miss them all, especially the babies, and my little girl with that self-understood smile of strength and goals, wanting to learn and touch everything around her (And throw, too, which I’m working on…).  Onto cup 2 for the tireless writer.. and everything need be documented.  Want to write more about my character, Kelly… thinking about her a lot these past few days, her life in the city and working in that office for the ad firm and never really being allowed to dwell in the creative.  Why, why she wonders and gently broached the topic but never gets any answers from management.  Her friend Sherry having her own creative outfit but no work for her friend, which kills her.  But what can she do.  They’ve been friends for over 20 years, since they were in preschool.  Both in their mid 20s and looking for their story.  Sherry closer to hers while Kelly technically knows but is blocked from attaining what she really wants.  But only in her head, and that’s where my novel starts, I guess… or sequence of stories… young artist needing to work but not liking her work, trying to make the best of her work but blocked even from doing that, by management.

These fires will only empower the wine world and animatedly bolster our businesses.  I know it.  That’s the attitude I’m embracing going forward.  Tempted to go for a drive now, but…. No.  Stay put.  I mean, where would you go?  Go go to Olivet Road, maybe, then to Guerneville Road and around RRV.  But what would I shoot?  Guess I won’t know till I get out there, right?  Later… not now.  Thinking a tasting’s called for, for today.  RRV, yes.. then maybe… don’t know.  I just know I have to stay in my wild wine character… write everything.  Carry my little black journal with me.  Looking at the notes I took the other day, before and after Justin came over— husband of Melissa’s friend.  Keeping it together, he was, but barely.  I poured him some of that first SB, New Zealand made, and we talked.  I gave him some of wife’s socks, shirts, a couple pairs of shoes for his wife.  I would have given him some of my wear, but he’s a bit bigger than the writer, so all I could offer him was my ear, wine, a hug before he got back in his car.  Taking notes of this all, not to trivialize but so that I adequately grow and learn from it.  People losing everything they have, had.  Kevin and I on our walk last night, seeing the fire actually touching our block here, by the mailboxes, even charring some of the fence behind wife’s friend Amanda’s place.  I keep telling myself I’ll stop talking about these goddamn fires, but I can’t.  What does it have to do with wine?  Everything.  Community.  Life.  Enjoying the moment and learning from the moment, and understanding the moment for its autonomous importance.  Life could change, in far less than ‘a heartbeat’.

Song ends, and onto a new one.  Need my office.  Need an office in the city.  Yes, SF.  See what my character sees, maybe go there three times a week.  Work from home and take what I produce here, bring it there.  Monday, Wednesday, Friday.. in the city.  Rest of time up here in wine country.  Need to get camera from car…. Got images and a dollar in quarters, dumped into baggie of coins.  Think the writer needs more coffee.. why not.  Keep the party going.  Will stay here while the cleaning crew does their thing.  Disport myself with Kelly, her story… supplementing her income by working in a tasting room in the financial district, one that pairs wine and music… she learns more about wine than she anticipated, starts drawing bottles on tables, hands holding bottles, pouring wine.. her art takes a new direction, yes, but tells new stories…. She sips wine in her studio apartment on a street I haven’t determined yet, sketches her last shift.. everything about it— the slimy businessman, probably late 50s, inviting her to his office so he can pour her some “real wine”, as he put it.  Kelly starts keeping a sketch journal, quickly jotting notes below some rushed illustration…

Thinking of my babies, up there in Sac’…. Have to work nothing short of obsessively while they’re gone.  Had the temptation to switch to coffee last night, but didn’t.  Why not.  Didn’t want to fuck up my sleep.  WHY NOT???????????  Should have stayed up all night, let the echoes of the wine fade like the smoke over San Miguel, Coffey, Autumn Walk, and work.  Well I’m here now, working.  Working and telling the wine story post-disaster.  This “disaster”, though, could be an anomalous mitzvah.  It is, as I’ve intoned.  Giving me all this time to write and taste however many wines I have and will, build new stories and approaches to wine.

Need another cup.  New song, new sights… wine, the vineyards.  I will be out there.  Before filling my little demitasse, I stare at it.  Yes, the obvious metaphor, wine and life, but I take a moment and all the moment sings, taking the moment for the moment it is.  Nothing is more ‘wine’ than just that, that act.  Not connecting the moment to anything necessarily, or even analyzing it.  Just accepting it, welcoming it, letting it speak or not speak to you.  This is Zen, this is composition of Personhood.  The cup tells me to back off, think about the day and what you’re going to do— the Kelly novel, notes for her, what she’s drawing… she doesn’t even live in wine country, and was raised on the Peninsula, and is wrapped and kept and told by the vineyard blocks and the bottles she pours in a way I could only hope to be.  My character in competitive quakes with MY character… huh, interesting.  What psychology.  Feeling like leaving now, walking a block.  But I can’t.  Would be constricted by time.  Need limitless time, for what I want to do today.