Back from Field, and back in the Field again. Cotati. Taking a couple minutes to me. Typing and not stopping, like I’d urge the students do. Teaching myself to write off my own attitude, and recall older scenes. Like digging in record crates as a DJ.
The tasting room, those first years teaching, then all the shitty jobs before that. Forcing myself to be more obsessed. With the writing, this #professormikey story. And, noting everything. Inventory all acts and scenes.
1 – Drive to RP office
*Mood = tired, eager, frustrated, forcing passion
2 – Working @ Café Noto, breakfast sandwich and sparkling water, espresso shot before leaving.
*Mood = relaxed, revived, more confident in SELF, teaching and writing, wine – books and blog(s) – more favorable shape to character; thinking of Nurse and our dinner last night, the Zin we shared (Orin Swift, 8 Years In The Dessert) – Be more a Storyteller like him, David the founder.
3 – In Field with Johnny G, talking and knocking doors
*Mood = light, no worries, writing in my head as I walked from the 500 block up to the 900.
At a point in my total Story where I final consolidation need be made. Not need, HAS TO. A life or death intersection. This writer, changing everything, fearing nothing. Composition, teaching SELF. Writing fictionally but not, about the vineyard walks, the people that’d come into the St. Francis or any other tasting room and ask their questions.
Making wine my topic. My only topic. For now, at least, anyway. When we’d do those big tastings in the morning at Chalk Hill. New released and varietal workshops with the then-Master Somm, Robert. The last one I think was before fires, or maybe a little after.
Getting to where I have to be. There is no other choice. This is an idea and mind-shape I’ll urge students to explore, try to acquire. It’s more than empowering and valuable, it’s healthy. Loving yourself, not letting self-doubt form and obstruct, build its fucking wall between your heart and the pursuit.
15:31 – Café in Cotati calming me. Mood, jazz-like, grateful, in love, certain that from today on, all my pages and the manuscript formed ELEVATE. Talking to my sister the other night, only minutes after her engagement. Her smile, talking about the wines, us just talking. But what shook me was how at peace she seemed. She was. I thought, I have that, but there are still some parts of the puzzle needing assignment.
Teaching self again, writer more freely, with more pizazz or something. More of a beautiful recklessness. Write about anything… law school and how maybe I should have gone and not listened to that dragon, or been pilot like Dad, the story Uncle Stevie told me recently of Dad decades ago not coming out but staying inside and studying.
My PhD, in literary theory and it’s not-so-academic application and value. I need to do it. I need to be obsessed like the Nurse when she was in school, that story of Dad.