I followed the black van across the bay and into wine country.

We were going to take our first day off at Rob’s cousins home in the Sonoma wine country, but a home this is not.
This place is a magazine….fruit of an absurd quality burst off of the trees, a barbeque smokes piles of chicken and roasted peppers which char in a way that I can never seem to master.  Rob’s family is sweet and all too hospitable.
We swam in the pool and talked about the quality of the senses.

Smell, though the most powerful of the senses connected to memory seems have true fallibility.  Lets say you smell smoke,  A wash of memory screams instantaneously screams FATHER, FIRE, SUNDAY, FOURTH OF JULY, CAMPING, CAVE DWELLERS, OAK, ASH, NEW MEXICO….but try to recall a smell, think of how your grandmothers house smells, or the smell of your 10th grade math classroom.  Then you find yourself sifting through sight files, hunting your brain to associate time with place then with smell.

In the hierarchy of the mind, smell is an alarm system which constantly floods the heart with more than the brain need process.
But sight is there to flip through like a book, it contains the files and footnotes.

And here, in a gynecological palace!
On a hill!
In the Heart of Steinbeck country!
With wasps cleaning my toes and humming birds still not landing on me!
With Robin and Basil and coffee in a press.

I know I will remember the valley and the low haze accompanying it….not the smell of my own hands, or the sound of the plane that circles overhead.

Its Robs birthday….tonight we go beach camping.

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   Goddamnit, Shakey Graves.

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