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Day 1 – In Wine

Putting out boxes. This is all a novel I tell myself. Group, 20+, later. Focus on the sale, I order of Self. Speak of wines as I always do, from the Literary angle and with recital tones, the stage posture– my Beat. Speaking of wines as characters and stories and songs. Need espresso, just one shot to have my motion fully molded and motioned; a consistency and constancy today that I’ve never had. This is ALL a novel, novels within novels for one grand novel opus brick of a manuscript, one so heavy I’ll have trouble carrying it to the publisher or store or to a reader’s hands, shaking and tired from pouring for people I’ve never met and will more than likely never meet eyes with again. I’m writing everything down. Everything. Ev. ‘ry. Thing. Write. Write it all. All this wine evidence and the people coming here from wherever and however. Today, this day, my company built in a day, a company started on this wine blog, this Literary attempt to deconstruct wine and assign it new surreality and textualized tonality and temperament. All the day’s notes: Lit & Wine. Focused in and on my work. Making wine a visual argument of sorts, of all sorts and my sorts are in this novel sorted.
13:37, no one. No one at the bar, no one to talk to. I’m bored but not angry as I was yesterday with the overwhelming Omaha Beach-like invasion of the bar, the lush rush as my co-workers call it. But now, I’m bored and annoyed, no wine coming from the bottles, no one sipping and saying the silly shit they say. I’m a novelist with no novel, no fucking pages precipitating. Edgy, irritated, trembling with anxiety.. where are my pages? Me, no, not even a taste, I’m waiting, waiting till there’s someone to taste with, someone to share a deconstruction with, to elucidate that character in the bottle and speak of how wine elevates the admirer’s soul, the sipper’s sense, sensibility, they become sensitive and susceptible to the poetic strokes of this Pinot– I’m not tempted to sip, not even by this ’99 Burgundy, old world, that Lalo brought in, not at all. Is my character changing, ‘cause I’m not sipping? I don’t know yet. But, quite sure it’s front fore.
Close to 5. And I want some wine. No one in room with me, no one, no sippers they all left. I’m not angered by my refrain, but strangely pre-occupied by the novel, this novel in a more worldly book, one that’s a universe to this meek moon. Thinking of a sip. Or three– But I move on and move my thinking to other others. Talking to Lalo today about business models of wineries and how business could be grown and aggrandized. I think about my label, my own wine place and identity bottled and writing about wine– the process, MY process and what I observe each vintage; how the bins look when they’re empty, then filled, then pressed out to barrel, shoveling the skins, or ‘must’. Scribbling notes about the wine I make, again not necessarily how I make it but what I’m thinking while I make my wine and what I see and hear, feel around me– the scene and tanks, barrels, even the yellow jackets. All of it. My wine world paginated with all its dimensionality and diversity; the auditory, tactile, visual, olfactory… What I envision and what I hope for with the product end. But there is no end for a writing winemaker like me, ever. And why would I want there to be?
Right now I write from John Ash not sipping a thing but this water with lemon and imagining myself here as a winemaker talking to other winemakers (they often hang out here with their favored beers or cocktails); I’d meet them here with premeditation, accumulate and scribble secretly more ideas, for the novel and what to do with what’s in ‘bbl’. I try to now listen in on conversations but I can’t pick out a one.. I focus on the feel and scene of what’s around me– wine country, the life, the barrels, the crush pad, the stage and stories. And the literature connected. This reminds me of that first chapter of Moveable Feast where Hem talks of the café with indignation and praise concurrent. I only laud what’s at all sides mine; my speech manipulated as I fear the bottom of page. I don’t want to hit any bottom, or see any flat, nothing plain, no plain’s flatness and crazying infinity. I want those higher atmosphere slices and sights. In wine– Dreams, aims, sights, views– share this with the students, be a student myself again. OF wine. What it is and what it embodies, what it does to the moment and gathering, the conversation and story, like last night at Jason’s watching the fight, me beginning with the single-vineyard project, sipping slow, then ending the eve with that odd red blend. IT was all around and about and acclimated to wine. Wine! And OF wine. Of Literature, the story, this novel; the theory of writing and writing about it, and if not wine then anything one’s in love with; the actual, and conceptual, the dreams and the dreaming.

Home, and I have a, or ‘the’, last glass of the McCrostie Pinot, here in the nook thinking about the novel and how my son already loves his books and fights with us before bed to stay up later to read his favored MSS. Good for him, I think. And good for the people coming into the tasting Room, finding new wine loves, new characters and stories, new interpretations of Pinot or Chardonnay, or Zin, and walking away with bottles, giving the glass’d contents a security in their respective domiciles. And that’s what wine is, in many perspectives and confessions, a place, or sense of.. new story, and this story, the novel, this new manuscript and day and stage of the writer’s life, with this new house and this new vintage and the poems in my prose. I find myself confused now, thinking about ME making wine and my sister and the character based on my sister– posted something earlier to the blog that I want to re-write and re-re-write and write again over till the original sketch is never again detected. OH the day, the new me and the new novel.. would love to have more wine but I need to keep writing, and thinking about how harvest is not just ‘around the corner’ but just down the block, it’s here and waiting to be recorded by a novelist, and the novelist has to make wine contemporaneously to understand his subject– I don’t have to go to fucking UC Davis, and conventional education with wine is not always, and manytimes never the answer. Look at my brother, KAZ. He taught himself how to make wine, he conducted his own research and had his own experiments, and here he is, respected and with his own projects and manuscripts and story, one that I will never be able to hold eminence over or even alongside.

9:45, and I’m beginning to tire. Wine done, but the wine fascinations won’t go away.. ha, funny how They used to tell me to sell a fucking fantasy but I see now that I can live it and sell it in my own way sincerely and now have to conveniently contort it, I can be honest and just talk about my bottles with heartfelt avidity. But I can tire from my ardor, and that’s what’s happening, but it won’t be like this for all days mine– soon I’ll have my office and a place where I can retire and retreat to to write my fiction, and pile more novels and maybe all won’t be bloody ‘best-sellers’ but I don’t care, no, I only want to live from the pages and I have to have those page circulated and baptized in wine, the fermented and the cared-for fruit that enables the story and the characters and bring the guests to the room, making it not empty and me energized and not disenchanted. And this I’m very much obstinately averring, as I have to– The wine depends on my staunchly trenchant penchant for the wild scribbles following a sip.
I wonder how many I know outside the wine and “academic” shiftings write as I do, how many are over a thousand words for the day, how many want a novel, how many have a subject or topic or loose aim, or the keys at their beck? Am I unctioning Self in what holy vacation begets? No! I’m just wondering, and I’m telling my Self not to be so hard on the writer– oh why have you not left the TR yet and why aren’t you on the Road yet and why why WHY? Don’t worry about it, I tell myself.. ‘Mañana, mañana.. tonight we don’t worry…..’

REWRITE OF EARLIER SKETCH: “Percentage Onlyness” — Krystal skipped about blocks with thinly rich alacrity and keenness. She found herself caught by her own preoccupation. What augmented tones and angularity would the vintage carve, she thought. The Chardonnay couldn’t be done the same, she thought, even if those marketing louts thought that it just had to be done, what did they know, working from their cubes and with their spreadsheets and highlighters and red pens? The shift, explosively summoned by the currency, the Now, the all and the call around her. She saw the flowering and could only wait and count and plan and not care what they would throw at her, like that question, “What did you do to the blend?”

The laptop attacks me and become accusing with what I type and how I am and how I want to type fast.. “You’re too sensitive,” I can just hear it saying. “Wow,” I rile, “how perceptive, you’re calling the writer ‘sensitive’, brilliant.. again, how perceptive!” Time for bed. I need to have an enriching sleep so I have no time for this nagging, this negativity from the laptop; bloody device, negative repeater.. I see strength in my repetition and my redundancy and my usage of singular words; their own worlds and expansion invites. To bed, and I’ll try to sleep but I know I’ll only think of the novel, the pages, the wine and what I noted at Ash, to my water. Tomorrow I’ll taste through everything, and note all the stories and voices. Just as I did with that ’12 Dry Creek Zin.

Watching footage on news of the Nepal quake.. I couldn’t cover that, journal it as a journalist and be objective.. how could anyone? Too much hovering over and in and firing at my layered reasoning. But the layers aren’t reasonable, not all of them. I’ll find reason, and be reasonable tomorrow. In wine, wines.

(5/3/15)

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Composition

This morning I expand upon Composition or the concept of and in. Our submission soon due, we should examine the togetherness of our pieces. Me, for example, starting with Kerouac and his need for the story, the Newness, the exhilaration and the stream of stimuli. But all critical and clinical consideration aside, use what’s around you, your everyday day and routine; you never know where you’ll find “inspiration”. Again, keep your eyes open, always, as writers. I know the view may be a bit extremist, but keep a little notebook with you, and pen, and scribble anything you think you might be able to use.. for example, again, Sal’s need to travel, to take off, to be around Dean.. then parallel that I would with the people I see around me everyday in the line, the coffee shop, on the way to work, some looking exasperatingly miserable. This would leave me considering the truest of true intentions one should have in life. Living vs. existing.. then death…..
I’ve said this several time, and I just want to make sure it echoes with you all: REACH with you ideas, don’t dismiss any of them as ‘crazy’– if they are crazy then they’re worth writing down. Dismiss or embrace later.. just write it down.. stay in your scribbles and thinking. The end of the semester is just a couple doors down, not “around the corner”. Composition is about innovation and the writer believing in their ideas and propelling them to page. It’s more than a silly course title. And there’s nothing theoretical about Composition. It’s altogether actual, and right before us all. And it refuses to halt, so we shouldn’t either.

On a note utterly separate, who’s writing for themselves.. any sketches, stories, poems? Let me know!

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MOCK SOMM: Porter Creek Winery, Russian River Valley/Sonoma County/Fiona Hill Vineyard, Pinot Noir, 2012

IMG_5714Emerson said “…poetry was written before all time was…” And this wine is immune to time, immune to worry, and a radiantly grandiloquent thesis in the grand punctuation of Pinot. Yes it’s poetic, most forwardly with its earthly and rustic, or dusty nose composition, but with the motion on the sensory, its initial palate push. This wine should come before a lot in our lives, certainly worry and preoccupation with any ingredient futile. I’m greeted by more richness of berry and versatile spice than some airy template of red– no, this Pinot which I just happened to stumble upon in an impetuous day tasting, an RRV lark, and ‘spellbound’ doesn’t encroach my truest of sentiments.
Okay, I’m over-thinking, maybe, comparing it to an Emerson utterance and thinkingIMG_5716 “yet another Pinot” in my latest Pinot practice and excavation. So, another facet to my ‘PC’ visit that left reverent impression would be the hospitality from Jonathan– Tasting Room Manager and universal renaissance man. He not only had his own magnetic tier of oeno-sagacity, but was friendly, not in anyway pretentious or self-aggrandizing, but simply nice, pleasant, and quite instructional with the surrounding Pinot blocks, the AVA and the winemaker’s insights and impulses with making this Pinot. This is something traditional somms tend to forget in their wine reviews, or feathery scorings.. yes I know, several of the wines are submitted to them as they’re so lofty and “read” (yeah right), cultured. But I know some of them visit the wineries, they have to, and rarely do I see a note of requital directed toward host.
IMG_5723But in any.. the Pinot. And its Poetic Principals, more than merely reverberant and echoing but its own inkling of palate instruction. Poe said, “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” And this ’12, a capsule and carrier of that thought… And then somms will say in their 20-word write-ups something like ‘Drink now until…’. I say, with this particular Burgundy translation, ‘now or whenever’. But don’t wait too long, it is a Pinot. But what’s “too long”? That’s just it, it’s all personal, and time.. time supervenes Poetry, and Life, not the contrary.
What a Pinot prize! Go get a case, soon! It’s small in bottled population.

MM94

(5/1/15)

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More on the

wine exploration, my new attitude and forum for the bottles, tomorrow. And in morrow, early wake. This morning out the door late from the easing of little Kerouac… but before I forget, prompts for morrow writing: 1, meeting with 1B students; 2, stop at Cellars for tasting and MOCK SOMM material; and 3, the SB from VML I sip now– oh, and 4: the Comp Book, how it fills and how much I must have forgotten. I know there’s a gem or dozen in there. I have to wake early, a Hemingway session, write the MOCK SOMM piece on the Pinot from Porter Creek. With this new wine campaign and writing momentum, I’m noticing more about myself as a writer and lover of wine, what I sip and how perceive it sensorily and meditatively.
The VML SB tonight has more melody to its words and overall ‘sip thesis’. More coherent, and more definite language to its composition. Everything I’ve shared this semester with the students has taught me something in the way I interact with Art, and wine, and Life,

always wine always mine--
always wine
always
mine–
and my own ideas. but I have to dive further into these puddles fermented, and link it closer to Literature, return to my vinoLit anchoring, what had me blogging or start blogging in ’09, what my sister-in-law suggested.. and yes, I rejected her at first but I’m glad I started these blogs and just putting my reactions into the world, into reader’s thoughtful realms. And now, more mature and more energetic and more focused from having a son and thinking of how he’ll one day read his diarist father, I’m more set to subdue any self-doubt or defeatist disposition. I too think of my students this semester and how hard they’ve worked and how farcical it would be if I didn’t throw more of myself into this new writing momentum, this newly catalyzed revolution about my words and entry pattern.
Tired, took a nap earlier but have since been sluggish and a bit moody, but I remain with my speed and sight with wine and the thoughts connected, everything from the MOCK SOMM column to the writing for that website, to wine itself, and what I make this vintage and what I’ll write about that, the process and how the fruit will look when it comes in.
There, alarm set for 5:20. And I will be writing. Then after dropping off little Kerouac, to the pool, and I don’t know for how many laps, as many as I can handle I just want to swim and stay healthy so I can write and be around for my children and have more energy, achieve that Wellness that Phoebe writes of.

Ready for calling the night, ending this fiddling with the synthesis of sentences wrapped and wound around wine. Wake early, I’m telling myself, wake early and write and post and show the pages to an already literarily-deprived world.

Oh, and tomorrow’s the first day of May. 36, soon 28 days at front. Need to get in that pool at ’24’, swim like I’m evading a shark, or one of those jellyfish with the poison that could kill like a thousand men with one perforation.

always wine
always
mine–

(4/30/15)

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MOCK SOMM: VML Wines, Russian River Valley, Sauvignon Blanc, 2014

I forever have felt SB was a back-burner varietal, like it’s something you sip IMG_5785before something ‘serious’, like it’s the wine you sip before real wine, something red. Well, this white warrants more craze, more conviction and more vigor from sippers. And that’s what I’m writing for, here, in this entry, for the Bordeaux that tells the sipper to pay attention and demonstrate respect, make that respect and acknowledgment visible.. the nose and initial palate are rich and convincing, boasting its own phenolic geography with those wild melon wiles and tropic touches, the togetherness of the concluding orders of the sip. Nose, collectively, nearly pheromonal– There’s a striking lightening to this wine from sip one to last, in all segments and stages.. a general impression that I’ve never sipped in an SB. The acidic flex is understated but pragmatically vibrant and visceral.
IMG_5786 This bottle has more than just what I call ‘palate attendance’. There’s work that it has done before sliding along and attaching itself to your senses. The tropical lacings and honey suckle are suspended and strengthened by the alcohol content, which yes is a bit high for an SB, over 14.2, and the texture doesn’t blare stainless steel exclusivity nor neutral oak. In fact I don’t know what the treatment or regiment was concerning ferm’ and aging. And I don’t care. Again, the aims of these posts anchor themselves in divulging and writing about wines that I–me the over-spoken, passionate and tireless consumer–like, and love. This SB, closer to a love, undoubtedly. AND… easily the best ’14 Blanc I’ve sipped till now. Certainly the only one worth writing about.
So what does the Lit lover in me pair with a sturdy imbiber? Short stories, either by Tobias Wolff or the little-knowns by Capote.. something thoughtful and with an imaginative handle on form, tilt your glass as you turn pages.

IMG_5816MM90

(4/29/15)

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Plan…

The novel, now my “toy truck” project, as King said. I’m not backing away or out of my project, I’m just abandoning the due date. I know that I wagered my son as motivation, but I now evermore dedicate to short fiction, that will be my job; the sketches and shorts and vignettes– so nothing’s changed, I’m just following the path that more calls me. When I have time to dedicate to the novel then I cut through that door. Now, I pan and tilt blade with more functionality.
Submitting a piece on Adjuncts to NPR’s ‘perspectives’, and writing another piece for that wine blog.. and then just writing for me, those pages for ‘yr own joy’ as he said. Mom told me to stick to short pieces, and why not? She’s write. I feel less pressure, and am less sluggish, and that’s all the time I have at the moment. When I’m not longer adjuncting and pouring 4 or 5 days a week, locked in MY office, then I’ll throw Self to a novel.
Tomorrow, optional office hour for the students to help them with their final papers.. oh, and that reminds me, I need to post to the teaching blog at some point this day. And this is the last semester of maddenedread. Everything from the Ox put into the Bottle. What wine do I open tonight? A Pinot? OR one of my Merlots? Not sure what I have anymore, as much of the wine was moved to Mom and Dad’s, before the move… Should charge the camera [in a past entry, I wrote ‘phone’, as now I pretty much solely snap stills with my phone, as do many in the country, world..], the one I use for real picture missions. Thinking of photographing along Westside Road, certain shades and lightings of the vines at this time.. into kitchen for charge and a sip from cup2– can really feel it now..
As a wine writer, or person, or lover, or… I don’t always have to address the wine, what I sip. Why not the vistas, why not how the air and soil smell around the roots and by creeks? Why can’t I cite how the trees look on the mountain or hill’s flat just elevated beyond the rows? Why does wine always have to be about wine and the act of drinking? Why can’t it be the ideas and associated expansions from wine?…..And I’m not incensed, I’m gentle extending a thoughtful entertainment. I already know.. people love drinking, they hunt for that buzz, and they see something actioning and assiduous to commercialized ‘hedonism’. In fact, some even write the word itself into their mission or statement or “Philosophy” as many winery sites italicize on their website. “Winemaking Philosophy.” Or, “Our Philosophy.” If you extrapolated the word ‘Philosophy’, you still have the same candor and vision disclosed, so why that unction, the layering, that self-endowment and anointment? Well, obvious. Didn’t you know that wineries are the foremost pedagogical places, each a sought phrontistery?

(4/29/15)

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In Adjunct Office

And tired. No mood for anything, even with the coffee posing its puissance.. After 1A go to bank, then to home, and after 1B work around condo.. nothing Literary about the day, or that I can see so far. This morning’s climate and stage brings fog of that blue-brined purple, and the mist away burns like its frightened of all the cars coming to park in the nearby lots. The coffee tells me to toughen up, that it’s not doing its job for nothing that I need to forget all that stresses me and think outside the box like it’s been telling me for years, and like I told myself the other day. “Which box?” I react, “This office? This adjunct office? This adjunct role? This patternized dehumanization? This one? This?” It just smiles back. I get it now, now I see what it wants me to see.
Interviewing a winemaker tomorrow and I’ll take more notes that I ever knew I was capable of taking– I’ll record everything he says and everything I observe and I’ll limit my article to 1,000 words.. four pictures.. maybe a video somewhere else, separately.. but I’m going to learn and step onto his property, that tasting room as a journalist, a wine writer not so much just a writer who loves stories and successes and people who thought outside the box and executed something to their benefit, betterment.. and he’s a dad, of three kids I remember, I believe accurately. Anyway, I’m quite sure we’ll share staunch similarities..

10:03, home, tired, diving headfirst into more coffee and readying myself and my ideas for 1B– the Critical Thinking section where it can only be loved, how they think “Critically” and show their liveliness from page and from their souls. This morning in 1A we explored the plain of career, how we choose one, “what we do now and what do we want to do, and what will that do for us.” I very much participated in this discussion and listened more so to what the students had to say. They taught me, an immeasurable amount about dreams and what brings them happiness and what they want, how they see themselves in whatever ‘career’ they target. I’m finding that work and what we do for a living and how we react as receipt of that career is much what defines us as characters. My interview with the winemaker was cancelled for tomorrow, on their call not mine, but I’m writing anyway.. I will stay busy and get caughtup with my novel.. Right now, I just enjoy the freedom of my writing and the quiet of the condo and seeing myself away from chasing assignments and simply pouring– I want wine to be more than intimately arched in my paragraphs and short pieces, articles or what be–
Listening to jazz and just relaxing in my home, or my home for the next couple weeks or so. The move before us, my wife and I, and so much frenzy and disorder, not of our doing that’s just how moves are I guess. That’s always been my experience.
Still feel like I’m in that office, ‘cause I’m in adjunct mode. And is this what I want, being an adjunct? Yes and no. I don’t want to be dependent. I want to teach a class here, there, and not be harness to this indenturedness.. coffee coffee, where are you?
There.
Made.
But I wait. Don’t want to jitter too fiercely. In fact, I should break from the page, and just relax, listen to the jazz, this track by Steve Lacy.. and daydream. Feel like I always have to be moving and shaking and productivity– the dilemma so human, and so fearful, “Am I using my time wisely?” I always self-interrogate.
I re-read my notes on Baldwin for the 1B, on ‘Down at the Cross”, and expand upon fantasy, and what fantasy is, and how I as a writer and thinker and lecturer want no part of it– no disillusionment, and that’s what They capitalize on, the chairs and deans and whores of trustees, the president.. I won’t let them play me anymore. Wine and Literature.. my life’s remainder, how I want to be seen by my children as I’ve said.. so today’s different, and my mood’s elevated from this morning in that goddamn adjunct cell. This office, this condo floor, on my floor with legs extended, laptop atop, has me centered, in MY Wellness, ZEN’d for sure, and I’m grateful.. I’m poetic, and I’m speaking form the coffee (cup 2 me awaits in kitchen), so so so… Now I jitter, but more a jitterbug than anything, dancing with Grandma as she told me she did long ago with Grandpa.. so much in my veins now and am I vain for expressing so? This is my work, my career and future I write– each moment its own standalone..
Have to get in the shower in 4 minutes, and this laptop dies. Don’t want to stop, don’t want to leave my ideas and this spot on the floor. First sip of coffee tells me to think outside the box and don’t follow your schedule, getting in the shower so you can leave on time and be at Petaluma campus and go over Baldwin and speak to students barely interested and have no urge to be aware of the movement he represents– I shouldn’t say that, not all of them, but when I look at the students and see that annoyed stare at the wall behind me or at their notebook, like they’d rather be doing something, anything, else, and that coupled with how we adjuncts are just tossed, tossed around, into whatever sections are leftover, I fall further into surrender. Oh, and I still haven’t heard from SSU. Of course.
My office is me, the character and these thoughts I carry with me; how I hear jazz, how I react to the day, what I’m needing to say, share through these sentences.

(4/28/15)

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Beauty Brooding

IMG_5691Attestedly, Pinot and I have a flimsy relationship– we bicker, we contest, we ardently altercate. But not tonight.. tonight we dance, thanks to this Russian River producer.. the fruit is not in any angle contrived or forced, or one-columned. I’m being spoken to, in song, in verse, this ’13 is like a convincing cloud of sensory force that I’ve never met; that other Pinots in set would envy and downright deplore for its palate prose. And maybe this would be the glass, my second, spurring the writer, but it’s Truth– this Pinot is its own mandate, a sovereign sewing of empyreal ebullience– wild herbs and field-y tones taunting the caesura of raspberry and maple, slight cedar– but I‘m not approaching the wine that way, with the dumbed cataloguing of notes and ‘descriptors’. This character deserves more, and more, and by ‘more’ I intend a story, and I envisage, some world, or setting, or moment where character like myself and another like-penner perambulate in words and recitals and– some crowd, listening to our words, all prompted by this Burgundy, from Westside Road… Next sip, forcing my diffidence, causing me to reject any and all boxes, and cherish my own chatter. When I find a wine like this, this is what materializes. And Pinot, of all forms, genres. This is no wine review, no silver-tongued sentence sequence, just me writing to wine; evidence irrefutable of the writer tilted and terrifically taunted by a new wine find. And Pinot… Pinot! I don’t want to be one of this new fashionable fold but it looks like I am. But that wasn’t the writer’s desideratum, by any measure. And that’s my understanding of Pinot as a presence: vagary, the espial; ensuing enclosure. But I’m digging too far as I tend to do, this writer-slash-professor.. I should have just sipped and scribbled, jotted some humdrum banality and skipped along with the glass-tilts. But that’s not how we arrange on page, we writers, the word-warpers loving simple syllabics with a bit of sip. And like Kerouac, there was a decision I’ve been meaning to stamp and solidify but it’s been tossed away from my perceptive plain, and pleasurably. And I thank the PInot, this ’13, for getting me to clarity some coherence of paragraph, composition.. wine wine always in a wine, me and my cyclical sentiments… my Beat.
And my glass empty. A lull ebbs in my Personhood. And to do.. what. Nothing. Just stare at this bloody glass as any Beat would. My curves and coursings opaque in any rationale, and so mundane when I re-write, and re-re-write. But this bottle’s solved that. And I’m untroubled. From this Pinot. Why does it confront me from sides blind? It, this contained vivacity light but not so, aims to have its Self heard. And I know you’re asking, “Where? From where? What winery?”
Why does it matter? I’m a writer, find love, a wine, mine, mind molded and resulted. Freed, me.. That’s REAL capsuled composition. So I sip again…..

(4/26/14)

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novel excerpt.. this morning’s session

“Deadlines,” I say to myself, “Deadlines, Mikey.” I watch the people walk into the tasting room, thoughtless, careless and eager. I welcome them, the whole time thinking about how I’m going to use one line ‘Moveable Feast’ for a lecture on Tuesday, one of the last of the semester. “…belongs to me…” But I couldn’t think too much about it, I had to focus on these people waking in and how they looked around, excited and curious, some seemingly intimidated. They, group of 8, approach the bar. I put out four menus, then glasses, ask them if they’ve ever been here before and what we pour.. “Oh, I LOVE Pinot,” one lady says. I tell her she’ll love our bottles, start them with the Chardonnay, watch them sip, and right off the bat one of them asks me how long I’ve worked at the winery. “Not long, actually, just over a month,” I say. Then one of them, an older man asks why so many in the wine industry move around from TR to TR. I tell him I don’t know and I’m “only doing this part-time”, so he doesn’t think I’m caught up in that herd, their indecisive migration. So obviously, I notice, I’m insecure. But I’ll use this to build, build what I want with everything, then the next pour, a Pinot, blend of RRV and Santa Barbara-ish fruit.
“Yeah, that’s what a Pinot should be, definitely,” a young girls says, swirling, looking, sipping, smelling again.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” an older man to her right, more than likely her father says. I can tell he’s not thinking about it too much. And why should he, or anyone, it’s only a couple minutes after 11.
Larry walks around the bar, up to my right side, lean, “I’m gonna go check the back bar, you okay?” he says. I nod, he leaves.
“You guys expecting a busy day?” another man in the group poses. I shrug before being accosted with another question about my work history, as if what did I do wrong in life to be stuck behind a bar, that’s what the question intoned, or how I interpreted… ‘belongs to me, belongs to me…this moment belongs to me and these people belong to the building, the vision, the Newness of this idea I’m Crafting, construction.. I’ll tell people form now on I’m in construction, that’d be funny, and accurate and honest, ‘cause I am. Now.
“We’re gonna go outside and hang by the fountain for a little bit, we’ll be right back,” the calm man says. They follow, and I’m alone. So I build on the word ‘belong’.. “Ownership,” I write, then “control” and “possession”. “The writing that shows this ownership and control exudes an admirable power on page, and ads to its transcendence, the immunity to Time, and an irresistible sense of locale and character….” I watch the group outside, must be a family trip, and yes all are related, I then imagine that the tasting room is mine, or my characters, and how she’d react if she were in here by herself.. she’d love to see her bottles tasted and sold, but people walking through the door alone would gratify her, give her promise and that sense of ‘belonging’.. then I play with the word again, “Belonging,” I write, “as in a sense of calling, purpose, kinship and intimacy.” This empty room belonging to me, I give myself a new deadline, have a beaming thought for Tuesday before they come back in. They look comfortable sitting on that ledge by the water, just watching the upspurt, so I scribble more, I tell myself ‘I will take this thought to class and then on the Road’. I’ll devour this moment, consume it as if it were an appetizer at ‘Billie’s Oeno Go’, the favored wine bar downtown, I think Fourth Street. The glasses, just in front of me, empty, under the counter, who will sip from that one, and that one, I stop scribbling and just look around, like one of them. And I pretend I’m one of them, like I’ve never been to Livermore wine country and like I know nothing about wine, that I don’t think of making my own wine and like–
“That’s beautiful out there,” the man says.
“Yeah, it’s pretty relaxing,” I say, putting my notebook in my back pocket.
“Wine notes?” he says, looking outside noticing that the family’s very much stationed by the water. “They love it out there, oh well, they’ll be in in a minute.”
“You ready for the other Pinot?” I say.
“Yeah.. that one you just poured was great.. I love Pinot.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.. that’s all I order when I go out to dinner.”
I pour the next one, from Monterey, and I think how he has a sense of belonging with Pinot– and yes I know I’m over-thinking this, ‘reaching’, but I want to, and like I tell my students, especially the 1B’s, “that’s when you discover something.”
“This one seems a little richer, is that right?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of rich, definitely more oak,” I offer, hoping I don’t influence his sip.
“Yeah.. yeah.. there’s more oak, definitely,” he says. I write down his words, and think he’s trying to communicate something with me, I don’t know what, but he’s sharing his love of wine and the winery and this moment speaking with me, and he doesn’t care if the others come into the room, in fact he’d probably rather they all stay out there; his wife, the others his age and the 20-somethings. He looks at the glass, and I write something down, “Observation.. can we just observe and not think too hard?” Which many wine people love to do, especially those who want to be seen as experts. “Can you pour me a little more, I think I tasted some cinnamon.”
“Yeah.. I get cinnamon from this one, too,” I say, feeling a belonging to this moment and this dialogue with the man. I pour, benevolently. He smiles, smells, sips.. “Yeah, definitely, cinnamon. I’m gonna go out there and make sure they haven’t drowned, be right back..”
As he walks outside to his family, I rush to the back, ignite the espresso machine, “café au lait,” I think, just like Hem.. I heat the milk, make two shots of espresso– push the door open, they’re still out there, back to my mix.. done.. behind the counter, writing again, noting what I can for Tuesday.

Categories
autre

A Show

IMG_5638The walk to the gate in the morning and looking at the lower block, for bud break, and the wines–again the ’12, my focus of day– and the slowed traffic, the ride to the hill’s top, all of it had me thinking and more cemented in my wined position. The grapes to come, for me and my wine and the character it’ll assume– Again, like this morning with the ride home, me nearly running a red from all the possible theses in my head– I’m here in the nook pulled several ways, from the novel to this blog to contact assignments writing and blogging, to waiting for SSU which I know will take its sweet time, just like SRJC with a section Summer section. Dinner soon, and the rest of my Merlot. Thought about saving the rest for tomorrow night but I’d rather not– and being solicited for material by those in ‘the industry’, I’ll be mindful.. everyone wants a writer to write for them, something, and do some kind of trade, not money no not pay. “This’ll be great exposure for you…” Exposure won’t pay the Autumn Walk mortgage, and it certainly won’t–

Running through my words last night interrupted by some thought, can’t remember. The sky today, surely won’t catch me like yesterday’s did on that morning walk with Al & Janice. No wine tonight, run tomorrow morning. Frightened the left knee won’t be happy with me should I now go out. Will soon be into that 7daysaweek pattern, but I’m not worried, it won’t be like when I was at K—-, I’ll be more eased with this new estate and their embrace of the writer and who I am in wine’s vessel.
Hemingway wrote of the people of the Seine with such herald and regard, and he IMG_5613couldn’t stop with his enumeration/catalogue of their actions and the articles on the banks, and I have to do the same today– so I now here admit that I didn’t satisfy my assignment to Self yesterday with taking notes while behind the counter and I had every opportunity to do so at day’s beginning, with no visitors, only that oddly diligent wind, talking with my coworkers, and tasting that ’12 over and over. And I was right, it is certainly the more evolutionary of our wine, from its high-alt’ blocks and the severe soil above the fog, near the oceanic ambient temp, it said to me: “I’ll keep writing, just like you, I’m telling you to keep writing, but do so in short, smaller pieces, today’s mine, so what’s yours?” And I don’t believe to be paraphrasing, or re-gesting.. I believe this to be its thesis for me yesterday.. that sky, the high clouds and my angle through the Pinot leaves, then sipping that Pinot, then walking with Kevin out to the lawn to appreciate where we were, are, the valley and the property and the moment, its own standalone, its own declarative madness; the green and light but rich red of the Japanese Maples and all the varieties with which I’m not familiar– so much to learn about the property and wine still, still, and that’s what separates me from Them.. any industry bots, the character of the adjunct finding a laid oasis for him in the schedule he’s trying to change. Wish my students could see me now here on the floor typing with Jackie behind me watching his educational ‘Big Cat’ show, with all the lions and cheetahs, a couple leopards– Would love to do what these blokes do filming these animals, waking early to capture all they can.. the discipline, the routine, the godhonest work of it all– me now with wine.
Rain last night as I fell into my new dormancy, resting, and I thought of rain and the vineyard and the drought, and I shouldn’t then have been trying to sleep but to stay up and write, finish the bloody novel, or at least a standalone sketch– any advent of Newness, fruition.. and recite, this idea of recording the fiction to tape or at the least reading it at Redwood Café– but it’s too noisy and too many not listening which infuriates me, that was evident when I went there with the students earlier in term. So how about start a workshop/podcast/group/lecture sequence/…/… ‘slash’ everything. But all around short fiction, between 100 and 1500 words. Ideas ideas and I credit the wine and all the wine people around me and my sister the winemaker, and even the template wine bloggers and those ill-breeding lumpishly scuttish sommeliers.
IMG_5616“He’s funny,” Jackie says about one of the lion cubs, playing with its sibling, rolling in grass like nothing threatens. The sky now, a bit hazed but blue with insinuations of gray. Alice getting up, and Jackie asking me “Have you seen my little blankie?” I go on a hunt, my writing again interrupted but I don’t mind, and all my readers if any should know that this, parenting, and my son and Ms. Alice and family empirically come before anything, especially wine and its world, but the wine world shouldn’t mind by definition as so many speak from the perspective of family or being family-owned, or at least starting so before vending soul to some corporate jawset.
Today, focus on Zin, both Zins, open both (both 12’s), and WRITE in notebook, anything from ‘rich, slow-moving’.. worded and musical.. I don’t know… I have to taste later, and note note NOTE what’s poured and how its being syncs to all my scribble sensibility, if I have any at whatever point in the day. As you have read, the Room can be exhausting just as well as when it’s emboldening.
Coffee 2, and I’m thinking again about this new idea for a podcast, or broadcast, or whatever it’s to be called. When I started teaching back in ’06 I prided myself in my lectures about thinking ‘outside the box’. And now, I must perform what I promulgate.
Issue of P&W, left, coffee right, and quiet in the condo after Alice and Jackie leaving for the gym, Jackie to play with the other children there and on that slide, the “fun slide” he loves so much and always talks about. And I’m here, left to face the day and the sky, the wine, vines, and characters visiting.
Summer and Fall classes exasperating me, as there aren’t that many.. what if teaching was my only option, as is with many adjuncts? Don’t think like that, cuz it’s not. Just beat on in your Beat, writer, and let songs and airs varied infuse into the prose, the story.. and be outside the box always– I usually don’t write in affirmations like this, but this morning it calls. And I again am convinced of the morning’s importance, the first lines in a story…..