1/8/17—

So now my laptop is working?  I’m so fucking confused.

But anyway here I am at Hopper sbux for the next hour trying to take in my environment, watching the cars of the drive-through park temporarily in front of me.  5PM precisely, and this whole scuffle with technology which appears now for some reason to be lending its tide my direction teaches me to rely on it much less.  And just LESS of everything.  Travel light, when going to class this term.  First day, early A.M., have only the syllabi, HST book.  That’s it.  I want students to seriously consider the idea and concept of less.  With their writings, reading, how they read, and academic focuses.

Too late for coffee and there’s no wine or beer here (there is, though, I hear on the 12 & Mission spot, and old writing haunt of mine), so I get myself one of those lemon— or no, LIME— flavored waters, sparkling.  Tomorrow begins a new week.  A week that is certainly not ready for me.  And it would be this way even if I didn’t have this apparent victory, momentum shift, or the dispute with a device at all.  Not sure what I’m feeling but I have a purposeful spot in the corner of the Hopper office, with words and thoughts about my wife going back to work tomorrow and how I spend most of the afternoon, or all of it pretty much, with my babies.  Usually, I’m at the winery, talking about wines and telling guests about the winery’s history and how the owner came from Wisconsin, her dog, and everything else about where I work that I find motivating and creatively propelling.  But I had a day with family…  My babies get older, grow quicker than I think they should be allowed to.  Should never have let this laptop wrench my mood, ever.  So I cease with its infusion into this sitting, look up, see the storm in a lull, no one in the drive-through looking at me, or on their phones in the short break before having to pay at the window.

Listening to music—  I’m back in my form.  Typing like this week is the last of my life.  Teaching myself to move past what frustrates, what obstructs or contaminates creativity, and I look up again and beyond a tree and worn white fence, to the ‘Wine Country Inn & Suites’.  Travel…  It’s out there for me and other writers are out there with whom I’ll exchange ideas, build new ideas and hear what they’re working on, how they maintain their journals and efforts and when they contribute to them.  Even if this laptop wasn’t working, I would be.  I am, and with more amplified rhythm and roar than ever.  Not even allowing myself time to look for synonyms or alternative descriptors for my immediacy.  This is me.  This is a newly enlivened me.  I’m here working for my moment and for this new week and semester.

I take a deep delivery of the water, and think musically, how more music in my life will get me there, out there into the world, and have my “students” more connected to the ideas I’m offering (not that I’ve ever had problems with attention or being viewed as anything but passionate, or “on fire” as a student said a couple years ago).  I’m replenished with this hour away from home, time to self, meditation and focus… a primely sharpened attention and attentiveness to my story.  Present in my told time, working.  Not at all confused.