off the wine I had last night with Mom and Dad, all the discussions on family, and life— Mama gifting me a little bag which I will use for all the pens I have meandering around the inside of my backpack like frightened ants, with a Kerouac quote on the outside of it, the ‘Enjoy your life, every minute of it.” one.  So thankful for my family, my babies, wife, where we live.  My co-worker, losing his mother so unexpectedly.  Why him?  Why am I so prosperous, and even I’ll say ‘blessed’?  Don’t know.  But I am.  Writing through this hangover and sipping the coffee like it’s the only elixir on earth, thinking of class tomorrow, the coming week, 16 I think.  Lecturing from where I started, beginning with an HST quote, the Kerouac utterances— forgot my friend Anne-Marie’s visiting, to watch my Kerouac lecture as she’s been saying she’d love to do for a while.  Happy she’ll finally be in the classroom with me, one of the few full-timers I respect, that I visible feel respects me.

LIFE.  What life is and what we do with it…  How I evaluate essays, work submitted by students, also addressed in how I address Kerouac in ‘Bums’..  wait, maybe the characters are performing some sort of self-assessment in the hikes and saunters, journeys and jaunts.  I’ll ask the “students”…

The wine’s ripples fade, finally, with cup 2.  Going to blend everything into tomorrow’s lecture— life, death and those around you experiencing death and how it forces us to appreciate life, my coffee, wine, the winery, commuting.. everything.

In Dharma’s definition, is locked the word ‘duty’.  We all need know what ours is.

Mine is to write.

Teach—  NO, to generate ideas, discuss them, help students with their writing and encourage them in the cementing of their own visions and ideas.  Everything starts with the idea, I’m finding at my old age— that’s what brings us to Truth, our own Truths, confidences, Wellnesses—  You know what, going to test myself.  No more of the cosmically enrapturing and convincing wine I represent, at Dutcher or anywhere.  How will my character be affected?  Want to have the same energy and joy as Jackie and Emma in the morning, wine prevents that.  Think I sipped a bit last night as I haven’t seen Mom and Dad in a while, and one of our exchanges became a bit fiery, which is my fault.  Opened a bottle of the ’12 Lancaster Nicole’s to bury any simmering and quaking hatchets.  Which was a great idea and a horrible one.

This second cup tells me to relax, enjoy your morning with little Kerouac, don’t be so hard on yourself, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy…..  I breathe, forcefully and with self-instructing intent, smell the waffles I just heated for my little writer, and now me here back at the keys hoping for 500 words or so but then tell myself to not focus on word count.  Forget everything, be Bum of your own Dharma.

Jackie with allergies, me too, one of my co-workers, everyone, the earth reminding us of Spring’s landing and that everything around us is about rebirth right now, a purposeful and affluent re-start of the story.  That too need be inoculated into the morrow’s talk.

Nearing 37.  28 days.  Today starts May.  Why is time moving with such reckless vigor, and dismissive shapeliness?  Reminded of how curt life is…  Think of my co-worker, my mother…  Don’t stop moving my fingers on these keys, jotting in my little notebooks… in love with my life, every blink and breath contained.  3000 words will be a daily requisite—  sipping my second cup and meditating deeper into the morrow’s ebb and order, or disorder, me a bum in my Dharma.. look to my book, books—