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.

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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.

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1/14/19

Laptop suddenly working. Don’t get it. Doesn’t matter. It’s getting replaced. First day of new semester. Class starts in 4 min, 1 hour. I’ll be in classroom earlier than that, obviously, if there’s not one of those mindless instructors that is in no way aware of the possibility that another teacher may need the room. Introducing narrative, tonight. The singular idea that will dominate the semester. Narrative…. telling stories. Telling your own story. Knowing your story. Just wrote that last sentence into journal. The Germany journal. What will the students this semester be like. I keep wondering but with so much need to know. It will take a while term to know.

No lunching out, today. Must say I’m pleased with my discipline and poise, for once. Need at least 2k for new laptop. Just updated the OS, here in office. See if this does anything. Doesn’t matter like I said. Quiet in the adjunct cell… good to be back on campus, in Professor Mikey mode. Sharing ideas, knowing students and the student experience better. Put quarters in pocket to go get coffee. Could use a coffee now. Beats always drink coffee, no matter time of day or how it may impact sleep. Who cares. Off to get a cup. Don’t worry, small.

6:15. Back in office. With decaf. Decaf. I ordered decaf. Mainly from being charged and directed in energy enough from today itself, training new hire and now in my element of elements sharing ideas in the classroom.

Everything out on this desk, in this shared office like every other semester on the first day. 17 minutes for computer, in whatever it’s doing. Who knows if it’ll work— WHY DO YOU KEEP THINKING THAT? You’re shedding it anyway, that devil thing you call a writing tool and think a necessity.

Another note in journal, for class— Your decisions in how you read and write, and immediately write from your experiences, or write your story, make loud your thoughts in the present.

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I did it.  I said I wouldn’t, but I did. 

This means I’m a writer, the typical one, the one that jumps from journal to journal and project to project.  So what did I do… oh yeah, started another book idea.  Today.  In head, walking from cafeteria where there was no open anything to get coffee, and then a longshot attempt up the stairs to that café up in the library.  Could have sworn that would be open.  Why isn’t it?  Why is nothing open, where a student or teacher can get some caffeine, coffee, or Yerba-whatever.  Nothing.  In this building, it’s quiet.  And I mean funeral quiet.  Ghost town.  Post nuclear wipe-out-everything silent.

With this new book, I’m here.  On campus that doesn’t feel like a campus, but more like a  stage that’s been left.  Or closed.  All the actors and actresses, stage crews and directors, producers or whomever, gone.  Just leaving me.  The writer with his new book idea.  Another one.  Where I’m sitting now, I’ve done so a hundred or more, definitely more, times.  Sat here and wrote before class started.  Collecting finals tonight, then, well, that’s it.  The semester’s over.  Then starts another one.  One where I’m only teaching one class.  To be honest, I’d rather not be.  Seriously.  I’d rather be traveling and writing while I travel and coming back with a new book. I know, why don’t I do that.  Thank you, motional numb-twit.  This new book, I know what I want to say.  I think— No, I do.  Just wrote the first couple sentences, here, with this knowledge of where I am, in this Now, and how I here arrived.

Now wine before coming to campus, which I thought of doing but tonight’s a no-wine night.  Running tomorrow morning, early.  4am.  The “God Hour”, as I call it lately telling myself that 4am is God and I need be faithful to it, or some shit like that.  Quiet in this building.  Probably the most quiet, and most isolated and alone I’ve ever felt here, in this building or anywhere on campus.  Something new, like yesterday in that coffee shop.  Could use a coffee now, horribly.  But I type with what natural pace and blaze I have in these current ways.

Much of the new book I think, maybe, I honestly don’t know, will be an exploration of where I am as an “educator”.  And questioning, essentially, if I’m even an educator, qualified to educate.  Why, ‘cause I have a Master’s Degree?  Not sure that’s proper knighting.  Class meets in 17 minutes.  Sweater off, hot in this room when I stepped in and sat and know I want it back, back on.  I’m uncomfortable listening to my jazz tracks and before class I need be un my most formidable of characters, one passionate and loud and direct with his offerings.

The new book, not so much a disputing of college, the community scape or university, but … An exploration of?  I’m just writing a book and hopefully I’ll finish the fucking thing, I’m saying to myself.  Full-timer walks in, gets something from the other room, and walks out.  Doesn’t say a word to me which isn’t surprising, but laughable and maddening concurrent.

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12/10/18

img_9420.jpg

Downstairs after dinner and everyone in bed but me.  Long day, whole day in field and all I wanted was this.  Some Jazz, low-lit room, xmas tree providing most of my sight.  Walking up and down hills in SF makes me want there, the houses, I want just one of them… some impressive grander in my head bouncing forth and back and back to my senses which even I now question.  Outside, sky and air remind me of what time of year envelops my Now.

Music on me unexpectedly quits.  No mood to fight, quibble, scuffle.  So I leave it off.  Could turn it back on, with phone, but I’m composed in the composition of this room.  Could use another beer for session.  But I’ll wait a minute.  And the music comes back.  What is this devilish device doing to me?  To my writing.  Ignore it, I tell myself.  At lunch, which I told myself I wouldn’t do, dine out, I was in Harvey’s (think it was called) writing in the corner, before the omelet arrived and walked around Castro taking in everything— lights and cars, shops and the bars with their engaging names, street lights and the evidence of history.  Going back tomorrow, and making it more a point to write in “real time” as some say.  But I hate that utterance and word sequence.  “Real” “time”.  If you have to note that it’s “real”, or remind yourself or a reader or observer that it’s “real”, there’s an obvious incongruence.  To me, anyway.  So.. point, write in immediacy spree.  While people walk by, walking their dogs, as they answer the door to us knocking to tell them about what we’re doing for the community, put all to page.

Down here, in this room, family room while family upstairs swirls and swivels and swims in dream, I’m doing something, I think.  Missed class tonight, and I feel awful, but no choice was mine.  One of the sales leads out so I was the transporter man or whatever, taking team to and from between Noe Valley and Castro.  San Francisco, begging me for conversation the same way that Paris would let go of Hem.  I’m out there as a Field Sale Supervising, most presently and poignantly doing my job, but as well not letting the writing Me away gaze. 

This room, now, just what I need.  Tree luminous, piano notes and keys hit, and now me.  Thinking of how I want to be seen, read, this job I have at a tech company that’s making me more a writer than I ever would have forecasted.  Drive down with reps, talking about certain topics then re-focusing on what we were about to do with this new campaign, me the whole time thinking how with business if everything was this exciting, like in the wine world, businesses would more readily attain what they sought.  The room says more to me, like just enjoy the room, go get a beer and be Hemingway for a night.  Think about your city, SF, and how tomorrow will be definitively different than today.  This room, now, not so much what I need but what’s ME.  What I embody… composition, the page, me here on couch, in assembly.  Time, rather “real”.

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Kerouac has

all interpretation and meditations leaning toward more. More exploration, more scenes, more looking around and acknowledging Now. Nothing behind, all ahead and in front of me asking to be experienced. What am I doing here, accepting any order, any regulatory, any institution. More, on that Road, the music, lights, cars, families traveling in winter or whenever. Sitting on unfamiliar boards, me…

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