If I DID stop altogether with certain things, and only wrote, what could anyone say about  me, then, critically?  ‘You write too much’, or ‘You’re too into those books’… or maybe, ‘You’re too artsy’… too much of a thinker…  Everyone wants to judge, and everyone has an image or a projected portrait of how others around them should be.  Disgusting.  Why is it so difficult for people to mind their own?  I’m starting to see that I need to even further isolate myself as a writer, and have the writing be my source of everything, FOR everything.

Not in any kind of mood for work.  And why should I be?  So tempted to go back to sleep, even after the value I just reiterated about the writing.  Maybe I should just hop to the coffee machine and make some cups, keep awake and go into work in a writing guillotine of a temperament, just writing everything I see, and everyone, using actual names, features, perhaps being TOO truthful.  Collect every victim I can.  But wait, is there such a thing, being too truthful?  It’s 5:49 now, A.M. obviously, and I’m already prepared for conflict with the clock, with that place, that place I’m obligated to go– such a miserable milieu, and I’m trying the most ardent I’m able to see it in optimistic yields.  But anymore, it’s a job.  And I’m a writer, and my novel from last semester, not touched a bit, not even winked at by its author.  So what does that make me, failed?  No, I don’t think…  Just a professional procrastinator.  Okay.. I’m looking at it, the book.. and I’m already annoyed.  Not by the book but by recognizing that I have to leave soon, get off this comfortable comforting couch and go to bloody work.  That’s not living.  What if I gave them my notice, just taught a couple classes, wrote, dipped into the publishing money I have at Schwab and upstairs and finally went for it.  “It”.  What’s that?  Now I sound like M.R., a student I had this last semester, who was after “It” as well but couldn’t quite define it, as she wrote in one of the drafts for her final submission.

My writer friend, the flight attendant, not dealing with the earthly circles I am.  Like I wrote in my most recent letter to her, she’s “above it all” now.  This has to be my age, that goddamn number I keep repeating to myself…  35, 35, 35…..

And what’s different about me, what have I learned, what new do I see in my stew?  I hate having to define, but just, simply, and plainly, I’m getting old.  So if all I do is write my life away, offer myself as somewhat of an average father for little Kerouac, then fine.  I mean really, what else can I be expected to do?  I don’t love anything more than him, theses pages, so why not harness to what’s known?

6AM.  I think I do need coffee.  I’m not going back to sleep, that I know.  Just took an allergy pill, but it doesn’t seem to want to work, or fix even the slightest symptom.  Is it going to be one of those days, AGAIN?  Where all the ingredients in the story want to attack me?  If so, then bring it on!  I’m ready.  How much worse can it get: going to work,  punching in, doing the same thing, describing the same tar-tasting wines the same way, with the same words– oh, and I try to change my worded illustration and deconstruction of them, but their only wines, you know? I’m not talking about authors, or something someone’s written, or some theory of sorts.. no, it’s just wine.  Am I bored?  Yes.  And what do I have to lose, my job?  Please.

6:04.  Haven’t been compelled to leave the couch, and why, because I’m doing what I want and writing from the purely indignant.  This provides an effect that no bottle could mimic.  So can I be judged for this, then?  Can I be categorized as an abusive writer, or a ‘problem writer’?  WHAT AM I?  I NEED A JUDGEMENT!  They’ll say I need help for what I’m doing to myself.. what, writing?  I need help because I’m writing, that’s what you’re saying?

6:07…  Now coffee sounds joyful, but it’ll only speed this countdown I’m afraid.  In the Kerouac documentary I watched, again last night, the scene where the man playing J.K. is in that small room, smoking a cigarette indifferently and typing, eases me.  It reassures.  He knew what I’m feeling, where existence itself is a charging ox, and I can only stand there, be run over.  But not if I let it, what if I taunt the ox, tire it, run faster or in any case WRITE faster?  And wiser.  It’s only an animal, this life.  And I’m a writer, with armament that it’ll never summon or be able to use.

6:11.  Father’s Day.  Why only one day to appreciate fathers, my father, or any father?  Something upon which the corporations like Hallmark and the wineries want to capitalize.  What’s the big deal?  I mean, do I get the day off?  Do I get to leave early?  No no.. I’m working, I’m being responsible, which I translates as punishment unavoidable.  Scolded for being what I have no choice in being.  Father’s day.. the man of the house, all that nonsense.. there’s no celebration or reward, just more expectation.  But again, I’ll write my way through it, like that student I had in ’08 or ’09 that told me after the semester he was going to jail for a bit, and he was terrified of what might happen to him..  I told him, “just write your way through it’.  Not sure if it helped him, then or when he was in, but it somewhat therapies me now, here on this couch, still without my goddamn coffee.

I like my new attitude on the blog, that it’s only a posting board for me, my books, not something to take seriously or hope people “like” or “repost”.  What does that get me?  Nothing, you’re thinking.  You’re right.