Raising the bar

As regards literature, I keep going to poetry readings even though I don’t seem to be acquiring a taste for it, not contemporary compositions anyway. On those occasions the reader, often the poet, moves me but rarely the poem. I’m a little ashamed, I don’t know exactly why but I sense I should be, to admit that I like poems that rhyme and that I can understand, not the poems found, for example, in the New Yorker. They don’t rhyme. Neither do I understand them. Further, they seem to rely on distractions, on the misuse of punctuation and grammar to lend a heft the poem might not otherwise impart. I like “The Psalm of Life” by Longfellow and I like “Ergo” by me.

Ergo

Ergo is a funny word; it means therefore and so

Because I think ergo I am; I eat, ergo I grow.

Music, classical music actually, a proper appreciation of which would go a long way toward giving me a loftier perch from which to regard the world, just doesn’t resonate with me, although I keep going to the concerts. There’s a staggering amount of music out here on the islands. I love most of it: blues, gospel, doo wop, bluegrass but classical music, well – again it’s the performer I enjoy, particularly a pianist or a string player, someone whose face, free of the instrument, can be watched. I used to carry a clarinet in the school band here on the island. I say carry because that is the only acknowledgment the music teacher would give to my participation. I was not a good clarinetist. When we marched on Memorial Day the music teacher, who had taken the reed out of my instrument in advance, told me to puff out my cheeks when I marched by my un-suspecting family so they could feel proud like the parents of the kids who really were playing their instruments.

I’m trying harder with art because my wife, Elaine, is a successful and enthusiastic painter. Sometimes I go to museums or galleries and look at paintings. The truth? I like Norman Rockwell. Not much of the other stuff moves me. What’s so special about the Mona Lisa? I’ve seen more beguiling smirks, – this week. There are exceptions though. That one Michelangelo did of God, for example, was pretty good and, of course, I love all my wife’s paintings. I built her a little studio down on the shore so she could make more of them. Once a man came by and offered to let her paint him in the nude. She thanked him for his interest but declined.

I’ve done better with wine. It was because of my association with Elaine that I got to go to the wine tasting. She got invited and I kind of “go with” her, like Kleenex. It wasn’t long ago that I couldn’t tolerate wine, couldn’t fathom what folks saw in the stuff. Beer was great, coffee too. Either, I felt, enhanced a meal and I’d enjoyed both for decades. But wine! It just tasted awful and it was expensive. You could get three or four six packs of Schaefer for what it cost for one jug of wine. Not long ago, though, a short lived and modest affluence descended on me and as I prospered I felt I needed wine. The awareness came on very naturally, like feeling, at around thirteen, that I needed a girlfriend, and later at around seventeen, that I needed one quite desperately. I was evolving. Suddenly, I liked wine, all kinds of wine, and I began to buy it by the box. I began to do more entertaining and to feel more confident about having folks over, different folks, more cosmopolitan folks. Right away I’d offer them a glass of wine and go right to the refrigerator and fill a glass from the little tap on the box and I’d refresh their glasses similarly as required. Sometimes our guests would comment about the wine, something like, “Mmm, interesting,” and I could tell that theirs was not an unqualified endorsement so I’d answer with something like, “Perhaps it hasn’t had a chance to breathe, it’s such a short walk from the fridge.” Soon, though, we began to get gift bottles of wine and our guests would bring bottles to dinner themselves. Gradually, as I consumed more and more of it, I was able to actually distinguish those I enjoyed from those I enjoyed less, or more, and I had to acknowledge that I liked them all better than the stuff in the box. I needed to learn more and I like to be orderly when I learn about things so I first learned there were reds and whites. The simplicity of this first step pleased me and I’m glad I took the time because my particular color blindness would otherwise surely have resulted, at some point, in my going to the Wine Seller and asking for a nice green Merlot to present to my hostess. Now, having had a little experience, and although I don’t know a Reisling from a Chardonnay or a Pinot Noir from a Cabernet Sauvignon, I am less nervous when eating out. I look at the wine list first so I’ll be ready. I pick out a white wine that is about $4 a glass and whose name I can pronounce and when the wait person asks if I’d like a drink to start I order that glass of wine. There is one exception. If Gewurztraminer is among the selections and if it’s available by the glass I order it regardless because I love to say Gewurztraminer. I took German in high school for the same reason, I loved the sound of the language. I wasn’t any good at that either. I sort of carried the language instead of speaking it, like the Clarinet. Several years later, while in the service, I met a German girl on the beach in Marseilles and, after awhile, intending to invite her (in her own language) to dinner, I instead challenged her to “stand up against the bathroom wall and hold a sheet of paper between her teeth while waving her arms in the universal sign of alarm.” She seemed to pick up on the alarm part but not much else about my proposal interested her.

When I choose from the menu I choose a red wine with a red meat dish and a white with everything else and, again, if I can pronounce it and it costs around $20 I order it. A $20 bottle seems to impress everyone just enough.

The alert that a wine tasting was in the offing came printed on a nice heavy chartreuse paper with those irregular and seemingly worn edges that are so popular nowadays, the kind that look like so much of the paper goods left to winter over in summer homes and which the squirrels have been enjoying. I say “alert” because it was addressed to Elaine. Added, apparently as an afterthought and in a different ink, was “and Phil,” the subtle implication being that she might put the intervening week to good use by bringing me up to speed vis-^-vis appropriate wine tasting etiquette. Inside were the details and a handwritten note offering the opportunity to make a contribution. “We’re asking each guest to bring a wrapped palette refresher to be enjoyed between tastings,” it read, “surprise us!” Boy, I thought, this is pretty exciting and I headed for the pantry to be sure we had plenty of smoked Kippers in Louisiana Hot Sauce. t

— Phil Crossman

Vinalhaven