Coffee.  A day off.  But I don’t want any kind of a day off.  Busy over the week but that’s no permission for non-submission.  I’m writing today, and that’s all there is in my character and mind. Today I’m Jack Kerouac.  More than Kerouac, or Hem, or Carver, Faulkner, I’m ME.  I’m the me that had wine last night and doesn’t have to worry about speaking wine from having to speak about wine, today.  I’m free.  I’m free of wine’s industry and telling me what to do, busy tasks for the sake of staying busy… no.  No more.  I’ve said this before, but I feel obligated to again put such in these day’s pages—  Wine is what I write, wrote, again write.  Not the bloody industry.  Or maybe I am.  Maybe I should.  Again, my tell-all of wine’s world and functioning and lack of.  But that’s not where the knowledge is.  That’s not healthy to obsess, and to do some tell-all is from vindictive voice.

Head a bit foggy this morning, from that last glass of whatever blend that was.  Think Merlot and PV and maybe something else. Martin Ray’s Bordeaux varietal project.  Still see myself having my own label, someday.  Some little tasting room… but enough dreaming.  What am I making happen, forcing to fruition today?  A run.  And not on a fucking treadmill.  Just plugged in the running watch, that Garmin thing the wife-ish person bought me for xmas or something.  She bought me one of the best models and I have not used it satisfactorily.  So, then, a run.  Write and write and write….  I descend upon self whenever I don’t write or don’t hit some word amount, and I know why then have no idea why.  Today, new.  The Newness invites me to travel from thought to thought as Neal and Jack went from State to state.  I think about my life, where I am in it, riding from house to house on appointments yesterday with that tech whose name I can’t remember and so horrible I feel as we had quite an enjoyable day.  Finally eating lunch in west county, Occidental, eating sandwiches I bought for us under a tree, watching people drive by on that narrow main street drag.  The first house, not a house at all but a traitor on a bigger property, Windsor.  Felt bad for the bloke, later in his life and that’s all he had.  He was of elevated soul and disposition, saying “I’m great!” Then I felt bad for being bad.  He’s fine, Mike… I said to self. When we called to make sure he was home so we could do, or the tech, DAVID, could do what he had to.  Left Windsor then went to Healdsburg to connect something at this lady’s house, who lives with her photographer husband.  This house I found especially interesting as the house had a beautiful side area, completely shaded and set up like a cabana, or gazebo bar or lounge area.  Then in back of main structure to their shared studio.  Walking up small and steep little bright dark-blue stairs to a loft, the studio area itself where her husband’s photog equipment and her web developer area situated, catty-corner to the other.  There was a couch which I can only deduce was either a little gathering spot for the artists and their musings, gatherings, or a waiting area.  I thought to myself this is just the studio I want, just the office I’m aiming for.  I saw my office in a second home, in Healdsburg.  Just blocks from the square as this dwelling was.

Then in Occidental, we drove out, out to West County’s distant dimensions.  The lady’s house had some flawed connections, or some blockage in the phone line itself.  I didn’t quite understand what’d transpired till after we’d left and David to me explained.  What I thought was quite literary about this house was the envelopment of those tall redwood trees, if they WERE redwoods.  How nice it’d be to have a place like that to write, to have a studio or some office to finally finish my fucking book.  Then to lunch.  Saw one of my former students, which was quite startling and pleasantly perfect for the educating day I was having riding along with my new tech ami.  While the sandwiches were being mad eI used the restroom in the Union Hotel.  The original Union.  It felt historic, which it is, but something else I couldn’t place.  Not haunted per se, but something, something was there, something had been there, there were years and years of vacationers there and however many stories and characters… something there had me.  History, wine, wine’s world and town, more history and directions.  The Roads…

While in the deli I looked at what wines they had.  Nothing too commanding or provocative, but even still I thought of what it’d be like to be just passing through the town, having lunch with whomever I’m traveling, opening a bottle of something, and just watching, observing the town breath, learn from it.  Since being with this new company, I’ve seen more possibilities in everything, everything that makes this writer who he is, how he wants to be seen.   From the writing itself, to business interests and aims, tech, blogging, photography, wine and food, Sonoma County, my running, health, truly all parcels of my person.  Now seated, and measuring, forecasting what I want at the end of this latest 30-day whatever.  Not sure if it’s one of those challenges, or just some new representative sample.  Of what I do where I am, when I’m there.  What I do with time when I have it as I do now with the babies on their first day of weekend, a day off for us all, watching their little cartoon from under their little blankets.  They lose their littleness by the day, and I know will one day read this, or one of my pieces or books.  So this 30 days, which was shoved into action really from curiosity and something I saw from one of those business/speak self-proclaimed authorities to know fucking everything about everything.  So I answer with humility and curiosity, hoping the humility eclipses.  What will happen in 30?  I stand back up, look at babies, knowing I need to have them ready for wife character in under an hour from now. 

To the Road.  MY, Road.

9/8/18