6/26/19

Latte.  Still waking.  All lights on in office.  Trying to wake, and committing self to writing in one location.  Not two different laptops, a phone, and who knows how many other journals.  For the moment, set on running at lunch but thinking of having literary lunching somewhere close by.  Why not.  Why not… all the notes from the Field yesterday and how I didn’t really get to go through them.  The caffeine now lands, shifts my momentum in one or another way.  Thinking… wine or writing…. I mean running or writing.  Do I have wine on perception already?  Yes.  Go to bottle barn, get something weird to taste.  Need more weird wines.  More off the grid and just shit I’ve never fucking heard of.  Everyone around me talking about politics and medical history, both but more so latter making me a bit uneasy, queasy.  Don’t listen.  Don’t attach self to the outside.  Focus on wine, the wine, wines I’ll taste later.

Done with project, now with time to self more or less but not an excess.  Resigned to writing at lunch.  Why, just felt right I thought while arranging uniform inventory a minute ago.  Time to self with music in room and door closed.  I need quite, I need still, I need time for the page and the story and where I’m going.  Know what I’m speaking about, more or less, for meeting with speakers.  About not knowing self fully, ever.  Whether you intend or no, self-discovery is ever-perpetuated.  You’re in constant ideological excavation wine teaches me and not only that you never want to know you, fully.  You can have stalwart convictions and still be in this tree.  Believe me.

Backing off of time stamping, for now.  Want my pages to be more “evergreen” as so many say and for whatever I just hate that word.  The way it sounds, I don’t know.

 

Some around me saying how it’s Wednesday or it’s hump day and it’s almost Friday.  A second ago I responded What? No!  It’s Wisdom Wednesday!  The attitude and fixation on days and what day it is, where we are in the week needs to be altered and re-shaped.  Well, if you want to get to wherever you want to be, as I see.  I’m more than awake now, and thinking a run might happen after the speakers gathering.  Why not.  Why not just go out there and see what I can put up, numbers-wise.

Quick coffee break before team arrives.  Most everything done, already.  Starting to taker notes for next week… what questions to ask, certain sales approaches I already have, but more questions that anything.  Be a student again, I tell myself.  We all have to stay students and put off “mastery”.  Stay in the learning lean, something I quixotically appreciated, voluminously, from the wine world.  Writing about work and how everything has a birth, need be cared for, worked on, nurtured, like the vines and even the bottled entity.  Whatever wine I pick tonight for tasting, I’ll translate the interpretive speak for purposes of next week, somehow.

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Wine is definitely communicating with you when all you can think about is a vineyard.  Not drinking wine, or even in a tasting or with some tasting group talking about AVA’s and producers, or what you get from the wine.  Just a vineyard.  And walking it.  One row then the next, then all over again.  Looking through all the pictures on this most recent phone, and well more than half are of vineyards, and if not half then a significant population.

If I were stopped from ever again drinking wine, right now, but I could still walk my vineyards and hold clusters just days before they’re pulled, I’d more than be okay.  It’s the wine, but it’s not.  It’s that rock bed, that tree next to the Merlot block, the view from the 115 Pinot block, Russian River.  Maybe my book’s about the vineyard, thoughts that come from the steps in the rows.  I don’t know, but where I am my thoughts are there, looking at one varietal or another.

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Brentwood, CA.

Lunch for a bit even though I ate on drive down.  Just more time to self, sparkling water and music in this building.  Not bad… café rock with bit of elevated tempo, female vocals, has me thinking of Road travel.  Driving somewhere distant.  Utah, Colorado, Texas, North Carolina, New York.  Saw this documentary about a band, this kind of rock from what I remember, touring all over the country.  Can’t remember much about it other than when they landed in New York for a gig they came alive in a way they didn’t at any other venue.  Tried looking for it just now but could find it.

Need more music in my life, much more.  And there’s already quite a bit, as you might know from reading.  More, though.  Why not more. Why not universes more?  I’m falling into a loving place, more loving, with my character, with who I am as a writer in wine.  Not going for any word count, here.  Just listening to the scene, stage, me, this track.  Work… what I do versus who I am.  Everything now intersects with loving steps.

I’ve only written here like this once, months ago.  Sitting at a tallboy table in a side room, different feel to it all.  My break, my time in the day to take time from the day for MY day.  Postmodern recipe for realization.  Challenging self to write a song while canvassing with team.  One short, but not so I’m at a loss, or someone listening would be saying something like “That’s it?” Like with some wines when you taste and you’re left wondering, “So what am I supposed to think about that?” Wine finding a foothold in my literary and musical life layers.

Vineyard, me in a wooden chair, old, sipping a bright white and remembering the envelope.

6/20/19

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Decided on the breakroom for lunch, not one of those thinking pods.  Not hungry, so I won’t be distracted by food, and I think I’m good on caffeine so no coffee.  Chewing gum I took from my neighbor John’s desk.  Relax, meditation, thinking of this whole envelope to tasting room, or winery, or vineyard story.  Where I am in life and not that I have to plan how I want to be remembered or anything that morbid or depressing, but I’m definitely in the mind of ‘here and forward’.  So, here an forward, putting more in that envelope and not be tempted to ever take anything out.  Touring with my wines and writing people’s reactions to everything I pour.  Other day pouring for those two girls and how their favorites were mine as well and how that one wine brought a decided direction to our interaction.  Wine is not only in my story but IS my story.

The ’07 Dutcher  Crossing entity with which Jesse and I interacted at dinner the other night, telling me so much and reminding me why I am where I am, what I’m doing with wine.  How I want that ferocity and form, character and charisma in the bottles I pour, what I make from my vineyard.  Honestly, I expected something to be off, but the Cabernet thieved its own muse, which gave me a book title idea and shoved me into more wined realization.  We poured, Jesse and I after the waitress poured just a tasting room amount into our glasses, appreciating the olfactory steps from the bottle to our senses and were startled.  One sip, after glass tip where I could only notice a sliver of color decline and I’m still not completely certain I saw any, stunned.  We both were.  We shortly thereafter talked wine business and what we see in our soon-days of wine life. We talked about wine brokering, but that’s not really what I want of course and I don’t think he does either.  The wine spawned new thought, new direction. What’s in that envelope at home, the days onward.

Breakroom where I can’t break.  I can’t just read some magazine, or even the book from Father’s Day I was given.  But then I think of the title, Destiny Thief, and I notice more intersection.  Can barely wait for the tasting room, Sunday.  Seeing that Room as mine, how I discuss all wines, my favorite of course but more, more, more wined story and words.  And they are MY words, even if people take not kindly to them like my sister the other night when she thought I was referring to one of her wines, the three vineyard Zin blend, saying it was reductive.  She said sharply and with stern ire “It’s not reductive.” I corrected her and specified I was addressing the Sbragia Petite Sirah Dad opened.  She apologized, but continued to dispute my observation, which is her right.  I moved on and examined the wine more.  Still, still with that slow musty circular sense.  Either way, like with the two girls from Lancaster, there was an interaction from a singular wine.  That envelope, at home, will bring more of this.  More books, more muse and pages to thieve.

 

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from wine pages

6/19/19

Starting day slow.  Can’t wake up truly or get into some loud creative stride as I want to.  Meeting at 9, then after that literary lunch around noon.  No run today.  Everyone around me talking distracting and disrupting what I’m trying to write but only ‘cause I’m allowing, I get that.  No word from possible department of transfer, and not holding my breath.  And I don’t write that with malice, at all.  I write it with praise, praise to self, and herald of this character I’ve arrived.  Computer keeps doing funny things, I act in defiance by simply writing through it.  Coffee taking a bit of a grip on my sitting and structure as character, but I’m still moving slow.  Has to be the sun exposure yesterday in Brentwood.  Has to be.

Keep self working and writing and working on writing efforts, the book, ‘thought’, till I clock out and even after.  Last night opening the Zin from Foley Sonoma, and I’m more or less convinced it was partially corked.  Not fully, or maybe not at all, but there was something TCA-y, if that’s it, about the wine’s flavor and communicating body.  Have no idea, but it said nothing to me.  Not many wines have been saying much, not much to write, no much to reflect upon.  Just not me, not for me, not for the page.  So what do I do then as a writer of wine, one who says he writes wine and is a wine writer.  I guess do just that—write ABOUT wine, itself.  About her, her SELF.  What wine is in my life, how every time I walk the vineyard, I’m more me and more alive than I am anywhere else, with anything else.  Everyone associates me with writing and the writing act, yes, but wine as well.  And it’s no surprise to me now that I’m waking, that wine IS writing.  The writing movement and sight, composing something to be read, to be studied or at least mildly considered.

Someone yesterday, or the day before I believe, said how much she enjoys my vineyard videos.  How she enjoys them yes but actually looks forward to them.  That my words wake her in the morning when she’s feeling slow or low or doesn’t know how to go about the day.  I thought again, that’s what I am… a wine writer, but still a teacher.  I’m here, I’m listening and present in the vineyard.  Even now, in the office, I’m in the vineyard.  And if I am awarded or granted this new position, I know how I’ll approach it.  Like wine. Sell everything and write everything, speak everything as I do wine. Now I’m awake, and what did it, like the co-worker from Monday who complimented my camera work, MY words and wined thoughts.  This.  Just writing.

Thinking I’ll go to that café down the street—oh shit, if it’s open.  Not sure it is on Wednesdays, now that I think closer.  So where can I…. OH, one of those thinking pods.  Those space age looking chairs or seats by the multi-purpose. Done.  Decided and decreed.  Should start prepping for meeting…. Looked over notes and I’m essentially ready, far as I can see.  40, and learning certain corners and angles, ROADS, all over.

Also at lunch, read more of Destiny Thief.  Book Mom and Dad gave for Father’s Day.  Love the title, and what I’ve read so far is not only very much ME but what I want to see, where I want to go as a writer, how I wish perceived by not just other writers, but anyone really.

The office gets quiet, and quickly.  What reason.  Don’t know.  Why.  Today and this morning, me here thinking of the vineyard and what I want to grow on my eventually vineyard.  Looked in my cash envelop this morning and thought it could start with just that, couldn’t it?  Journal the journey from that envelop to my first vineyard walk of my own blocks.  Cabernet or Chardonnay, or something else maybe I don’t know.

8:33 what the clock says and finally, finally, I’m falling into my writing form.  What I want from the day… to feel more like a writer. Lately just been noting notes in the Kerouac journal or elsewhere, and not collecting them. Just posting them.  And yes… I could return to later, but I haven’t been feeling how I want to feel as someone who shares he’s a WRITER.  Of wine or whatever else.  Write everything I tell myself.  Someone just walking by my desk and outside possibly to walk along the front of the building to get to breakroom, walk in and get coffee or something form the market.  Which reminds me I should put my sandwich in the fridge, there.  Now the latte’s 4 shots are speaking to me.  What are they commanding.  Focus on the vineyard, on that envelop. Don’t take ONE bill from it. Nothing.  See yourself pouring your wines, but more importantly telling and sharing the story of how you got to that table pouring the wines and telling the story of your vineyard.

10:38 and meeting having finished a but over 30 minutes ago I’m ready to go.  Ready for not so much an easy day but one of personal production and precise productivity.  Again I note on the Road to my own wine room, tasting my wines for and with people, the language and story around my wines and their story.  Everything for that Room…. Three wines to start.  Chard, Merlot, Cab.  Or a blend maybe, no Merlot.  Or maybe then my label, tentatively dubbed whoso cellars, or whoso wines.  MY life’s work and story, from that envelop to that Room.  My interest elevates and intensified and even though I’m done with the latte I type like I’m still hitting the caffeine quite fired.

Money.  More.  From writing, blogging… this.  Writing about wine and what wine tells us all to do, and only now at my old age am I listening. Quicker, more purpose and poise, passion and composition.  MY narrative is not just ABOUT wine, but actuated from and for and toward the wine, it vineyards, my Room.

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Tomorrow morning

waking early to write. Brewing coffee now, or about to, and seeing me now. A father. I have kids. They look to me for… something. What. Maybe everything… coffee in front of me. Like the morning. Meetings and possibilities. New pages and people. This last glass, Cabernet, telling me to slow, not be so quick to know.

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