Tag: #adjunctchat

autre

Nouvelle Forme

Trying to grade but the distance campuses won’t upload. Of course, I thought.. even after the semester ends they have to offer their troubling troubles that contaminate not only mood but any attempt to be a more prompt and effective educator for my students. Typing out the business/life plan (limited to 1 page) that I wrote a few weeks ago— more like 2 weeks past.

So far today, breakfast with little Kerouac and now a feeding of Emma, another coffee for the writer and down goes Kerouac for his nap. And I assume Alice will rest a bit, too. Have to write a MOCK SOMM piece for the wine blog, then grade a bit more. By day’s end, everything will be off this desk. Everything… Just removed a couple items to desk’s interior which doesn’t really solve anything but rather put it off, and out of my sight.. which is a victory, in my mind and eyes.

Interruption after interruption, the integrality of writer-fatherdom.

Back from putting Jack down. Two children is assigning me a new style, one certainly more entrenched in micro-pieces, strings of them. All for the end-game, the vision of my family winery here in Sonoma Country— distracted by the clutter on desk. Going to just go on a decluttering mass-execution of all this paper and waste on my writing desk. House so quiet, currently.. antithesis of recent consistencies, but that’s fine as it’s given this writer new pattern and “style”.. Coffee cup empty.

Do I want another.

Dumb question.

Another.

Upstairs Jackie counting the fingers and toes on his stuffed black bear, and then his own, then asking me “You want to count your fingers?” And I did. In such a way promised to provoke laughs. So here I am, ready to write a bit more and use this day to sell writings, blog posts, work with the story and not against it, yes, but as well convince this story of the writing father that it needs to turn when I order it. There’ll be a wine in my tasting lineup that will reflect this time, this new atmosphere just after Emma’s arrival.

Switching over to the grading of papers— See what these JC students submitted. Graded one, now a legion more me awaits… Underdeveloped paragraphs, unsupported quotes and evidence usage.. frustrating. But I grade on, find ways to be creative, make it part of my professor/educator story..

Ordering books for Spring, soon, AND looking for additional instructional assignments, and I know that if I get a couple I could wind up scolding and scorning myself for such, but I think about who I TRULY am, and that’s a writer/professor, not some “wine guy” or some blogger that can only hop in and out of wine’s fashionable puddle. My wife asleep now on the couch down here, next to Emma, or “Sissy” as we more often call her. All I hear are the neighbors’ gonging chimes and some other Autumn Walk characters passing our porchfront, talking about something concerning the holidays. Wind, little rain.

Et donc il va, my new written form.

12/20/15

autre

NaNoWriMo rush

My lecture book out, and I re-characterize self and how I “teach”, and what I am determined to mold in my role as a professor. Forget the adjunct part, completely unimportant and that’s a fucking title THEY gave to me. But this new ME doesn’t accept it… So, the word of the day for us in the class, both meetings, is ‘hortatory’, and of course this is selfish of me as I’m constantly in a struggle to talk my Self out of funks and moods and away from the adjunct tears. But my pedagogy is re-polished and poignant, and encouraging more of creativity than conforming to the course outline and what the school orders us to do. Today I’m a student in my class. I’m teaching Me how to read and write with more onus, more confidence and more pervasive conviction.

Having to stretch but not wanting to as I can’t bring myself from these ideas, this thought barbarian or warrior I am now, at this desk screwed to the wall of the adjunct room.

Out of this office, I have to get out. Walk around.. I need a break, a breath. But I’ll do that after these papers are graded, and there’s not that many of them, or not as many as I initially estimated. And the cold autumn air outside would be good for me, I’m sure.. so, I get up, walk away from the laptop, turn it off and put in bag, done.. relaxed.. getting into professor role, mood and mode, new character new vision new strength.

I never do get out of the office and I finish grading the papers, quickly. So then I start to plan, offering introductory thoughts on Hemingway before we start reading ‘Feast’. I start to feel like Hemingway and Hunter S., Kerouac and Faulkner, Plath and Cummings. I defy everythning and everyone around me, refusing to be minimized in this adjunctedness. So I write on in my lecture book, and write loudly, circled three times, “defiance”. How I hope to be, if I’m ever to have children, and even if I don’t and I only have Mr. Joyce as my knighted nephew, I’ll be what I want to be seen as.

“We have an author,” I write, “that has more conviction than most, but somehow demonstrates vulnerability and a certain sensitivity that’s trounced out by boldness, this masculine paradigm. He writes in discipline as well as in between excesses and indulgences. He’s proverbially aware of life, death, and their unmistakeable and irrefutable interconnection. Reading his work, you can see he admires everything around him, everything and everyone. It’s all material. It can all be on a page. Which is similar to the other authors we’ve read but with this author there’s more intensity. And a stratosphere of more confidence, near cockiness in his compositions. When reading his sentences, try to determine which clauses convey strength, and which deliver a sense of vulnerability. This will help determine who and what we’re reading. I’ve said before that ‘Hem’ is his own genre, one of only a few American authors that have achieved such, I offer. Similarly, Hemingway wants us to experience truth, the truth of where he is, what he sees, hears, tastes, touches, smells, feels, wonders and loves. A soldier on the page, in his sentences and in life, while still visibly sensitive, vulnerable, and dare I direct.. ‘feminine’. Let me know if you see what I see in the Feast. And if not, what do you see, what are you observing? Because, quite frankly, this memoir or novel, or just ‘book’, is all about observation, life and appreciating the day. Appreciating the Feast itself in the savory city of Paris. Prendre plaisir!”

11:49, and my mood intensifies in expanse and confidence. Lecture posted and I’m ready, and I think I know just where I’ll start as this new radicalized adjunct. Starting to feel a pull of hunger, I pack my bag again, Comp Book, laptop, and head for the door. Walking outside I feel like I’ve been asleep, or jailed, both maybe. But I keep walking to my car which is schedule to the C Lot, since I’m adjunct and would have to be on a “wait list” if I wanted options neared to where I often teach, here in Emeritus, which is bloody fucking ridiculous. But I shut myself up, order myself into silence and removal from any negativity. All of it from the adjunct noose to the Paris Attacks, to pollution the Republicans, even the Dems.. all of it. Only sun today, and my writing, my teaching, ME. If there was ever a time where selfishness was warranted for this writer it’d be now. Today actually, on this walk, walking off the wine and the stress, narrating each step… “Write…read…French…run…study…teach…inspire…ME…rain…ink…books…wine.”

autre

comment

The adjunct thing, what kind of thing, a con a soap opera, a mess, an everything and a fruitless nothing pit at once. So I’m stopping. I’m teaching, is what I think, what I tell myself and how I’ll see it. Just teach a class here and there. MY career is writing, and I guess wine, I guess. And blogging, reporting my life to interested and relevant and engaged readers, although modern readers are rarely engaged. But the adjunct wheel receives no more acknowledgement from me. And I will not, I REFUSE, to be one of those adjunct who continues to bicker and complain and form into some argumentative and grieving porcupine in some halfwit newspaper or publication or blog. Life is far too short and since the passing of Uncle Ross I can only focus on life and live for him, for Grandma, for Mo’, for Nana, Aunt Terri, and everyone else who separated so soon.
In tasting room today and run after.. more steps toward total Zen and Wellness and more material, more Life, more to record and report. REMEMBER: talk less and write more. “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness,” Dostoevsky said, and when I don’t write and I don’t have time to write I become ravishingly discontent. I’ll bring a book with me today, more than likely the Kerouac Dreams, and note, certain words and thoughts and characters that come into the tasting room and what they say to the wines they sip and to each other, to use behind the bar. Again, all material, and all for my pages, that makes me happy. The fact that I’m only an adjunct at the JC, and that I have towers of papers now to grade and students coming up with excuses as to why they didn’t have their submission ready and why they need an extension (one of them), in no manner adds to any pleasure for the writer. So I move on, into more writing and into more projects, this ever-written novel and novels and reportings and recordings of what I observe.
I’m not ‘supplementary rather than an essential part.’. I AM the essential. And with this fervor and fortitude I depart…..

(5/22/15)

autre

5/15–

Thinking of Wellness and the notion of practicing it from when I woke which wasn’t too long ago. Only act left to execute is dressing little Kerouac.. keep blogging, all day… Still not totally convinced the teaching blog needs to die.. actually, it’d add to my Newness in adjuncting, if anything.. thinking now that it should stay alive, and keep the posts short! Same with bottledaux.. post post post! All day. More is better, where some see as less being better with their models and modes, and that’s fine, but for me as a brand I want readers to see me as tireless and always writing, ALWAYS!
Will take a fifteen minute break today to post prose to bottledaux, the MOCK SOMM piece I wrote last night. And what else.. just everything and everyone is material.. writing the wine world and what’s in my head as a writer and teacher and how Wellness will be attained– should set up the coffee machine in this Autumn Walk fort.. will find it tomorrow when Alice and I look through and ATTACK the boxes in the garage.. no clutter synonymous with Wellness. Not letting anything or -one under my skin or into my head less they have a beneficial additive for the writing. Jackie needs me now, done with his waffles and we need to leave earlier as his school is all the way across town, now.

At the Starbucks on Yulupa after dropping off the little BEAT, and I listen to everyone around me, many going to work or watching after the kids or just out on a Friday, maybe the day off for them, wouldn’t know what that’s like but I’m doing just what I planned and listen to the salsa music falling on me from the ceiling circles, knowing I need travel for Wellness, and need Newness, never enough, for my Wellness. Didn’t run yesterday as I didn’t have the opening for, and didn’t work out with weights from same reality. I’ll wake early tomorrow morning before work and either run or lift.. so far, just a breakfast sandwich today.. and getting ready and stressing and venting to Ms. Alice as how I couldn’t find a single fucking piece of clothing, not attired peace: Wellness is 90, 95.. no 98% mental and cognitive, and I might even assert ‘spiritual’, and I never say things such. But I realize that my spirit and Wellness rely on Equilibrium of mind. Thoreau said “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” And this reminds me of Michael Browne and when he affirmatively uttered that “blind people can see and deaf people can hear…” There’s more than what greets our senses and when we realize and truly souse our Selves in this scope, more is visible, more is writable, and more is to be lived.. oh, this moment and its value, my Composition book open and me looking at all I’ve scribble over this semester and the one before. I’ll never leave the classroom, but I’ll be free, freer.
9:04, should leave soon to get that early lead in the day. Want to walk away from this café with three posts, so I should give Self till 9:30– writers and Time. We lose, eventually but we can make it difficult for the clock to stop us, or worry us, or have us stuffed in a worrybox–

MOCK SOMM piece posted, now I have to rush this entry.. will do third post from winery.. today I listen, and barely talk, write it all down.. no podcasting, no video.. just pictures and prose.. that’s it… looking for 300 words from winery, from the garden, find the Wellness and ZEN I need for this pageset.. 9:17, and I feel like I’ve already reached a thousand words.. have I? Speed writing and typing and living but all with peace and Wellness and Equilibrium about my lettered shout. Two younger men have their coffees, walk past me then stop to get cream and sugar– who are they, I wonder, and what are they doing today.. where do they work? What are their dreams? Do they alway want to “get fucked up” as one of them, the one with the red hat and holstered knife to his belt, just said they did last night. Now they talk about a friend who just got fired, “They took all his shit,” he said to this friend that still waits for his coffee. “Did he call his union rep?” the other said.
“No. It’s all fucked up.. his hand’s not even healed..”
I imagine the story and what they want to do and what happened to this friend of theirs. Reminds me that I need to be, MUST, be self-employed, by these writings and the scribbles and the lectures.. literature.. came across the Poe quote from ‘Red Death’, where he narrates “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”… The workplace, the Man, the Devil, continues to show itself as death to me, never having our lives in consideration, or at least substantial consideration. “I feel bad for him, fuck…” the knife kid says before they both have their cups adjusted with the cream sugar and whatever else. Exeunt.
And me as well. Nearing departure time but I don’t want to rise from this chair and I think I deserve to be late a couple minutes as this morning and the move and little Kerouac even have all decided to challenge me. But I’m calmed in mind, quieted musically in my epicenter, no quakes, no tremors, no disruptions. And this be what the writer takes to his day.
Fulfilled.. oh this pouring of Time into my advantaged cup.. calculated, a bit yes, but mostly lovely chance. In no box, this writer, and the day’s lesson seems to be all with Wellness, and how I pocket it and write it and have it recorded into my foremost functionality.. Namaste.

Not bothered, by a
thing, no, I just stamp and stamp
and affirm no– each