Only a couple minutes, maybe less, till Jack wakes. Friend of mine sighted distraction in my recent pieces. She’s right. Need more consolidation. Woke a bit ago to help with Emma feeding, then couldn’t fall back asleep. So here, at the keys I try to fly, try for some flight, some disconnect from ground.
Man came into tasting room a few days ago, to do yesterday’s 50-mile run around Upper Sonoma County. Training for months, he and his wife said (she not running this race). No wine since before January. Again, I’m convicted in my head that if I were to demonstrate similar stringencies, I would have everything I want, need as a writer. So.. the delay then in starting? Good question. Tomorrow, class, and helping my wine bar owner friend Scott with some inventory and wine deliveries. Should be interesting, at the very least, and a couple bucks to garnish.
6:49, my time-obsessed Self notices. No distractions. Like Mother urged, “FOCUS!” Each semester a memoir, and this one nearing its end, Week 13 launching with morrow. Keep writing, I tell myself, don’t stop, don’t get distracted, don’t even think about that expected coffee. Act out of character, try new acts or new inactions like with no coffee— NEWNESS, chase the Road, travel, the streets of Istanbul and Paris, South Africa, Denmark.. man in tasting room from Denmark yesterday, incredibly interested and in love with wine. Not so much knowledgable, but that’s what I adored about his character— “This is wonderful wine, such exceptional traits and flavors,” I noted in little paged notebook, him saying. He just loved wines, and he loved Dutcher Crossing’s wines. He’d been out before but never to our place, and not with his wife and little boy as yesterday. There was something homeostatic about him being there, me pouring for him and he sharing his thoughts.. “All of these wines are wonderful wines!” he added. Of course, I had to write everything I could down, which was arduous at best with such an inundated counter.
6:55— Fridge humming, and me focused, on the Road, driving across country in my writer-tour-bus. Speaking, of— poetry reading in the city, soon, spoken word competitions, soon, me, the Newness I need, acting out of character, not that I’m afraid of competition but I certainly have been avoiding it for YEARS. WHY?!? No more. Focused on being on that stage, read to people, for people, with other poets in the Bay Area and about.
Fridge went quite, no more loud hum behind which to hide. My key pushing and punching noises are in the Air of this Autumn Walk Studio. Emerson would be proud of me, his student, just pressing and writing and typing on even in the potentiality of interruption, and more discipline like my 50-miler ami. His wife told me yesterday that today he would just walk, no recovery run. “Huh,” I thought, “I wish I deserved to just walk.” And I maybe I do, but I need to feel like I do. I need to focus, decimate any distractions.