4/12/12.  Back at the keys, and I have no idea what to push.  Kept notes all day today, in one of the small mead journalist notepads I have on me from time2time.  The ones I call “flip-pads.” Everything from characters, to situational reactions, to verse.  Thinking verse may be the most lucrative, and conducive form for me now, given all in motion around me.  Today, 3 tours.  All couples.  One gentleman asked me–the man on tour 2–”Do you ever write in here?”, as we walked through the cave.  Told him I hadn’t yet, but I now plan to as a result of his mention.  Why HAVEN’T I written in the caves yet?  Will, next shift.  If I have time.  See Self, clearly now,  writing for 8+ hours a day.  For income, yes.  But, more crucially, for peace.  So many notes in this little notebook.  Don’t have a clue what to share with this log.  And maybe I won’t share anything tonight.    Or ever.  Maybe they’re just meant to be notes, for me.  Will leave it for tomorrow morning’s Martin Eden-esque session.  Setting alarm for 5:50am.  And I will leave bed at that time.  Start coffee, and hit 2k.  Short prose.  Poetry, verse.  SONG.  All I have time for, now, as a new dad.  Well, just as a dad, period.  And I like that I have less time, that I’m struggling to write; that I can only, many times, fit in notes, crazde poetic yawns, spurts, into whatever paper I can get my hands over.

Just finished a glass of ’09 Cab.  Trying to determine which vintage I’m leaning towards, principally.  And I hate speaking in generalities with wine, you might already know.  But that’s the exercise I’ve put on Self, tonight.  Have to say that ’09 has a more uniquely crafted continuum than 2007’s set.  Again, I’m just using the two Cabernets I tonight tasted as evidence, or any validation hint…  But, thinking of other bottles I tasted from these two years, I’m realizing that ’07 was like that pop culture film that everyone loved, kept watching so many times on account it was easy to understand; It was appropriately luminous, palate-friendly, but formulaic, too easy, and often too loud; a ceaseless circle–big fruit, huge tannin, expansive mouthfeel, elevated volume in each taste stage.  2009, sharing fruit that went through struggle, giving us as consumers a unique character; one defiant, seductively evasive, strangely charming; it educates us, our palates; She takes US on a tour, shares stories, doesn’t aim to appease; She’s truthful, tangible, wine’s validity paradigm.  Wish I didn’t wash my glass out downstairs.  Need another pour…

No.  Need to be ready for early rise.  Tomorrow morning’s 2,000 words.  And yes, I’m targeting a word amount.  And that “word count log,” or whatever I have it titled here on the monster’s polluted beach of saved files.  Just pulled the little pages from my back pocket.  Growing quite attached to this little notebook, I realize, listening to some sensuous track on my Wine Bar beats Pandora station.  One note: “Fear of somms”.  As in, sommeliers.  I have no idea why any winery would want to change their habits, tasting flights, tour progressions, verbiage, or anything just because a sommelier’s coming to taste at their facility.  Where’s the individuality, integrity, Autonomy in that?  Certainly no Artistry.  I respect the humble sommelier, not the self-anointed one, thinking he/she’s deserving of some special show.  That’s not Wine.  And it’s certainly not THIS writer.

10:49pm.  Rain, trying to return, like me to this keyboard.  But I think it’s tired.  Wonder what Kelly’s been creating, in recent days.  Haven’t heard from her.  Her character, becoming a challenging equation.  Think I need a tutor.  OR at least a mentor.  Maybe I should just let days’ moments tell me how to involve her frames into my Literary games.  Note symbols, suggestions.  Unintended existential nudges.  Wait, let Her happen.  She’d tell me to pour mySelf another glass of the ’09.  “You deserve it,” I hear her saying.  She’d more than likely urge me to taste that ’07 Sonoma County Cab [didn’t mean to surrender appellation] just to be sure that, and why, I’m siding with ’09.  And she’d do so without assumed instructional tenor.  She’s musical in a way I could only pray to write.

4 minutes till I make mySelf lay.  Tomorrow morning’s session, one for my book.  Historic, hardly morbid.  All victorious, and altogether glorious.  In those 2000 words, I want 3 standalone’s, written with intent to recite.  So if it’s prose, I want to have both ’07 and ’09 attributes.  A non-vintaged dexterous dart.  One more glass before I’m done, or passed, past.