1988 Chateau Canon
Judging by the sound of the fireworks deployed over downtown Portland, the New Year arrived as I was walking across the intersection of Flanders and 19th. The festivities to which my friends were attending didn’t appeal to me. So I didn’t go. I spent the late evening writing, but with only a few minutes left of 2007, I ventured out into the streets. I didn’t know why or what I thought would happen, but I knew I needed to be out there, out where I could feel the night’s breath on my face. Jovial revelers wobbled by offering their celebratory wishes to me as I wandered deeper into the dark frigid night.
Now home, I look at the bottle of wine that is on my desk, that has been on my desk, in a drawer, in a shelf, in a closet or in my room for over 11 years. The bottle of French red wine was surreptitiously procured while at a party in college at a rich friend of a friend’s parent’s house. Being idiosyncratic, I promised myself to only open the bottle on a special occasion to share with someone when the current year was a multiple of five of the anniversary of the bottled date. Don’t ask me why.
This year, 2008, will be the 20th anniversary. I lived through the years 1998 and 2003 without any exceptional reason to open this bottle. So it has remained sealed. I hope that this is the year. Otherwise, it will remain dust covered until at least 2013.
And that seems like an awfully long time away.
Posted in retrospective, thoughts/life
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
drink. that. wine.