Woke to thoughts of a character, Crystal, in dream, her dilemma with Life outside winery with how busy it is AT winery, post-harvest.  Her vacation approaches but the executives want her to give a couple talks at dinners and tour once, a short trip yes but it would break into her time, her time, time she deserves.

Jack still asleep.  Me right to this keyboard, into coffee already…  Jackie downstairs with me and I think about the day and refuse to plan even a bit of it, no not a drop.  A new printer would be nice.. so much to think about in these hundred days and how to do it and am I going bout it all right– can’t think about just have to act, and a run, maybe, that would take away from the sitting.. the sitting, sitting, and writing, getting something onto paper but I can’t print ‘cause that machine upstairs has seen its final day I think.  I can’t let go of the dream I had.. she’s young for a winemaker of a winery that size and at times of anxious, overstressed and worried if she’s doing a well-enough job or not but the medals and awards and articles speak for themselves, people tell her.  She doesn’t think it should be like this, though, all this hassle and– yes it’s supposed to be work and a bit stressful but not like this!  It’s wine!  She designs her own label from time to time on small sheets of papers but won’t show it to anyone.

And I sit on the couch biting at the French Toast sticks and waffle with Jackie, knowing I have so many papers to grade but today I think I’ll just look through them and organize, maybe grade a couple.  What I really want to do is write in my loft, around noon or something and just write about my character and her finally finding her wined voice, and a balance of the having to make money from it with her voice, her intention, what she wants and how she sees wine, her oenological beliefs if you would.  And the time wears this morning, I find myself not at all stressed just thinking about what I want and my beliefs and those papers– and I’m not flustered!  How?  This is a first for me!  And next term, no Mendo!  I can barely accept it, that I’m free, that I have balance and more time to write and publish/print (like the word ‘print’ over ‘publish’, always have) and run and be with little Kerouac.  No rain this morning and I’m fine with that, the difference and Newness with the stage’s post-front glaze.  And no mocha this morning just black coffee.  Even Ms. Alice is surprised and I realize a bit impressed with my corporate coffee removal.  And that adds its own Newness as well, having all coffee in house.. and the loft calls me, no beer just the coffee and the espresso I have yet to sip up there.  Poetry in my moments and thoughts.. spells but I want these incantations to be implemented into prose, into my ongoing brainstorming of Crystal, the winemaker who just wants to make wine the way she sees, the light into which she dreams, visions, and that’s a centering similarity between her and I: we have visions, there is a way we see things for ourselves, and we just want to be left alone in our avocation’d vocation.  Thought about having her novel be narrative in Lit shape but I can’t do that to her and I don’t know her story like she does, I don’t want to speak for her, I’m not qualified, so I’ll just narrate from removed.  Not the most telling fan of 3rd person narratives but that’s what she deserves, me outside my comfort zone.

Back from taking little Kerouac to school and I stayed int he Suburu a bit after parking, listening to an American Jewish man speak, or read from a piece, narrative, that he’d written being a journalist and going to Isreal/Palestine– just the passion in his voice and the cruciality in his topic and address.  Wine has nothing like that, I thought but then refocused on his passion and voice and how he cited line by line and note by note, specific by specific the crimes Israel had been committing in these occupied territories.  I’m writing not that I agree with him completely but his coherence and voice and passion were something I noticed obviously and want to emulate.  But I need to stay focused, and I can be journalist like with this Crystal piece and character development, report on her findings and growth and struggles– and if anything were to be on such a ‘newsy’ level it would be the employment situation in the wine industry, how everyone’s expendable, how They, managers and ownership, want us to “sell a fantasy” when it’s anything but in the tasting room, in the office, encircling the entity upon which we depend for pay.  Activism in this man’s voice over the radio and I was humbled and embarrassed.  I want to follow my own cause, and I want to speak be heard and be read and invite discussion with opposing sides, debate bigshots like Baldwin.

And I clear my desk as much as I can in this mental triangulation and myriad of curiosity that will lead me nowhere I know if I follow it too long.  So I take the old writings off desk, the papers from spring ’14 that I still have and don’t know why, and I look at my coffee cup, cold and encroaching emptiness– and left, about $17.  Putting in wallet.  Why am I letting the dayoff stress me like this?  Don’t go to Palooza, you could be writing during that driveTime.  More coffee and take a reading break if you need a break at all.  Noticing the reality in a way that I never had: yes I went to grad school to be consistent and follow through with the aim or “goal” of being a professor, but next year, February, will make nine years of adjuncting and for what I have to ask.  Today, no moving and no talking, just writing, write it all out, every dilemma, wish, thought, inconsistency and inanity.  The rain stops and I start.. hoping for a notably dose of madness today like Kerouac in Ferlinghetti’s cabin.. the delusion will be poetic so I have another cup of coffee, watch the ghosts lift from it’s opaque surface in the cup, cherries on sides, Alice’s cup, she would say I don’t need another and I know she’s right but she doesn’t know what I’m attempting and I don’t blame here, but this is honest, honesty.  Still, the rain at bay, quiet for me, wanting me to continue my story, this hundred day war with self, with my dreams and wishes.  Know I have errands to fold today but I’m not of interest right now and I don’t know if I will ever be, see, the books need to be returned to the SRJC library but who cares, are they gonna make me FT?  Of course not.  And the haircut, and taking out Mom & Dad’s trash bins (this I will do).. but what then.  Something, some newness, here, locked away, when will I feel the madness and the Creative lunacy that will strip me, peel me, break me from that goddamn wage cage?  The only thing for me is here in this written logging and meditation.  “One fast move or I’m gone,” he said.  I feel the same, and have been since turning 35 in May.  And I have till day 100 to organize, solve all problems and be the writer and father/husband and son/brother I’m written to be.  The story doesn’t have to accommodate me but I have to ‘it’.. the IT that Macy wrote about in Spring ’14 English 5 is obvious– it’s the sense, the Equilibrium, total happiness and control and identification with intention.  “That’s not possible,” you could say but it is, it most affirmably is!  No waves here, though, no gulls …