In the Pacific Grove/Carmel area.
Just dreaming….
Can’t think of anything to write.
Not even my meta approach is working.
Goddamn this quarantine.
When
You hear something, turn
to the sound’s place, base, face, trace.
Establish new gate.
1:40pm
Desk. Again. Learned that schools are closed until May 1st. Great. Effects of the quarantine are visible. Loudly visible. Made self a coffee, kids in home school mode in kitchen writing in journals. Jackie writing about the day, effectively reminding me of the straightforwardness of such narrative qualities. Stressed now about business, and the whole virus itself. I need to stay up late tonight as I earlier mentioned… write my thesis on not thinking. Noting in journal, item #11. Been itemizing ideas, a project to itself kind of but more to see how many I can log sans interruption.
“This should be Emma and my art studio.” Jack says. The eventual office need have that feel and texture, voice and creative climate.
Jackie and his mother leave to go back to her school, to get some chords or something for some device on which they’ll do more homeschooling and lessons, activities, ed videos and what be. “Can I bring my journal so I can write that we’re driving to your school to get the power chords?” Jack asks. Love his eagerness to write and how he writes, his style which may be influence by my emphasis on narrative meta, or not. Emma stays with me and sings some song in a silly octave, in the kitchen coloring, or trying to write… she continues singing after a short-spun intermission.
Dream Call
So much to log from day…. Running 3 miles with kids, wife telling me earlier that she wants to as a family thin or get rid of, pull, the weeds in the back yard. Jack and I took the lead, surprised how into it I fell. Wanting to pull everything, work with Jack, compete playfully with him, saying from time to time “JACKPOT”, and he wanting to get a jackpot. Toward the end of our shift clouds move in, rain came, but only lightly and what felt like raise the humidity. Later, before going to store for some quick gets, thunder rumbles that were the most significant I’d heard in a while. I ran back in the house and got both babies, just as Dad would’ve done when I and Katie were little, when there was something to see. Both were exhilarated in a way I’d never seen.
When back, Thunder still playing its tracks for me. And a couple bolts seen. I again ran back in the house to get them, holding Emmie and telling little Kerouac to put on his shoes. Emma distracted by kids from the street riding around the circle didn’t see the flash Jack saw. Today speaks to me, in a new quarantine dialect. Sipping a Little Sumpin’, Lagunitas, and wanting to collect more. This episode in our history, this “pandemic” and the reaction to it. Escalating my value of time, my life… more thunder, write more it tells me. Storm on the page, in life, tomorrow at work working from home in how I prospect, look for new businesses. Build MY business… educating self in my Now and sharing ideas with others.
Letters… will start with one now. Not disclosing name… telling character how it’s been far too long, too much time separating a letter back-and-forth. Of course life happens, but still. I fault myself. I fault me wandering sight and wanting to take on everything I can. In the quarantine, or whatever this is (not much of a quarantine as I went for a run with both babies while they rode their bike, see life differently. When you can normally do you can’t. No wine tasting, no dining out, no seeing friends, or family. Mom telling me that her and Dad want to do a curbside visit. They want to be safe being older I guess, which I want for them as well, and want the kids and me to be safe, I get it. There’s a shift, though. Don’t wan to go over and over the whatever this is in the letter. How are you… What are you targeting? Feel like I don’t know your character as I used to, and even then I should have known it better.
Letters need consist and constitute more of what I do as a writer. One letter every day. And yes, that can count toward the 1000-3000 word aim. Letters…. With the prospective clients as well. Show them that I’ve done research on their company and show, not just tell, or better transport them to my interest in wanting to work with them. ‘Nother baritone throw of thunder…. That means I’ve found something. Cemented conviction.
JACK. POT.
Shelter
Thinking about this word in new view.
1:08pm
Went for long drive around Santa Rosa, then down to Rohnert Park, the up and around the Fulton area by the Sonic office, the to 101 to Windsor. Went to the Starbucks for only a tall latte but with two shots, and one of their little breakfast sandwiches. Need to get out, drive, have air on the face and through the window. No where I can stop, no where I can write and I brought journal with me but nothing scribbled. I just drove.
3/21/20
Stay in the chair.
Force yourself to write, read, even when you don’t want to.
What materializes will educate you.
This… this coffee. Tired of it. Going to treat self to the meanest, most caffeinated latte in the history of lattes.
Back from getting latte and only drive through access. You can’t go inside and grab n go like before. I ran into one of the baristas I know and she delivered this news to me. Was looking forward to going inside for some reason. I shared my thought that the drive-through only dimension doesn’t help with the panic. The barista somewhat nodded and offered a micro-apology.
Back home now and kids are into everything. Feel bad for them. They have been playing outside as recent as yesterday, Jackie and I playing hoops and Emmie riding her big girl bike.
Poems. Write more. This time is more for verse than paragraph, I’m learning. In the moment expression and reaction.
Dialing Something
3/21/20, Saturday
7am.
Starting to lose my composition, composure and character a bit. Calming self down and putting on some clean clothes, brushing teeth, the kids finally somewhat calm (yes, there has already been a crazy spat and exchange, a true fucking show, ALREADY this morning), I am at desk. Wondering how I am going to survive the day. Since nothing is open, the only thing I can reason is working in car. May drive to the beach, and just write, plan for next week which I think will be devoted to messaging IT people, forming partnerships and just wishing people well.
Want to go to Storage unit and get my Lawson book, or download it.
Jack comes downstairs and says he wants to make breakfast, passes through the office area and into the kitchen.
I fix him a bowl of cereal after taking something to recycling bin. Then Emma comes down and wants the same. They play with some Light-Bright (possibly spelled Lite-Brite, and I don’t know if hyphenated or not) toy, talk to each other and tell what the other is making. Their conversation calms me like this entry, just sitting and writing.
I play around on the internet, researching office spaces to myself, one that’s not a co-anything. Lab or other. I promise self that I need log this whole thing, the covid thing and being told to stay in one place like we’re all dogs. Morning, sun barely showing anything yet in day. Look left out my quarantine view. Same.
Emma calls me into kitchen, telling she wants water I get distracted by something Jackie points out about his lite brite and Emma complains that I haven’t retrieved her water yet. I say I’m getting it, and she shouldn’t whine. “You don’t whine to me.” She fires. Good point, I think to myself. We’re all locked up together and any grievance or protest is essentially not so much futile as it is plain useless, and rather dumb.
7:19, and more than a whole day ahead. “Daddy, we’re going to see —– today!” One of Jack’s friends, which means there will be quiet, a writer’s volume in the house. Wait, how come they can leave? IS this shelter order just a suggestion, or is it an actual order? I don’t care, and neither should anyone else. You should work. You should keep moving and use this time to create and fixate on what you want. Shared note to self, obviously. Thought about writing letters to old friends, Dav, Lila, even Mr. Sedaris. How would I do that, and would he even read my note? Sure he’s written daily, thousands of times over.
Left, a small stack of my AE cars on the mantle. Or is that a hearth. When will I be back out in the San Rafael Streets, in that Starbucks writing or looking for more leads. I keep asking myself “When is this going to end?” Then another part of my professing person doesn’t want it to. I need this time to write, be forced to stay in the chair like I’ve told students over and over, semester over semester.
Well now I’m in the chair and actually writing as I should. Emma comes into the office area to work with me. She reads a book to herself, or pretends to. I turn around to look at my little girl, then right again out the quaint quarantine vista, onto the street with the nosy, crazy neighbors. Now I know I don’t want to leave. I start rooting for the virus. Ask it not to kill anymore people, but keep up with the whole fear thing. That’s working for you, I tell Covid. And it’s working for me too, thank you.