11AM and I start with my day’s drops, driving over here in rain if you could call it rain, but not like the weather people called for.  They predict storms or they put the anticipation fire on highburn, and let us do the rest, simmer in wait, fear, or just waiting to see if we should be afraid or not, and give it all (this potential) a word like El Niño, to personify it with some menace and overarch, like a branch with the most gothic of vultures looking down to us with intentions beyond our control–

In the adjunct hut, done with grading and more or less ready for the meeting, the section next, only four sessions left if I tally today and the exam day, which I may or not be a cast member of.  Could use more coffee but the walk over there would certainly take from my types and with time as it is I can’t afford surplus even if I do have some– the clock won’t agree, and my metaphysical synchrony’s awobble anyway today.  Must be the late rise this morning, with Ms. Alice waking me saying, “It’s 7:20…” “Oh shit,” I three from my vocals, first of the day, running to Jackie’s room and he already up as a little Beatnik would be and I had to catch up.  So that mode and panicked late-week modality steers me to this page and the last teaching day of Week 16.. by far the most weighted and chasming semester of my adjunct story thus far, closing.  I think of the break and what I’ll do, and what else but grow the wine story and enjoy the vineyards in their dormancy, in their meditative composition and code, walk and record, take notes as I did that one day at St. Francis after little Kerouac was born, strolling the Syrah block and scribbling notes and translations natural from the naturalist notes around me, all circular and rewarding.  Am I there now, in this adjunct den, with equalling quietude?  Not really.  But I’m close, as the jazz jumps around like kitten synecdoches with paintbrushes, chase chase chase–

More music in me this morning than I’d expect be–  and that has to be from the rain I’m hoping for, but not in the later tonight cruise back from Mendocino.  What I’m hoping for, a quick meeting with them on rough drafts and dismissing…  Tomorrow a meeting with writing/wine client, then to.. what.  More writing, probably at Hopper coffee shop watching everyone around me with those Friday woes and reliefs blended with the angst that in just three days they’ll be back.  At work.  Clock… task orders patterns and papers stacks beyond their control and influx moderation circuitry, acuity.. my rambles facilitated by music and not just what I’m hearing in my ears, “Ayerloom” by Roy Ayers, I’m enlivened and not simply “emboldened” as so many now punctuate, but driving while still, further into another story, and what, what else do I recite– have to inventory all these new writings and sell every last bloody one.. no more outside Sonoma County!  I’l be stationed there, in my SELF-promulgated pages and whirlwinds of wild wine prose, like the Dizzy trumpet, paradiddles on highhats and the piano in tow.  Anymore pattern, no–  Just freely sewn sentences in a rewarding stream, for me, my students and the new story I’m rushing through and to for expository exponents anew..

The records need be better kept, I’m realizing with these standalone pieces, locking myself indoors and riling at least five pieces in a sitting, poem and prose, like Kerouac after a bottle of something red, or Hem after a few beers, Ms. Plath after three cups before her babies wake.

Pen, left, from this adjunct hut, and I won’t give it back.  Spoils!  Ugh, sound like a fantasy or sci-fi writer.  But I take it as a gift and reminder to myself of this semester.  I won’t ever again pen with this pen, but just look at it, on my desk or in a drawer– no, it has to be visible, that reminder of these drives and the new writer friend I’ve made– fellow adjunct and novelist and person in this putrid parlor of blandness and slouching vision.  But not for us!  We write!  And in the syllables we more than just survive or cope.  I’m seeing more in the vineyards and my interactions with them over break.. walks, yes, but photography like Hunter S., writing to what I shoot like the still I took the other day (with my phone, contemptibly), pulling over to 12’s side just before 29 to shoot the Autumnal blares from tired vines and rusting trellis wires.

Definitely need more coffee.  A cup before class I think, and why not.. oh, the notes.. I don’t want to pull myself from this page, though.. so, what does a versifying wandered do or execute with the xylophone bouncing on my ears’ drums like caffeinated bulls.  Keep thinking and picturing, I say to myself, and the Road just ahead, the travel and the plates, wine in hotels and with new writer friends..  Keep the story of this adjunct morphing into something that will not even closely mirror the catalyst; that first class at Chabot!  If only I could have then seen what now’s tangible.. but no.  This was all part of the story.  WAS and IS the story itself.. me the diffident, defiant, separatist writing adjunct not at all quiet about the inequities facing us; constricting and draining our pocketbooks so they can have a section go, some desperate and overeager burgeoning instructor wanting ribbons on his résumé.

Just spent 2.5 minutes planning, if that, for class.  Not much to do in these précis weeks.  And, IF the dean shows today, I’ll be more or less ready.  But how ready do I need to be not at all vying for a spot next semester?  I feel’s though if he does show, there’ll be literally no communication, and he’ll be observing close to nothing as there’s nothing much to observe being this Week 16, and all our material’s been covered, only this departmental “exam” next.  The ubiquitous and rife, robust (!), disorganization here is bewilderingly humorous, and rather amusing at this point in term where as in Weeks 1-11, it frustrated, irk, further embittered.  Now, I’m musical, singing to myself in victory and newly paginated Autonomy.

(12/2/15)