Sipping coffee now. Melissa had the idea to open gifts slow and progressively throughout the day, an idea and approach I agree with for obvious reasons, and is quite frankly brilliant.
Katie gifted me $50 on Amazon. Debating what I use it for. Want it to be for the blog and business, somehow. But what. What do I need… camera? No, have two.. much I try to talk myself into getting one. Then I think, BOOKS. This new year will see me reading more than Bill Gates, or how much he’s at least rumored to read. Starting there. With Hemingway. Sedaris. Eggers…. Jenny Lawson, Irby, Wolff. Read, professionally… I’m thinking. This new year will see a lot let go. All those side goals and aims and ideas.
Reading time today, later…. Notes. Where is that journal Mom gave me…? In the file box. Not using the 1948 pages for my reading log. My new student life. Told self I wouldn’t buy anymore journals, and I won’t. I don’t need to. These thoughts this morning of reading and noting everything has me more than ready for 2021 as an AE. I’m not an AE anymore. I’m a writer. A student. The book nearing its finished form, its identity.
This is Henry’s first xmas, of course, and I can’t wrap my head around that. This new life, in this house, experiencing everything for the first time. The toy he’s playin giant now sings to him and makes that template BOING sound. Everything is new to him. Everything is a first. This new year, I gift myself that. Everything like that and similar, or even slightly distant from it. The repeat of repetition needs to stop. And it does, today.
Time for reading later, starting with the Bukowski book, his entries and letters and whatever else is in there. Free-writing. In letter and verse. Today, one poem and one letter… letter will be to kids. All three. Right now Henry sleeps on his mother, exhausted and drained from the stimulation of watching his older brother and sister open gifts, play with those enormous Power Ranger robots, or robotic tigers. Again, envy his excitement and the newness of everything. Everything is a first sight, new discovery, new music.
Read a Buddhist saying this morning that suggested the best way to defeat the problem is to stop contributing to it. Can’t remember the exact wording, and don’t want to look it up through internet search. In any event and maybe it’s not so much an event but an overdue realization and sight. Where I am is what I did. And if something is not fitting, comfortable, or whatever, then I stop nurturing it.
Kids getting on a zoom with their cousins, me thinking about the wine for today. Should I go to the store or drink the last LE (Lancaster Estate) Cabernet. Use what’s here, I tell myself. Write wine, write more wine… write about the Beringer Knights Valley. What about it… nothing of note, nothing special or especially convincing. But a wine nonetheless. Cabernet, what I see myself making next year should things settle down with covid and even if they don’t I thought this morning during the first thousand words though I didn’t write it – Write a letter to Cabernet. A book-length letter, or series of notes and letter, speaking directly to her.
Feels right for some reason sitting at this desk table I so many times curse and scold. Like me on my beat, wine, in all its codes and manuscripts, tells and places, senses and songs.