HEAVEN

(Original Image by Moritz Knoringer)

Heaven.

Heaven is a hill overlooking Amador wine country, some place near Karmère, where the hills roll into each other, one after the other, and the old Missions sprout like flowers from the vineyards. There I will lay down a blanket, a case of wine, some glasses, and a corkscrew, and my friends will sit with me, and we’ll drink and talk and laugh as the sun sets. Then Mandi will light the firepit, and we’ll all continue long into the night, looking up at the stars with drunken eyes, dreaming aloud the way we used to together. Everyone will be on the same energy level, the same wavelength. We’ll feel each other’s vibration and take it into our own without judgment. Hours later, we’ll stumble down the hill to the hotel and open one or two or three more bottles in flagrant disregard of the day to come… Still, the hangover will be light the next morning, cured by two cups of coffee and some scrambled eggs and bacon. This is my heaven, my eternal paradise. I told Mandi to scatter my ashes on that Amador Hill, to let the wind carry my soul over the grapes that I might be bottled and corked and consumed by the wayward souls of this world.

“You’re drunk.” She responded.

Maybe so.

I have to be careful not to think too much of the past while drinking. It’s not that I’m a nostalgia-addict. It’s that I’m positively twisted on how isolated and cynical things have gotten between us. We’ve slowly branched out from one another, become territorial with our lives, with our beliefs, with our thoughts of the future. Maybe out of fear. Maybe out of shame for past debaucheries. Maybe out of a sense of obligation and responsibility. Understandable. I’m just surprised the fire doesn’t spark anywhere on its own. Memories take a lot of intentional effort these days which, of course, kills the romance, the spontaneity of it all, like telling your date when and how you will kiss them once the night is over.

Shit. Who would’ve thought how dry the vines would become! A clandestine, cosmic shakedown, it was. Unbelievable. No crimson, orange, or golden sun either. Just grey sky falling into black night, and a hint of mimetic, monkey pride that, despite our adolescent proclamations, we eventually became what was expected of us. It’s sickening to think about.

I want that hill in Amador. I don’t care what anybody thinks. I want to drink with my friends, and talk and laugh freely amongst the vines. I want to feel that sun against my skin, that wine warmth in my belly once again. I want to know that the next half of our lives has not yet been DECIDED.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy. I’m okay with that. If I keep down a job, provide for the family, not be a total tyrant asshole, craziness is an acceptable disposition.

Bukowski said in a poem, “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

I’d take it a step further. I’d say some people STOP being crazy, what truly horrible lives they must lead. Most wrap it up before the age of forty. I just can’t do it. So, I drink my wine alone and think of my hill in Amador as the sun sets and a friend opens another bottle.