She wanted us repelled by the world – by the entire order of the nature. It was all about disgust – utter disgust. Disgust: that’s the lesson. We have to be disgusted with everything.
We are disgusted with everything, pretty much.
Not enough! We have to become more disgusted.
The postgraduates are retching – is that a good sign?
Definitely!
This wine is a transition. It’s a threshold. Over which we have to cross.
And what’s on the other side? Like, good wine?
It’s something to do with Europe, too. These are European wines. Grown in European soil. In the European terroir.
They’re still disgusting.
Is she saying something – that Europe’s disgusting? That Europe should disgust us? She knew how infatuated we were with European thought. Was she saying we should leave it behind? Or is it that the soil has changed, somehow. That the terroir’s gone rotten.
Why’s it gone rotten?
We don’t see any of those great European thinkers anymore, do we? Those bestriding the world like colossi types.
Some of them are still alive. Some of the greats.
But they’ve outlived their time. They know it. This is the age oif ashes – that’s what they know. May 68 and all that’s long gone.
And the ashes are in the soil. And in the vines. And in the grapes. And in the wine. Is that it?
Cicero would love this: us sitting around, pondering her so-called message. Trying to figure things out as we drink her disgusting wine. As we, like, pondering the mystery of its disgustingness very seriously. She’d think this was very fucking funny. You guys are even more idiotic than I thought you were, she’d say.
I think she wants us to digest the wine, not retch it up. She wants us to convert the poison, somehow. Through some internal process.
Isn’t that what Socrates did with alcohol? He could drink all night, but it wouldn’t touch him. All the other drinkers would, like, have collapsed around him, but he’d just head out to the marketplace in the morning, as usual.
Yeah, but he didn’t convert the wine. He controlled its effects. Using reason.
Temperance – that’s the virtue, isn’t it? The mean between puritanism and drunkenness, Aristotle would call it.
Cicero hated temperance. The palace of wisdom leads to the palace of wisdom, and so on. Fuck reason.
Wine’s part of Jewish rituals, right? It’s in the psalms as cheering the hearts of men or whatever. And it it’s in the Song of Songs as, like, a good thing. And they poured out wine as a libation offering in the temple, right? Which means God likes drinking wine, too. You drink it during Passover. It’s about the joy of deliverance.
Yeah, but when Noah got drunk he got all incest-y …
And for Christians? Jesus turned water into wine, right? At that wedding? And wine’s a symbol of his blood, right? It’s about his sacrifice. Drink this in memory of me, and all that. And didn’t he call himself the true vine?
But this isn’t good wine. You wouldn’t Jesus to turn water into this. It’s not, like, good stuff from the earth. About the earth’s bounty, or anything.
Because the earth isn’t good anymore – that’s what Cicero’s saying. By your fruits you shall know it. The earth sucks, so its fruit sucks.
And blows.
It’s bubbling. Like when you stick phosphorous in water.
I can actually hear this wine. Is that supposed to happen?
This wine’s got its own microclimate. This wine’s positively balmy.
Socrates could drink, like, infinite wine and not get drunk.
Work in Progress 