Je Vois– (from today’s 3)

Waking this morning just with a novel and several memoirs on mind.  Listening to my son count the coins he requested over there in the living room, placing the coins on the toys chest, and then he counts them, forming them into an ‘L’ shape, “Daddy look what I made!” he reads and then does some dance in celebration of his coined expressionism.  I sip this “gourmet” coffee a friend gave me and I’m still not convinced I like it but this is all the coffee I have to my name and to this house.  But I’m focusing too much on the coffee and not enough on my character and the students I have to teach and finish lessons with this coming week.  And like that Summer Session is already over.  I plan on running from the winery today, from the Westside Road base, just to do something new and to explore that road– but last time I did so I was horribly halted by the heat.  Shouldn’t be that hot today, though, so who knows.  Alice at the moment is out with her friends stomping up the Fountaingrove hills and mountains and windy paths past Paradise Ridge.  My business, my writing, my family, the security therein and of– thinking of myself as a wine writer and journalist the same way war correspondents deliver their findings from the field.  And as harvest nears us I ready myself for a war-like platform, reporting on the early hours and from the early hours in the vineyards when the crews rush to get the grapes off the vines to form them into something fermentable.  And as Jackie talks more and more to me I have trouble focusing on the page and on these visions of harvest and the crews out there, putting the grapes in those tubs then dumping them into the gondolas, then off to the scales, then pressed or set aside if they go through some whole cluster route.  I look at the bottle I opened last night, the rouge, et comment il était merveilleux (and how wonderful it was).  The wine spoke to me again with my revisit and how it not only sat on  my senses but how it remained and how it continued to sing its song.  “Damn it,” I say to myself, “SHOULD I make my own wine this year?” I need to again play with some ideas, how to get the fruit from A to B.  But where is ‘B’?  I guess I could crush it at Katie’s place, but I don’t know if I want to do that.. how about that place in SR, on Cleveland.. thoughts, thoughts…..  I could write the whole thing.  I’ll reach out to my friend there and see what he thinks, see how he’d approach the matter.  No, I should decide first then go to him..

Classes for Fall–  shit, can’t do much on Monday as I have to head to Mendocino to order my books.  Organize and plan everything, I tell myself, and WAKE EARLIER!  Not only that, have all the “busy work” or “side work” (a term I’ve come to adamantly deplore) done by noon, so I can simply gather material the rest of the day and what it says, take notes as I did last night at the Union Hotel while waiting for our pizza.  What if I had owned a pizza place, a gourmet or artisan pizza joint like Rosso’s?  Or what if I’d been a dentist?  A doctor.  A CPA.  A pilot like Dad (not smart enough to do that I’m convinced, and I don’t handle stress or fear in a way a pilot should, or as Dad did for over 35 years).  But I’m here, this Mike, this writer and teacher and wine-extolling figure.  So work with what I have already and what I know and what I’m convinced I excel at.  I’m not with the luxury of time fit to focus and obsess and abscess in what lacks.  So away I go.  One goal for today: a page of notes in the little notebook like last night at Union, a page of the wildest of wine notings; how revering and declarative the Pinots are, but I can’t sip as I want to run after work, at the gym with more speed work and now the odd coffee I’ve been sipping really to me speaks and Jackie fights valiantly for my attention as he yells from the couch from under the blanker playing some new form or hybrid of hide-and-seek, but then pokes out his head to say something in some mock-evil voice then back under.  “Daddy…  DADDY!”

My thousand word obsession doesn’t let me stop.  And Jack now stands on the floor trying to put the blanket over his head, “This blankie so big,” he says. walking around with it over his head.  I always become nerved so I rush to him so he won’t fall and hit his head or anything.  I know I’m the overprotective father, possibly harming him in my visible swooping protect, but I’m not immediately concerned as he appears to be the daredevil you’d expect from a 3 year-old.

Ugh that coffee left a peculiar echo in my mouth, on palate and all.  And I have a universal jitter to me that I’m not fond of.  So I toss the rest of those packets in the garbage, knowing quite well that I won’t redress this type.  How I just want to stay home, not pour wine and not repeat the same words, over, over, again again again–  But I make it my own.  So my mood changes.

Jackie quiet, lining his cars as he does and putting some of those coins atop the roofs of his cars, and truck, and a couple trains.  This is my morning and I’m moving into the day with a sense of proverbial ownership.  And that’s what the story wants me to say.. and it DOES want me with the right coffee.