to open the laptop, so I’m typing on my phone. Thumbing. This isn’t fucking writing. I don’t even know if it’s thumbing. No TV. Tuesday through Thursday, the trench as I call it this semester, I’m not a fan of human voices. Don’t even think my own. Or anyone I admire… what if I had the power to make talking around me not possible Tuesday through Thursday. Or, I just couldn’t hear them. Or, I vanish to some Stranger Things dimension but without those ugly fucking monsters. And sun, there has to be sun. And a lake, a writer’s cabin by the shore, it’s always a warm agreeable spring, and wine. Like this SB I’m sipping on the floor, legs out and crossed. No voices. Not even my own. I can’t talk. Just write. I’m selfish I know, but it’s because I’m a writer, and a teacher. “Teacher”. I think I teach. Too moody and sluggish, heavy and not-poised to think further of it. Yes, I would have so much of this Aperture Sauvignon Blanc that I would speak its language and only hear her. What is she telling me to do now, right now, with tonight, this floor… Nothing. Enjoy your lazy, laugh from your mood, and don’t mind other voices or anything. You’re allowed time to YOU.
Not at Sonic today..
Driving back from Sacramento area. Ready to connect with projects and have the most prolific and powerful week, EVER.
Not to
Write about waking at just after 3 from wind.
Driving in mostly dark to El Dorado Hills.
Sipping latte, will need nap later.
May not go into work tomorrow.
New diet starts today–
No dairy, no carbs, no alcohol, no sweets. The latte I’m sipping, the only clemency. Any latte, forgiven. Moderate meat consumption.
2017 all over again. Couldn’t believe that wind. I feel bad joking about it, that it wouldn’t come, that the news was embellishing. Can’t beat myself up. Heard Soda Rock Winery is gone…. Want to move.
PIIE
Poetry. In. Is. Everything. Wrote a piece while standing in line at the Starbucks down the street. What I bring here with me. Last night in class talking about destiny and future, what we will be, how we get there… and blocks to getting that. We are the blocks, often. Or rather, we allow the stalls and falls, the walls that we see and have ourselves sold are there.
No run today. Want to make sure right foot is okay. Hurt a little on run yesterday, but not obtusely or loudly to the point where I had to stop. The heat stopped me, obviously. Can’t think of what to put to page, or what to do with this day. Feel self getting a bit sluggish and deflated from the day-to-day. Not complacent or numb, anesthetized in action, but wondering how to change pattern and habit, here. What…. POETRY. In every bloody thing I see. Thinking of that Plath interview I played for the 1A section, and myself I don’t know how many times, where she said that someone can write about anything with an informed and I think she said free mind. I know what she meant, or I think I do. And my former student Amber, now posting so much about Plath, I’ brought back to origins, initial intentions with my writing life.
Look left, she’s on my shelf, with other literary beacons, instructors. I’m looking to them as to what to do, next. How do I approach today differently than others. HST would say, Just get out there and take a ride, you already got the ticket kid…” Something like that. I can believably hear his voice saying those words, same voice as in one of his interviews.
Wrote quick piece. Haiku. Student messaging me if she has to type her reaction or write extensively in journal. Have to grade that stack as well, the 1B section. Power may go out again today, I’m honestly hoping class is NOT cancelled. Want to write a lecture for today, speak it…. POETRY. In everything.
Goddamnit, get up earlier. If could have two hours of writing before the day even starts….. Do. Not more thinking. Poetry is about thought, NOT. Poetry is about reacting to your immediate scene and sight. Where you are, what you’re perpetuating, actuating. Don’t see myself getting knackered by such a practice, with all I want to do and how I move and how I assume all projects and beats.
Deke myself out of pattern, usual steps and jigs. First no more caviling. Step, celebrate, speak, make a verse of each sitting and step. Think of the reciting at North Light Books, or in Berkeley when in graduate school… quitting prose, and if I do play the paragraph parade it’ll only be free entry, nothing of stoic structure or stance.
Mood gripping me but I’m parrying its kicks. Like Dad said, “At my age, I can’t afford mistakes.” I, yes younger, put self in same mind. The same thinking and philosophy. A kamikaze is ME.
Behind in my NaNo
project. Have to write tonight…. Begging the story, my story, to make me write tonight.
Soon leaving for Corte Madera. Opportunity for new business and speaking Sonic, and have people be aware of me and my words.
Latte at home, fans still going drying out the ceiling from upstairs leak. Surprised how that happened, a bother, but teaching me more into homes and real estate, how homes are built and properties and their value… someone’s home, the beaming gravity of such.
I’m not too old for new interests and pursuits, no?
4:40.
Possible power outages. Everyone talking about it. If it happens, it happens. Just my mind about it. Getting a beer after this, then class.
Going to send my EOD, and possibly leave early. Just thinking about it, at this point. Wonder how life will be affected if the power is out for several days as some say might happen. Not worrying about it.
Checking schedule, when I can write…. Daily word quote still enough under 2000 words that I’m in an eased writer spree and breeze.
Alone in bullpen. Trainers gone, my AAE partner gone. And nothing really to write.
How ‘bout a walk. Use restroom. Walk slow.
Now back. Nothing to write and feeling anxious. But what would I tell my students. Of course, relax and don’t force it. IT, whatever IT is, will find you.
Another thousand for nano book. Still want another thousand to bring me over 3k, but we’ll see. Reasoned I’ll let students go early. Get something to eat, soon. Finally going for a run tomorrow, at lunch. Tech event in the city tomorrow…. Will do what I can in terms of connections and “networking”, whatever.
6:03. Head to campus in a bit. Need a wine to pair with dinner, but I have no idea what I want. Smell garlic, or garlic fries. No, garlic bread. That has to be bread. Thinking Chinese food tonight. Or Mexican. Ugh…
Need new dimension to novel…. Be more wild when writing it. It’s fiction, I have to remind self. Make the character uncomfortable…. Or, make him, hmmmm…. What do I do. Not going to overthink it. That’s best way to get me to do what I always do and that’s abandon the project before it’s really or at all left ground.
Tomorrow’s run needs to be at least 7 miles. Haven’t run in a bit, doing those fucking HIIT classes, but I think I can. If I can hit 8, I’ll see self as back in shape. MY measure, my standard, wrong as it might be.
Still Morning
Coins, eye blinks first when
another plan another
laugh. Pocket all lights.
Something else in mood.
Leaving all clouds and dark in
the furthest distance.
9/4/19
9/29/19
We learn through our moods, which ones we want to keep, and which we which simply shed. Just get rid of. Of course you’re expecting me to say “Write it down.” Well, yes, but not right away. Take your time, just for a second. Slow the approach to page, think of where you want to be when the entry is done. Right now before class I don’t think about class. I enjoy the movement across the keys, this entry, this Now right here at this table in one of my most frequent writing spots. Didn’t want to come here, to tell truth. But I thought why not, go with what you know. With writing it’s sometimes the beauty of Newness but as well sticking to the beat you’ve kept.
I share ideas that encourage freeness and essential lawlessness in writing. To shed convention and get out of the curriculum coffin, but as well know where you want to be. Envision your arrival spot, the state you want to paginate. Writing is form, but it’s form that you form, that your prescribe.
Write the mood down. Whether it be awesomely optimistic, of a little downtrodden. What do you want to retain, what do you wish release? Trust yourself and fear nothing, create and compose in crazed ways. I do teach English, but I don’t. I’d rather not. I’d rather just emphasize and punctuate my simple aim of, ‘just write, and write more freely than any teacher has let you’. Writing can’t be taught, and that fact that some of these “teachers” think it can, puts me in a mood. Just move the hands across the page, enjoy your sitting, enjoy your movement and your words. They are yours, no one else’s. They can’t be, even if plagiarized. Chase Newness, embrace your Beat and re-write when you wish.
Teach yourself
to see more elevating promise in regular moments.
Scribble, not type, how you got there.