On my day off want
more of my time,
I of theirs.
There’s not enough.
Days off try.
6/24/18
Water
On lawn, sidewalk,
a jeep’s tire.
Down to drain, sewer
that leads somewhere.
Ocean different, in glass.
What’s that.
6/24/18
Weather
Changing, from time to–
Wondering what front next in arrives
and changes my scene and setting and
what I have planned. Drops, dry. Sun,
then none.
Rocks waiting for the change. Dreading or
not. Sold one approach and life after another,
me listening to a couple from Texas have a conversation
about the heat, here. What heat they said.
Laughing, walking, think I heard thunder.
No sound before pour. Always the way.
Trees move, telling me it’s here. New approach and landing.
Kind first notes, benches gently drenched.
Songs in the steps, clouds convincing me.
6/24/18
Plant
Self in a room to decide,
everything in and out of time–
The leave with sky stretch.
6/23/18
When you decide. You decide you’re done.
Done. With he regularity of blandness and expected shows, do’s, tasks and tallies. This morning I woke with a slight ache in head from I’m sure that one and only glass of Alexander Valley Vineyards Zin. I never drink Zin, and I had it too late. So this morning leaving pillows and sheets I rolled my eyes and thought about the day ahead in the tasting room, told myself not to take any attitude, especially THAT one. So I’m here committed…. People around me, with the day off. Me, not. Needing my own office… where is it? My mood… writing way out of it, approaching that age. Stop writing about it, I know. I’m legitimizing it. Need to do something drastic, today… creatively radical. Eight hours I could be writing, spent pouring behind a bar. There’s that attitude, I know I know.
At least I acknowledge where I need repair. Book technically due tomorrow. What can I do. What will I do. I sip the mocha and say ‘fuck it’, frankly. I’m a shameless me manuscript and modality. I say to myself, “We all are, from time to time, right?” I have no idea. But this idea, this finding self through more exploration of self and what I want, what I want to be doing for the rest of my life— what YOU should be doing right now instead of being safe and contributing to pattern and the expected formation of everything out there…. Go. And move quick. The clock is a cannibal.
Stories in head, from the tasting room and other realities… my character, Kelly, and her novel, some novels snd short story collection. Will be with family all day, come morrow, so I need five sittings I this morning vindicated, between now and when we leave the house for our drive (taking kids to see race cars, or something, at the raceway in whatever city that is). Five. And I’m doing it. This isn’t passion you read, but refusal, refusing to keep with anything. I’m done with templates, being on a foreign schedule.
So I did it. The same thing I always do on Saturday. Get up, ready self for labor, care for babies while Mama suits up for workout class and leaves, wait for neighbor to come over and watch Jack and Emma, then I leave… come here, write a bit, get to place, and then stress finds me. I decided, on change. That this will be how I make my life more worth living, make a living, more wildly live. There is more in the present than I before noticed… people around me, looking at their phones or talking in small groups on their day off. Me, the writer in corner gathering himself…. Short stories, screenplay, novel. Starting over isn’t starting over. It’s starting. I’m deciding to start, I’ve found. This morning. And why not. Why not decide right now that, more of what you want, what you aim do for the rest of your days, and stop what stops you, or slows you. Decide.
Laud Syrah Awe
08:44. At winery. The morning and kids testing me with interruptions and crazy kids/baby behavior that in no way would allow for me to write. But that’s fine. I’m here in my wined zone, writing, seeing Chris in the lab working on blends and trials I’m sure. My thoughts, in and out of the Syrah last night, Mendocino Ridge character…. A voice that was gentle and assertive, self-personifying and beatific, everything I look for in a wine but this was magnified, propelled at my sight and total character with pace I was unprepared for, completely… but it didn’t matter. I kept sipping and seeing, the Mendocino altitudes and sights, everything in my wine story consolidated… thinking about her now makes me forget the scattered haphazardness of the morning, how tired I am from waking just after five and throwing myself into writing. I’m here, there, with her, the wine, something of elevation and poetry, more verse in the fruit sphere and sensibility than I can here catalogue, but I have to… my job, a wine writer, to not just write about wine but be with her, in all letters and expressions, sounds and beats. I momentarily leave the winery, and I don’t know where I am.. only with her prime passion paragon, stringing and singing with stanches conviction. Energetic like the babies this morning, but with some oddly formed and teaching containment. I try not to think with too much force, an excess of exertion, but it’s difficult, demanding…. I succumb to losing self in Syrah thought and perceptive knots.
A Syrah semaphore, signaling me to follow her, following wine wherever it wants to take me. Be contained in the ideas of wine, but in no one location. Again I leave my office and find myself in Souther Rhône, Northern, Mendocino County and Australia, with varied myriads of notes, songs unusual and electrically etched in memory and purpose. She hold me then lets go and I just blindly follow, admitting I’m an admirer or obsessed confessional avalanche, much like her. We’r more alike than different then realize that the contrasts are what whisper and breathe multiplied life. Eased and inaudible smoke, amiable cherry chords, rose petals that haunt me with light roars…. I’m on page, right now, from her spell, morning more eased and musical because of my last sip, a bit under 12 hours ago. I’m like one newly in love, or with renewed love, kissed by telling atmosphere and scene, me in a serene lean, in dream, meditative ravine. Why I’m writing about wine, and how life from the wine re-write my current writing life, any measure and thought on life, where I am and what I’m doing, what I’m to do with wine. Hearing my finger type about her, smiling, smiling for the remainder of day I’d guess. Nothing will stress or undo this writer. Nothing. I’m composed and with new character composition from her, her words, from when I pulled the cork night before last to last night with my last sip before sleep— kept, her smile, the year, words, color, where she takes me, all philosophical parcels of what was in glass, to now at this desk, with me pushing keys just after nine o’clock. These are the wines that remind me why I am, here, what I’m doing, why.
6/22/18
inward jot
My vibe this morning here in the office, elevating. Brought lunch today, which doesn’t often occur in my morning habit and way. Seeing it not me to do what others do. The job thing. That’s why I make this job, here in the wine world, at this winery, my own. I can’t be comfortable, certainly not conform. Not as an artist. Not as me. I’m finding that there is one oneness about my “literary wanderings” as I put it to M, the wine club manager here asking if she minds if I sit and “engage in my literary wanderings”. Have to be on clock in exactly 35 minutes. So this meditations, providing more soul, more spirit, more health and wellness about my aims..
Looking at book progress. Has to be done and sell-ready in three days. Hoping I can do so. I don’t much feel like teaching anymore, either. At least not at the institution, at the JC where I’m only given what’s left, assignment-wise, as an adjunct. So what next, then… only this. Only writing in the morning and the rest of day living, taking pictures, taking notes, observing… simple observing, here in this office populated by cubicles and people at computers, typing and emailing, scanning and looking for another manila file folder.
Starting the work day… work. What I do for a living. That’s the topic of every human, I feel. Some definitively loathe work, what they do, for what they wake every morning. I can’t live like that. I won’t. I don’t want my babies to see me that way. They won’t. They don’t. Never will. My ebb and vibe, sight, more than positively defiant and definitive. My story, what’s my story, like I ask students every semester. Just a writer…. freedom, waning to be free from any financial woe. And I am. So what are we talking about, what are we looking for and what do we want.
My inward types this morning, knowing, understanding. I’m slightly distracted by something, but I won’t let it fester or grow.. keep writing… have a little wine when you go downstairs. I mean, don’t drink, but taste through the flight like a journalist, like a wine writer… there’s no excuse for me to be in any lull or stall, pause or be caught by any push of anxiety’s ax. Didn’t go to coffee spot as I only wanted to write, not spend money, that $6.05 (Can you believe that?) on a mocha with 4 shots. Difference, this morning… you have to throw yourself outside of regularity and pattern to grow, to get to your There, I know see at my old age.
Where I am— office, winery. What I’m doing— writing to self and hopefully nearing the Road, my travels, teaching, on writing and wine and writing about wine and the act of writing, keeping a journal and writing everything down even the shit that others would soon so dismiss, disregard. This winery, much more sizable than the one I’ll eventually proprietor. Journal on my at all times this day, jotting what I see and imagining the tasting room mine own.
(6/21/18)
Right now.
PUT MORE PURPOSE ON YOUR PLATE.
