I write whatever comes to head with this beat playing in my ears.  You, writer, and one reading if you write, need be always free.  Even if you’re focused on one character, create and type, write freely in him, her.  Kelly tells me to follow her, to her apartment, to her creative corner in her apartment, which is less than 500 square-feet in the city but more than she needs.  She’s a minimalist of sorts, but wants so much for her day, for her story.  She write in her journal, keeping track of everything she’s done creatively with the day, so she can see her actions, make sure sh’s doing something to get out of ‘the box’, as she calls the ad firm where she works.  She wants to see everything, the world and more than the world.  And me, just writing her, wondering about my character… where I am and what I’m doing.  Coffee spot before the day takes off… feeling my age, but only ‘cause I tell myself I am.  I’m not.  Write lecture notes for the day, like I do on days teaching.  One of my former students, one from the past semester, works here.  New to position, but I can tell she already has handle on everything, everything.  Quiet in class, not saying much but I see and feel the thought in her character, the way she views and surveys literature.

This morning’s freewrite, fighting off exhaustion.  And I think it’s gone.  Hate feeling like that, first thing in the day.  Woke this morning, before 4, with wife and babies, to help them get ready for the balloon fair, wherever it was.  Colors and music, food and other toys and treats for kids (intended audience).  After they left, I felt awake, saying to self, “Stay awake.  Don’t you dare fall….. fall……..” And, to sleep.  Back into dreams.  Woke, only to go back, till just after 7 when I went upstairs and threw this lazy writer into shower.  I’m fascinated by that early hour, around 04:00.  I took a couple wine bottles outside, and the to-go boxes from KIN, to recycling bin.  I remember stopping, looking around, listening to feeling more of the wind, the street.  I wanted more of it.  Why did I go back into dreams like a surrendering slug?  Ugh… can’t let self be in that frame, thinking or meditative, anything.  All over my brain and circulation, my story, this morning with more to say and think than I know how to productively put to page.  I need this book done, the next one, the next….  The other day winemakers insisting I taste from two potential blends, two final blends of a wine disturbed all over the country and I think a bit of international presence as well.  I was looking for character, and a pure, honest prose to its progression.  In the wine industry, I’ve learned so much about myself that I don’t think I’m me, sometimes.  The tasting room has re-written me.  And, for manuscript’s boon, to be sure.  No detraction or erosion of self.  But, I do know, now, this morning and for some span, I’m a writer.  That’s what I will die doing.  No doubt in this writer’s mind.  If the industry wanted to get rid of me altogether, I’d be fine with it.  I’d thank them.  When let go from the Sonoma Valley winery, the TR manager, a character I for the most part deplored, urged I seize this as an invitation to do what I “really want to do” as he put it. I agreed, agree.