Art – bottledaux

Typing on laptop, but not.

By a proxy, proxy of this keyboard I plugged in, if that’s a proxy. Never much understood the proxy thing. But, my laptop is functioning. Conditionally. Sipping the Sanglier Pinot I bought the other day, my day off, but not wanting to lay it down. “I’m gonna lay it down for a while, uuuuuhhhhhh…” I hear so many say, like they know so much about wine, and and what wine wants to say and how it’s to be read, and tasted.

You know what, I much like this more, this keyboard— Have to stop addressing tech, writing about it. May have saved self something like, I don’t know… $2000, something like that. I definitely need celebrate tonight. Not running on morning but hoping I wake to write, or do something literary, writing something of some sentence sowing, that I can sell and “market” or, I don’t know….

Company event tomorrow. No idea what to expect or see. I’ll take it all as it presents itself to my story, to me, the one narrating. No music, I walk on eggshells with this goddamn device…. How many battles have I had with devices, with technology itself. And why do I keep having them. ‘Cause I put myself there, in that arena, gladiator me on the sand or whatever that terrain versus the lion with saliva portrait-style jaws, for me, the writer expecting it to work. I’ve been had, I ‘got took’ as I was once told. Yeah, so….Need another glass of that Sanglier Pinot. Need stay closer to wine and paper. The journal doesn’t need another journal plugged into it to work, that I know. Feel like a wobbling jester typing on this fucking thing. Not so much a fault, but a result. A behavioral outcome that need be studied, clinically.

January 25, 2019

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Going to

finish a book.

Soon.

Not worried about what genre, what form. Just write and collect and it will for something, some voice, some scripture.

In a bar up the street from home, just after work. One guy playing pool, others talking about something that happened either at this bar one night, one wild night, or at some party. Lady tending at trying to push this one beer, her heart to be blessed, that has all proceeds and monies made supporting the Camp Fire.

Me at a tall table, by self, stressing over writing, my writing, what I wrote this morning at Stony Point Starbucks and in Field, and now, Now.

The morning, more than these later hours.

So much more.

These hours, this time of day, night, could never parallel the A.M. value, gift to me and the page– me on the page.

January 25, 2019

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06:09

Starting day earlier than you have in a while. Coffee cold, just as you knew it would be.

Time for shower.

Budget money for day.

Start the day.

Let it get you closer to IT.

There.

Bring There, here.

January 18, 2019

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1/6/19

Been writing in more than one place for the ’19 story. Oh well I say to myself with another glass of sparkling, Jackie over there playing on the tablet my mom and dad bought him this past xmas. Nothing I’m writing lately I’m liking. Certainly not loving. So what’s the bandage for that? One part of me says just write free, with less shackle and inner-hassle. What’s that mean I don’t know so I re-focus on Jack. The day he and I have had, his sister too. She now off with wife and wife’s friend and wife’s friend’s daughter to Target to get who knows what. Kerouac has some inner dialogue with himself regarding the game, if it’s a game or some scholastic, learning program…. “Jack, what are you doing? What are you playing with?” He gives a bit of a mumble but I’m not convinced that was directed at me. He goes back to doing that, whatever that is. He rests the right side of his face in his right palm, right elbow on right inner-thigh as he sits on floor, legs crossed and lightly locked. We just spent the past couple hours watching football. Playoffs. Or postseason. Chicago versus Eagles, in Chicago. Eagles pulled it by a point. Just one. I of course was on CHI’s side for various reasons—none of which I’ve told you so I guess I shouldn’t write “of course”—and so was Jack. Both us disappointed in the result. But we move on. He with his game, or learning program, me with words and this morning before our together time, and time with his sister, a 7-mile run which I now feel.

Hoping to get some reading in, tonight. Hemingway, Coelho, Plath, Hughes…. Not sure I’ll touch all four books, but one of them I’m rather confident. Need to write more poetry, read Hughes more, and other poets like Cummings, Plath of course, Yeats, and from that collection of several poets I was gifted years ago. Today teaches me to not work against existing momentum, ever. What you want to do with the day is one matter, what you’re able to do and what you can do with what is present is quite another write.

Writing everything down…. Jack, quite poised and careful how he touches that screen. Face Ibn right palm, again. He says nothing to me on his own, and I don’t want to break his connection to his current action so I just push these buttons while I look at him. My little boy who daily loses his littleness to time— Time, that fucking animal, devouring all of us as a matter of duty and functionality, normalcy. Why I deplore normalcy, the patterns. The expected. The unavoidable tumult of the clock. I look at reflection, mine, and can see changes in my face, around the mouth and eyes. Forty this year— fuck. Have I lost some of my awareness and writing ability? Am I starting to fade? Looking over at little Kerouac, my little beat. He’ll keep me young. His sister, too.

January 7, 2019

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1/1/19

My beat isn’t as sped as I’d hoped it be for this first day. But I’m here, present and done with grading. Didn’t go as slow as I wanted but I’m not concerned. It’s over. Now I move on and prep for next term. The class I teach at Stanford, or wherever will have me. Philosophy or Reasoning, Thought and Overthought, thought of in differing ways. Looked at clock and it reads 11:50. Earlier than measured.

Emptied backpack. Now the trick, keep it empty. No more carrying laptop around like an unneeded part of me. It’s not part of me, so unneeded entirely. Re-shaping self from Literary character to one just of thought. Plain thought. Act of thinking, understanding where I am and why— What brought a writer here, what does he see, what does he want. Is he being honest with himself in doing what he does or is he acting, doing what’s perceived to be “mature” or “professional”. Not referencing anything in particular, but I will give more focus to …. Don’t say it. That’s when you get into trouble, when you promise. And, that’s when you get bored with your writing like you are right now. Bored with this sentence… then the next one…. This one as well. Fuck, I think. Thinking of what to do with day to not just spice it up or garnish it with some unexpected electricity, but….

Quiet house. No kids or wife, just me and this stack of submissions that are anything but bewildering in quality from last term. There’s a couple, yes, that I guess you’d call impressive, or even strong.

My beat starts to pick up. It does. I notice myself start to feel like a student, again. Like a “teacher”, even. Part of me wants music, the other not. The silence of the house notes its own notes and anecdotes for me in a new year that’s not all too varied from last, but still distinct in composition. My composition changes. I realize— You realize where you’re headed when you change little attributes of your day-to-day. Teaching Philosophy, starting with deconstruction and postmodernist qualities in the Now.

12:02. Already half way through this first square, inaugural step. Anxiety grips me, angrily. I ignore it, or try. It’s there from my acknowledgement. Then I choose to not give it any sight or reaction. Turning attention to when I was in graduate school, my thesis on Carroll’s Alice works. I decide to start there, in this new beat. The child finding herself in an atmosphere where the logic is anti-logic, but that itself is sound, it constitutes a form of reasoning that must be learned. She attempts to adjust and she more or less does, finding herself in immediacy of too many pictures and too many conversations, as she wished for at the books very first utterances. Not sure where my copy of the book is, where my grad notes are if I even have them anymore. Doesn’t matter. Start over. That’s what new years are about, no? Renewed self, renewed sight, renewed power of self-renewal. And, ahead…..

January 1, 2019

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Day’s end, and

Pinot is there to ease me, sing and educate, provoke meditation and new sight, exploration of prior hours. She instructs the writer to not work as hard, not feel so obligated to fill a page. See the room you’re in, she says. Walls sing alongside her and the floral scape of her animated way.

December 29, 2018December 29, 2018

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