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December 05, 2006
Brian Doyle Breaks It Down
“So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end - not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched up by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words ‘I have something to tell you,’ a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mothers papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.“
Above is the last paragraph of the delightfully succint and succulently delectable essay Joyas Valadoras. Get nuts and read the whole piece aqui, or check it out in Best American Essays 2005.
Oh and of course - be sure to pour yourself a Big Gulp of Lange Pinot Noir to enjoy with as our man Doyle is, coincidentally, the author of the book: The Grail: A Year Ambling and Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World. And that's the boozy lit that made this Zin-suckling freak finally see the light in regards to "the noble grape of Burgundy."
Yeah. I'm a regular Paul Giamatti over here. Whoooey, Pinot! Whee! Yeah! Allllll right! Etc. (I'm far too overwhelmed to type through all these emotions. Also, I'm totally wasted on Diet Pepsi and string cheese. Don't worry about me; it's nothing I can't blame on altitude.)
Posted by Bree at December 5, 2006 12:19 AM