The rain falls harder than I’ve seen it so in who knows how long. And in this room off the Healdsburg Square, I’m assured a total traffic drought. No influx or downpour of people looking for wine pours. No. I’ll be at the keys all day today, keeping myself busy with any method I can, listening to jazz and brainstorming on whatever I can, and there’ll be plenty time for a plentiful storming of brain. No wine open. We’re not even open yet. The day hasn’t started, and I’m already going a bit stirred. Crazy. Stirring in craziness and that’s what happens in the offseason, on rain days. Drive up here, crazy on 101, all the standing water and splashes, people driving insanely when they be slowing down or at least entertaining using their brakes once, or twice.
Brought a book to read, and anyone who knows me knows what it is. But finally I have quiet, peace in a still room. No 4 year-old barking commands at me, no crying 2-month. Just me, this music, the quiet, jazz, and I know I should be writing something more electric and expansive but I can’t, I can only roll around in this time to myself like a pig in mud, or his own expel. I can’t get enough of it and I don’t care how obnoxious I am in repeating how in love with this scene I am, with the rain sounds and the passing cars, how they make that passing splashy-swishhhhhh sound that flies right through the window, into my ears down the arms to finger and tapped into keys, these sentences— boring to most modern readers, but those that seek the same level of Zen or that as well writer, know my sentiment and urge.
A writer and his room. Though it’s not completely his, he feels it is, and why not. He deserves it, he deserves this. It’s a been a crazy—no, shitty—week. I’m in a tasting room, surrounded by amazing wine, and I so very much could use a splash of that Grenache. But I can’t open anything if there’s no visitors, right? Maybe I should buy a bottle? Maybe I should go for a walk— In the rain? Are you out of your fucking mind? I look left, and yes, it comes down just as angrily as a few minutes ago. So no walk. Well, the rain, and I forgot to put on a belt this morning. Yeah.. how… I have no bloody idea. Just another oddity and annoyance in an already agitating week. Can’t remember the last week I had that was like this. Nothing to note int his room but what’s in my head and what I listen to, and thoughts of my own wine, how I’d love to taste some wine but I know it’d just make me doze off into a swaying sleep from which I’d be yanked by one of the blobby wine broker people from upstairs. Like I told you, not alone. Not my room, completely. But I pretend it is, write those broker barnacles out and only the writer and his own wines in. I make a Sauv Blanc, a Chardonnay, Merlot and Red Blend. No one coming in because of the rain but I don’t care I want to taste through my wines and see how they’re growing and evolving, developing their little quirks and dimensional dimensions, how they speak to me and pass by my senses one day only to directly connect the next. The stirring crazies fades, and I dream of myself as a winemaker. I can think of at least three winemaker friends of mine that are now in travel with their bottles, On The Road. Teaching will never get me that, travel, any, or at least not in the institutional manner I’m teaching, at SRJC where you only know at the minute last as an adjunct, or at least where I am in the “seniority” roster, if you’re getting classes, or no. I’ll lecture independently.. yes, a roaming lecturer. Road scholar, right?— Maybe I am going a bit batty, it’s possible. I look again at the rain and it just continues with its job, falling at the pace it chooses and soaking Plaza Street with its seconds and temperament, telling narrative of a Sonoma County March day where some “storm” moves in and Californians freak out and all the visiting tourists, especially from states like Massachusetts, or New York, Maine or Connecticut, just laugh at us thinking “You don’t know what the fuck real weather is.” True. Wish I did. Wish I could experience it on a travel, pour wine at some ski resort in Colorado, or some lodge in Yellowstone. I’m just dreaming, yeah, but it’s what the writer has to do in his room, beginning of day, to remain sane.
Had a business idea… My brand, if you would, and when I have my own wines this will be part of it— writerNOW. Everything writing, writing YOU, and doing it now. Telling your story NOW. Your story matters. It needs to be heard, read and felt and remembered. [Just thought, I need to share this with the students on Monday…] Car passes again. That sound. The person in that car, had a story. Didn’t see who it was. Male, female.. doesn’t matter, there’s a story in the cabin of that car, or truck (pretty sure it was a car, small, maybe a Mini, or Scion, or Prius). But they have a story they should write. I could help them. Help them write it. Show them how to write it. Right? I AM a Professor. Adjunct, yes. But Prof’ none’less. I could do so much with this idea, the rain tells me as it now curves left toward the Square, toward the some other tasting rooms, a favored restaurant of mine. This crazed synaptic momentum about me proves beneficial. You know what, I am going to open some wine. Celebrate. What? The moment. This room that’s all MINE. I promise not to doze, or even yawn.
(1/10/16)