Woke up this morning after two days off with nothing to say here. In terms of the usual inspiration and how drinks come about, I’m not much of a wanderer when it comes to going out and seeing what other people are doing in their cocktail programs. Yeah, I guess that’s not good on my end. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t have the energy, coin, or desire. Number one, it’s not a good look to be a drunken, carousing dad, number two, I don’t get the same pleasure out of drinking that I did ten or fifteen years ago. Somewhere along the way that second or third drink just made me feel shitty the next day which is why I typically use the NFL veteran quarterback advice to a rookie quarterback when I get the hankering for an adult beverage.

“Enjoy the first, sip the second, refuse the third.”

The best way to jump start your imagination is to go see what others are doing. Go to those who are doing it better. I got this idea from the new season of The Bear. I haven’t finished it all yet but about midway, Marcus the pastry guy goes to Copenhagen, we’re assuming Noma here? and works with a high level pastry chef. He’s pretty much alone and just working hard while he’s visiting. This seems like a good way to do it. Something I may have been able to do long ago. Ha. There’s no goddam way I could do that now. Yes, the bitter sting of regret. I tell the younglings I work with, I tell them all the time, “Get the hell out of Southern California for awhile. Go discover the world before you’re tied down. Enjoy the freedom of being young and stupid.” They just think I’m ranting as usual. No one listens. I say, “Go work in New York or Spain…” The advice falls on deaf ears.

I’m usually pretty inspired by the farmer’s market on Wednesday mornings. Especially right now with so much stuff coming around. I go down there with my son, find the parking, walk around, the sun is shining, the palms are swaying, there’s some familiar street musicians here and there. The old guy at the first part of the entrance, the woman with the daughter who has a sweet smile and a nice voice, the woman in the wheelchair over by the alleyway. You can see the ocean and feel the salt breeze. There’s life. People. It feels like somewhere else. It reminds me of how grateful I am to live here. I’m super lucky that I don’t have to go far to get here. I do wish I lived in a more rural environment, especially after reading this great book I just devoured, Green Mountain Farm by Elliott Merrick. But if there’s one big lesson I’ve learned in life–you can’t have it all. I know, I know, Yo La Tengo says I can. For the nerds out there, the song was originally by George McCrae. God, what a great fucking tune.

Can you have it all? Maybe you can, old soul, maybe you can. Maybe if we all want something that is easy to achieve, but anything easy to achieve isn’t worth the squeeze. There’s a great passage from Green Mountain Farm where I think the whole thing coalesces into the main theme of the whole book.

“We have found that the only time we lose money on our farm work is when we raise stuff to sell. When we eat it ourselves we get it for less than we could buy. We are our own best market. We are so far from other good sized markets that, or course, we are at a disadvantage when it comes to selling. Probably the smartest thing we could do to make a profit on our farm would be to build a few summer cottages to rent, and thus import our own market. As it is, we find that when we try to sell stuff, we often receive less than the stuff cost us. I remember taking fifteen dozen ears of fresh golden bantam corn to a chain store to sell. They offered me five cents a dozen, though they were reselling for twenty-five cents a dozen. I brought my corn home and fed it to the pig, and was very glad I had a pig who would so enthusiastically grow pork for me. Of course, when trying to keep account of costs (which we never do), we don’t figure our time at anything very much. This is because we’ve never been able to make an estimate of what our time is worth, and we immediately jump out of the realm of mathematics into philosophy. If we weren’t raising food and canning it, we’d be going to movies and building swimming pools, wouldn’t we? All we can make of it is that we are happily constituted so that raising food makes us strong and happy and gives us aesthetic delight as well as gustatory pleasure. So we’ve decided we had better take advantage of it, and that’s that.”

A great swath of text from a great book. It was written almost a hundred years ago but the main philosophy of being closer to the earth still remains. Today, the number one happiest profession is…You guessed it, farming. Being outside all day amidst nature and animals, working your ass off, eating heartily right from the soil seems to many to be too much effort for little pay off but to me it seems like a good life. As of late the city has really gotten to me. It’s hard to see the concrete and in your face poverty. LA is not a beautiful city. We were in downtown Culver City yesterday getting some ice cream and Jo said to me, “It’s so pretty here.” To me it’s still very ugly because of where I’m from. If only she could see Vermont, I thought to myself, it would blow her away. I wonder often, now that I am a dad, why I would ever leave a place like that? And, will my own son ever get to see and experience living in the country? From there to New York City, to Boston, to LA. What a crazy roundabout route to circumnavigate in order to realize that where I started was the best of all. It’s possible I’m just homesick and need to go and visit. That experiencing just a little bit of winter after not feeling its sting for eight years would set me straight but I can’t help and wonder sometimes what the hell happened. Why have I been away from such a beautiful state for almost twenty years now? Why did I want to leave in the first place? In these noisy, dirty cities. The only explanation is that I had to follow a path, I had to see more of this great country in order to realize where I’m from was the best. And now getting back there would be so difficult. When I think about it, my heart hurts. So many questions and always the lingering doom of the six month winter to halt any further thought of it. But right now, summertime, Vermont is the most gorgeous place in the world. Green and blue.