My bulletin (board)

I am one of those people.

I raise a glass and toast to the evening, admire the label on the bottle of wine you (I) picked out (for the label followed by the terroir. yes I am a victim of marketing). Then as you go to throw that cork out as we move to the next bottle or towards our homesteads, I eagerly grab for that little piece of floaty spongy wine stained goodness and proffer, "I'm saving them." You give me a quirky look but quickly hand me the cork, convinced (knowingly) that it will most likely end up in a Ziploc bag filled with vino conquests spanning the years. Or scared that I will hurt you for it.

Silver Oaks? Chateau Rothschild? La Fleur?
1989?
Got it.
OK. I confess that not all the corks come from bottles that I fully enjoyed by myself, my companions. I admit to pilfering corks from jobs where they would have ended up in the bin, pilfering not only corks but sips from decanters not quite empty. And what sips they were! Dregs from a bottle worth more than my monthly paycheck will not be swirled down the drain! Even if luxury goods are overpriced there is certainly something about a 30 year old bottle of wine heavy with sediment and- dare I say it- complexity. Not that I can tell notes of tobacco from notes of bourgeois hypocrisy. All I know is that it ain't Chuckie Shaw.

Most of the corks are my own. Enjoyed with friends on long evenings near the beach, in a crew mess, on a boat, with campfire ashes on our hands or the remnants of a fine French meal- snails and laughter and memories and all- lingering on our palates. It's not really about the names, it's about the experiences. The intimacy of finishing (or trying) a bottle over an evening of connection.

I have little trouble finishing a glass of wine, but many of my projects seem to go unfinished.
So what I am saying is that my corkboard, though minor, is a long sought after accomplishment. Sitting down to glue small pieces of tree to a larger piece of once cotton ball fluff stretched between more identifiable striated planks soft to staples and betraying every bruise to arching fiber is something. I sit and I glue I position I reminisce. And after staring at my pile (Ziploc) of corks for years, I am pleased with my progress. Soon I am able to hang my creation and post silly notes with slightly broken tacks. I create, I use, I go on to the next idea.

Which is huge. Usually I am stuck on ideas. They brew in my head for years, decades, clawing at my right hemisphere but stuck in my throat, my fingertips on keyboard clenching and resisting. How many ideas will go unbirthed, sequestered to corners, folds of cortex, memories of thoughts unrealized?

But the levy must burst someday and I am ready for the flood.
The corkboard (silly, insignificant, beautiful, practical) is a start. A bulletin (board) for renewed creativity, postings of feelings thoughts intentions.

Some ideas are better forgotten, for sure. But the question still lingers late into the night when I think of myself at 21 3am on a Tuesday New York morning pounding at keys unable (thankfully) to sandbag the stirrings...

At 33: What's next?