No time to write last night as Alice and I had dinner from the little Trattoria down the street. But yesterday morning, I wanted to note, while in shower coating myself with that tropical wash gel, that this project is a collection, a meditation for the next book! The first of the Massamen notings. (shit, just remembered I forgot to write my somm friend Chris a letter expressing my ideas for collaboration, as he couldn’t make our beer meeting last night, already having a gig in Petaluma..) I may make this a habit before every book! One hundred days of three pages at least.. yes, that’s how obsessive and how nothing-else-is-on-my-mind I am. And I want people to know that.
Feeling the beer and wine from last night, a little, but I stopped early so I’m not to “curled” as I let my friend Allie know in a text last night, I told her my pages have me ‘curled in regret’. Not sure what I meant by that, but I find it interesting, the wine-pooled ME, acting and talking differently but still with writing on the mind. OH– coffee in kitchen on the dock of the machine, ready for me but I don’t want to stop with my moment; Jackie throwing his dinosaurs, and now lining up his trucks, and me thinking about the lectures for Monday– I mean TUESDAY! Still not used to teaching those days.. and no nap! Have to run, as I will today after work..
First sip and I’m more awake and what remains of one of my sister’s cuvées fades, now ready for day. Jack lifts the bigger vehicles now and sets them by his chalkboard. He examines them closely, interesting, “Oh that’s a big one!” he directs to me, and now he languages shifts a bit with a new vehicle, “That’s a heavy one.. that’s a heavy one, Dada…” One of the vehicles makes sounds, and he states, “So loud, no!” I laugh and he turns around to observe my reaction, then back to task lifting the biggest of the trucks, the yellow dumper. He pushes it across the floor a bit then situates it back to its original plot.
Can’t get behind in this project as I have been, and I’m not sure why it’s happening now, at the end, or toward it. I’m not bored with the project by any tilt of thought or tiring as a writer, I don’t think. I hope not! That’s why I was taking so many pictures yesterday, and the day before.. anything to stimulate the prose and shove it forward. Right now I could use something, some shove or fire lit beneath my character and seat– The Massamen notes on mind, with everything my poor fellow adjunct has on his plate or wishes were on his plate, putting all faith and belief in the system, the educational plan and pattern, he was part of a mass movement, a MASS movement, but he was not moved, and why should he be? There was no guarantees for his near ten years of teaching, TEN. Yes he’s applied, but nothing, nothing.. one fulltimer years ago even had the nerve to infer it’s a bit selfish of adjuncts to be “so focused on a full-time job, when there are students who need their attention and passion…”, something of such word yield. And it infuriated him. But he teaches, he does what he can, but something has to be shifted, he realizes, he wants to do something else, but what, what? He thought about wine, and how he’d always loved wine and how people talked about it, and he had the idea of talking about wines or considering them as he does Literature, one of his favorite books, but not to overthink it.. and he won’t move too quick on this, it’s just an idea at this point. But he has to have a plan, some vision for his character and his development, his “career”. He can’t go on like this, nearing 40.. it’s out there, he hates the number, and it will find him, that bloody count, Time, the world, him in it, that ‘age’. So he runs, bikes, hikes, anything to defy the encroachment of the 4, the 0. The cardinal count, why, why was he valuing it as he did– Change of mind, he thought– But what am I writing it like that, 3rd? It’s going to be narrative! All my novels must be from me, and Mr. Massamen.
Poetry today.. pieces I can read.. goddamnit there’s never enough time to do anything I want, I feel.. like now, it’s already 7:4-goddamn-2. Time all around me. More coffee, cup 2 already brewed and I’m slowing. And if I have the luxury of editing this piece, no that won’t unfold. and I don’t need it to. Like a jazz session, it just happens and goes with its own measures– the core of caprice, the Leap. And that’s where the poetry will come from, like Kerouac’s sea poem.. I want to read three pieces per appearance, I’ll write the first today, and they have to be new conveying right where I am today, in this Now, and covering the mood of the last few days, when I was in this very couched spot, in the morning after the 1A with coffee, my jazz, the quiet and heated condo… There, 4 lines for the first poem, typed.. maybe in the Loft today I’ll finish it, have it go to the third page, then stop. Yes, one poetic standalone for reading. And be firm with yourself, Mike.. don’t slide away from your aim, from your poem, what you’ll read.. and whoso, the whoso chapbook series.. put online, a new blog maybe, but people HAVE to PAY to read it.. ask for support, solicit it! Sell it! You have to! ‘whosonotes’ I’ll call it.. yes, alive this morning as I was Thursday after class, after that bloody… no, not noted here.
-notebook, wine, notes, expression and voice
-new books for Jackie
-start writing Tues lectures…
-Run for hour after school, Tues
-whoso, my ideology, FOREVER, like my friend Pippa touts