…Mom said, “Laughter’s a proven life-extender!” Yes, very true, Mother.. now I create and focus on my images, the one of me just walking around a vineyard (in this particular conscious envisage, St. Francis’ Wild Oak Vineyard), between Syrah and Chard, and I think that’s Merlot.. not sure, but I just walk, look up at Hood Mt. and stare back at the ground. My wife, Jackie and I took pictures over there, far left, over by the visitor center, where the tasting room is. All positive and poetic about this morning and this imaginary walk, ‘nother sip… Mr. Hutcherson plays, and I play.. music and poetry, my teaching, talking about Kerouac to the students and seeing what they have to say.. this 1B session, about wellness, health (mental and physical), about Personhood and “spirituality”. Duluoz, in a battle for Personhood, for (dare I say) recovery! He wants to, possibly, recover from everything and recover and/or recapture what he’s lost, leaving the madness behind– I’ll save for the paragraph below, the one I’ll post to the teaching blog. Today I live as how I saw myself living later in life when I was 17 or so, in high school, in Mr. Sullivan’s Creative Writing class; I saw myself, at this age, as a writer/professor, and that’s it. And today, that’s it, ‘that’s the ticket’ as they say, I’m him, the New Mike! The one I saw then and now and the one I revel in. Divorcing the negative, attaching Self to the positive; my son, my wife, my family, the words, the mélange of it all, all the positive, all the lifts and gives to growth, that makes me smile, this poetry, the Art and expression and LIFE! That old expression: ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.’ Radiantly correct! Why would you! Why would you dignify the negative and what would prompt to say or write negativity with the Art, with words? No! Only the affable and transcendent!

…COFFEECOFFEECOFFEE, my singular obsession in this sitting.. why do people drink alcohol when you can have this? Especially if you write? You’d rather have a drink, a whisky or wine or bourbon or beer? Are you a fool? Look at this, this madness that folds and delivers me from any sorrow or depression or holding, or clockish confines! I will hit 5 pages today you can bet, and when I wake from my nap I will run, only five miles, that’s it, maybe just do my ‘big daddy’ run that Alice often does, just five, a comfortable and leisurely 5! After 10 now and I should take a break from the page, maybe use the restroom, stretch, breathe, meditate without writing, but can I do that? Something so godly about Literature, and Philosophy, and the act of reading, what’s on a page, the Author having the fire to confess what he/she does. I could only have heros like Plath, Kerouac, right? Like Mr. Hemingway, like Dickinson, Joyce… I’m at peace in my Personhood now, so thankful the story brought me here, home, around my son’s toys and on this couch, hearing this jazz paired with the fridgehum in the kitchen. I’m smiling right now, fearless in my joy and positivity, my thanks for everything, my loves; Mom, Dad, Katie, Jack, Alice, Grandma and when she told me only days before she left, “It’s YOUR life…You have YOUR choice.” And, now and always, I choose to be happy, and to be in love, with everything, with tomorrow and today and what brought me here, all in my story. Namaste…..