The weather, hot. This has to be Summer’s last song, I guess– in technical coding, it’s Fall. But it’s very much a summer song outside.. no clouds, sun, heat, and the air that warms you even if you’re in the shade and want to be left alone. I could use more coffee, as you probably already guess. The drive this morning, long and tiring like it hasn’t ever been. And of course on the day I’m observed, right? I don’t see luck as anything real, just an excuse that certain characters utilize to generate.. something, not sure what, empathy and sympathy in and out of themselves.
SRJC next. I need to get to the library, write and research teaching and those models and modes I mentioned. I think I’ll start them off with a freewrite prompt. What? Don’t know, need to find one. I want them, the students, or I hope they go outside themselves with thinking and the assignments and what they write, ALWAYS–
Done checking campus emails. OF course nothing that immediately if at all concerns me. That happens as a teacher, you’ll see… I’ll have my sparkling water on the way back to SoCo, and think of new directions for the 1A classes.. first, writing, then talking about the news and current events, connect to sympathy and empathy, the group them up explore the short stories more– but I want to do something else.. what… WHAT? Not enough time. Already 1:03. I’m relaxing, breathing like the article I read yesterday urged. Yeah, I breathe, but not like this.. I need to do this more. THIS. Really breathing, and for me.
prompt for students, SRJC: Something society needs to pay more attention to is… [make an argument for why we should care]
There. That’s how I’ll start. And I’ll pull up a couple news sources; CNN, CNBC, New York Times, BBC… Still with the journalism bug, me, always. I want to report, and I think that’s what much of teaching is; reporting, ideas and writing directions and “rules” I guess, but conveying something to the student, something they should value, and carry forward with them, or “walk away with” as I say.
1:08. Leaving in 7. Not enough time, like I wrote yesterday for whoso and the entirety of my writing Life. No looking back, with anything. I read the news and see all this despair and tragedy, death. Life needs to be lived, not quarreled over or stressed within. If I didn’t have these Mendo sections, I could be writing, or I would be right now. There will be no more four course semesters, not as long as I’m on hwy 12. Should leave.. I’ll finish this entry in Santa Rosa. Stay ahead of Time and your schedule and your commitments and projects. Then everything works and creates music.
4:53PM. In library, more exposed than I’d like to be, at one of those four chair study tables in the middle of the floor. I won’t listen to anything but I own wants. People walk by, they could rad my novel I guess, or some small sliver of this journal, but I don’t care. A student sits at the table, left, by self, opens a binder, breaths heavy as if he ran here, I’m sure he did– but I can’t pay attention to anything other than what I type and what I think and what I have to do to get on the university campus– and whoso will provide that bridge. After posting to the blog I’ll contribute something, something, some thought or entertainment from day, like the drive and the low intensity to the Sonoma/Mendocino sun driving on 101’s northerness. An older man at one of the computer terminals, right about fifteen yards. Wonder what he’s looking up, or studying, or just casually looking into. Two ladies, older, at the table at 11 o’clock, reviewing each other’s answers to something, I’m guessing some math assignment. They speak fluent spanish and one tells the other that their assignment is ‘loco’. I almost laugh, as I’m sure some of my students think I or some of my paper prompts or ideas are a bit crazy as well.
Haven’t touched the novel in days. What’s wrong with me? There… Just opened both documents containing its pages. Need to stand by my deadlines, finish ALL projects.. creep through my old writings and ones not so old 300 pages at a time– that will be my life strategy, my life’s work.
There… I’m up to 194 pages of content in the novel, with recent Spring ’14 adds. There there THERE!!! I’m back in my novelist character! This is addicting, these adds.. a novel, mine, my story as writer father teacher winery drone wine drinker runner and roamer– on page, for readers, or maybe just for me, and who cares if it’s just for me? Isn’t that real writing? Idea for vignette– for whoso. I’ll keep it internal, save it for later, and if I remember it then it’s meant for page, right? Thinking of the presence of death in Wolff’s stories, and in Kerouac, and how that makes their material so much more REACHING, generating more sympathy. I can only find it interesting, I have to say, and beautiful, not the way Poe saw death as beautiful.. different than that. Not sure how to phrase it or articulate it, but that’s something I could pitch to the 6PM-ers for a paper topic.
Already not in the mood for the winery tomorrow. Not in the mood for the people and what they ask and how they sip the wine and how they over-over-over-think it– battery low, need a charge.. to the 4th floor.
4th. With a view that I’ve never been graced with– the quad, the bookstore, the trees and students rushing to class, some skateboarding, walking, just wandering– envy the life. Forgot cord in car, so this laptop will die. Well there you go, death in this writing session. 10% left– posting…
Internet down. Writing in Comp Book.
10/9– Payday tomorrow. Good. Need to somehow find time to go to Schwab and move some money around, for house and company. This morning’s session in the Kenwood lot will be for whoso– feeling slow this morning, and guilty as I haven’t run in a while, and I have the ‘half’ coming up, three days away. At this time on Sunday, I’ll either already be there or be on my way to Healdsburg, to that starting point. I’m just looking for finish in under 1:50:00. I’m not even looking to beat my last ‘half’ time. Not at all. Want to have a nice run and enjoy my day off. Right now little Jack is enraptured by his toys, arrangeing the smaller trucks in the bed or back-bin of the larger one. “Dada, sit down!” he orders. And I do, but I have to spackle this page, my pages my journal. Need to do some word hunting, pack the thesaurus– have today be a day of words, empty the work bag of all those papers that were handed in yesterday, all the short reactions, and the students delaying or playing games with their instructor, like the one in the 930 section will only lose, to themselves, not to me– this semester has already tried me in like instances of students trying to skirt the system, trying to compile excuses into some impenetrable defense or rationale to where and which I have no explanation I have to either pass them or give them the grade they want. No, sorry. 7:21– and I think about the day ahead, have to make it work for me, who am I with in the reserf room? Back from a sip of coffee Jackie says “Look a car, my Dada!” I walk to him, situate on one knee and once stationed, hug him tightly, let my little Artist know I’m not ignoring him, that I see him, that I see him playing and love what he’s doing. Kiss on top of his soft knotty blonde head, back to keyboard. Oh… And to my delight, I’m not in the res room. I’m at the bar, lovely. But no tasting today, even if Blair asks me to the bbls. And if he does, I’ll only smell the petite Sirah, that’s it. The wines are developing rapidly and I don’t want to miss any of the transfers or “rackings” as they call them, from tank to bbl or bbl to bbl. Now 7:28, need another sip of coffee, trying to be as axial as I can in my plan, this morning’s scribed map. The novel, another racking at some point today. MY friend has the day off so I won’t be distracted to lunch or some other type diversion on my lunch “break”. I’ll go to the Warm Springs park and write, work on the novel as I haven’t touched it in a while– that’s not true, I racked about 10 pgs yesterday. “Dada, wha’ doing?” he now asks, little Kerouac. I stop, will make a recrudescence in about 5 hours. For the novel, magazine touched in Kenwood lot. And poems and words an odd phrases through out the day, glacial pats and Yukon-like contemplativeness–