Goal today is three pages.  Can I do it, I hope so.. but the start is rocky, rolly, literally, with this table I’m sitting at, Yulupa Starbucks, wobbly, not wanting to be still for the aging writer this morning.  Have earphones in but didn’t ignite any music as this place is already tallying tunes I would find on Hutcherson’s station.  So my mind must have thought, or me subliminally, that I was playing into ears, through these little phones.  Pulled table closer, and no wobble.  So now I think of the week ahead.  Have to gather book, my “Real Wine Book”.  Only tentative title but maybe it’s not.  Can hear older couple at left talking, about something depressing.. getting sick, being sick, a friend getting or being sick and dying… “We lost her” the man said.  Need music directly into ears now.  But then a sax stretch plays and I don’t want to turn on my usual jazz selection.  So far the morning’s been relatively smooth.  Got a chance to shave and iron pants, get babies ready while wife kept reiterating how early she had to leave, and she did, and I understand— staying home Friday to show Jackie a special day, on his preview of kindergarten.  I must say, how Alice made her career happen, just the way she wanted it, having singularity and strength and support at one school, impressively bewilders me.  Feel the same about to happen to this writer, with the new winery assignment and much else.

Steve Lacy, “Alone Together”.  Love this track.  This whole day will be a jam session, instruments internal and all over, unplanned and beautifully disorganized.  Nearly distracted by a woman who walked by, smelling like an old man’s cologne.  There she goes again, out the door with her mobile order.  Making me a bit queasy, but I type on.  I narrate forward, toward the time I skip to the door then to my car, then to 101 North to Dry Creek.  Three pages… that means no vineyard walk today.  Did you hear that, Mike?  I’m fine with it.  Not that I’m getting bored with the walks, I just feel them being too similar.  So, inside I stay, typing at the winemaker’s desk, which I have to say is surprisingly small.  More of a makeshift or intermittent gathering surface.  Only seen him there, I think, doing work on a laptop once.  Will take lunch early and do whatever I do or will do, there.

Find myself just watching people pass me, to the counter to order their order, put themselves in that line.. the corporate dealers.  Me, one of their best customers.  But make no mistake, this is a dealing station.  I know, I’m making a mountain from a molehill, but I have a book to write, I have to hit three pages today.  Remember living just down the street, in that condo…. Seems like forever ago.  More than forever, like a quilt of forevers, tied to another quilt, in a store of like-quilts.  Wine is like this, people in its world with half a brain are like this— thinking and acknowledging what time is, what it does.  I argued that wine is antithetical to destination, and that’s why… it’s timeless.  Am I off-topic?  No… just jamming.  Older couple continues talking, but I can’t hear a word they say.  I imagine them seeped in a more positive precipitation of address, like going away to Europe for a month, or visiting a new grandchild, something that doesn’t harness to sickness or death.  There’s too much of that, too much, and I need more life to hit three pages today, and all days after.  Sip my 4-shot mocha and I feel more kinetics curving through my circuits.

I now next what do—  Who knows.  Get to the page’s lower floor— old couple leaves, I hear the man say to his wife “Whatever.” And walk out.  She follows.  I feel disconnected from them and everything around me, but advantageously, beneficially… oddly and fruitfully.  Aujourd’hui, ce sera une belle journée!  I know it will…. 08:56, don’t want to leave, but I have to.  “Says who?” Life.  She’s strict.  No matter.  I make it my matter, not so much of fact, but form, fortune, story more than the telling of it.  Lost in my own character.. scenes of wine and people tasting.. growth.