One more rough draft session for final papers.  Not expecting much from the 1A section, if you should know.  But, who knows.  Who knows what’ll happen.  It’s like with wine, going to tasting room you’ve never been before and maybe the room gives you some weird feeling or you look at the tasting flight and everything just sounds weird, or you see some varietal on the flight you’re convinced you’ll hate ‘cause you’ve convinced yourself you have Chardonnay, or Zinfandel, or Pinots, whatever.  Then, you’re surprised.  You’re taught.

I’m a wine blogger, trying to survive.  As a winery and tasting room character, then as a adjunct English Instructor.  And I’m about to turn 39.  Fuck.  39.  How and why and why am I always asking self such.  I’m here with time to self and I’m starving but I convert the famished feeling into its own forward and electricity.  A swooping voltage and sped sensibility for sakes of this survival.  I see it now, what this blog is really all about— survival.  LIFE.  Yes, wine, I guess… but bigger topics.  Me and my story, what I’m trying to do and not wanting to settle for anything much less some simpleton position, whether here on campus or at ANY winery.  My writing takes on new posture, new roles and imaginations and persistence…. I am really seeing something new in my self, and that’s not some banal and expected repetition of some affirmation I’ve before paginated.  Everything in this story is for this story, MY story.

In the next class, I’ll offer some of these ideas, for the rough draft and the days till they submit the final, which for the 1A section is Monday, 13:00.  Not sure why now I’m writing in 24 hour time.  Just what I in the moment feel.  And that’s all any of this is, in the bottled ox’s story.. what I am and what I’m doing, right now and what I’m thinking, feeling.  What I’m feeling, the morning’s eight mile run.  And my age.  I feel old today.  Defy time, I tell Mike Madigan.  It’s not raging again some light, or battling time itself.  It’s what’s in my mood, my head, my inner paragraphs which aren’t being put to page.  No edits, no post-production, just as it conveys itself.  That’s the way from here forward I’ll write.  Not even honest or transparency, something more.  Something more unfettered and unobstructed.

Tonight’s wines, thinking of them, and what they’ll say versus what I want to say for the whole of my story, my life, right now and tonight and beyond that. How I want my kids to read me, definitely not as some corny and pattern-following wine blogger who writes safely and has his own scoring system like anyone gives a shit.  I’m unwavering, with how I speak on wine and my story, where I am and what I’m doing, whether it’s right before a class or in the middle of a long winery day where you can only wipe down a counter so many fucking times.  I’m present, convinced, moving fingers on black laptop keys knowing I’ll get somewhere… ox no longer trapped in any containment.  Now, he flies… he sees.  He is me.  ME, here with pages and pages of…

(5/16/18)