Writing freely, done with coffee on a lazy Sunday not at all lazy. Getting Starbucks for family then going to the jumpy house place up the street, then taking Jack to Epic Center, or Epicenter, and now home. Was about to take a nap, but no. Going through old pictures, a couple of them, and wanting to take more but not having any time to go out and shoot. I’m a writer, not a photog, but I do want to get out there at some point and take some vineyard shots or pictures of production. Something. A media company, maybe. Media and publishing. Using what I have.. family, the kids. Me. I have everything I need. And no more overthinking. None. Done.
Jack still over there watching Peter Pan. 2:46. Hungry a little. Found one picture that makes me think of my vineyard walks at Dutcher Crossing, or right before I’d go into work. Seems like another life. I move on. Not Sonic and learning from it to get me to where I want to be… which is with Sonic and with my company. Collaborating somehow.. telling their story, and imitating their ways, their discussions with communities, their focus on education internally and mentorship, goal-setting, life. Business and life balanced like it is in no other workplace. Anymore I think often I write about work. The concept and obligation and place of work in our lives. Why we do it, and why would we ever do something we hate for a living.
Waking early tomorrow. My word. I’m giving it here. Writing about the 4am hour, what it does to me and how I make work out of it, a business…. A life of waking early and wha life would be like if I just continued waking at 6-something. Which is a respectable hour, yes, but that’s when the house wakes— kids, wife, family. I’ll be up before, far before. Look at picture again, light and color. More of each in my pages…
The vineyard,
always speaking.
article
Definitely noticing
an increase in overthought. Way to combat, work. Write. Just the act of action, actuation. That simple, really. Just made salad to go, now the pizza wait. 1 beer. Use time. Writing all time. Despicable, the waste of any time.
article
A Cytological
A beer, and some quiet. After today, which wasn’t bad, or a blah-day, just odd, I need this. I need this time for ME. I need collection, thinking about what I was thinking about this morning. All that “thinking”, definitely overthought. Has to stop. Wasn’t going to take bag to work today but of course I did.
I literally can’t decide what to write about. I hate this feeling. Catch self…. Not liking reading ways, or writing, so I re-instruct the one now penning. What I just wrote in journal. And that’s another thing, no more ‘I’. Starting to loathe that letter and word. So, over again. Back to school. More education. Exploring language and how it’s on pages composed. That’s another thing, no more ‘me’ or ‘my’ or ‘mine’. Wanting these pages to be about readers, YOU right now reading if anyone’s reading. Taking writing away from author and with more consideration of reader, seeing now here in kitchen. Quiet, just jazz… Mr. Coltrane speaking in octaves perfect in pairing with this beer. Wine next, the Cab last night popped.
Free in the moment, in present education. Hoping to wake early and jump to gym for running on belt, but feeling’s though this could be a night for writing. A night for assembling new curriculum, new sights and ideas for education, ideas offered, building not so much a brand but a story, a new identity and if not one new then one re-written.
Knowing just what to write. Taking ‘I’ away. Not even so much about you, reader, all respect meant, sent. This page and all following about the idea itself. Thinking… decisions that turn your vehicle, that shift and shape your voyage and trek. In traveling from page to page, writing to writing, observations and rooms, new instruction and curriculum if you will, need to travel light intensifies. More than before in before-pages. Learning from today, to plan ahead and not pressure character if something doesn’t align with the envisioned. Life is a circle, then a triangle, then something of square-semblance, and after undefined. Present at this counter, going over day, from the morning meeting with T, to the drive to SF, to the hike south on 35th, to my meditation on 35th and Vicente, to the drive back battling traffic and seeing all those faces in the lane left and right, and in 6-facing mirror, wondering what their day said to them, where they’re going.
Taking focus away from he in this seat, and seeing all around me. My neighbors, the people with whom I work, Mom Dad, winemaking sister, this beer bottle, kids cups just behind this laptop, journal and pen.. scene, scenes, interpretations, days, weeks, year ending. Just remembered, a 30-day project or challenge still progressed. Day 19, just learned. What’s wanted? Hmmm…. Not sure. Read with more strength and excavating traits. Writing, same. In class. Only one. All this still, music, time to seat, self. Something repaired, cured. Now, new advance, or forward, instruction, induction… not-so-subtle deduction.
(11/7/18)
11/6/18
Coffey Park, Santa Rosa
Day’s end. Wine of course. A Cab I bought the other day at Bottle Barn, and feeling scattered, like not like a writer at all. This feeling more loathed by me than I think anything. Called in English 1A tonight, stuck in traffic on way back from city. Traffic of course in Novato, the “narrows”, and then on Stony Point in Rohnert Park/Santa Rosa, which was a bit of a shock. I cam home feeling deflated and defeated.
Waking tomorrow morning early. Not for gym, not to run like a weirdo on the treadmill for 9 miles or a bit more, less, or something around the 9 I always shoot for. But to write. And, honestly, not even to write. To be with ME. To have time for me, which IS what I hold and profess now on the floor of this Autumn Walk Studio, but perfecting my writing self. Tonight and tomorrow.
Anymore I’m finding these moods I get in quite funny. I’m laughing at myself. Like I said in class last night, that’s healthy. It’s certainly more healthy and elevating than the person unable to laugh at themselves from time to time. I refocus on the wine. AV Cab, one I’ve never had before. Honestly I’m not moved. I’m not taught. I’m not caught. I’m not anything after sipping it. Been a while since I’ve had a wine that’s contributed to my story, my character, my There, then.
Night ending, and I want blood… other writers to battle. Like Hemingway with gloves on, or off. It doesn’t matter. This sport, not a sport, but a profession, lifelong night-song lesson. Day teaching me about sentences, how they present on page, and the wine orders me to listen, with more careful cursor and fervor. Tomorrow morning, writing about 4am, what it does and how it feels, what I have to say in that hour— Have I made my coffee, yet?
New Affair
On campus. Took nap before coming here, after getting some takeout brunch for self from Piner. Was in a bit of a mood knot so I said “NOT” to self and went to get an omelette. Regret a bit the nap, but I feel enlivened. More than that, I feel snappy, with an unusual bit of comedic pep. Am I prepped for class? Not really. And who cares. How I’m dealing with these mood knots, now, going forward, my truest of true business plans if you would, just laughing at them. Laughing at myself. What do I have to be in a mood over. Really. Nothing…. Here over 90 minutes before class and plan on using every ounce of it for writing. For words. Oh, ‘nother nice thing, little treat for self was gift to book store. Bought copy of Castle and the David Sedaris Diaries that came out fairly recently think.
Devoting life to essay, essay writing, essay philosophy and practice, the habit of that practice and how I, we, maintain such as essay writers. Who cares, my approach to essay. Which sounds dismissive and perfunctory, but not so. Anything but the case. In writing essays as I urge us all to, we write them not convinced with convention and structure, construction and orthodox diction and thought prism. We write freely. We write unconcerned. While waiting for my Denver at Piner Café, I thought of all the essays I’ve written as a student, and all the essays I’ve had students write. Have I done them a disservice by instilling and advocating the structure and formalistic tap-dance the course outline says? I think a bit, yes, if you must know. But now, who care. Who cares. Or, who else cares… Or, who cares who else besides ourselves cares is what I SHOULD say.
I’m laughing at myself, writing this essay. If it’s an essay. Maybe just a free write that I could submit as an essay. Submit to who, my own blog? Is that where? I’m in the conference room, not the shared office with adjuncts where they have us cooped like chickens or ducks or pigs about to be slaughtered. Could write an essay on that, the shared office for adjuncts, or just an essay on adjunct-ing, or on students of the adjunct. Essays should be rooted in singularity and extend from it. After my nap, I’m a growling lion, or bear, hungry for more pages and more climates to feed the career of essays I’m about to paginate. I feel exacerbated by the time I’m in, the time in my life where there’s a decision to be made yes but just where I am and not necessarily solely to do with age. What exactly then I don’t know, though note there’s more vision. Not doing this, following through with this recent singular call to build a career on and from, and explore essay would prove mordant. So I follow through, and just follow.
Being on campus does something to me. Always has. Though I deplore adjunct-ing, and being an adjunct, I love the proximity to students and the act of learning, self-study, and of course the English Department where essay is the interminable nexus. Or at least it is in my vision. My proclamation today is that I finally have a proclamation to make. Finally. At nearly age 40. Ugh, I sigh to myself and I’m pretty sure I did so aloud. Cant tell with the music in my ears, but I know I did. I know someone in the department heard me. Essay… essay… essay… on daddy-ing, wine, reading, journal keeping and habit practice and maintenance, on ME. I am an essay, and argument maybe. What’s my argument. Keep learning, about you. Learn the outside but the inward is the apexing aim. To understand self. How is that vain? How is that egocentric? I offer it’s healthy. And what more optimal approach and averment that with words.
Reading through my journals and diaries today I see these lulls or stalls, funks surface every-so-often. And now, I forecast less of them, less occurrence and their beat which I loudly detest. I’m here, gathering thoughts for class, and for me, thinking ‘Who cares.’ With a smile, with eagerness to see more in this day and learn from everything. If not learn then gather, collect scenes, write them all as there’s singularity in all. Just a moment ago having quick chat with a full-time professor about beer. She told me years ago she was a beer fan so every time our presence eclipse, we talk beer. One of the only full-timers here, if not the only, I enjoy talking to. That I even have any interest in exchanging words. Note of our talk in journal. So what. Little revision, little concern, free in my thoughts. Could use one of the beers she just mentioned to celebrate. Do I finally now have a job, a dream job, any job— writing composition. Who else cares? I don’t care. I’m preoccupied with the essay form, and how so many in this department think they know what an essay is. How to write one. Where have they been published? Forget that question… have they even self-published any of their work? And if so, where is it? Did they only offer it once? Maybe some of them can write, but how far away from the course outline have they composed?
Sinew in this renewed page stride. Edit minimally. Delete nothing. Free. Freedom. If you’re to write an essay, you’re to surrender to yourself, perforce and ambivalently. Remembering my master’s thesis, other essays written at SSU, Foothill, even in high school like the one I wrote about Bubba our pet rabbit and how he would always lead me to chase. Any mood knots remaining are now carrion. I’m understanding self more in the last hour, since getting to campus than I have in the past ten or so years. What did that nap do? Was it the omelet?
(11/5/18)
And I have that again. That ‘I don’t know what to write again’ feeling.
Something. Is it a feeling. What is it. Look at me. I can barely write. Am I writing now, here in home, lone, listening to Coltrane as I do so often and thinking and thinking to despicable overthought trot. Receipts next to me I told myself I’d log to inventory somehow, but no…. Dream last night about helping someone write a birthday poem for a friend. I said something off the top of head and the person liked it. She told me to write it down, a co-worker at Sonic, handed me her notepad. More book than pad. Saw how much she’d written in days recent. Everything. Literally everything that happened that day and everyday before that was documented. Everything from putting money in her wallet for the day, logging that she bought a bottle of water from the snack shop in the building, everything. Not sure if I got around to writing down what I recited for her, so taken by what she wrote.
Now, I write. Or try. What’s with me, lately. And my writing. What’s holding me, stopping, stalling me. Have to figure this out, crack whatever code this is or cut through this fog before 40. Goddamn that number. Forget about it, I tell myself. Don’t think, just write, I tell myself. Just like one of the students in my class. The would-be scholars that come into my class, classes, hoping to be better writers. How’s their instructor, though? I’m writing, now. Early in morning, day of daylight savings. Would be 09:20, but I have 08…. Feel like a warrior, now, taking back my territory, ground, land. Still having trouble writing, typing. The jazz helps. Nothing more I want than this, this right here, establishing whatever legend or story for self I can. On writing. On life. On happiness and singularity. All of it. Just writing freely and not looking for any kind of synonym stream or beaming, shiny words to make my prose sound like anything else but me.
What do I write— My surroundings. So now, here in kitchen with no kids, wife, just these typing fingertips desperate for a story and some direction of something, something that…. Thought of taking pictures, of any nearby vineyard. But no. I’m not a photog. I’m a writer— A writer who does like to take pictures, yes, but a writer who has plenty of pictures he hasn’t used, of vineyards and other realities and scenes, things and people, so many somethings not yet put to blog or page or given a set of words, or even an acronym.
Kids clothes, pull-ups for daughter, coupon, a bag for something, headphones and a pen, more receipts, a mocha with 4 mighty espresso knocks in it. I’m here, present in the kitchen presenting my now-self to a later self, hoping that that punctuates a solid sense of self. Mood, in a one of those shapes of determined and eased confirmation. Who I am and what I’m doing. This started this morning, soon as I woke. I knew, I knew that narrative and personal essay were calling, and I thought of my story…. All the jobs I’ve had. How sometimes I’m embarrassed by such while others entirely proud and joyous as that’s what’s made me, me. From the grocery store, to the music story, while in college working in that office for can’t remember what it was, a medical something company that came to your house I think and took blood…. To the wine world. The wine world. The story always comes back to that, to them. Told a friend the other day that the only tasting room I’ll ever again set foot in will be my own. True, last night I thought sipping the St. Francis Syrah here in home before dinner out. Wine… wine…. Could write about that in only so many ways, then I think that’s the only thing I should be writing about. That’s the singularity, that’s the happiness. That’s where I write, that’s where I find self. I don’t know… this is a different morning for me as a writer.
Tell self to wash hands of anything stalling me, stopping me, putting up some kind of wall. All the praise and good write-ups I get for being a professor, or instructor, louden that. Be active from that. I know I’m using a lot of ‘I’ in this entry, but I’m just getting started. Let me warm up a bit. It’s morning 1. Of how many? Don’t know yet. I don’t quite know where this is going. I’m not meant to. I just don’t want to be one of those wishing writers after age 40, or even at that age.
Was near distracted by those receipts, off to left. To crumble them up and toss them in trash. No, I told myself. Stay where you are. Write. Write more. Never be not-writing. Keep with your composition keep and streak. Only 08:32, thank whatever. I need time. I need this time, time to just be with self, to write, to see where this project, or idea, yet another project or idea is going. Just see where it’s going, where it’ll take you. You only have to move, see what happens next. Knowing answers isn’t the objective. Explorations is. Just seeing, wandering, meandering, soaring and not moving wings too much. Let yourself be careless, free, free in the new freeness you’ve discovered.
Thinking of more Newness to embrace. That’s an aim that should be pursued. If you don’t know what to write, or what to create, what to do, just make sure you’re moving. You’ll find something, something. And if it takes a while then it takes a while. Enjoy the journey, enjoy the exploration, enjoy the enjoyment of you decided to move in a decided direction. Receipts crumbled and tossed into trash. Now more typed movement to this track. More New, Newness I can’t let slide or skip away from me. Teaching self to write and read, completely and wholly over again. Thinking of jobs again, then forgetting them as soon as they surfaced. While swim around in past tides where there’s a new one right in front of me. I see where I’m going…. Have always seen, but always been distracted.
(11/4/18)