Coffee made for tomorrow morning.  Should I cycle in morning, or write.  If I wake at 4 and…..  Writing.  It has to be writing.  Cycle at lunch.  Why, I’m having wine now and it just seems more sensible to write in the dark than cycle in it.  Plus, I want to write to the rain.  As it’s falling, calling, sprawling in relieving sheets to the Sonoma County streets.  Everything about rain is poetic to me.

Surprised I sat to write.  Recently and for reason odd and undefined, unexplained and just self-accepted, writing in evening hours has become all but impossible.  Too tempted to be lazy, watching some movie or being on phone and yes doing work but not doing this, at the keys typing to Tycho or some other track set.

Both kids in bed, MAF feeding Henry as she watches some school district discussion forum or meeting, conference or some talk pot on how and when do teachers and students return to the classroom.  This pandemic, more than a topic.  It’s defining, designing, re-aligning everything at least in this writer’s story.  But when it ends, then what.  Where will I be, what do I want, what will I have.

Thinking of life’s work again.  Mine.  I know what its is so you won’t have to read some back-and-forth.  How could I be indecisive for so long.  Can’t afford to anymore, not with three babies looking to me, their beat writer dad typing pages like made and having conversations with vineyards and old pictures of wined stories and moments.

Sip I think three of this one and only glass.  Nothing gripping me, nothing visual, nothing taking me anywhere,  It’s just wine.  No slander on Oliver’s Market of course, as I depend on them for far too much.  Just, I get it.  Bulk juice from Sonoma County blended, little to no oak, bottled boxed and shelved.  It’s not of pour or soured quality, just not a song.  Not a novel.  But here it is, so it’s something.  Part of my night, how and what I write.

Current play, “Elegy”.  Tycho.  Why don’t I do this more.  What made me do it tonight, sit here on this couch to this track and with this light Cabernet, putting together thoughts like a buzzed architect. 

Hear Jack moving around upstairs. What’s he doing.  What if I went up there and surprised or even scared him.  Did a total dad thing.  9:06, should do it soon if I’m going to do it at all.  He’s definitely moving around up there.  To be a kid again, walking around when you’re supposed to be in bed, risking only a talking-to from your parents.  No real consequences, only play.  Completely my story, these little beats.

I’m going up.

And, no shock, they were going back and forth between the other’s room.  Emma walking out of our room as I reached the second floor and Jack standing in his doorway with a funny grin to his lips and cheeks.  “Will you hang out with me?” He asks.  I tell him I’m not mad, but he needs to go to bed, that he’s 8 and doesn’t need me hanging out with him every night before bed.  Hated myself after saying that, by the way…

I then do some sill faces and movements, sounds and he laughs and I laugh and Melissa from the other room says “Mike that’s enough go downstairs.” Our lunacy, poetic like the rain I’m waiting to write.