9:57. No wine. Just meditation. Thinking. About everything. The whole notion of a career and one in the wine world or one with writing and one with teaching at some university, interpreting Literature and sharing ideas, having sessions that inspire me and students like the one this evening.. just so much for this 36 year-old writer to think about. And the teaching blog.. shit.. didn’t reboot that yet. I’m a mess tonight, I feel. Mikey-a-Mess, my loathed antithesis. So what do I do? What do I want to do? Write. But is it copy I want to write? Or novels? “In a perfect world,” like Dad said, “what would you do?” Books, obviously. I’d be Tobias Wolff. I’d be Hemingway. Even Kerouac. Living through my Art, and the pages, my sights and observations and dualities and embracing my follies and contradictions. I mean, how much can I obsess over certain things? Okay.. stop… stop….. think about this. What are you doing? What do you see yourself doing? I have to write the students tonight. Share this revelation with them. And I know that some in the class will dismiss it, and that’s fine– even if all of them dismissed it I’d be at peace. As long as I send it, that’s what matters. That;s what lands, that’s what has impact. So pleased I chose not to drink any wine this evening. Yes I’m tired but I have that sharpness to me that any writer would envy and want to replicate and enact in their pages. Everyone in this house, this A-Walk base, asleep. But me. And what am I doing? Writing. Not watching TV. Not scooping ice-cream into my mouth. I’m writing. And thinking. And thinking freely. Writing freely. Caring less if there’s fluidity, coherence, or syntactic accuracy. I’m a writer right now. sitting on this hardwood floor thinking about the Sanglier wines I tasted, spit, before driving to campus– or no, haircut first then campus. The writer finally relaxes. Is ready for bed but I don’t want to stop what I’m doing nor what I’m saying. The Massamen novel, screaming at me. And this is a new development for him, my character, this copywriting and “Content Marketing”. Interesting. I think of Sedaris and his essays, his attitude and how I want to be more like him; more committed and more aggressive and fearless. I want his tourings, and his travels– wait! I thought of something else. Have to bring back the teaching blog, first.
Tried renewing it, but tech hassles me. Not in the mood. Not in the mood for any clutter or disruptions, chores or un-summoned chimes. I’ll wake with my wife tomorrow morning, as she’s set on another spin class. How does she do it, Ms. Alice? So content and so cogent, and so confident in her career. The tiredness I felt minutes ago now doubles, I crave bed, sleep, or is it coffee? I’ll let you know. Tomorrow. When I’m more awake.
No. I make myself stay awake and think more about the vision, and the image I hold to.. the novelist and short story writer, occasional playwright, maybe. Poetry, sure. Just a writer. Touring with his standalone works and not having to answer to. any. one. How lovely is that? Is that not the truest of lives? The truest of treks?
I turn off the goddamn internet. Need to be like Hunter S. in the documentary I screened a bit of the other night with the students.. and be crazy like him. A true Defiant like him. I need to write more crazily, more fearlessly, less safely– like a Beatnik with a GUN. And my gun, loaded with thoughts and transient musings that attack any order. This new form of writing from me, and the new me, won’t be what I used to be or see or privy. No, this is a writer like.. I don’t know, just Newness. The newest of Newnesses. And I won’t use this fucking laptop tomorrow morning– okay I will, but just note, reader, that I need to use and depend on technology less, I know. Can you imagine reaching what Hunter did? Living like him? I don’t do drugs, obviously, but just the fearlessness about him. His stubbornness. That attitude. I saw a picture of him pointing a gun at a typewriter on the ground, in a field, as if he were going to execute it. I fell in love with that image, and would love to do the same with this laptop. Take it to a remote part of Annadel, and execute it. Bury the parts in distant parcels of the woods. No one would or could ever locate this buttoned demon. I know, “Is he drinking right now? What wine does he have open?” Nothing. This is the unfettered Mike which I prefer.
And I’m not editing. Not a thing. No. Thing. Nearly to my thousand and I hear the fridge make an odd tweaking sound, then a haunting pulse of a hum. Odd. Is it talking to me? What is its dialect? I need bed, so I can earlier wake. More than likely, Jackie will wake up a bit after 12AM, kick me out of our bed as he does, sending me down here. What if I didn’t go back to sleep? What if I wrote? And wrote. Wrote. And more. And said “fuck what I should do.. I do what I choose.” That’s Hunter. That’s Hem. That’s a real penner in this modern day of laziness and willy-nilly subscription to whatever has a pretty cover or label.
To bed. And to bed I think of how I should be traveling. How I should be more into Art than ever. If not now then when. Fuck Time and its numerics. And all the expectations on writers, who are they and do they ever write? My heart’s BPM elevates, then sedates. Why let a thing bother me? Gun pointed, at screen.. BAM! I walk away. Don’t even bother to bury this thing.
(7/16/15)