Census

Up still.  Moving still.  I started my 4am story, the pages sequencing from this day forward with the antithesis of control.  Going to get coffee.  First expense of day.  Moving money around, toward my business, and this blogs & chapbooks idea.  Today, back in Berkeley.  Hit a bit of traffic on way back to Sonic but time highly utilized for meditation, thinking of all the projects I now have hovering over me.  Was contacted today to possibly do some wine industry consulting.  Am raising rates, as the questioned project is outside anchoring sight of mikemadigancrEATive.  I’ll see what happens.

In adjunct cell, nearly caught up on everything.  Thought I was much more behind, but apparently I’ve been as tireless as I boast in these posts.  I am axiomatic and pragmatic, to some sense.  Just a couple notes for class, so far.  Tonight I’m keeping simple.  A think tank, blended with open mic attributes, associated with just newly generated thoughts and journal readings and who knows what else.  Making a master list, a new one yes, of all my projects.  I’ll inventory which ones I hit day to day, or try.  6:17 and need that coffee.  Need to write whilst I teach and offer my ideas.  

This morning being at gym— or let’s start with waking, alarm playing its odd tune looped at 4am and me sitting up, rubbing eyes and forehead, saying to self I can go back to dreams for just a bit.  Then a commander, a sergeant of some sort in my character ordered, NO.  Don’t you dare.

So I didn’t.  I dressed, laced, grabbed wallet and phone and earphones, keys.  Out door by 4:06 I think.  At gym shortly after and on tread at 6.2 speed before 6:30.  I had my eight miles, and when done, I walked over to friend from Sonic, Mr. Abraham, who was in the corner jumping rope like an over-caffeinated rabbit, so precise and so quiet in the swings and diagonal throws with the rope and his hops coupled.  We talked for a bit, and I headed home.  Paused in the parking lot as I hoped to.  Smelled air as I saw myself doing last night when I thought about the walk back to car after 8, if I hit 8.  And I did.  Warmer than I thought it’d be.  When home, sparkling water and look at oven clock.  5:52.  All that done by 5:52.  Before six.  I have to make this habit.  Religion.  I said to myself sipping the bubbled H2O like I’d been lost somewhere remote and had only dreamt of thirsty ending the entire time.  

Now I’m here.  The typing helps, and I know the coffee will fully bring this writer back to his lively literary life.  Need cinnamon in it, anything to keep me in my character’s code and courting till home when I open that blend from Napa.  Or do I want something else?  Do I have anything else?  Need to budget for a massive wine purchase.  Talking about wine wakes me as well.  No surprise.  Very much now up, flying over these keys and laptop and to all walls and borders of this shared adjunct office.  Over and over, going over the morning.  The alarm, tying shoes, drive there and back, the water, and me now after the eight miles, over twelve hour past.

10/11/18

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I’m awake and working out.

Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.

Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.

Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.

Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.

05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.

The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.

05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.

Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.

05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.

05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.

Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.

Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…

10/5/18

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A Meeting

Now home.  Today, sent me.  Somewhere.  Not sure where.  This is more than work.  This is more than a job, Sonic.  The place where people walk around smiling and talking with each other, where they smile and greet each other and fall into a joyous back and forth about everything.  I won’t get comparative, promised I wouldn’t do that in this sitting at day’s end.  But today, did something.  After my EOD meeting, on several worlds and ancillary topics, a conversation which I was more than merely invested in, I hurried on into the rest of the day and onto campus to give my most kaleidoscopic and axiomatic lecture yet, I think.

Sipping from a bottle Thomas gave me, and I direct further toward and into this meeting with self, me here having an inward conversation, hoping to come to some sort of useful singularity but maybe I won’t.  Maybe this is just for the sake of exploration, for setting sail into some new thought stream. Where I’ll land.  Not sure.  And why do so many focus on destination?  I know I do from time to time but even still sometimes we just need to relish and have internal dialogue and mediation on the trek itself… the voyage, the journey.

If I do manage to wake as early as I’ve drawn, tomorrow, I’ll work out while writing.  Down here, downstairs, living room, in dark.  And if one of the babies wake then I guess I’ll deal with it, I have to.  A 90 minute workout, all core-honed, what I’m hoping for.  I still feel Sonic’s office around my senses, all five, and the eighth, ninth.  This Italian red proposes something different, as it’s something different in my usual sip pattern.

So I keep with kaleidoscope’s shades and telling.  Don’t need to be yet privy to destination.  I’ll get there…. I will.

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Sonic Jot

Next day, the second where I feel like I’m on a rocket ship, just ascending and appreciating altitude.  Third day of victory, of production, producing, feeling my life and creative tide just going and rising and taking me with it.  On lunch now, peanuts and a ginger ale I bought from shop.  Stomach still a bit uneasy from that vegetarian burrito, yesterday.  Work today is more than enlivening and exhilarating.  I did feel this a couple times in the wine industry, but with no consistency.  Can’t remember the last time at Roth I had three consecutive days of pure life and topic ownership.  My story becomes its own storm, now.   Its own Now.  In this large warehouse-like quarter with Sonic everything all around me and everything that Sonic embodies, from the communicative facet to people just visibly enjoying what they do.  I’m definitely space-bound.  My work is no longer work but something that’s redefined and redrawn and re-purposed my literary purpose.

Walking someone through the office and into this break arena earlier, I could see the amazement and disbelief in her facial shape.  How the company encourages its people, how the “employees” are more so investors and partners, family members to the immediate and distant motions.  All motions overlap and intermingle, creating a creative concurrency.  Their own currency to be exchanged and interchanged…  I notice my own face change shape, sitting here.  Taking another sip, not needing any real lunch but just the snack I have and everything on either side— left and right, 12 and 6.  All these corners and visuals decide on magnifying my manuscript’s physiology, writing new one for this writer who anymore writes about work as he’s embedded and invested in work that binds to his moral and ethic etch.

I’m horribly saddened, honestly, when I hear of people going to places they hate for work. Of course someone could ask, “Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Yes, an easy question to ask, but not so easy to answer or attach any formula.  It’s not that they do anything to themselves, but haven’t found their pages, haven’t landed in their story.  What I recognize, appreciate and further analyze in my sitting here is that only now do I see.  Did I find not only a home, but a topic.  A book, and another one.  Me, a writer, literary guy, beatnik from the wine industry, now more fiery and eager and moved to words.  AT A TECH COMPANY.  But this isn’t some simple tech company, or start-up or wanna-be startup village.  This, here, the creative is basal, inherent.  Expected.  Sonic, like a university hopping around in exponent climates.  Here, you’ll hear people say how they write everything down.  You see other writers here, other thinkers, people seeking to enjoy where they work—  More than just “enjoy” it.  Live it.  Be it.  The IT, to it all.  What they do, yes, but more who they are. That’ how I see myself.

My story just arrived.  At 39.  Late?  No.  Lovely timing.  If anything, it’s more than punctual and optimal, just before 40.  This place has me forgetting I’m 39, if you should know, and you should know if I’m with your attention.  I just fixate on the day, whatever project to which I tend. The company’s name, Sonic, denoting and connoting sound, and speed, something audible, and then I think of course of music and being a literary bloke hear Kerouac reminding me that the only truth is music.  Here, in the break room and in the office proper, between enclaves and hamlets of encouragingly and electric and eclectically adorned cubes and desk, you hear it.  See, feel, then a sixth and eighth sense.  Someone you acknowledge or you think you do adequately but only know you’re there, in it all.

New writer, new vision.  New understanding and embrace of purpose.  I am writing a book, about this place.  More than a place but a dimension, a warp of time, timing.  Forgot about the ginger ale, peanuts.  Hearing co-workers talk of their projects and ideas while on lunch.  They don’t talk about any TV show, who’s dating who, where they’re going this weekend. But work.  WORK.  It’s not work. It’s more than passion.  It’s creative escalation and an impassioned saddle of axioms and projects.  Seeing each day as its own book, not just a chapter.  This is not a new chapter in my life but a new life, a new armada of books I’m about to write.  This day— what would it be about?  Learning, something new.  Spreadsheet.  Yes, me doing spreadsheets.  I was deathly afraid of them, before coming here, and up until yesterday still quite unnerved at the thought of toying with rows, columns, cells, formulae.  No longer, though.  My self-certain, assurance and general fortitude eclipse any anxiety.  Moving at a speed I’d deem supersonic, frankly.  And I don’t see myself working, I don’t.  I see the growth and the metaphysical and ontological model re-write itself over and over, from this company’s thesis. New song, everyday.  New chords.  New opus offerings and new interpretations of everything around me.  And, again, spreadsheets are part of this paragraph, part of this elasticized praise for where I now sit, in this lunching province. 

Stomach, solved.  Today did so.  Cured me of whatever that restaurants plate did.  And I forget it, universally.  I’m made more healthy and assembled as a writer in tech’s clef and step.  Anything past workplaces instilled, left, far in days behind me. Today’s book, then tomorrow’s, where I’ll be at Month 6, and yes I have a specific aim and tangible destination for such.  Never did that with wine’s world. I didn’t need to, as no such thought was ever invited or encouraged. The culture of not only writing and taking notes here, but education both from self but colleagues makes me feel like I’ve discovered some cryptozoological wonder, asking myself What is THIS? and Where am I?  Imagine that, being not merely in love with where you are, what you do, where one works, but seeing yourself as healthier, happier, more composed as an immediate consequence. 
10/3/18

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At school and tired from dinner.  Just a vegetarian burrito but still feel a bit of a food-tuned slowness coming over me.  I ignore it.  Chew gum I bought in cafeteria.  Have books with me for night but not sure how long I want to stay, to be honest.  Just talk to them, tonight.  That’s all.  Just talk to them about their Plath observations and thoughts on their essays.  Not planning anything tonight.  Nothing.  Everything on sight, on spec, in the moment, bottomless from the bottom of my mind.

Couple minutes before 6:30.  Long day, but not really.  Woke just before 6 with Jack, started shaving and didn’t have to iron any clothes so I was ready rather readily and with speed that doesn’t show most weekday mornings.

Want tonight’s class to be exciting.  Theatrical.  I say that a lot, “theatrical”.  How about animated, interesting or engaging.  You know what I mean.  You know what I want from tonight’s session.  Yes…. Rubbing my eyes… UGH, I think, Why did I have that burrito?  Focusing on moment.  My stomach has 30 minutes to digest everything and lose this full feeling.  Phone sounding, reps still in field, doing their thing, canvassing.  Feel bad I’m not there with them but I have to fulfill this, this obligation, this last semester.

Feel me get into professor mode, what to say when at class’ front, facing all the registered characters for the class I’m meant to “teach”.  Work… make it your own.  Don’t look at it as a task, but what you’re made to do—  NO.  Who you ARE.  

Have so much to grade and the stack keeps rising, heightening its attack and talk.  Another swarm to land tonight.  Life of a teacher, adjunct professor or instructor, whatever they want to call me today, this week.  How is it that they decide?  How is it that anyone or any institution or company can call me something, give a title or identity without me signing off?  You might say, “You did when you took the job.” Okay.  Though, I never agreed to a title that’s ever-changing, and I never agreed that anyone or any THING can decide when to change it.

Day catching me as it nods into night.  Feeling a bit more awake.  A bit.  Part of me does want to get coffee, but that will harm sleep.  And I’m going in circles in this quiet conference room and wasting me time to self, this time to build and collect and prep if I choose to.  I don’t.  I leave the day’s page blank and we as a class will fill it.  Idea by idea.  That will be our collective prompt.

Feeling like a professor now.  One who will be teaching independently by semester’s close.  Tell myself to stop thinking so excessively and I do.  I stop and just write, not in the Plath book.  Tell myself which quotes to offer but then retract as that’s a promise, a plan, a step back.  I just walk into the class being me, lecturing on writing and reading my loved author, and how they see her.  What’s their assessment of Ms. Plath and what she notes and narrates through her contemplative turbulence..

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Rest of day, getting certain spreadsheet things done, then sending emails, writing more ideas, journaling everything.  Recording everything.  Writing EVERYTHING down.  I do have to smile that a tech company helped me become, and I will say, more of a writer.  You never know.  You can be surprised.  Don’t judge.  Tonight in class I’m going to go through readings with students but I want to focus on some other creative prompts, write more, discuss things more.. how to write more… how to write more consistently.  Why write at all?  Why be here at all, in an English class?

Back at desk in ten minutes, stopping this current paragraph set in five, now four, minutes.  Learning from the day and my time here at the office new, how to do everything differently.  The wine industry could never do that, many opportunities as I gave it to teach me something new and give me some new path or some new assignment.  I’ve learned more in the last month dealing with wine outside its industry, about wine itself and writing about it, than I ever did while in the tasting room.  I have to laugh.  Tech now, writing, still into wine and in wine, in wine’s stance, thinking about what I taste and eager to sip from bottles that I’ve never before heard of like the one last night Thomas gave me as an anniversary gift of sorts.

Pulled into conversation.  A nice one with director of sales.  Never in the wine industry did I have days like this, anything like this, where I’m learning at every turn, in every convention, in all my blinks and breaths and turns of head.  What do I write about… I think work, now.  Work.  Not “productivity”, not “health”, not even “education” or knowledge, or philosophy.  Work.  Doing what you love.  What you want to do, as you have a singular set of time to do it.  And you don’t know what that time expanse is, what it entails.

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10/1/18

New month and new challenges, new invitation.  First month, Q4, and for me everything is in a poetic synchrony.  Breakroom writing which I haven’t done in some time.  The whole day with projects, an interview with a new candidate which I thoroughly enjoyed, emailing someone in company with new idea, and more ideas, more, more than lily going to have to come here early in A.M. to catch up on some addresses as my laptop, the work one, not wanting to agree to do anything this morning.  I’m mean to be here, in this chair, in this big lunch room, sipping coffee and not needing to eat as I finished the rest of the sandwich wife made for me end of last week— actually that’s a lie, I didn’t eat any of it last week, forgetting I even had it in the fridge.  I felt horrible and swearing to self that I’d today eat it, hoping it’d be edible, not molded or gross or off in flavor dote.  And, it was perfect, just what a writer needed to have this sitting.  Writing at a tech company.  Am I a tech writer?  I guess, in some form.  Well, now maybe yes.  Yes I am.  I’m in tech, coming from wine and education, finishing out my last semester at the JC then setting everything, all efforts and projects and proverbial promises in this basket.  All new axioms enacted.  Both journals at my left, new thoughts let to beget here on lunch hour.  Not sure when I clocked out.  Not certain how much of the hour I have left.  Who cares.  Know I have till 1.  Which means, 38 minutes precisely.

Was supposed to have lunch with new friend and co-worker in other department, Abraham, in the “MDU” division.  Take him to lunch actually to thank him for all his kindness and help this past Saturday, at the event.  But he didn’t know that was today, or that I wanted to take him to lunch, something lost in the translation and delivery of my offer.  So, Wednesday, two days from now we lunch.  I’m actually grateful to the craft to Craft it worked out as it did so I can write.  And now, in the field, now more eating out.  That lunch I had in the East Bay, Saturday, at the BBQ place on San Pablo was messy, too expensive, non-flavorful, and just upsetting.  Should have had a sandwich at the Subway in front of which we parked.  Btu no, I had to do that.  No matter.  Now forward, I write.  I’ll find somewhere quiet and jot.  All specifics.. who I canvass with, what new I learn of the company and the product we offer in field, about me in my role, educating the reps, and new reps that come to the company.  Now, I’m writing, I’m doing what I do, ME, who I am and what I do but more who I am which is what I do.

Teaching tonight.  Nothing prepped.  So what.  And, no wine tonight so I can wake early tomorrow and put to blog an enormous number of pages.  And obnoxious slew of page-storming.  More of that from me, now, here, and because of here at this office.  Technology isn’t technology, at least to me.  It’s relating to the community, connecting people, service and in a way the wine industry only boasts it is but never really embodies.  No nugacity in my being here.  Everything is significant, significantly sown in new Newness, new significance.  Two journals on right, me jumping from one idea to the next. W hat this place does to me.  Tomorrow morning I’ll wake earlier than early, and do something, get me closer to my end-Road here at Sonic and with my own projects.  I’m not promising, I’m affirming I guess you could say, adamantly affirming my affirmations, inward and outward then back inward, inwardly.  Coffee, bag, guys over there playing video games, me here writing which doesn’t make me anything, I’m just a writer in a technology pond.  I’m humbled and welcomed and fascinated by the contrast.

No poem written today. Still have to finish the 52-line piece I made loud advancement in the other day.  Blockage everything out, forcing self into hallucination where I’m deaf, only hear the keys and some jazz, jazz… I need some but don’t want to play any as the fight agains the noise around me is colorfully stacked in reward and gems philosophical.  Catch myself overthinking so I look at the first sentence… no poem written today… I’ll change that in a minute, in the closing frames of this lunch break.  Everything in this room is poetic, a form of poetry and poetic narrative, music and song, jazz, a jam session of sounds and the people in my head, audience, hearing everything and moving their heads forth, back, smiling, then I smile too right in front of everyone here and don’t care if I’m observed.  This new job, how it has me thinking, how it has me moving more poetically-intoned and intentioned than even the SRJC or any other campus.  People in and out, debating over what to eat for lunch from the fridge, talking about their dogs and how they have to fill bowls by their cubicles for their fur-amis.  More leave, the others keep playing their game.

Snacks at my desk, so I’m not tempted or tampered with by the chips and cereal, whatever else is in this room with me.  Solely coffee.  Talking, about work and other, this conversation and that—  A poem hops into my head, want to write it down but then I get another idea.  The office has me furious and lovingly frazzled with pages, ideas for story, more stories, what I want from life and my own story.  Nearly didn’t make it here, and I won’t be doing this come Wednesday.  But I’m here now, I tell myself.  What am I looking for, from this job, from this office, from this internet service we take to communities?

More sittings like this.

More of this. 

ME, here.

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Interesting place to write, this morning. 

0c7912a9-f190-4f4f-8b7b-b781b33bc8ab-6321-000003e349dc6a68_fileWhile car’s serviced at place I found on Piner.  Not there, but at Epic Center, or is it Epicenter…. Either way I’m here with a 4-shot mocha and laptop seated at tallboy table, with vent above me but not blowing on me thank goodness.  Need today to be a center of epic quality in my story.  Guy said car wouldn’t take long to be tended to.  So I expect this sitting to be interrupted which is fine.  Going with flow, more or less so today.  Writing daddy finding time to write after taking kids to school now that’s schedule’s changed, having Monday and Sunday off which I prefer anyway as to have time like this.  Seated in unexpected place, writing, gathering and assembling self before day leaves ground.

Below this paragraph, this new thought if it’s even a coherent, autonomous thought, I type notes for the meeting today, class, reviewing essays.  The workshop, but I want today to be antithetical workshop, not what they’re used to.  Past couple days or so I’ve been thinking about me as a teacher or professor, how I view writing and how I read, what I hope for students to take away from every meeting, and how that translates to my new life in tech, in the tech world and working with internet, in business.  Everything begins to intersect before me, musically, and like Kerouac said, “The only truth is music.” If this is musical, it must be truthful.  I know it is.  Before class, I’ll lock myself at some point in my home office, arranging books, looking through old notes, amplifying the professor-Me.

Last time I came here, during its normal operating hours, was with Jesse, one of my best buddies about whom I’ve written a few times.  Guy who was on my roof last October hosing it down do it didn’t catch fire from all the falling embers and little flaming pieces and bits of homes around that weren’t as favored.  We came here and bowled, had beers, walked around and watched people play games, talked, then had some more beer and walked back to my house.  Seems like forever-forever ago, and I just think about time as I always do.  Setting plan for today, trying to get ahed of time.  What can I do?  Nothing.  More and more I’m old, older, but I don’t feel it.  How do I reconcile that?  Maybe I don’t have to. Maybe I am where I am, where I’m supposed to be, like my friend Tasha agree a cosmic intersection. 

Hard to believe I’m writing here.  Epic Center—  No, it IS ‘Epicenter’.  Oh well.  Doesn’t matter the name.  I definitely didn’t see my morning going this way, writing here, a place where I usually only visit when wife and kids are away and with Jesse to bowl and beer, and maybe play some game, something.  After this, thinking a drive somewhere, write somewhere else random.  OR, should I go home and arrange office.  Re-take the office which has recently been overtaken by the little beats, where they leave toys and sweet little drawings for me and their mother.  OR…….  Do I go to that collective crush pad, watch the winemakers and fruit come in, document what I can, be more of a wine writer than I ever had, just play around and fiddle with visuals and writing ideas like I do when here with bowling ball and beer.  Yes.. just go there and play with wine, and now that I’m out of the industry I can very much do that.

Looking for fruit, bins full of berries, winemakers I know, ideas for my little label.  Find stress commotion, people talking about what to do with fruit, how to treat fermentation, temperatures.  That place, Punchdown it’s called, is my epic of epic centers for creativity.  Now with this day off, I can work.  I can collect stories about wine and the wine industry and what people want from wine that work with it everyday on a production level.  Just made a note in today’s lecture and lesson plan, “What are you looking for?” Writing is experience, as is reading, bringing your life to the pages of whatever novel or memoir, book you’ve picked up.  Everything intersects, all elements connect.  In writing in life in work with reading, everything.  Like a game.  A ball down an isle, knocking over pins.

9/24/18

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The Glass

img_7604Late, and wine and music, thinking about the day and week ahead.  Day off tomorrow from office new but class later.  Going to put thinking in mode of close, already for semester.  The writing daddy thinking, thinks now, bigger than in past sittings.  Tonight, Pinot Noir.  Went to winery he just in the last month left, yesterday.  He misses it, wine, the industry.  Would he ever go back?  Fuck no, he says to himself.  He says it loud so he can hear himself think it and say it, and feel it more before the next sip.  He’ll have his own winery one day, something small.  That small little tasting studio and room where people, anyone, can just taste wine and talk.

He closes all the other docs on his laptop.  Focuses on his memoir or note or memoir-ish novel piece, he throws more Pinot into his circuitry.  And I’m tired already, even though I did manage a nap earlier, and after having some coffee.  Guess the writer needed it.  Mike looks at the wine, remembers his last days at that Chalk Hill spot, going into the vineyard his last day with the TR manager to do his exit and she saying this is how it should be done as he’d always talk about the vineyard and everything in it, how he’d walk it everyday.

He’d write it.  That tell-all.  Or something like a tell-all.  He wasn’t trying to expose anyone or call anyone out, or do any tabloid shit on his blog, he just wanted to write the wine industry, the bar the glass the towels the inventory.  Each turn, jot on a paper clipped by a spreadsheet metal clip-y thing.  He looks again at the glass and writes more notes about it, what he thinks someone from, maybe somewhere like, Indiana would say.  Some small town Indiana person, now a rich oil or farm behemoth.  “That’s nice, that’s like one of those Pinots that tells you what Pinot is, what it’s all about… I’ve had Pinots like this before, I’ve had a lot of them…” He’d heard lines like this, so many times before, someone trying to sound like something, some wine something, an expert or “connoisseur” or “aficionado”, or just a fucking EXPERT.  But it’s in his head.  He knows he has to write this down.  All of it.  He sipped the Pinot faster, pour another glass or sip right from neck. It’d changed, 

Wine speaking to him in octaves applauded, in his thoughts.  Empty glass, full head of wine visions, walking a vineyard again like he did at every wine he’d ever worked at.  He doesn’t know where he is in this session, and he doesn’t care.  The mocha, maple, cherry and milk chocolate from the wine speaking even several minutes after sipped.  He sees himself light up after writing about glass’ occupant, even after gone, even before letting it sing through a bottle’s neck like he were Kerouac.  Much to tell, more now later.  As a writing daddy ought do.  Much anew do.

9/23/18

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