The Syrah tells me to hold my state, thinking, keep with the Coltrane track, see streets in Paris.  You will get back, she sys, reminding me there is so much more time for me, so much more story, pages, pages atop pages.  I needed a night like this, to just be here in home and listen to wine alongside the notes of Mr. Coltrane.

See my tasting room, pouring for friends and family only, and maybe friends of friends.

My business model is so simple it’s not much a model at all.  Like this Syrah, inviting, not over complicated and quite communicative.  The tasting room wouldn’t be a tasting room, not sure why I keep calling it that.  So what is it.  Yes it’s a room, and yes we taste wine, but every tasting room is just called a “tasting room”.  The study?  The Room?  What if it didn’t have a name, like a track with no title?

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wine page

6/29/19

Second to last day in June.  Will be in Sebastopol, today.  Alert on my phone saying I had to be here AT 8, but incorrect.  Not sure how that happened, maybe I put something on calendar as all-day event.  Anyway, two wines tasted last night.  What is an all-day effort is to write about each, 500 words each.  Sipping coffee from office as I rushed here from getting gas just in case I was wrong and did have to be here at 8.  Strong, but not at all appealing in flavor or, well, anything.  But it has caffeine, I’ll take it.  $8 more in envelop.  OR should I set aside for next Saturday in Napa tasting wines at whatever, however many dozens of wineries and tasting rooms and collectives there are.  Not thinking about it.  $8 to envelope, done.

Wine one, a Rose from Topping-Legnon, think that’s how you spell the winery and is the actual name, far too dark for your typical or even non-typical Rose.  Not much said through introduction on nose, with aromatic language and touch, then on palate a bit more expression and layeredness to her, but again nothing that confirmed or affirmed any distinguished identity.  Not that I didn’t like it, her, but again there was not much said.  That doesn’t mean the wine was bad, or missing something, or once more that I didn’t like it.  No.  There was just a compromised connection for some reason.  With only two glasses, really a glass and a half, if even that now that I think, we didn’t have that attraction.

Second, a Robert Young Cabernet, Spring Mountain.  At first, I thought something was wrong with her.  I don’t know what, like temperature damage or just a bum bottle.  Not in any way the case. After some air falling down the bottle’s neck, 20 or 30 minutes give or take, she was alert, awake, ready to communicate.  No more dreaming of another thrilling Cab from Robert Young. She was present, there, speaking to me and now I was ready for the page.  Of course I’ll write more later, but I can still taste that immediate pulse, the pronounced impression of the mountain, of the winery, the ’15 vintage which as many know had its own mood and shapeliness from the drought.  Don’t want to write about her like these published wine blatherers.  There was far too much there, far too much being sang to me there in the kitchen, from that glass.

Seeking more definition from wine, and last night’s second bottle provided more than what I expected.  To be honest, I just wanted to taste wine and not think that much about it.  I didn’t want to be a writer, not then, but again, the second bottle had a vision more consistent with my own than my own.  Convincing composition and what I said to myself in the last glass about 45 minutes before bed was, “I need a vineyard.” Pretty much the only thing I wrote last night in the Kerouac journal, watching the final inning of a Giants game.  Find myself thinking now, this morning in the office to this coffee and stop myself.  Just write about the wines, and what they say.  The Cabernet more and moreover speaking her song, not letting me stray from the vineyard rows again.

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wine page

6/28/19

Morning writing in nook.  Feeling especially musical and beatific this morning.  Possibly from the morning being sans Road bumps with kids and their A.M. dispositions.  Not sure.  But I’m in the mode and mood to do something, today.  Lead out, so I sub in taking crew to Richmond District.

Going again regular motions and patterns, perpetuations, today.  How every vintage is different, year to year.  Even if the block selection is the same and the same oak and yeast and all dimensions contributing are the same, the year will sing a different song, in a different key.  Today different but not just for sakes of contrast, new invention or new direction….  I don’t know.  The espresso in this latte has me wound and spun, singing alongside it.  Thought in thought, birthing more thought..  Much of it from wine, yes, but the rest from the moment around me.

Sonic employees in breakroom getting their coffee and or morning snacks, breakfast, whatever, and I hear some of what they say through the music.  But I often write that.  What now then… the envelop.  Like $150-something in it.  For what.  Am I just saving to save like an old friend, Chris, said he was doing several years ago.  More than twenty past, when we both worked at Sears in the sporting department.

 

Mike writes down his plan for wine, his winery, him.  He does it again, this time with different words, not so much varied emphasis.  He teaches himself to write again in writing down his wine aims, seeing the view from a hillside site, Cabernet, some Merlot, Chardonnay.  He walks the vineyard with his sister and some vineyard manager expert bloke she connected.  Mike knows it’s happening now.  His wine story, his winery, wine encompassing his beats and paragraphs.  It’s a good day, he says to himself.  Closer to wine, closer to a Room, a quarter where others will be with him.  This morning, this day, this move and the next, paragraph and the lines composing them, perambulating in possibility, meter and verse from one cordon to next.  And all from money he started racking to an envelope.

Next week, to Napa.  To taste different interpretation and new characters, voices and rooms and Roads, hills and beats.  Mike searches through wine’s denotative and conno’, learns about where he is and what he’s doing, why he’s had all the jobs he’s had—To bring him here, to be with wine for the bliss and grinning percussion to her step, soul, arrangement.

Mike smiles, looking around the Sonic breakroom, seeing that this is making him more HIM—more a writer and more an explorer in the principle pillars and ideologies of wine.  Madness, the hilarity of how it all came together.  Something people always say but Mike has always shrugged.

 

Last two day with Field Sales.  Next week in B2B boat.  Learning, as I did when in wine’s room, those first days.  Like life started over and kept going, one story ending all in erratic conversing symphony.  More than emboldened this morning, more than with accelerated voltage, but a storm of inquiry and wild exploration, me in a new station and day’s dazin’.

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6/25/19

At work, feeling more than invigorated and fiery with this promotion.  Sales, selling, speaking… now everything culminates, much I hate that word.  Getting done starting tasks, committing to 3000 observational words for and from day.  Idea for day, Knowledge.  Get to know the person in front of you, even if you already know them.  Listen, listen more…. Study, again, observational.

At my desk, ready for the day in a way I’ve never been.  But I calm, compose, collect, settle and assemble attitude and sight for what’s next, in next hour.  Want to work in slowing down in idea delivery.

9:08.  Writing notes to self and even more in exploratory mode, mood, mold.  Drive down to SF, thinking, speaking into recorder.  Envelope to tasting room, or just studio.  Where I write and self-publish, blog and develop what I develop, bring more to life.  Creative Room….  Just got a call from a scammer, claiming to be from the Social Security Administration.  The recording claimed my number had been suspended due to suspicious activity.  Wouldn’t a live person want to tell me that?  I pressed one to speak to the next available “officer”.  A gentleman came to the phone and asked for my name.  I asked Shouldn’t you know that already?  He said no.  I said I’d wait for something in the mail.  The guy then said he’d inform the sheriff and the arrest warrant would be issued have a nice day hang up.  I turned off phone, and laughed my way back to my desk.  I thought and am still thinking about it, from a writer’s perspective.  Shouldn’t you write a better plan than that, a better script, story?  And all due respect to scams stretching from other countries, don’t you think the accent kiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of gives it away?  They’d benefit from my instruction, a small or larger writing seminar, creative writing effort and intensive for scammers.  I wasn’t sold.

Then thinking came back to here, Sonic, selling and what I’m about to sell for the B2B division.  Still laughing, and if I’m not arrested in the next couple hours, I’ll keep jotting jots on sales approach and tone, word selection and deployment.

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from a journal

On a day off.  One lazy.  Now with some time to self and some Sauvignon Blanc poured, I think of the week ahead of me even though I don’t want to.  And the semester I won’t teach this summer.  Or the semester I won’t teach at the JC.  Choosing to write in complete silence, or to just kitchen sounds.  And for what… don’t know.  Just to write.

Told Alice earlier that I may be tiring of Sonoma County, of Santa Rosa.  So then what.  Don’t know.  Want to follow wine to some other place and shape.  Where.  Of course this writer’s mind goes to Monterey.  Teaching at the university, possibly, or one of the something like five community colleges down there.  Just thinking of course, but this time aloud and to Alice.  Mother of my little beats.

Again taking out Didion’s Magical Thinking ms and thinking of making it a reading assignment for me.  Put self back in school.  Learn how to do all this over, all over, again.  Be a student, have a devoted collection and stack of pages.  This day off I’ve been only twirled and twisted in thought, thoughts.  40…. Challenging self to challenge self more.  My life changed on the 29th, and then the other night with everyone here “celebrating” my birthday.  Why am I phrasing such in such a way, just where my mind is.

I re-focus and situate on the wine, this Sauvignon Blanc my sister made.  At first a but herbal and grapefruit tilted but now with more harmony and love-yell.  The wine reminds me to focus more on her, on all wines and songs that are said and singing to me in a moment.  Quiet house, me and wine, we talking.  Again, no music, just the ebb and pulse and poetry of our personalities, intermingling and interchanging the changing scenes of life and the Now.  While Alice and I walked around Spring Lake earlier I saw me at some beach café in Monterey or Pacific Grove and working on some book on wine.  On what.  The tasting room, walking the vineyard as I always do, meeting people from wherever and they commenting on my “impassioned speech on terroir” as one guy put it yesterday.  Everything wine.  Everything wined in all days, down there, by Monterey.  I see my writing spot, and I think SINGULARITY.  And then, wake up earlier!  Yelling to self before another sip, the SB now taking on more a vanilla or cream or soft silky melon-meant voice.  Not sure how to explain it.. but the shift in narrative for the wine is there. And who knows if my sister meant for this to happen.

After 4 in this day, this day that’s by all frames and decisions mine and for what I want to do, but wine has other ideas.  Taking last sip and putting plastic stemless bowl back to tile and me stopping.  What do I want, what do I really want to do as that one tasting room manager urged me to consider and meditate as he dismissed me from duty.  Something for which I was and am SO grateful.  So what do I do.  What does wine want?  As Joan cited, life can change and stop in a blink, a breath, an instant, a turn.  Turning to what, I don’t know.  I just know I have to perpetuate some peregrination of self, of me, who I think I am or want to be.

From left eye’s left corner, I see some table cover, one thin and paper and screaming 40 YEARS or something flaps and moves up and down.  I know, I know… I need move faster.  Holy fuck, I’m forty.  The SB calls me from the counter over there by the coffee maker.  Another, think more about Monterey, extend days by waking earlier so when you walk into that office you have no “expectations” as everything you wanted to do with the day you’ve already done.  Write.. Write MORE.

6/3/19

 

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5/31/19

Learning that there are not many places to take my teaching practice.  The only option, truly, is to start a school or some writing and reading camp or cove of my own.  This morning my meditation is curved, or cracked, something.  Mood, off.  Writing yesterday but only in Kerouac journal, at lunch.  Today, cannot let self eat out.  Need to work.  Plan for this writing seminar or set of seminars I want to teach.

Putting everything into this new education project.  And I’m not touting or boasting, advertising that I’m some writing and reading expert.  But, I have taught for a bit now, and have ideas to share.  Anymore that’s what teachers should incorporate into their classroom presence, that they’re sharing ideas and not telling students what to do.  Self-discovery, yes, but just following thought pursuit, Human curiosity.  Wondering why so many that are technically teachers want to be the one in charge, the one with all the answers rather than practice understatedness in their statements and lectures.

Made a couple more additions to document.  My character evens, balances, rights itself.  Educating self through this Now, this experience, this breath and intersection of intention and realization.  Telling self that knowledge is where I am, where I’ll forever be.  Remembering everything taught by Dad, Bob Coleman, and only a handful of instructors that contributed something true and truthful to my story.

Music in everything.  Even the time, much I loathe it.  8:33…. Only aim for today, points of learning, education, where I learn and ideas I want to, WILL, share with students, anyone taking one of my online courses or seminars.

Journal writing… Wrote one point for class.  Keep self in learning mode, more than teaching.  Reject teacher moniker, embrace the book carrier, pen mover, class to class goer.

 

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Breakthrough In A Room

Notes to catch up on, and other directions pushing and pulling this morning.  On a fast, for I believe 16 hours.  For no other reason than discipline.  Last night the discussion with students on Wright’s Black Boy coerced me to re-think memoir, to rethink writing in its principle territory.  Writing, especially memoir or personal essay, or “creative nonfiction” a genre or type tag that I frankly loathe as what nonfiction isn’t in some degree and walk creative?—Demands more honestly. More boldness, more rawness and the moment itself in all its obtrusiveness and oscillation of concentration and code.

People walk into the room, this breakroom, I think new hires as I’ve never seen them before.  Or–  Friend Taj walks in.  I tell him what I’m writing about more or less and what we spoke of last night in class on Wright.  The Human dimension and collection of facets, emotions, observations.  I tell him about the student last night who said he can’t relate to the characters in the book as he didn’t live as they did, or didn’t see what they saw.  I disclose to Taj how I asked the student “Do you love anything?…Have you ever felt pain?…Do you have a mother?” The student I think felt a bit overwhelmed or confused maybe by my response, but I stood by my point and I at least wanted him to consider it.  Taj sees where I’m going with the thought framing and delivery.  He’s since left the room, after getting his tea.  Now a lady makes coffee or something from one of the machines, and I think fixes it or installs a new filter, something.

I’d be not much a memoirist or narrator if I didn’t put to page I was again sparring, fencing, or just plain boxing with a mood this morning.  Similar to the one I felt yesterday before the Pinballing piece, and very akin to what was over me last week.  And, honestly, I’m bored of feeling like that.  I need Newness.  I need be crazy and more wild and flight-prone.  Just taking off and not asking permission from any control tower.  The JPR project here at work very much was not so much a cause of the mood but a set presence in the mood’s movement.  I stop it all, taking this 30 minutes or so to this seat, these keys, going over in head what was discusses last night, and that one student, AGAIN, reading for class and having us wanting more of the words, more story, wherever it was going.  And that’s just it, he had us not knowing but wanting to know.  There was not so much excitement but obvious atmosphere and personality in the characters and what they may have been doing, or not doing.  This student not only shows promise as a memoirist, essayist, but as a teller, narrator, truth-teller.

Now, I plan the day.  This fast I’m on, what notes I have to input, and how the book’s going to tell EVERYTHING.

Details:

-8:17am

-Coffee cooling in old tumbler, black, bought as xmas present

-More people walk in for either eats or free coffee—eats, as I can’t see them, obstructed by newly-built wall which denies view of fridges

-Me, Mike Madigan, only one in here, certainly the only one writing memoir, story, any poetic effort to capture a Now

-No more oscillation, new code

-Sip coffee again

-8:20

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3/3/19

This.  This morning.  This is for you.  This is yours.  You have the morning, day, week, month, everything you want by deciding so.  Candle going, at laptop’s side.  Meditation with latte.  Wife deciding on snow gear for kids, upcoming trip.  Me, with the candle, something never near me when writing, seeing more Newness.

Fire, tempting me to try new avenues and expressive streams.  Morning, a bit sluggish from last night going to bed late and after dinner and wine with wife.  Melissa on couch listing prices to me for their snow trip approaching.  Tahoe.  Morning telling me to write faster, morning telling me to write more in Germany Journal, map how you get There.

Kids should be home, soon.  More photos of them.  Their steps in life, my story, the story itself.  More thoughts and considerations this morning than I forecasted.  What do you want? I keep asking self.  Above everything, not citing health of me and all near and loved, travel.  It has to be travel.  Every continent.  As many cultures as I can see, feel.

What’s the plan, wife asks, for day.  Good question.  No plan.  And maybe that’s what needs to be.  Life isn’t excessive deliberation, but deciding more in what’s already present.  Yesterday, not in Field with sales squad, I replayed repeatedly the walks on all streets.  Blocks.  Districts and meta-districts.  Truly wanted to be out there with them but couldn’t as that would’ve been day 6 in a row.  Which I don’t at all mind, but is against Sonic’s stances.  No quarrel, only putting myself there with them, imaginarily.  People in San Francisco, the battle to find a parking spot and the daily inner-problem solve of where for lunch. The plan for today is today, to not plan but to live, talk to both babies, ask them questions, learn from them.  Being with them is the demand satisfied, wanting them to teach me, instruct me how to get to those travels.

 

They already have, but I need more.

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