This morning my son testing me at every angle, keeping the writer on his toes and now me at work getting in notes where I can between tasks for the winery.  You’ve read me blazing quick a writer after coffee but never like this.  The urgency is nearly too much for me to filter, this “tireless writer”, this writing father, this angry adjunct now finally more a writer than a teacher.  Time won’t win, it can’t win when I’ve had this much coffee.  Do you think I’ll reverse age?  A meta-meta-metamorphosis, some alchemical expressionism attributed to this morning’s test with my newly pugilistic son?  Probably.  I hope so.  This morning and the afternoon only hours away promises to be something more than an instillation to my NaNo effort.  I’m not writing a novel anyway.  And not a memoir, either.  So what then— Don’t know.  Coffee rants?  Wine diaries?  Someone once called me a blend, yes intentional pun, of Kerouac, Hemingway, and Hunter with his Rum Diaries.  Is that a compliment or is my admiration and study, my academic side and stride too visible?  Goddamn coffee forcing too many meditations and self-critiques.  So slow down, then.  Go for a walk.  That’s a good idea.  Should I?  Yes I should.  Be right back.

Took my usual ‘down the row’ photo but there was something different about this one, the contrast of green and yellow, the way the air felt.  Comfortably metallic, pure and promissory.  I slow my narrative finally to look at my to-do list, “It’ll all get done,” I say to myself then look at the time, 11:02.  Where is Thursday going?  Why is it moving so fast?  Why are my kids growing so fast?  Time, you bastard!  Why won’t everything just SLOW DOWN?  An unreasonable request and Time is unconcerned utterly with my woes.  Wish I could go for a drive.  Maybe I will at lunch.  To a neighboring winery.  Taste a little, take notes, more thoughts this peculiarly interesting and not-at-all jejune Thursday.  Start a ‘Wine Diaries’ motion of mine own.  Doesn’t even feel like a Thursday.  Or Friday.  Am I on vacation?  “No, you’re at work,” the photo’s colors command, “keep moving.” They’re right.  I can’t afford to slow.  More coffee.

Poured into one of the office’s cups, on the outside displaying a standing Grizzly against an off-white background holding the state of California like it’s a baby, snuggling it, and on the other side in a humble and endearing font, “I Love You California”.  I hold off on sipping as I want this paragraph to finish without synaptic aid.  Another test for a writer, self-assembled and administered.  Today’s teaching me to not focus on moving, and just move, just put something on the page, be bold and edgy like your son.  Just talk and don’t edit.  The story has to deliver and declare a riled truth, oui?  So then, today, it’s the day itself.  Could be Thursday, Saturday, Wednesday, any day.  A day is a day, and my job as the writer is to live, write, it.