wounds and tears are characters’ Where.
The location and point of soul, of music, of life, of CHARACTER.
Waiting for haircut
time. No time to waste and no time to wait. All minutes are instructional, all times in your story narrate something to you, teach, they demand your direction and response. Gems compile right in front of you. Eyes should be ever present nets. Catch everything.
On campus.
Notes, studies…. more story.
There’s always a story.
Always something to study.
Coffee needed after
7-mile run at lunch, and before lecturing tonight.
Seeking Newness
in all forms visible and invisible.
Start your Road to something you’ve only had as a vision or dream, THIS MORNING.
3:32
Decided on Mexican good, to take myself out to lunch. Reasoned I deserve. Can’t remember the composition of that reasoning, or if there was any, but I’m here and I’m fine with it. Sparkling water. Staying with my vision of drinking more water.
Get up early, I keep telling myself. Walking all those Albany hill streets Nd imagining running them.
Will meet with Caleb’s team, check in and get an update, canvass with them a bit then head back to Santa Rosa. I know what I’m learning from the day, but don’t have time to write it here. Not now. But will later.
Lunch. Small latte in car. Windows down. Even with clouds it’s a bit warm. Excited about drive home as I want time to Self, quiet and music. The day is a bit odd now I feel, changing its tone and talk, character and code with me for some reason. I sent the day too much influence and say in my day. On Solano, in Albany. Was tempted to get something at a nearby Mexican grille but told self no and stuck to pb&j and latte guns. Now, time to Self. Cold air replaces warm and humid uncomfortable. The air, nicely pushing me, easing my edge and nervy echo.
Car next to me pulls out, back, drives away letting more speedy air at me from left. A Porsche Cayenne, then a ford, then a Civic. People going somewhere but where I want to know for story sales and just the curious strut mentally. This town I find interesting. Would never live here, but it’s different. It’s new. And the older I get I find that’s precisely the aim to everything. Newness.
Work. In the Field. Each day gifts Newness, but you have to manage your temperament. Then I think there’s nothing to write about in the cabin of this company car with a small latte and windows down, people walking by and cars zooming up Solano behind me. And maybe there’s not. But there is. I’m here and Sonia all of this. I could be staring at the screen of this bloody phone, but no. No. I didn’t let myself. Celebrating that I didn’t.
2/14/19
Work early. 8am now, clocking in at 8:50 or so. Forgot headphones adaptor in car. Tempted to run out and get but why I then think, just take in the breakroom voices you hear from the nook. Work with what you have, with what you have, Mikey…. If I’m to know the Now and be freed from it, this is what I’m utilizing and implementing into the morning’s prose.
Out in the Field, today. In office all day yesterday and in knowing where I am and what I’m doing, I ignore time. The ten post-it notes to self I brought to class last night and shared, hours after lecturing on Kerouac and Madness here at Sonic, I’m in a different place. And in this different place wondering how I place the beaming benefit of the contrast, and finish my two essays. Didn’t make the deadlines I put before self. I know. Month over in two weeks, the time I have to finish my book. Different movements will manifest different Me’s. So, one different act—didn’t get the headphone piece. Usually I would have, as you might know, especially with music become more and more a demand and decided direction in my story.
Rain, light. Room now completely quiet. I’m not at work but in an office of my own, for more pulses in this page set than I can tally. The breakroom, now, has intermittent landers. People coming in for coffee, or some breakfast they pull from the fridge and pay for with that self-checkout box standing to the left of the refrigerating storage. What do I want from the day—or more immediately and tangibly what do I demand from now. The, Now. We all need to have this discussion. So I’m having it. Again. In Santa Rosa, Ca. Just 15 or so minutes from my house. Narrating to self, SELF, for sakes of more Self, more understanding and questioning where I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. No qualms or quibbles, none at all, but I maintain the conversation.
Yesterday I spoke on Madness and how madness is love and creative, how it’s its own form of freedom, accentuation, its own manuscript. Vowing to live more madly, right now in this nook. What I want is what I have, and what’s before me will supply and sequence more proliferation of ideas, get me to my travels. Why travel. Why not. Why not see the world and have sittings like this in cities like Prague, or Lisbon, Cairo, New York…. Montreal, and of course my love-city, Paris. I need it. I need more. To understand self, narrator of and to self, share my findings with other so they can see what I see, in themselves and what’s around them.
Someone walks in, laughing, obviously content where he is, “Good morning, guys.” Followed by a few more warm ha-ha’s. Today a day of the Valentines, where you’re to love everything, everyone. My babies this morning, excited to be allowed to eat a little candy their mother bought them, and have some party in class. I step back, did this morning earlier and do know, to see what’s evolving in this day of love, or cards, candy, smiles, balloons and parties. The Now, estimating it, appraising it, deconstructing it and the Now you want to have. The reality that you have that reality is a reality to love and celebrate. I start laughing to myself.
I look out the window to parking lot see a delivery truck. Think they deliver linens or supplies, or something health-oriented for businesses. Abraham, my good buddy, my workout buddy whom I astronomically admire for his early wakes and workout routine walks in. I ask him if he went this morning and he offers “Hell yeah, e’ryday!”I again smile and see a new possibility in waking early. If not to workout then to write, finally finish my essays, and if not that then make a dent, one substantial and meaningful in the book. Writing I did in field day before yesterday on tablet emailed to self, one page, possibly the first page in book, tonight edited. Or, tomorrow. We need difference, we need contrast if we’re to pass the envisioned and land at the actual.
Just saw someone peek their head in. They were gone before I could see any face or eyes or right ear. Could only see a collar and shoulder. My breakfast sandwich, gone. Will fast for day’s remainder. Write for book in lunch’s hour, wherever in the city I’ll be. Possibly the Castro, or Noe Valley. Not sure yet. And, observe. Yesterday talking to Tasha for our mid-month check-in we talked about the power of observation and how not always one needs to be directly involved, interacting, present and talking, but watching. Cataloguing observations and reacting from there, an idea I echoed and argued last night in class with the 100 group.
People see me writing, say hello, walk out class door after scanning their badge, her badge, nice young girl from Inside Sales. I observe them, they me possibly, then time persists in its insistence. Amplifying from where I am, observing the little contained mess I made on this table with the sandwich bag, napkins from Starbucks, my phone and keys. I arrange, re-arrange, make my writing space more spacious. Done. Now with the time I have left, set aims and visions for day—Writing at lunch, at desk more post-it notes to self like yester’, and notes for field today. Set an observation template, if you would. For the Sales Leads that I observe daily but as well for the day itself. Everything from words I hear, people seen in streets, street lights and stores, cars and crosswalks, what bags people carry, what sounds steps make, everything.
I’m at work early writing because that’s what I do. That’s what I have to do. That’s my story. That’s what keeps me healthy, you could say. Alive and mentally alive and living and exploring my character and the story the character’s given. Passing the visions, and about to land in rooms actual. The travel, the hotels, lobbies, airplanes, tickets, engine sounds, taxis…. The story sows a new narrative. And in that, I better know the current Now, and soon step pervasively and definitively free, freed.
2/10/19
Morning following morning of marathon that was only a half for my, my thoughts are on and in literature, writing, teaching self and being taught from experience. I don’t see yesterday as a victory or a defeat, but a prime lesson. Instruction on everything.
Morning with family. Kids on couch with their mama, my over here at kitchen island, writing, in Kerouac’s novel, wanting more of what Sal did, what Dean did and thought he did. In travel, in wine, in music. The wine I had last night, bought with son at store. Jack telling me we need to buy some wine so can “do some business” as he put it. Everything I need for my Road, for my travels, here.
Mike thinks about his day off, what he wants from it, how to approach it. Thoughts, everything in thought, what’s in his thinking and the ideas that pass that he won’t remember, that he won’t write down. Mike Madigan, analyzing himself and what he does. Wanting to feel what Sal and Dean did in the car, at the jazz clubs, at all the unexpected locations with new people they’ve only known for so long. The reason and reasoning, thought and philosophy to everything from people at a house to beer and tacos, to the sound of cars being parked in a lot, crazily.
Mike forgot about Sausalito, about the marathon, about running altogether. He thought about wine, again about self-publishing and wine, what to do from there. New ways of approaching wine and teaching, books… Sedaris’ essays, Plath’s poems, Kerouac’s novel, Hughes and all his pieces. Mike would re-read Road, note every sentence, including the first where the narrator lets readers know this is about him, Dean, how he felt right when he met Dean then onward into his life. Mike has a son, daughter, since knowing them he sees the world with more reverence and hesitation—How does he live every moment as deeply as he can? Why does he spend so much time thinking and overthinking rather than writing, living? He didn’t have an answer. Not this morning. He wouldn’t. He didn’t need one. All he needs is them. Those two. Their mother. The house. Writing father seeking more reason and reasoning in everything, all that he does and what’s around him in his current scene and current.
Thought—everything in the appreciation of Now.
Living is literature, he finds. He’s always know this and Mike has always seen wine as more a literary presence than some chemical or agro result. Mike returns to wine, for this thought. Sitting at the kitchen counter and looking over at the bottle of Grgich Merlot, ’14, that last night he explored and let speak to him. He refused to let wine leave him, or him leave wine. He’d write each sip, even if twelve essays or pieces or sketches came from the same bottle. Wasn’t that the point? Each sip, different. Each second there is more in the jazz of what you poured. Maybe this is the business little Kerouac was talking about, yesterday in the Oliver’s wine isle.
Wine speaks to Mike in a way it hasn’t, ever. She tells him to move, move quicker. Edit nothing. Just express. Self and the Now, thought and reasoning in what you sip, the appreciation of the Now… no going back, now. The story is set. Now he writes.. Several books. With wine. A marathon of book output, then another, then a marathon of written treks in the vineyard rows. He sees it. All. All sips and steps.
Where I am and what I’m doing.
All I need to write, create, self-educate, meditate, grow as a character in my story.