laptop up to Jack’s room to write but no battery.  So now we’re downstairs, and he load ABC pieces in his truck, “Daddy I have to clean my hands.. see?” he says as I type and wait for our cinnamon-raisin bagel, our preferred. The allergies again accost, and I think of how I didn’t touch ‘Avarice’ yesterday, again goddamnit.  360 pages, just sitting there.. “Read on now then,” I can hear a much old Jack suggest, the college Jack who’s already read one of my novels in an English class (well, he read it before class, but he read again formally and “academically” and everyone around him expected him to be the expert..).  I will in a minute.. I need an office.  One of my own.  My own room where I can have quotes and pages and books absolutely LITTER the floor and walls.  I’ll have it be a completely Literary and novelized poetic experimentalist Room.  MINE.

At the winery later and I have to bring Comp Book.  No laptop.  Sit by the water for ten or so minutes, and scribble, this new direction I’m taking both Massamen and Krystal novels.  Combining them!  And changing Massamen’s character a bit to align with my own, having him with wife and child, possibly one on the way, and not a single late 30s.. And Krystal.. just like my sister.. Mike wishes better for her but also himself and sees how there are advantages he has that she can never grip, like true autonomy.. but he doesn’t have her money and money’s always on his mind even though he doesn’t want it to be and he hates the fact of Time and how it ages him but it’s inevitable and he can only combat through this vision of he and his sister somehow working together down the road, somehow.. family, to him, IS the solution to everything, everything.. if they establish their own sovereign wine outfit, then nothing could touch them.  He envisions a small house, no more than 6,000 css.. she’d be the primary winemaker and he’d head advertising, directing and managing and steering the brand’s story.  It could only succeed.  And no wine club, he thought.  Some allocation list, or just ‘buyer’s set’ or something.

“All done!” Jackie says, telling me that everything loaded in his big yellow truck.  Then to dump it out of course, start over.  8:09.. should start my prep for departure.. but I want to play with the little Artist a bit more, who’s seeming more of an architect at the moment the way he stacks things around and on the truck, leaning in close to make sure the measurement is artful and precise..

Analyze the wines today.. all of them, but olfactory only.  No palate.. dissect the scent and “nose” of each wine as far as you can.. give it personality and name and character-type.  Hoping to run tonight as well but who knows, who ever knows with a writer..  another cup now that’s what I need or don’t.  Jack took half the bagel, so hunger with me still.  And the night of writing, tonight, early to bed and time with Ms. Alice and thinking about the semester’s surplus..