First night of solo-ness after wife and little Kerouac’s leave for DC. In adjunct cell after a more than productive and fulfilling, educating day. Forcing Self to stay on treadmill for 8 miles then hurrying up to Dutcher Crossing Winery to get my 3 bottles I won in a sales bit. Then to Bottle Barn to pick out and up tonight’s writing assignment. Thought about taking myself out to dinner but vetoed as I find it’d be more useful and better for home writing if I just snack around the house. May start with some cheese and crackers, nuts to pair with the Viognier, putting the Tempranillo against whatever I elect for course main. Hoping I can rise from sleep early enough to fit in a 6+ mile run. I can, if I have the most correct and optimal of attitudes. Everything is attitude, perspective and point of view. And this, I only now understand at my old age.
Quiet in the adjunct professor cell, sipping the Diet Coke I just bought from the bookstore. How often to I sip this poison? Not often. The wine will help remove or at least neutralize every toxic bit of talk coming from this plastic death bottle. Wishful thinking, yeah, that wine’s that powerful. But who knows, maybe for me tonight in this instance it will be(?). Ina mood to have fun, be funny, do everything different and out of character— As I so many times write about, Newness. I want to overdose on it, tonight and tomorrow and for the rest of my life. Searching for new wines is the easiest catalyst, obviously. Follow one wine to the next, where they come from and what producers are similar to the ones I’m sipping. Just like authors and books, I tell students. It’s all Art, Poetry, Life and Love. Though, I’ll disclose, I’m not loving the Diet Coke, but I sip for the caffeine as the exhaustion from this morning’s treadmill speed work just landed. In my legs, back, lungs a bit, and eye-lids.
“Don’t you dare get tired.” I say to self, imagining opening tonight’s bottles, taking the first inhale through nose and hearing, feeling, sensing what the bottle wants to say. My notes tonight will be exhaustive, expansive, wildly creative and magnetic, enveloping. I will not let my pen stop moving even for a nano-sec. Or if I’m typing, I’ll be Kerouac with a legion of exponents. I can’t help but feel tired, though. And if I want to run in morrow’s wee hours I can’t stay up too long, tonight. The indecisive pauses are both annoying and educating. Just keep going, like I wrote yesterday in the vino letter. Grapes keep growing in their basking. They grow till picked, pressed, fermented. They never stall, so I can’t. I follow the vivacity and tenacity of the vines till I land, then take off again, just as vintages close then open, close then open…. Music everywhere, around me and in those bottles I’ll open tonight, taste from, note from, learn and grow from.