with definite and defined mood. Like I’m bored or something– no, like he scene needs changing. That I should write a novel, write something to get me on the road. Guess I shouldn’t be writing when in a mood or funk or what.
In line at Starbucks, long line which only antagonizes it. I breathe, order my latter… some loud blender noise, lady asking me if I’m waiting to order or for order, something she could have figured out on her own. I need to sit. I need music. Need the caffeine and quiet, my own seat. No more crowd.
Will more than likely be a long wait. Adding to it. I don’t allow the addition. Writing through and past it… people around me corralling themselves to their orders, mobile and in-house.
In my writing nook in the office. So much more me with this room, contrasted to the loud and crowded, shove den of Starbucks up the street. Feel like I can’t write this morning. Nothing. Not a note, not a paragraph or even my daily you-sentence. What now, what now… book due at Month’s end. Quiet in here, jazz in ears. Just what I need, but I need travel, more than the coffee, more than any wine. Travel. Seeing. Living. I’m panicking, panicked. How do I write. I literally just asked myself that. Just write. Do what you tell the students to. The students, more writers than I am this morning but I can change that and this mood and the plainness and repetition of days. Plan. Won’t write it. At least not immediately. Soon. Don’t stall. Not at all. Not a squandered second. Write everything. I’m coming out of it. Don’t overthink and don’t think, as Mom advised use what’s around you. What you’re doing. Driving to Berkeley again today. Yesterday with the Richmond-San Rafael bridge out having to go through Vallejo then down 80 and my navigation taking me on some not-so-scenic way.
Need to call about Fall class, if they have one for me. Rather hoping they don’t, if you must note and record what you can. The classes at the JC now begin to run together, blend like dumped paint down a parking lot drain. Nothing hits me, anymore. And when students offer attitude, I get bored with it whereas before I was I guess you could say a bit amused, but ended it with one sentence with not only put me in confident posture, but assured me I was deserving somewhat of what I’m doing. Now, I’m passionate, and that’s it. No interest in grading, no interest in classroom management, only in the lectures I offer. The ideas. The thoughts on writing and what we’re reading, now Sedaris, and journal keeping and contribution.
8:28. No class available, Fall. Can’t say I’m sad or even lowered by the reality. In fact, this mood, IT, is damaged. It shifts in its advance, away from me. It sees me getting more vocal, more entrenched and trenchant in my day, what I’m doing in this office, with this blog and the book I’ll have finished by 2/28. Short month. Short life. The marathon, already here. How do I feel, honestly. A little nervous but FOUR HOURS to myself, to run, be by myself, write in head, see the ocean, be in the immediacy of other runners, only glazes me in affirmation and a creative functionality I’ve not known, ever. So tomorrow, waking at 5, sleeping in running gear hoping such will put this writer in more character to finish with a time I’m not ashamed of. In fact, that I’m eager to write about. 26.2 miles…. Start slow, feel and get sense of morning, surface, air, people around me, me in the day itself. I’m assembling, re-writing morning and me in it. No more of that mood in the coffee line. I have to stop with that coffee stop on Stony Point. Even if I were to have had cup in hand sooner, the mood would be there as there was no place to write and that same clown with the long white cord stretching across the floor to his unattended laptop while he talks to the oddball in the fedora by the window… not my routine. Not anymore. Not attempting to have that be in my morning.
8:34. Lesson for this morrow…. Write through it, out of it. If something’s taken away, add something, yourself. I will. My courses, my books, everything. I will hit 3000 words today. I need it. More than need it. My body and character, here in page placement demands it. Not so much philosophy or psychology, but the Now-ness of what’s here, now. How did I get here, how am I in a position to ask for classes to teach, hoping there’s one FOR me to teach. You can chance whatever you want, I’m seeing and I know I’ve written before.
Mike sees the morning differently, with stark and encouraging contrast, than he did just an hour maybe less, earlier. He works on his essays and articles, notes, some projects formal and others not. He re-writes himself as a writer. Not concerned with any rules or overuse of “I”. Nothing. Today, that day he’d hoped for, where a formula would be disclosed, where a key would be handed to him and if not a key a book, blank, all pages for him to fill. A new table, new lot, new connection to self and what’s meant.
8:41. He’s more than eager for the day to land, approach and antagonize him. He gives himself to the page, solely the pages in front of him. Sip latte, need new topic, a novel, an essay, something. He just keeps writing, he can figure all that out later, he reasons.
Mike relishes and celebrates in and from the singularity. Of where he is, in the office, in that nook in the breakroom which always has seen his own. His office, if he couldn’t yet have his own office. He moves money from one account to another, for his office. How much is rent, in Healdsburg. Probably astronomical. He’d put money away, anyway. Mike could see the table where he’d write, the door, the books on shelf, then the travel, speaking at campuses about writing and if you want to teach don’t be dependent on the institutions. They depend on adjuncts, as long as they know they can depend on them. The need is mirroring, but not. If you don’t have a class, it’s no pain to them. If they don’t have an adjunct to fill a class, they have to move. They have to maneuver. They have to pain. Mike’s temperament again leaps with more luminosity.
