passion plays

I spent the morning reading a recent draft of a play written by our friend in England. Anders puts the wunder in Wunderkind, to be sure. He's good. There is an electric charge that runs through truly good plays--a gradual tension that pulls and teases you along until the final curtain. It's a more concentrated energy than one finds in novels, sometimes; the combination of dialog, shorter scenes, and limited, forceful action makes me feel as if I'm holding a stick of dynamite in my hands. The passion I had for plays during high school and college has never left me; it's just been tucked away, I guess. But reading the play this morning brought me back. I hope he breaks through one day. It should come. People need to hear and see and feel these words.

tying it all together

I've been out of the creative writing habit for so long that I'm having a hard time figuring out how, and where, to start. Habit may be a strong word. My fingers and brain have been so occupied with what people want me and pay me to write (this outstanding Burgundy, the best you'll ever experience, from a vintage without peer, etc., etc.) that we (my fingers, my brain) feel a little pang of conscience when I actually sit down (like now, for example) to contemplate other Work, as there is always, always other "work" to do.

I like that John and I have reclaimed the word "work," at least in our world. There is "work" in the small "w" sense, which addresses the stuff we do to keep a roof over our head and sausages in our vicinity; then there is the big-W, the Work that is the expression of all the good stuff inside. At some point, perhaps, it will be an "oeuvre," but today, it is my Work.

For example: There's a woman somewhere out in Berlin riding a bicycle. Her spine is as straight as a piston, and like an engine, she peddles effortlessly. A puffy, velveteen black hat is propped on black curls; a wispy shawl flutters above shoulders as she heads down Wilhelmstrasse. It's dusk. The pavement sparkles with the day's forgotten heat. The street is empty, except for her.

This is what sticks with me. There's a catalyst in that black hat, a trigger. What this black hat set into motion was extraordinary; at least, everyone said so. But no one can remember; details are hazy, stories don't add up. This is what I have to figure out. So go, storyteller, do that thing.

falling down, and getting up

Last week, I finally did what I've been worried about doing for six months: I caught my bicycle tire in a track and flipped. It was a cool-kid skid, bounce and crash. The shock (and frayed nerves) following my spill proved much worse than the actual bruises, which total one big blue egg on my ass and a couple of randomly placed purple splotches on leg, side and chest.

Nothing broken, except a little ego that doesn't like to go bounce. But needs to. With two weeks of a antagonistic family visit, the mounting concerns over our legality here in this country, the ever-growing pile of work missives from abroad, the let-down following a full month of language lessons that left me capable but not yet chatty, I'm not surprised I kissed the pavement.

Kids have it easier. After a full day in the park, with sand and digging and swings and yelling, the tantrum is a great release. I'm exhausted! the tantrum says. There has been so much. But I want all of this. I want the energy and hours to play in 1,000 parks, to dig 1,000 holes. Today. Forever. Fists balled in defiance, tears cutting dirt-streaked rivers down flushed cheeks. We chuckle from afar and think, oh dear, meltdown.

But me, we, we're not so different. I fell down and so I cried, and realized then I really needed to cry, because the physical pain gave me the out to unload everything. Which is crap, because I shouldn't need a bruise as a prompt to be honest with myself. But, and then. Perhaps I just need to dig more holes, or have more tantrums in the park. Or write more. (Then I'll really have something to cry about.)

easy for you to say

So we're drinking wine with dinner, which is something that everyone should do. Tonight is a Mosel Riesling, which is a surprise, as usually with rain (and generally with dinner) we go red, because red is a better rain-cutter. But it's that kind of night. Yet, this is an "inexpensive" Riesling, which should be (and has been) a warning to us: pretty bottle, potentially nasty juice. (Read here to see what happens when one drinks a liter of cheap German wine. It involves Finnish metal and short skirts.)

There's many a challenge to discovering the world that is German wine. German labels are terrible, for one. Labels are covered with very long words, usually in some terrifying, Teutonic script, with lots of hyphens and little dots over places that aren't usually dotted. What's more, there's usually some 800-year old family crest with dragons or picture of a haunted, crumbling castle that screams "Run!" rather than, "Enjoy me with Thai curry, please." It's too bad. Some weinguts get it and have made changes for the better; many, typically, in the search for simplicity muck it up even more.

Which brings us back to our dinner bottle. It was a nice label, something you'd see out of New Zealand--a lovely image of the Rhein, nice gold touches, the word "Riesling" big and bold. It even smooshed the tongue-twisting "Mosel-Saar-Ruwer" region designation (say MOzel, Zaahr, RUUver) into a fairyland-sounding, "Moselland." But what tickled me the most is the bottle's bold claim of quality (even though this was a 3 Euro wine, at most) with the label Hochgewächs, in bold gold script.

Germans have a word for everything. Really. What do you call a football team that plays kinda shoddy during the regular season but then turns it on for the tournaments? Turniermannschaft. What do you call the rule for making sure if your dog dies you remove it to a safe and sanitary location, approved by the local authorities? Tierkoerperbeseitigungsgesetz. I wish I was joking. Hochgewächs is an unofficial way of saying the wine is of a high caliber, judged by no one else but the winemaker. It's kind of like a sticker with a smiley face, or a thumbs-up. While there's plenty of other official ways to designate vineyard and wine quality, this is one for the guys who make the 3 Euro wine, and want to say, hey. Enjoy it, 'cuz it's a lot better than that 2 Euro swill.

And enjoy it we did. With Thai curry, in fact.

kein Geld, mehr Wein

In our new roles as globetrotting underpaid writers (and in the tradition of worldly writers before us), we've been dabbling in the enjoyment of cheap wine. Baudelaire wasn't talking about a kegger of La Tâche when he scribbled, "Il faut être toujours ivre."

Turns out that the cheapies we used to grab by the six-pack at Trader Joe's--the nameless Côtes du Rhônes, the Sicilian Nero di Troias--seem more abundant and even cheaper here on the "continent." Our favorite bottles need only hitch a ride on the autobahn to get to our local enoteca; eliminating the long boat ride across the Atlantic does wonders for wine selection. Yet if the Euro keeps drubbing the Dollar, we'll be pining for the Trader before too long. (And for jobs that pay the local stronger currency, too. Anyone?)

Our local down-and-out "Extra" is winning the cheap wine provider award, so far. It's a grocery chain a step below Safeway, stocked with wilted cabbage and plenty of frozen pizzas. Their wine shelf, however, reflects the taste of a respectable wino with a eye on his port-de-monaie. We've enjoyed a couple of smoky, plummy bottles of basic Bordeaux and a Rioja Crianza or two--good for rainy spring evenings and the unexpected rainy summer ones, too. A good Tempranillo offers the same tingle as smelling new leather, or biting into a blackberry tart. Sweet and sour, with a little swagger.

the dregs

I will never ask the War-God
At my future feasts to dine.
When he has some drink inside him
He'll to violence incline,
Gatecrash other people's parties,
Break the jugs and spill the wine.
-Aristophanes, "The Acharnians"

Aristophanes, playwright and friend of Plato and Socrates, tells a practical tale of war and peace in "The Acharnians." Witnessing Athens pursue a fruitless conflict against its neighbor, Sparta, inspired him to write this play that calls for "peace in every possible way."

In the play, protagonist Dikaiopolis has had enough of warmongering, famine and death. He makes his own "personal" peace with Sparta, and opens a market, befriending those besieged (and making serious enemies of his own neighbors, who see his peacemaking as anti-Athenian.) In the end, he makes a mockery of the Athenian hawks and their flashy trappings of war while enjoying a Dionysian feast. He is proclaimed, "the champion."

The moral of the story: war is fruitless and only peace fills the belly. But other themes are raised, at least to my attention. Dikaiopolis is fixated on his feast (and thus, fixated on survival); he pushes desperate farmers out of his comforting circle; he hoards his goods. He is mocked for being so pleasure-driven in the midst of mass suffering; how can he celebrate, lo, while others bleed?

And so too might one ask how a creative, conscious person write about the pleasures of wine while the world around appears to be falling to pieces. For one, it's how I fill my belly and keep a roof over my head. Yet the Greek chorus still pesters. I've spent every day the past two weeks trying to milk buoyant, peppy prose out of my ever-parched brain while reading about all this, and this, and this. Some of it is close to me; most of it is thankfully still far away.

The story of wine, at its core, is the story of people. People that till the earth, tend the vines, nurture the wine in stone wombs, often in their own simple homes. As old as civilization, and probably older still. It would be trite to say that winemaking civilized us; but perhaps its discovery too gave us license to do worse, as it allowed us to forget more.

So maybe my frustration is justified when I flip from a story that tallies the dead in southern Lebanon to one that extols the virtues of drinking rosé on a hot night in Manhattan. I like rosé. I hate war and the terrible urge inside all of us to look the other way because what is ugly and cruel and terrible is so much harder to swallow than a picture of pretty people holding glasses of pink wine. Is that callous, or just human?

So here's my challenge. To talk about passion while the world loses its head. To capture beauty, wherever it may be hiding, while all that is ugly finds a welcome stage in too many parts of the world. Good luck, you say. Better start drinking.

this place

It is 1:56 p.m. Wednesday. And a radio spills into the courtyard with a 1920s tune, something Big Band, muffled by the flapping of loose plastic sheeting on the roof. The tune floats through the chestnut tree, bending with every windy blow, its traditional springtime dance. Now is the time when the dirty clouds roll in from the west, Potsdamer clouds. A plane cruises overhead, a smaller craft with an engine made of angry bees. Its heart rumbles above and gently shakes the walls surrounding. It whispers away, trailing with a whistle towards Tegel.

The sun feels good. It creeps in the bedroom around this time every day, when the Potsdamer clouds allow, clawing its way over the sill and onto the drab gray carpet. It plays havoc with the piles of coins on the windowsill, so many pieces of copper and metal that together could buy a loaf of bread, separately fall out of pockets with too many holes. Here, the clouds are winning, and the sun's gone for now. The plastic tarp waves goodbye. The construction soloist on the roof has left for the day; pleased with his newly built echo chamber on the dachgeschloss, he belts out stacatto stanzas. “Oh my love.” A coworker bellows orders, or perhaps a request to pipe down. It has no effect. The call of the stage is too strong, even for the manual laborer.

The coins beg me to order them. It is the way of procrastination, or better, the absence of compelling thought. To fiddle, perchance to eat a sandwich. There are always ways to explore the other while ignoring what's right in front of you. Luckily for me, I'm staring at the world on the wall, circa 1996. It claims to be political, but I promise to be neutral. Zaire is enormous; Brazil is bigger. I wonder why no one came up with a better name for the Central African Republic. Or whether Kalaallit Nunaat really translates to Greenland, in that tongue the five people in Greenland must speak. When it's not too cold to talk. Other times, they just sit around and watch as the sun never sets. Or never rises.

A horn blows from beyond the apartment building. A conch shell, perhaps, something to signal the beginning of a game, or just a beginning. A television mumbles, bouncing its afternoon programming from wall to wall in the central courtyard. There's always one person with the TV on full strength, and you can't tell where the TV is. It's a false statement. The TV is all around you. Where are you? In my bedroom on the third floor overlooking the central courtyard at the heart of a corner apartment building on the edge of Pankow, formerly known as east Berlin.