8PM. Precisely, and I’m not in the most optimal state for writing. I’ve had a little wine, and I opened a Lancaster, a ’12 Sophia’s. This is the type of wine that I see myself making, one day, when I develop a creative oenological way, or some expressive trot as I do with writing. Dark outside, and quiet in house. Alice on the way home with Jack and Ms. Austen, and I enjoy what quiet I can. No music, even. Just my types, the sounds of the plastic little squares being slapped by my finger tips, and the thoughts in my own channels of wine, writing, traveling.. sipping….. Just what you’d expect from a well-done ’12— dark, textured, weighted and self-personifying. Other wine writers and “critics”, and winemakers, will simplify it to a roster of remedial “descriptors”. But a wine like this deserves multitudes in addition. In fact, I shouldn’t have opened this tonight. I just wanted to open something nice, and I’m running out of such bottles in my cellar, which is really just the downstairs closet, by the table where Jackie eats his dinner, where Alice does certain school-related tasks on her laptop. Quiet like this is rare, so I have to take full take of the moments I’m gifted— but I have to use the restroom. Goddamnit. How much wine have I had? Well… glass of SB at Cellars then a beer at Piner Café (where I acquired my dinner as there’s not a single edible bit in this house for grownups). Quick visit then back.
Back from restroom, and I decided I need music… Of course, Hutcherson, and other artists similar. While eating dinner, my burger which was stupendous on levels that I so needed, need, this night— I imagined I was on travel, on assignment, on some wine-writing-something, in my hotel room, enjoying dinner but knowing I had to finish an article in a matter of minutes, or start working on it at 7:45 SHARP (the time I remember, looking at the clock on the kitchen oven, thinking about it, the life, on the road—). And then, I rise and start typing, while looking out my hotel room window, down at Vegas or New York, somewhere in Texas, or Florida, Chicago. This Lancaster speaks to me, tells me that it’s close, it’s close, stop stressing and wishing, that I’m doing everything I can, that I should be. Another sip.
This goddamn desk, everything on it. Going to move a lot of these books to the garage, to the workbench that Dad set up for me. Not sure he had envisioned that I’d use it for book storage, or placement, temporary landing, but I have to. I need this space for writing, and reading (one book à la fois [at a time]). Want to read something tonight, but what? How about the Tobias Wolff shorts? Yes. Where is that book? OH.. the autographed copy the students last semester me gifted is right here, at left, under the other books.. SHIT, no it’s not. Where is it. The workbench? Yes, the workbench.. off to fetch… Got it. Reading the first piece, ‘Garden of North American Martyrs’. Maybe my favorite story in the collection. And it’s the first one, oddly. Thinking of my reading, and how I will intensify it. Need to read two books at a time, review or react to what I read, as I read, as I instruct the students to. No license needed for that. Not like wine blogging where you blog to sell, or broker, there’s licenses needed for that. Annoying. But not for reading, not for teaching, not for thinking.
Not yet.
(3/18/16)