I want to be free. No responsibilities. Sitting in a cafe drinking kir royale while reading a book, observing life and people between the pages until they become real.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Quotation from Steve Jobs, Commencement address delivered to Stanford University

Called “The Eden of the West” or simply Eden, the Fountaingrove Winery was built according to the precepts of the Brotherhood of the New Life, a utopian religious community located in Northern California. The leader, Thomas Lake Harris, called himself the “Pivotal Man” from whom the announcement of Christ’s “Second Coming” would emerge. He believed the winery itself would be physically taken into the “Celestial Sphere” at the turn of the millemium. He also saw Fairies roaming in the vineyards.

Also see Fountaingrove Winery: Part 1. And click here for another photo of the winery.

The Fountaingrove Winery was established in 1875 in Sonoma County (California) by Thomas Lake Harris. Harris believed he was chosen by God to grow grapes and to make rare wine “filled with the divine breath.” He also believed himself to be immortal. The winery became home to the Brotherhood of the New Life, a “cult” that believed God is bisexual and that each person has a counterpart in heaven. Harris expected complete surrender from his disciples, including the surrender of all their their material wealth to him. He was eventually, perhaps predictably, forced to leave the winery after a sordid sexual scandal. When he died in 1906, his followers earnestly declared he was only “sleeping.” The winery closed in 1934. A fire destroyed about half of the remaining ruins in 1991. Today, the winery is mostly visited by local teens who like to get loaded and spray colorful graffiti.

Give me a severely dilapidated building, some broken bottles and cryptic graffiti, and I’m pretty much mentally and emotionally revitalized.
Quotation from Gabe Meline, The Fountaingrove Winery

Although the sun shone high and strong, I got a serious case of the heebie jeebies. I kept expecting to see ragged, misty faces looking at me through the cracked window panes. I love that feeling.
Quotation from Leilani Clark, Ghosts in Our Midst

Food is seduction. Prepared with fresh ingredients and some imagination, it excites the senses and engages the mind. Food is the ultimate foreplay.

Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.
Quotation from Federico Fellini

“Nice cookies.”
Attribution Unknown

My stomach is growling. Some veggie spring rolls please. Or some warm bread with wine and gouda.

Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.
Quotation from Sarah Bernhardt

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.
Quotation from Garrison Keillor

Some people are ambitious. They take big steps. Others are content with whatever life offers them. They take smaller steps. Either way, being valuable and productive still means being able to move your feet. The first step, that giant one that gives you direction, is always the hardest one to make.

Ambition is an expensive impulse, one that requires an enormous investment of emotional capital. Like any investment, it can pay off in countless different kinds of coin. The trick, as any good speculator will tell you, is recognizing the riches when they come your way.
Quotation from Ambition: Why Some People Are Most Likely To Succeed (Time Magazine)

P.S. No matter what it is you do, if you do it well enough, you can make money at it.
Final note: The wine industry is very, very big in California.

Wasted, a song by Angus & Julia Stone (YouTube.com) I’m wasted. I’m so wasted on you.

Why do politicians make the worst decisions?

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford: Mistress is ‘soul mate,’ but I want to fall back in love with wife (New York Daily News)

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details…
Quotation from Governor Mark Sanford, written in an email to his “soulmate” Maria Belen Chapur

He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids.
Quotation from Jenny Sanford, on her husband’s mysterious “disappearance”

There are Real Friends and there are Placebo Friends. Real Friends are reliable and very rare. Everyone else is a Placebo Friend, part of the control group that stays with you only through the good times. That doesn’t make Placebo Friends evil. One can be both a Real Friend to someone and a Placebo Friend to another.

What are friends?
Friends are people that you think are your friends
But they really your enemies, with secret indentities
and disguises, to hide they true colors
So just when you think you close enough to be brothers
they wanna come back and cut your throat when you ain’t lookin’
Lyrics by Eminem, If I Had

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Quotation from Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

I’m glad cyber-thiefs haven’t disrupted the world’s chocolate supply. But if they ever do, watch out! The public reaction to a worldwide chocolate shortage will make puppy-stealing seem like child’s play.

Intelligence officials worry about cyber attacks taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the internet… Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems were also at risk.
Quotation from Electricity Grid in US Penetrated by Spies by Siobhan Gorman (The Wall Street Journal)

All we ever wanted was everything
All we ever got was cold
Get up, eat jelly
Sandwich bars, and barbed wire
Squash every week into a day.
Lyric from Bauhaus, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (YouTube)