Round and Round We Go

It’s time for the taille.

I’m in the vines again snipping and stripping at migrant wages. Like the taxi, which I’ve left behind for nostalgia to consume, the vines have the endless, repetitive, back and forth that draws me in. I am drawn to constant motion that goes nowhere. It allows me look around, inside and out.

It can get scary, like boots caked with icy mud. Cold wind all day long making you beg for the end of the shift. Or it can get beautiful, like a thin sliver of moon starting to shine in a newly night blue sky as the workday ends. Often it’s a mix of the two and I’m free to choose which side I glance towards. That’s when the choice of regard becomes critical.

The souche and my thoughts.
There’s a digression that goes on. A weaning away of the wasted distractions that suck energy for wild and unproductive growth. That’s what we are doing in the vines, getting the growth into the position that leads to a healthy, productive direction.

What can I say, it’s taille time again. It’s all I do. Wake, work, sleep. And perhaps something in between that is saturated with the thought of waking, working and when I can get to sleep.

But I digress, I wanted to tell you what I saw the other morning. It’s one of those moments that doesn’t lead in a productive direction because it already is in itself perfect. It needs nothing. It leads nowhere. It just is. It is direct, without distraction.

I am doing the taille. Cutting the vines back. The vines are carried on 3 horizontal lines of metal wire that are strung along the 100 yard rows on 10 metal poles. We cut the growth back to the vine stump which runs along the lowest wire.

It is December 7th. 8:30 am. Latitude 43.6291. 1° centigrade. In other words, it is cold and the sun is just rising. I am standing in the mud and the myth of southern france. I am starting my day of work. It will end when this same sun sets at 5:15 pm. But that is the end and this is just the beginning.

At this moment (that moment now), all along the now empty wires of the rows we have cut yesterday are drops of water. Each in perfect suspension and lined up one against the other along the wires. Frozen solid in their ‘drop’ form, they are back lit by the just rising sun and are gleaming. Thousands of drops of frozen water lined up like gleaming jewels row upon row just to the horizon.

For a moment I think of nothing else. Stunned by the perfection of the cold muddy world I am in.