Driving home from SF, talking with co-workers about cinema, favorite films and what would, then with one of the characters in cabin with me while I drove, literature.  Books and characters, who likes Hemingway and who likes Gatsby— a novel I have always been free in voicing my qualms toward.  Home now, after drive, after walking up 2nd Ave, and up 3rd.  Or is it down 2nd and up 3rd…. Sipping Chardonnay and going over, somewhat proofing a note I to self wrote while in vehicle and then before when in the Chinese restaurant with someone I work with.  There has to be a better way of saying that, and not “colleague”.  How ‘bout just ‘with someone’.  In the context and scene you or a reader would know. I work with her.  Anyway, back from away from field, I jotted this note with thumbs on phone.  306 words at end.  Obvious presence of typos, and here at home and on second glass of this stainless Chardo’, I’m not caring too much.  Before writing this, I dreaded writing, writing this… thinking “Oh what am I going to write?” What’s happened to me as a writer?  I need regiment.  Militancy, at this stage in my life, the aging writer approaching 40 and not finishing a book but having two blogs and retired from wine’s industry and into another sales world which he likes assuredly but still self-doubts.  This writer, Me, mike madigan, sip again and a full pull from the bowl of the Wine Roads event glass.  House quiet.  Think little Kerouac is in our bed, which means I may be lodging on couch for suit which won’t be that much a negative as I plan on waking, hoping to wake, at 4.  For… something.  Christmas gifts and ornaments and remnants around me, saying something about time, that I have to let some things go, like I can’t control how fast my children age and that maybe the wine shop isn’t in my narrative—just thoughts of it are, or story ideas about it—that I may not ever have my own wine label or vineyard.  But I can write about it.  All of it.

Today in San Francisco, on that one street, I think still on 2nd, I saw and sensed my truest of characters.  Yes a writer that lately has had somewhat of a furrowed and sharp self-estimation and declination but sees.  He does see.  Sees himself.  This writing father, wine in his story, Chardonnay making him remember the Cabernet from last night and the Anderson Valley Pinot.  Driving home from SF, talking about these great narrations and me mentioning Raymond Carver’s short stories, how Mom has always told me to write shorts—  I go back tot he wine industry, the tasting room, those mornings where I’d open Roth by myself and taste through the wines, jot my jots and stock thoughts.  Just what happens now, for Mike Madigan.  He looks at his glass, pineapple and green apple, frenetic vanilla and mint, all around his thinking.  Road after Road in each sip, shown.