12/23/13. Tomorrow, to Monterey. And tonight, tired. Wasn’t sure I’d hit my daily thousand. Nine days. That’s 9,000 words. More, actually. But I’m keeping, remaining with my aim. Listening to the reality TV in the other room, enough to make me pull another beer. Have to somehow fit a thousand words onto page, tomorrow, the day next.
After this posting, I plead poetry. Like the 5th. Not sure what constancy I want surfaced with this next semester. One of individuality, of course. But I also would like some new coat upon my delivered words. But, as I think, maybe I shouldn’t plan. Just heard an odd noise outside. Wonder what it was. Sounded like it came from the sky. Can’t concentrate with that bloody TV on, especially the reality show that currently shows. Definitely need a night’s capping…
All the grading I still have to do. It’ll get done, it’ll get done, I keep telling Self. But it has to, so I’m not Self-deceiving. The mini-Comp book, that my former student bought me.. very much in use, but the pages continue to fall out, then I stuff them in my wallet, like a new currency sort. “Well aren’t they?” I say to Self. Yes.
Looking at a wine menu I took home today, from our winery. Wondering which is my “favorite.” Hate that question, “So what’s your favorite?” Why does that matter? I always answer honestly, but I hate that I have to, or answer at all. But I do. To be “professional”. There’s so many questions that find their way quite consistently under my skin.
Onto my night’s cork. Quiet, here from couch. Please, I beg the Craft: “Let me wake with early’s cruelty. Before 5. Before Jack wakes, above all. Wonder how much traffic we’ll see. I’m guessing quite a bit, no? Much as I love xmas, I’m always eager for it to be done.
What my sister’s friend Andrew told me the other night, about his intern waking at 5AM to write poems. A wine industry intern.. and here I am, the “writer/professor”, having his hurdles in doing so. Shame. The only inner note I can feel as result. 10:24PM. How did that happen?– And then, my little boy cries from upstairs. Hate when he’s sick. The coughing, his obvious discomfort. If any supernatural sense to me now listens, take it from him and give it tenfold to me!
Technology, always the distraction. Bloody phone, social media. But I catch myself quicker now. My Art will not be compromised, certainly not by some circuit-sewn block. And not with me. Wish I was in Paris, early to mid-20s. With EH, sipping that white with oysters.
Not too cold down here, as it usually is. Have the silver blanket at right, just in case. Imagining mySelf writing in the Sunriver house, by that fireplace, looking out at the snow-patted deck. The truest of quiets. Was just talking to some Oregonians yesterday, from Salem, about Sunriver, everything there. They were a bit odd, so I didn’t detail my detailed past with the resort zone, but our interaction made me even more wish for my paths there around circles 10, 11, 9, 4…