Dad knows he needs to relax.  He will relax.  He’ll have a beer and get to his writing.  Cap, night, needed Now.  He sits on the floor after helping wife set up for cookie party tomorrow— gathering for neighborhood moms and their babies to make holiday/xmas cookies.  Daddy just needs some time, time to gather, he’s a writer and he needs some collection, meditative aggregate of aesthetic pleasing and centering.  He doesn’t really know what to do but fully throw himself into his moment, there on the floor with his back to the couch, sipping his nightcap thinking about the the day— the vineyards and how they looked, how people reacted to the wines, how he could have been writing something but the observations at the winery are more valuable than he knows what to do with—  “Relax, relax,” Dad tells himself.  There’s so much he needs to do he knows but right now he just needs to relax.  Wife in the other room watching a “reality” show but he can only think about the next day, the coming year… a new year!  So many could edit this and carve this conveniently so it’s accrochable.  Mazes and mazes in each day, with my babies upstairs getting bigger and older and me getting older, just needing to let go of my skirmish with time.  What can I do, it will just keep revolving in number, but I keep regretting the acknowledgement of those numbers, here on my laptop just staring at me and blaring at me— boastful bastard, time.  Day’s close, I need to relish in the relax.  I feel like Hemingway on one of his walks about Paris, now I wish I were in Paris, walking around the hotel we all stayed in, wife and I walking to get our mochas, the croissants.  I can’t relax as there’s too much on the writer’s mind.  Need a drive but I can’t drive ‘cause wife and I had too much of that Merlot.  OR, I did.

Shoes I wore today, right.  I and so many have heard that prose, ‘walk a mile in whose shoes’…  My shoes, need more.  More ground, more diversity, more seatings at restaurants in some random Spain spot.  More, more New, more new Nows.  I can’t relax, there’s too much for the writer to measure and walk about in his own head— from the wine to this nightcap, to lecturing on everything from writing to journal maintenance (need to work on, that “lecture”), to running more, to not taking on any additional writing clients.  I remember that one winery owner telling me “less means better”.  Tried angularly to reject his statement, however presently I see it rather astute.  So… doors closed.  Only working with clients current.  So the dad find something, something centering, something renewing and enriching.  Wife still in other room, and me here on floor next to shoes I today assumed.   Where do they tomorrow me take?  Where’s the day planning on taking me?  What does time want?  What if I object?  Just relax, relax…  Dad, seriously, you need to relax, take a breath, relax.. enjoy your cap.

(12/17/16)