5/27/19
Jimtown Store, Alexander Valley
Two days. Not even sure why I do the countdown anymore. Who cares… don’t want to dwell or fixate, fix or focus on that. Writing at the JT Store. First such sitting in ….. how long. How long, ever, I wonder, with time flying by me as it does. Wife upset she didn’t wake early to workout and me not happy with my continuing late wakes. Going into this new year of my story… 1, no fear, of anything or anyone. 2, less editing and less thought, just fucking release all writings. All writings can be sold. 3, 4am is GOD, and you WILL NOT be unfaithful to her.
I wake this morning getting into shower hearing my babies be silly as they often are in the morning call to me and play basketball with one of those hoops you hang from your door, Jackie’s that he received as a gift last xmas I think,
This latte… costing 8 dollars as the young chap behind the counter was nice and accommodating and I know that if I were him I’d appreciate a nice cash shove. So there you go an $8 latte.
Call intruding on writing but I don’t let it. The morning, the latte, Jimtown, Alexander Valley and all the vines enjoying sun which reminds me I brought my camera and am committing self to taking some pictures, somewhere either close to the store, that vineyard across the street or near Lancaster, down valley.
2 days. More writing, 4am or death, books over books, over more finished manuscripts. Thought of the plan to just give all my writing away, but then no… I need to sell works just as my studies masters did. Why am I afraid to sell my work. WHY? Why are any of us as Artists afraid to live from sentences? Isn’t that what we want?
9:11. Getting ready in a bit to leave and launch into vineyards and take pictures of the vines that call out to me, that want my attention. Which ones do. I have one block in mind, close to Hannah’s property, across the street. I’m even more compelled to cruise through vineyard blocks and just note what I see even more than capture it with some fucking lens and button. What do I mean ‘even more’? I’m a writer. Not a photog. This room, this back area where I imagine people eating breakfast or brunch, or just stopping for a midday beer or glass of wine, from far away like the people I met yesterday from Southern California and those from the other week from MN. Everyone comes here and it blows me away. Travel, the vines and this room tell me, travel… get out of here. Go write about other rooms, other varietal blocks. Photograph everything, write about it. 40 is now alarmingly close, and if something in my practice doesn’t alter, then I circle.
Yesterday tasting that 2-barrel Malbec, remembering why I keep coming back to wine, writing these essays if you could call them that, these entries, keep returning to the tasting room much I criticize it and its industry. There’s a mystery and then the obvious, a helix heavenly and promising me to write this book and finish it then begin the next one before this one ends. This book on thought, how so many of my thoughts precipitate from wine and barrels and my days at wineries, how now after all the industry battles and downright wars I’ve fought against the machine, I’m immediately free in the tasting room, at the winery, in the vineyard to do as I need to, as the books demand… more stemming from MY personal legend, or narrative, nor notes.
Today hosting a Napa winemaker, from one of my favorite Napa wineries that I can right now think of. Know my approach, and know what I’ll talk about.. the wine, maybe, but life, why we’re both there, at that moment, in the philosophy of the Now, the narration constant and present. I’m not planning or preparing for this tasting, I’m eager to talk wine with someone who writes in wine as I write in and from, more toward my own voice closing in on 40.