…and one of them saying “I’ve been here fifteen years, you don’t need to tell me that,” speaking in mimicry of the moment, the exchange with this person. I don’t know if ‘this person’ is a full-timer as well or an adjunct but I’d like to think he or she’s an adjunct, and that this is just more evidence I have of how they’re always there, talking about us and slighting us either to our faces, behind our backs, or in their heads. But then the run starts to catch up with me, slowing everything I do, typing on this keyboard, and slowing my eyes in their movements, making the lids heavy, and me disinterested in everything I’m thinking and doing. And what am I doing? But writing a novel. Or finishing one. Or have I already finished one, in that string of 100 days, 3 pages a day. Now, the 3-page mark is to be daily, and forever, all prose and reflective and truthful, and painful if I need it to be. Tomorrow, wake when you should have today, around 4, or just before 5, and get the three pages started. Enough of these affirmations, I think.. these writer thoughts. No one wants to read that! Wine! People love wine! And the wine fantasy! And winemaking and the winemakers and the sight of some bottle on a table surrounded by opulent and visually antagonistic food. One of my clients, one of the two, has a pervasive thesis of wine and food, which I love, and the link to the farming.. there’s something there for me, and what specifically I’m not sure but it’s something. This man, self-made, a farmer and winemaker and overall whiz with so much, and how– self taught and some institutionalized order. And I’m reminded, use what I already have, what I know, I don’t anything new, any more stress or clutter.
Outside for a break, I think. Need something, and that’s air, the sight and feel of that parking lot air and the furtive gusts I remember to be out there presently.
Back from my walk, and returning a message, someone saying my writing is “fantastic”. Want to look into something, something concerning wine brokering, or selling wine creatively.. after all, my company is called “mikemadigancrEATive”… So I start brainstorming.. need an idea book for mmc, one quaint, not too large, and in one place.. selling wine but not in some cheesy scripted robotic, unidimensional utilitarian method. 3:03, the adjunct forces himself to look at the clock much as he doesn’t want to.. meeting on Thursday, 5PM, wine-related.. opening the Stewart Cellars Cab Blair gave me. And it starts, brokering wine, a facet of mmc’s “Professional Blogging” division. Good, so I’m consistent…
Still quite full from lunch, and tired from the run. So I brainstorm, think.. write.. images… listen to the music I’d have playing in the mmc office. This adjunct, shedding his initial intentions with teaching, and finding more about himself and his relationship with wine. And that “perfect world”, the travel and the lecturing, showing the literary qualities of wine, and the voice and narrative, truest of stories disclosed in the sip sequences.
Needing another break, but I won’t let myself stop till I reach this page’s bottom and am onto the day’s 3rd. Wine.. the character, the arranged nature on the palate and how the suggestions encase your perception and ability to react and reflect; when you find a wine that tells you what to think, and embraces what you already cognitively hold, accept. A pleasant palate putsch. I love those bottles. They make me think and rethink everything about my knowledge of wine and how I speak of it.
Iced coffee.. gorgeous in all its dimensions, but I can only think of the wine I’ll drink tonight, and tomorrow at the winery how I’ll talk about the wines differently, and associate them with certain characters in Literature or maybe just laud them as their own individualized presences other than just recite basic and dumbing “facts” as so many do– the remedial approach to wine, the depreciative demeanor. Wine deserves more, especially wines one’s passionate about. Could use a glass of Sauvignon Blanc right now, here in this adjunct cell. I should do that one time, bring in a split of something, have after class.. ha, then I’d really be making this cell my own space, my own Creative cave, my own slice of Newness. Have to start prepping for class in 29 minutes, 1 hour. But now one of my favored calming songs appears through the speakers delineating my senses in this cell.. or this office, depending on how you look at it all.
And more wine thoughts fly through my head; drinking it and thinking about the food I’d have with it. Tonight Alice said she conspires to make a wonderful pasta plate with spicy meatballs, so perfect for that Stewart Cab and all the precipitating writing following, right? Don’t want to think of all the calories I’ll be re-introducing into my circuitry after lunch, then this iced coffee, then the pasta and wine. No matter, will run Thursday, early, but speed work on tread. My tenacity is re-firing itself in my keystrokes, and in the rhythms I hear from the speakers, like bands on stage not taking anything back and no time to edit just let the thoughts fly to the screen, the page, and everywhere, finding their readers.. my beat comes from everywhere in this sitting, my the 36 y/o writer with his novel finally constructed. Want to start assembling, and with noted officialness, my “wine qualifiers list”. An amalgamation of words meant to describe wine but not like the simplistic and numbed-down words that these tasting notes sheet utilize, thinking they’re so brilliant and resourceful, helpful or entertaining. Truthfully, I find a better 80% of them annoying. And not worth a read. But I learn from reading then, as like Faulkner said, “Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad…” They would land, if I were to conclude, majority of these lists and their illuminative wordings, under ‘trash’ and ‘bad’. And if I could add one, ‘dead’. The words are lifeless, doing practically nothing but taking up space on that page on the tasting bar, committing page robbery and having the guests, especially tourists who’ve never been to a single wine zone in CA, think the author is some handler of prose, imagery and voice…