More Days

Wine at this sitting, putting me in a mood of wondering and reaction, reflection, and probably something else I can’t now think of.  Sipping one of my ’12 Merlots.  Never tasted like this with it more poetic edge and ebb– ugh, told myself I wouldn’t write in blog tonight, that I’d produce something I could, and can–  typing in the “Study” of the Autumn Walk palace, now.  And I think about the music they were playing at the beer bar at Whole Foods, while I was waiting for our burritos– punk, loud, disorganized, would have killed for some Hutcherson– huh, this chair’s rather comfortable and accommodating, love it, and love this moment and how the wine flies through my system and senses and what I’m meant and made to think of…..

My articles.  Should work on them.  But not now.  Now’s for this freeing session and the thinking accompanying, and everything associated.  My wine in the kitchen and I can only think of how I have no money to self-publish, put my actual ‘yrownjoy’ efforts on actual page so I have to use this bloody blog.  Should make a publisher print my work, yes the traditional route, that’s what I should do, so I’ll do, that’s what I’ll do– the Massamen novel and go everywhere with it and my thoughts in it and this blog will work for the novels, only garnish them and further elucidate and punctuate my militant manuscript manner.  But the distractions.. I suppose part of life and part of the time I live in but it’s not an excuse, especially if I am truly a militant and highly disciplined writer.  Watching my steps with this new writing gig I landed through Shana, see where it goes but I have to finish a novel!  I thought to myself today, while drinking that IPA at Whole Foods, watching the guy tending the bar and the other employees working; moving boxes and helping frustrated customers like me who don’t have the patience or wherewithal to find the cereal on the cereal ISLE, and the man making the burritos:  What if I died and never finished a novel?  I felt instantly horrible, horrified, like I was really dying and I needed to get that goddamn thing done.  Not be distract by ANYTHING.  No short story ideas, no sketches or vignettes or short-shorts, nothing!  Not even poetry!  So I have a new plan: type the novel, quick, then print, edit minimally before, then send out, shop it; the novel about the adjunct in the East Bay who has to have two side jobs then discovers he wants to do something different, a bunch of something-different’s– but what and how, he’s getting old…  But he’ll do what he has to, to be the character and life he’s always thought– but then I think of the value of the short pieces, but how can I sell them?  Fuck my frustration and how it cripples me– what if I produce novels like other writers do short stories, poems, or short memoirs?  I can be that writer, right?  UGH.. how many times have I had this deliberation?!  So it here stops, halts and dies and is buried.

I quite like this study, if you must know, didn’t know how I’d feel about it as I love the kitchen island, but here I am, looking at a picture I took today of the Mendocino Ridge Pinot, 2013, I poured for myself toward the end of the day, before the blind tasting Mark (one of the winery owners) initiated for us, again.. this one a 2009 Pinot, RRV, from a producer I’d never heard of before.  I like it, I guess, but it was definitely showing its age and losing momentum, motivation for its own senses and purpose and sense of any purposeful positioning of purpose.  And I’m overthinking the entire wine life again, but that’s what I do– my novel, about the teacher at a community college leaving it all, to live a life of ONLY art.. no conformity, no following, no more fucking applications for anything.

The Pinot, the Mendo Ridge, telling a different perception to this sipper, a narrative I envy, frankly, and that I want to imitate.  Someone today even said it, and I could only laugh louder than I ever could aloud: “This isn’t light enough to be a Pinot.. this isn’t a ‘real’ Pinot.” What’s a “real Pinot”, I thought.  But then, yes, it’s subjective, I know.  But wine isn’t “supposed” to be anything.  I mean, how could you say that all Cabernets should do this, or all Pinot should have this feel to them?  That will never make sense to me, ever.  And the night grows and with me, with it, I become agitated and irritable, the cranky aging writer who hasn’t finished his goddamn novel.  But tomorrow that changes.  No shorts– no poems– no sketches or vignettes or even idea scribblings.. only the novel and the novel work log, like .. you know who.

And journal entries are to be kept to a minimum, no more than 300 words per act.  And no more than 3 a day!  I want to see how disciplined I can be as a writer, see how Hemingway I can become.  This house, now, quiet, and the lighting in this study, as I just told Ms. Alice, perfect.  Lit but not too beaming that I’m squinting or wishing it were more dim, more ambient or whatever I need.  I don’t even know what I need.  Or.. yes, yes I do.  My novel.  Done.  Write in one place, just one, and have it published, and all the full-time pigfuck professors at the JC and Sonoma State and wherever will have nothing to say– an adjunct fled, with writing, and nothing else.  He doesn’t TEACH writing anymore, or reading.. he actually does both.  For a living.  Travels.  Lives.  Assigns his own assignments.  And nothing else.  I rub my eyes, and forehead.. I’m tired, but still more than angst-angled with my characters and what they want to do– list, wish list, me always–  Wine stained pages always aid for such discord.

(6/10/15)