60 items to grade today. This should take me to about noon, I’m hoping. Not sure if the writer’s ready to run– but who cares. I’m in an investigative mode, with wine. What’s out there, my thought. Go up the street to Matanzas Creek. Photograph what’s left of the lavender.
Second coffee in cue, Jackie playing with toys everywhere. Think my energy level might rival his, but it’s hard to tell just yet. My story, now, at 35: embittered adjunct trying to recenter self as writer and wine lover, and father, and husband, and son, and brother– balance in aspects all. Find my Zenful gallop through the world, no more stress, not with money or the commute or anything. Going to take pictures of the Bennett Valley AVA, get where I can for as I remember many or most or maybe all of the vineyards are fenced in or off.
12:30PM.. breaking from grading to write. Today’s already had me stressed with the car, getting that goddamn new key and the shit with Jackie’s health insurance, which we worked out, and work drama.. my heart rate went up I felt, and I mean it really did so I just had a couple sips of that Zin, the old vine stuff from the winery. And that helped a little. Not having any more but I needed some kind of ease. This morning after the car visit I went up the street to Matanzas. No tasting, just a load of photography. So centering that part of this small valley, with the lavender and the colors, Fall, the vines in rest and the wind playing with the leaves and me as one trying to just take their picture. I’m in Zen mode now, trying to maintain it. Think I need to write offsite. Was in a grading mode but no longer. I will have all these items graded and recorded before next Wednesday. That’ll be easy, more than easy.. so, 12:39PM, my present time, I ask you: What do I do now? Lunch? Possibility.. but where? A sandwich? Safeway? Cheap, budget friendly for the writer.. have to print some pages, now I feel sleepy, the problem with days off, you get lazy, sluggish and heavy, but I have no regrets about taking my days. I more than deserve them. And while at the car place I began to feel the stress sink in, about writing, making a living as a writer, becoming a failed writer, having to work at the goddamn winery for the rest of my life, and being dragged around campus to campus as a bled adjunct. So no.. photography saving me, which I never thought would happen, well in this morning’s session anyway. It was the red leaves that dominated me. They stopped my gentle trot about that one row. “Go slow,” they suggested, not getting too firm or forceful. It was a conversation between the Art itself and one admiring it, trying comically to capture its modality, somehow, and for some reason. The Artist doesn’t know.
