses, check the change and the receipts. Sit down finally.

This whole book is available online, I will write about it again because it has influenced my work over the past ten years and I don’t know about that many things. The tired is not just from this doing referenced above, but also maybe a little tired of myself and that I am constantly going to refer to Luce Giard for perhaps the rest of my life.

I need a flush in my cheek and maybe a little extra blood pumping through my veins? I’ve been drinking less often, but only want red when going for a bottle. Maybe because it goes hand in hand with my favorite date in Chicago, burger and fries from Red Hot Ranch on their loud patio with something good. I had Ping Pong from Les Petite Mises the other night and it was perfect. I also would go for Les Valseuses Soul Makossa, anything from La Dernière Goutte, Lamoresca Nerocapitano, Mayga Gamay from Octavin, or L’Enchanteresse. Some extra guts or like a blood surrogate or something. I do wonder about all of the errands that made them happen, but instead I just drink with a little extra appreciation of the unknown. These are in the shop, I recommend sleep if you are physically tired but if you need a little inspiration a little wine can be nice.

Also, I would like to note that Cub & I will be closing the shop next weekend for rest (Aug 12-14) to reopen on the 19th.