Tag: #adjunctlife

autre

excerpt

…frankly, I don’t know, but I do know that I feel I have to stay in the fight for the students, and not let them, the ‘Them’ (deans, chairs, presidents, useless trustee members and all), rob me of my love of teaching. Coming to campus, especially days like today where I can truly move at my own beat and don’t have to teach, still gives me the charge, that thrill that I felt when I taught my first class ten years ago. Can’t believe it’s been that long but it has, and I’m still an adjunct. Have I tried hard enough to be a full-timer? Have I been doing well all these years as an adjunct? I guess I have, to some extent. SRJC still keeps me around and I had the best “review” or “observation” of my career last semester. And, Mendocino and Solano still let me have classes though last semester was my final term for each commute (just too much of a drive, and I think they just let me teach those classes to fill a fucking square, they don’t appreciate me the way SRJC has shown to, but more on that later). I just can’t do that anymore, those drives, time away from my family and now that I have a newborn little girl I need to do this assessment, this manuscript length measurement of self. And for what, I don’t know, I never do when I start something…

autre

Post author By mikemadigan
Post date November 18, 2015
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Behind on novel progress, but I don’t care. I refuse stress after that last assignment, and after this semester.. my next students, next term, will have a bit more emphasis on temperament with writing, and with assignments, more deliberation and meditation before picking up a pen. Being rushed doesn’t make you a stronger writer, and deadlines that are enforced are lines that truly make you creatively dead, so I say to hell with them. Write for yourself, and write what you want to read, not what the course outline stipulates and has been negotiated by who knows who.

I’m a new professor after this term, and certainly a stronger one.. so I write on and play in Literature and my own writing as I never had. These old timer professors, which yes I’ll one day be, are speechless at my boldness– “Oh how dare he, what is he thinking, how can he teach like that?” I do. I just do.

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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.”

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Bonjour….. En fin

Je suis fatigué, mais maintenant je suis éveillé . And I don’t know how it happened, but it did. In a mood to write for Self after a little editing of the Tours article, and helping Jack with his toilet mastery a bit. Saturday at the winery, assured business and a bit of frenzy, no doubt. I’m trying to write faster and with more accuracy, showing you reader what it’s like to be a writing father. Of course, no run this morning from me. and I could scream at myself. Didn’t even set my goddamn alarm… et pourquoi?! Distractions, deciding to open one of my ’12 wines, not sure which one it was as they became jumbled in the move to this Autumn Walk stronghold. Only had a glass, maybe a glass and a half, but still that’s enough to make waking at mother-in-law hour nearly impossible. But no alarm so what does it matter?

6:56… no coffee in house, that too has to change, but I quite like this morning for some reason typing to no caffeine. Depriving myself that heated palate eros.. somehow contributed to my Zen at the moment. Oh if I could have the day to myself, have the time to run and finish these article edits and just write for hours into the Massamen novel. That’s what it is, what it’s all about and around what it ever-revolves: bloody time! Maybe I should run after work– no! Make yourself get up early.. come home, eat a bit, put on running gear, and go to bed. Earlier than Alice, even. That;s what a running/writing father has to do. Jack in front of me in the little chair we bought him, his first xmas, and he’s content in a way I wish I could be at my decayed age. When first downstairs, he shot directly to his seat, placed en face de his little toy chest with his cars atop, serving and looking like his desk or workbench. He meant business, my little Beat, and he wanted to play and watch his fancied cartoons.

Now I wait for coffee, think about the other two articles, papers I already have to grade, running… not much wine, or wine industry.. but the short fiction café, I want to stay longer.. more short-shorts, sketches, vignettes.. just write all day. Can you imagine? Me in my office with coffee and sparkling lime or lemon water as I usually enjoy. This morning I’m filled with unusually dinosauric confidence and sight.. see the blog expanding unexpectedly, writing later to pictures I posted prior (Earlier in day or couple days prior..).. and just writing, teaching through my writing and not in some box, some sterile institution bowl. I’m Mike Madigan. The writer. And yes I have a blog. But am I blogger, I guess.. off point a bit but I need to write something, show I’m alive and with my own beat, peripatetic in my prose pulse, and aims, what I want to do and how I want to be see– right now Ms. Alice goes for her run and my personage falls knowing I should have been up and running when it was dark. I told her that I’m going out tomorrow morning, and I need her help. She joined my cause and vowed to aid me in getting to bed early. So.. I will run. I will run. In that early hour and see the sun take stage… so, so, tremendously musical, its lyric composition, for me to enjoy.

(6/20/15)

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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

autre

Actually Seeing

This morning, oddly rich purply-blue sky, weather on NPR saying possible thunderstorms and I’m not surprised. I had to rush myself out the door this morning and break the nostalgia of what today is, or beings with it: taking possession of Autumn Walk. Like Mom the other day noted, a new chapter. And I listen to jazz and sip my coffee here in the adjunct office– and again I have to make self just write, write! Don’t get held in reflection.. write it down! So.. the meeting with Michael Browne yesterday, what started from a saving of tips with his friend to producing a barrel of Pinot (the last bottle of which I saw on the wall of that magnum room), to now having a serious wine operation and world of his own– will save for later MOCK SOMM article. Today, meeting with students, the 1-on-1’s again. 5 pages due, at least 5, on Tuesday, then draft on Thursday, then final submission well following.
Love this song, ‘Delilah” by Hutcherson. I have to stay in type and reading of my texts and with my handle on the adjunct world and role and reality. This morning in my mail slot in the mail room (surprised they even give me my own, but…), a copy of the “union” paper, a voice for adjuncts or an attempt anyway. Talking about privatization models and how adjuncts are part of that… I’m already exhausted. I’m in a mood this morning to only hone on what I want, and what I want is not to be a part of that at all.. still teach and lecture on Literature but in my own capacity and context, and with my own delights, those Paris Review interviews for example. Baldwin may have to be revisited in Fall, as I don’t feel I took away all that I wanted, I didn’t have time this semester, with the house and the work at Arista and everything else– or I just didn’t manage Time effectively, which has been known to happen. A symptom of being a writer, I’m sure. But I persist in my passion and my prose, the stories.. with another piece published by the wine website, my narrative on not drinking wine to think about its concept then returning to sips.. then I think that if no students show today I should complete a standalone piece of fiction, or even if they do show. Start writing after I talk to them.. thinking of the walk through that production facility and walking on that catwalk, touching that puncher on the rail system.. making wine, making wine that people love and want to drink and want at home with them. Versus living the rest of my life a struggling adjunct… You tell me! What’s the more enjoyable election? And the more practical, for that matter….. I will get my hands on some fruit this vintage and go forward with it, produce it, and I want it to be Pinot.. every word from Michael yesterday ordered me to do what I want and not be dragged around, just do what you want, Craft, create, be happy with your passion and make it your job and if it’s a true love you’ll never hate it (reacting to what one of my 1B students the other day offered, ‘never do for work what you love ‘cause you’ll wind up hating it’.). I see the logic and I don’t. But either way, the adjunct tussle is not any longer for me. I will teach, but there won’t be that dependency, and I’d love to teach just one class, a 1A or 1B or 5– staying critical in my approaches to literature and what I’ve always prided myself on: Onus, and making that writing your own and building your ideas for what you want to state.. one student in the 1B, ‘R’ I’ll call him, showing more vigor and intensity with this project than he has with any other effort this term, already having 7 pages typed! I was humbled and motivated my self.. I want to print! I want to submit! I want to be like a student again! And I say that all the time but this moment’s different.. again, taking possession of Autumn Walk, Jackie not stopping in his growth (his sentences and logics becoming more pragmatic and sharp, and ‘timed’ which keeps the writer ever-alert), and wanting another child.. growing for my family and with them. I’m getting a bit emotional, yes, and slow with sentimentality but I have composure and focus.. oh reader look at me now to this jazz and in this adjunct cell meant to imprison us but I only grow like inmates in hardened facilities.. knowing where I’m going and how I’ll escape..
So.. wine.. last night finished that Reserve Cab from Kunde Family Estate. And the palate withstood the oxygen invasion over the 24 hours since last touched.. nothing compromised or curved.. the coherence of the wine’s sensory scope was still quite anchored and, as I used earlier the word, ‘honed’. I attempted acquiring the constituents of the wine’s process and conceptual edifice, if you would, yesterday from my friend Zach (winemaker at Kunde), but didn’t hear back. And it doesn’t matter. The wine was resplendently luminous in its harness and I’m ever-riled more to make wine this vintage.. wine made by a writer and a writer with more growl and ferocity and spleening virulence than he’s ever had– NO controller or manager or hasty-witted moldwarp owner jabbing at this writer from their bile-posed not-so-ivory tower– EVER. I’m autonomous now and with certain written pugilist complex, which is beneficial, reader! Don’t be mistaken!
I take another glance at the article about the adjunct who was brought into a full-timer’s office only to be yelled at, and want to toss this fucking thing in the rubbish bucket by the door. And my contempt isn’t with the full-timer but with the adjunct, all of them! Why do you let them do this to you? Why do YOU do this to YOU?? No more.. okay, calm down, this is the coffee talking and as my brother Dwight will tell you, I become quite the page-bull when I drink coffee, especially a rattling mediumroast like this.
Wonder if thunderstorms will actually greet us today. I wonder then how that will affect the writing and how I’ll be mood-wise stepping into Autumn Walk.. how.. how.. what will this new Chapter bring and how will my narrative be shaped?
Can’t wait to meet with the students that do actually show. Last Thursday, and on little sleep from waking with little Kerouac, I was brought to elevation I’d never before felt. Especially with.. well with both sections.. but the 1B, the talk with ‘M’ and ‘J’ (whom I call “Mr. Kerouac”) left quite the note with me. That I actually TEACH. That they are engaged and that I am making a difference in their scholastic progressions. Too bad the politics soil it all. Or almost all of it.

Autumn. Walk. The Fall season, closing the novel only to begin a new one, like Mom said, and to ‘walk’, saunter as Emerson did, not to rush– I see great and grandiose significance in this new home, this new book (not so much a mere chapter, I’d offer to my empyrean and sagacious mother). All will become ordered, now, coherence, and beaming with promise. That’s what I was thinking this morning, standing in the kitchen and staring at the red curtain which acts as a door over the glasses and plates that remain, Ms. Alice demonstrating her wonder by having nearly everything packed and prepared for transport. 6:44 now, and I’m eager to see who shows, and who doesn’t and who wants to exchange ideas and what ideas I exchange with them. I’m putting it all on me, the Professor– no, WRITER– no, ARTIST– no, Thinker– no… Now I know.

(5/7/15)

autre

Composition

This morning I expand upon Composition or the concept of and in. Our submission soon due, we should examine the togetherness of our pieces. Me, for example, starting with Kerouac and his need for the story, the Newness, the exhilaration and the stream of stimuli. But all critical and clinical consideration aside, use what’s around you, your everyday day and routine; you never know where you’ll find “inspiration”. Again, keep your eyes open, always, as writers. I know the view may be a bit extremist, but keep a little notebook with you, and pen, and scribble anything you think you might be able to use.. for example, again, Sal’s need to travel, to take off, to be around Dean.. then parallel that I would with the people I see around me everyday in the line, the coffee shop, on the way to work, some looking exasperatingly miserable. This would leave me considering the truest of true intentions one should have in life. Living vs. existing.. then death…..
I’ve said this several time, and I just want to make sure it echoes with you all: REACH with you ideas, don’t dismiss any of them as ‘crazy’– if they are crazy then they’re worth writing down. Dismiss or embrace later.. just write it down.. stay in your scribbles and thinking. The end of the semester is just a couple doors down, not “around the corner”. Composition is about innovation and the writer believing in their ideas and propelling them to page. It’s more than a silly course title. And there’s nothing theoretical about Composition. It’s altogether actual, and right before us all. And it refuses to halt, so we shouldn’t either.

On a note utterly separate, who’s writing for themselves.. any sketches, stories, poems? Let me know!

autre

2day’s story–

6:54, just got to campus. Optional day for students. Thinking of new ideas for what I’m building in being a writer, and putting the novel on hold, or rather having it be my toy truck project. One student in room with me. My adjunct days, or the dependent/co-dependent days of living so are coming to an end. Won’t go off on that and I know you think I will, but I’ll refrain..
The wines from yesterday, and just how I felt driving around, introducing myself and finding new interpretations of varietals and business models.. has me thinking of expansion, and doing something MAMMOTH in the industry.. blogging and tasting and Art and photography.. all of it, and blending it with literature.. saying this wine would pair well with– OOOO!!! Just thought of something else.. have to type it.. “class” if you’d call it that starts in 3 minutes, now 2. Jackie and I up at 2 till after 3 watching cartoons, but I have coffee don’t worry. Told Alice I would sleep between classes but I don’t see myself doing that, knowing me and how much I want to write after yesterday’s RRV mission…

Home. And I’m writing. Posted wine review, see what happens.. think there’s something quite valuable and antagonistic, valuably antagonistic in this MOCK SOMM column.. again, we’ll see. I am tired but I know if I have just one cup I’ll write luminously and with seismic force.. I say that and cringe, thinking of the people in Nepal. How and why does life do that to people? Wish I could fly there, document it to tell there story, and help in other ways. But I know me and I’m certain I wouldn’t be able to handle it; the pain, the death, and the sight of harmed children. Was going to watch a WWII doc the other night and stopped when I saw a baby crying, atop rubble. I felt sad, sick, and ashamed I even saw that pained curvature to its eyes, mouth, brow, arm.. ugh, no more.
And my baby, little Kerouac, up early this morning with his cough and me bringing him downstairs to get his mind away from the discomfort, turning on cartoons. He was much better, more talkative and expressive for it, and we all went to bed for a couple hours following, so I have no regret in what I executed but my body and sight, thinking is affected. I’m slower, and sensitive I notice to sound and how I touch things, even these keys. But I’m sped in my keypushes so I’m determined and strangely comfortable, at Peace with this sitting (on floor, against couch, next to backpack).
Consolidating blogs at semester’s close, my left knee.. more coffee.. a nap.. haircut….. Jackie….. Just a few subjects strangling my sensibility at the moment, and how I discussed this morning with two of my stronger matriculants the contradictory and widely ugly hypocrisy of academia.. more I think about me and my story and role as adjunct I see these pages taking me away, and soon, and the inventiveness must perpetuate.. bottledaux as a company.. ‘WRITen’ as an idea, and the whole vinoLit philosophy I formed in ’09/’10… Think, don’t stop thinking.. brainstorm as I urge the students. When I look at some of their journals and see how heaping they are with thought and just true stormings of the brain, I realize I need to anger my own efforts. Antagonize them. TAUNT them. Treat them as caged cats that only want to fight back. SO I do I will I’m going to.. all day. No nap. Fuck a nap. What would that do but make me dead for an hour or more.. no writing when you’re sleeping. That sure as shit won’t finish a MS.
And back from a distraction. Email, social media, pushing the blog and what have.. So quiet in the condo, and I know I won’t sleep. And I’m not that tempted anymore. One of the social media tributaries is slow, or clogged, simply not functioning but I won’t let it damper. No.. I write on.. and I’m hoping tomorrow at Arista gives me more material on wine and wine thoughts and words as it has since I started. Huh, look at the writer fly across his keyboard. You know what, reader, I will have that next cup, if you don’t mind… And I’ll rise in a minute from this floor. Wine.. wine tasting.. winemaking. With more and more flowering showing up in the vineyards, my wine nears, my Cab. OR Pinot. Shit, what do I want. Why not try Pinot? The chemistry dimension or segment you can find assistance for, with. But how it tastes is my conduction. I’ll again study what we’re pouring and elect what tones I want visible. Yes, I’m challenging Pinot just as I’m sure it will challenge the writer.
Already coming to a thousand for the day and I can’t wait for tomorrow, for the reactions from how I describe the wines, which a better 99-point-something percent take to. And, sometime I instruct myself there, in the moment, in the TR while I’m connecting with a local or tourist on how the wine presents itself that day. Wine shifts shapes, I evermore appreciate and see and think that’s what people forget. “How will this taste in two or three years?” How the hell should I know, however the wine wants itself to taste. Now some winemakers will give you a thought that’s smattered in formula and some obscurely worded prediction (if they have their dictionary or thesaurus or ‘phonics’ book close by) . But I’ve found the wine is more cognitive that we give it credit. And, again, that’s why wine is quite plainly FUN. Why would you want to know what you’re going to get for your birthday, or xmas, or any occasion. Isn’t the tradition of surprise much of what contributes to and establishes life’s allure and cherished chase?
Looking at a picture from yesterday, of the soil in one of the VML vineyards. And I’m not sure, why, just the richness and texture and visual voice.. that image and.. I don’t know, but I’m captured and developing in my survey.. the seen, the scene.. I react and.. and….. I don’t know. Splendor, sense, Art, writing, a story, new ME: NEW MIKE. One I like, or even love. Again, I
don’t
know–

Ideas.. a broadcast in addition to the writing.. just keep writing and working and thinking and capturing..

(4/30/15)

autre

In Adjunct Office

And tired. No mood for anything, even with the coffee posing its puissance.. After 1A go to bank, then to home, and after 1B work around condo.. nothing Literary about the day, or that I can see so far. This morning’s climate and stage brings fog of that blue-brined purple, and the mist away burns like its frightened of all the cars coming to park in the nearby lots. The coffee tells me to toughen up, that it’s not doing its job for nothing that I need to forget all that stresses me and think outside the box like it’s been telling me for years, and like I told myself the other day. “Which box?” I react, “This office? This adjunct office? This adjunct role? This patternized dehumanization? This one? This?” It just smiles back. I get it now, now I see what it wants me to see.
Interviewing a winemaker tomorrow and I’ll take more notes that I ever knew I was capable of taking– I’ll record everything he says and everything I observe and I’ll limit my article to 1,000 words.. four pictures.. maybe a video somewhere else, separately.. but I’m going to learn and step onto his property, that tasting room as a journalist, a wine writer not so much just a writer who loves stories and successes and people who thought outside the box and executed something to their benefit, betterment.. and he’s a dad, of three kids I remember, I believe accurately. Anyway, I’m quite sure we’ll share staunch similarities..

10:03, home, tired, diving headfirst into more coffee and readying myself and my ideas for 1B– the Critical Thinking section where it can only be loved, how they think “Critically” and show their liveliness from page and from their souls. This morning in 1A we explored the plain of career, how we choose one, “what we do now and what do we want to do, and what will that do for us.” I very much participated in this discussion and listened more so to what the students had to say. They taught me, an immeasurable amount about dreams and what brings them happiness and what they want, how they see themselves in whatever ‘career’ they target. I’m finding that work and what we do for a living and how we react as receipt of that career is much what defines us as characters. My interview with the winemaker was cancelled for tomorrow, on their call not mine, but I’m writing anyway.. I will stay busy and get caughtup with my novel.. Right now, I just enjoy the freedom of my writing and the quiet of the condo and seeing myself away from chasing assignments and simply pouring– I want wine to be more than intimately arched in my paragraphs and short pieces, articles or what be–
Listening to jazz and just relaxing in my home, or my home for the next couple weeks or so. The move before us, my wife and I, and so much frenzy and disorder, not of our doing that’s just how moves are I guess. That’s always been my experience.
Still feel like I’m in that office, ‘cause I’m in adjunct mode. And is this what I want, being an adjunct? Yes and no. I don’t want to be dependent. I want to teach a class here, there, and not be harness to this indenturedness.. coffee coffee, where are you?
There.
Made.
But I wait. Don’t want to jitter too fiercely. In fact, I should break from the page, and just relax, listen to the jazz, this track by Steve Lacy.. and daydream. Feel like I always have to be moving and shaking and productivity– the dilemma so human, and so fearful, “Am I using my time wisely?” I always self-interrogate.
I re-read my notes on Baldwin for the 1B, on ‘Down at the Cross”, and expand upon fantasy, and what fantasy is, and how I as a writer and thinker and lecturer want no part of it– no disillusionment, and that’s what They capitalize on, the chairs and deans and whores of trustees, the president.. I won’t let them play me anymore. Wine and Literature.. my life’s remainder, how I want to be seen by my children as I’ve said.. so today’s different, and my mood’s elevated from this morning in that goddamn adjunct cell. This office, this condo floor, on my floor with legs extended, laptop atop, has me centered, in MY Wellness, ZEN’d for sure, and I’m grateful.. I’m poetic, and I’m speaking form the coffee (cup 2 me awaits in kitchen), so so so… Now I jitter, but more a jitterbug than anything, dancing with Grandma as she told me she did long ago with Grandpa.. so much in my veins now and am I vain for expressing so? This is my work, my career and future I write– each moment its own standalone..
Have to get in the shower in 4 minutes, and this laptop dies. Don’t want to stop, don’t want to leave my ideas and this spot on the floor. First sip of coffee tells me to think outside the box and don’t follow your schedule, getting in the shower so you can leave on time and be at Petaluma campus and go over Baldwin and speak to students barely interested and have no urge to be aware of the movement he represents– I shouldn’t say that, not all of them, but when I look at the students and see that annoyed stare at the wall behind me or at their notebook, like they’d rather be doing something, anything, else, and that coupled with how we adjuncts are just tossed, tossed around, into whatever sections are leftover, I fall further into surrender. Oh, and I still haven’t heard from SSU. Of course.
My office is me, the character and these thoughts I carry with me; how I hear jazz, how I react to the day, what I’m needing to say, share through these sentences.

(4/28/15)