Also today, experimenting with a book selling business.  On eBay.  See how it goes.  So far no one has viewed the books I’ve posted, but I’m not bothered or discouraged.  Not yet.  This inspired by wife selling old clothes of babies, to her mommy mafia partners, or associates.  I don’t know how to define or tag them, give them any moniker or whatever.  Finally quiet in the house.  Of course thoughts from a writing daddy, his only day off with family and no regrets or resentment but I needed this time, this time to write, to do what I do.  Write.  That’s it.  Everything else is a support of this, of me.

If I don’t run then I’ll write, which is much like running intuit you want to hit some mile or distance catch.  Wine, now paired with the last piece from the kids’ side of last night’s pizza.  All cheese.  Paired with now a cold SB glass, perfect.  Wonder if there’s a football game on.  More goals for these closer-to-40 pages… watch more sports.  Write about sports.  Write about music.  Buy more music.  Make more music.  Write about everything.  Next time someone asks you what you write about, just say ‘Whatever I’m in in the mood for.’

The wine and pizza are like music, like a Coltrane code and album, just jam session.  Thinking I may deliberately not work out tomorrow morning and just write.  Or… shit I don’t know.  Not enough time.  No there’s plenty.  Okay then… run, but only for an hour.  Hour and five minutes which includes the belt’s cool-down offering.  Then come home and write at least a hundred words.  I shaved about an hour ago, so all I’d have to do is put out clothes tonight and readying tomorrow morning should be cake’s most loving and jazzy of walks.

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Again catching self in an overthinking maelstrom

I leave the house.  Come to downtown Santa Rosa, to Beer Baron.  A place I’ve only been once.  Ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, one I’ve never had before and don’t think beyond that.  Just enjoying this whim, this sudden cruise downtown.  Not sure where the direction of the writing’s going, and I don’t need know.  To the characters I was thinking of in the tasting room.  Yes…. The two that are behind the bar and want to get out of the industry, starting their own wine gallery.  That’s what they call it at first…. I came here just for this, for new ideas and brainstorming, not be at the drawing board but to draw a board of ideas.

All this before class.  All of it, of this, my new stories and wine thoughts, wines I’ve tasted recently, yesterday with the St. Francis Chardonnay then some Kobler Viognier when home.  Everything in the pages, on them, constituting them.

This place, a serious bar more than a restaurant or any wine bar I could see myself opening.  Earlier thinking of self as failed in some wine aims and dreams.  As the waitress just now puts down the glass, I find I’m not in any way “failed”.  Have I even really started?  What if this could be my office, everyday, I think.  Come here and work from noon to whenever.  Why not.

I stare at the Sauvignon Blanc for a bit before smelling it, and much before tasting.  I let it be a symbol, a reminder of wine’s life in my life, its presence and my past and present, all futures.  I won’t let self take a sip just yet, but rather draw my characters at their winery, at day’s end, having a glass of Pinot on the patio. They talk about just going for it.  Saving whatever they have saved and putting it into some wine business.  A brokerage, they think.

But then I as the writer put the idea on hold and think of how I’ll approach them, this story.  Their stories.  The wine story coupled with their stories and mine.  I stop everything and focus on them, Jane and Elly.  Jane out from somewhere in the midwest, always wanting to work in the wine industry, years ago and now here and tired of being tasting room locked.  Elly, from San Francisco leaving her corporate corner to be in wine’s everything.  She’s worked two harvests, then to tasting room as production for some reason just wasn’t her thing.  She knew why, and didn’t know why.  She loves the winemaking process of course and everything that goes into harvesting and fermentation, barreling-down lots and pressing, even the shoveling of tanks.  But the people in the tasting room and the words they’d say, the interactions with people, called to her and wouldn’t let her ignore.

I take my first sip of the SB and focus on me writing, what brought me here.  Then the two characters.  What we all have in common.  They of course, or maybe not so obviously younger than me.  I keep writing.  Till this is the ONLY thing I do.  Writing about writing and people and what they do for work. How work and our jobs, labor, determines so much of our character and how we estimate the world around us.

Think today is the day I finally killed overthought.  I’m not editing, or measuring, forecasting or worrying about how anything I write, type, is perceived.  I’m just moving and not allowing any stationary sets for this writer or any of his characters.  The two girls start a website, for anyone coming to wine country.  They see themselves as fashionable intel, something to make people more pleased with their choice to come to Sonoma County much the way I’m please with my election to come here and write.  Relax before class.  See me in business with son and daughter, eventually.  I quit the wine industry but am very much back in it on my own accord and set of terms, rules, and I guess some regulatory rattle.

Second sip.  Such real and truthful tropical body and bravado.  Nothing invasive or excessively aggressive.  This is a character that has me more into my characters and these new characters I’m writing.  I return to them and what they want, what would make them happy, what in wine they want to grow toward.  What do I want to be, grow toward.  Wine, travel, speaking on wine both metaphorically and immediately.  Tonight, open something new.  Study it. Let wine dictate my own fate, give me direction and more introspection.  Tempted to take the night off from class.  No.  Use it as speaking practice.  Not practice at all, the second sip says, and I sipped minutes ago.  Can still feel that tropical shock and rush, set of steps. 

I pick up the glass and nose what remains, which is a good two sips I’m guessing.  40 next year.  That’s where my head is.  And then what.  Maybe I’ve overthinking that as well.  Sure I am.  Look at the wine, focus on it… wine writer and journalist, one who actually writes and journals and doesn’t just take a blare of ridiculous shots of himself and other wine “experts” or “writers”.  Glass up again, sip….  Follow the stories, MY story.  Don’t think at all.  Just write.  What I tell the students, every semester.

Talking about writing, tonight. That’s it.  Beyond simple argument, or any attempt to persuade which was the chapter they had to read in that “Prose Reader”.  Or maybe that’s singularly what I should discuss.  I think about taking notes, but the wine says no.  Be in the moment.  Or be above the moment, flying and hovering above simple time and whatever that clock reads, dictates.

Finding that when you write down ideas, they speak back.  They instruct you on possibility and presence.  They talk back, love back, write back.  Thank fun to the Story, and everything, LIFE, for today.  For the embrace and blind subscription to whim.  To not sink into overthink.  To blog and jot against any overthought.

With he glass done, I slow.  Thank of the walk yesterday with my son in the vineyard and showing him the remaining clusters on the canes.  I had him taste a couple….  I thought of us, in business, how our visions of our company will differ and will be surprisingly in some places identical.  All this from wine.  Thinking of wine, living wine, writing wine.  Wine writing me, since my first day in the St. Francis tasting room, 2006.

10/22/18

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I’m awake and working out.

Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.

Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.

Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.

Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.

05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.

The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.

05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.

Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.

05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.

05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.

Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.

Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…

10/5/18

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10/1/18

New month and new challenges, new invitation.  First month, Q4, and for me everything is in a poetic synchrony.  Breakroom writing which I haven’t done in some time.  The whole day with projects, an interview with a new candidate which I thoroughly enjoyed, emailing someone in company with new idea, and more ideas, more, more than lily going to have to come here early in A.M. to catch up on some addresses as my laptop, the work one, not wanting to agree to do anything this morning.  I’m mean to be here, in this chair, in this big lunch room, sipping coffee and not needing to eat as I finished the rest of the sandwich wife made for me end of last week— actually that’s a lie, I didn’t eat any of it last week, forgetting I even had it in the fridge.  I felt horrible and swearing to self that I’d today eat it, hoping it’d be edible, not molded or gross or off in flavor dote.  And, it was perfect, just what a writer needed to have this sitting.  Writing at a tech company.  Am I a tech writer?  I guess, in some form.  Well, now maybe yes.  Yes I am.  I’m in tech, coming from wine and education, finishing out my last semester at the JC then setting everything, all efforts and projects and proverbial promises in this basket.  All new axioms enacted.  Both journals at my left, new thoughts let to beget here on lunch hour.  Not sure when I clocked out.  Not certain how much of the hour I have left.  Who cares.  Know I have till 1.  Which means, 38 minutes precisely.

Was supposed to have lunch with new friend and co-worker in other department, Abraham, in the “MDU” division.  Take him to lunch actually to thank him for all his kindness and help this past Saturday, at the event.  But he didn’t know that was today, or that I wanted to take him to lunch, something lost in the translation and delivery of my offer.  So, Wednesday, two days from now we lunch.  I’m actually grateful to the craft to Craft it worked out as it did so I can write.  And now, in the field, now more eating out.  That lunch I had in the East Bay, Saturday, at the BBQ place on San Pablo was messy, too expensive, non-flavorful, and just upsetting.  Should have had a sandwich at the Subway in front of which we parked.  Btu no, I had to do that.  No matter.  Now forward, I write.  I’ll find somewhere quiet and jot.  All specifics.. who I canvass with, what new I learn of the company and the product we offer in field, about me in my role, educating the reps, and new reps that come to the company.  Now, I’m writing, I’m doing what I do, ME, who I am and what I do but more who I am which is what I do.

Teaching tonight.  Nothing prepped.  So what.  And, no wine tonight so I can wake early tomorrow and put to blog an enormous number of pages.  And obnoxious slew of page-storming.  More of that from me, now, here, and because of here at this office.  Technology isn’t technology, at least to me.  It’s relating to the community, connecting people, service and in a way the wine industry only boasts it is but never really embodies.  No nugacity in my being here.  Everything is significant, significantly sown in new Newness, new significance.  Two journals on right, me jumping from one idea to the next. W hat this place does to me.  Tomorrow morning I’ll wake earlier than early, and do something, get me closer to my end-Road here at Sonic and with my own projects.  I’m not promising, I’m affirming I guess you could say, adamantly affirming my affirmations, inward and outward then back inward, inwardly.  Coffee, bag, guys over there playing video games, me here writing which doesn’t make me anything, I’m just a writer in a technology pond.  I’m humbled and welcomed and fascinated by the contrast.

No poem written today. Still have to finish the 52-line piece I made loud advancement in the other day.  Blockage everything out, forcing self into hallucination where I’m deaf, only hear the keys and some jazz, jazz… I need some but don’t want to play any as the fight agains the noise around me is colorfully stacked in reward and gems philosophical.  Catch myself overthinking so I look at the first sentence… no poem written today… I’ll change that in a minute, in the closing frames of this lunch break.  Everything in this room is poetic, a form of poetry and poetic narrative, music and song, jazz, a jam session of sounds and the people in my head, audience, hearing everything and moving their heads forth, back, smiling, then I smile too right in front of everyone here and don’t care if I’m observed.  This new job, how it has me thinking, how it has me moving more poetically-intoned and intentioned than even the SRJC or any other campus.  People in and out, debating over what to eat for lunch from the fridge, talking about their dogs and how they have to fill bowls by their cubicles for their fur-amis.  More leave, the others keep playing their game.

Snacks at my desk, so I’m not tempted or tampered with by the chips and cereal, whatever else is in this room with me.  Solely coffee.  Talking, about work and other, this conversation and that—  A poem hops into my head, want to write it down but then I get another idea.  The office has me furious and lovingly frazzled with pages, ideas for story, more stories, what I want from life and my own story.  Nearly didn’t make it here, and I won’t be doing this come Wednesday.  But I’m here now, I tell myself.  What am I looking for, from this job, from this office, from this internet service we take to communities?

More sittings like this.

More of this. 

ME, here.

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0656

Not up at 4 as I’d hoped, shocker, but I’m up before 7 on my day off. “Day off” I should write and specify as I’m going into office at 2 to tend to everything T and I couldn’t when we landed the ship back at base. Today will be a day, I can feel. Picking up check at Idlewild Wines TR and getting in a run somehow. Not shooting for 10+ as I did last week. Just a healthy run. Maybe just 6.3-mike measuring run as I used to. Just note, reader and self, that I’m awake, alive, fiery and purposed in my present presence. I’ve been antagonized and self-catalyzed.

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21:00.  Home

3f783641-3af6-422a-b9a5-b4814a6a08c1-24969-00000ff7a5f0b9d9_fileand on floor thinking over day, over a beer.  Great lecture in English 100, after meetings with co-workers and a positive, energetic, and animated new-hire.  I learn from everything.  My knowledge addiction doesn’t in anyway diminish or taper.  Only exacerbates.  AMPLIFIES.  Would love to talk to that twit who once accused me of using the word “amplify” incorrectly.  Yes, she is a career tech-laden say-in.  But I’m one of language and word ties and sentence storms, I know what I’m saying when I it say.  And as I said in the wine world, being a literary bloke in its walls, I’m now such in the tech world, making everything around me MINE.  From the desk at which I’m based, to the break room in which I was earlier writing, to the carpet, those chairs outside the break room that look like something from 2001 Space Odyssey, or The Jetsons, or Star Wars.  Everything is new, Newness for a literary body as I in tech’s step and compositional clef.  I watch and see everything, learn from everything. More about the internet and business functionality, 

Being new in tech, I don’t feel the intimidation or anything scary or over-my-head that so many said I would head.  Nothing like that. Everything invites, teaches, and as an academic I can only see what’s in that office in such a touch.  When driving to work this morning, I for some reason felt either anxiety or fear, or insecurity, something like that.  Soon’s I walk int through the doors, putting my badge in front of that sensor thing after saying hi to one of my co-workers and her dog, Frankie, a beautiful wolf-looking pup of some makeup, I centered, felt more me, the literary me in tech’s periphery.  Now that the day’s over, and with class late tomorrow night after a day in the office working on new projects and meeting team members, after more meetings, brainstorming more on more new ideas and possibilities… I see this, all of it. This is my platform, or launchpad of some kind, profitable and promising precipice.

21:15.  Starting to fade, get tired, feel tired, want to give up on the writing but I won’t let self before touching and feeling a word count.  I know, the whole quality versus quantity, or is it quantity then quality consideration, debate, I don’t know, but how tired I feel’s beginning to beg my concentration.  Has me straying from one thought to the next.  And no, it’s not the beer, as this is my only in this nightcap place, placement.  My character Kelly comes home from work, her new job in a tasting room and opens a bottle she was able to take home, to try, from the winemaker.  She feels herself getting tired, starting to fade a bit but doesn’t let her concentration erode to the point of not studying the wine.  She pretends it’s hers, what she’d say about it.  A Syrah, all Russian River whole-cluster with extended skin time and more than 50% new oak, French.  Like me new to tech, and she new to wine, there’s profuse truth in experiential design.

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Day 11 – 

Sat down in break room/arcade/snack shop, immediately started writing.  Told self I’d grade papers on break, but not after the busy morning I’ve had.  I very much deserve this meditation, this collection in words, with my paragraphs paired with leftover pizza and sparkling water wife me bought at Costco, yesterday? No.  Saturday.  Anyway, I think of business.  This business that I’m now in, melding customer service and PR with hospitality and sales, tech, language, storytelling, everything that I am as a … everything that I am.  Truly.  This morning’s meetings with T showed me what I already knew but punctuated what I need more pay attention to.

I’m learning still, at my old age.  Learning to learn, learning to write, write everything down, make the moment and everything in it especially at a new job my own.  New knowledge, in every step and turn.  No exaggeration.  I can’t get anywhere close to enough, here.  Of everything.  From the product I represent, to the services… how do I make this my own, I think.  The same way I did, and still do but on my own terms with wine.  Words.  Speaking.  Performing to a lesser emphasis.  Here.  Present.  My story and in my business, my business in this business, learning about the internet and why Net Neutrality is important, how I as a consumer of information is impacted.  I’m learning, and that’s my fix, that’s my addiction and story.

I still have a semester to get through, and I have to get creative tonight if I’m to grade what I have to, what remains.  What I had more than enough time to get to over the weekend but decided to instead write as I now do.  I should be eating this pizza, taking down this sparkling water, but I collect and mediate, recover on page.  Not that there’s anything to recover from.  This place, this company, everyone around me in this break room put me in a cumulonimbus composition of passion and creative… how to approach prospective buyers and how to approach the office every morning.  Writing down plans and goals for each day.  Yes, I’m doing so each day, and assessing the writer’s progress.  What I’m doing, how I grow, what I know and what I learn, how I grow from what I already know and the shapes and sequences newly-learned.  Feel like my story is only NOW truly starting… that the great consolidation of things and vignettes in my greater story only now’s noted.  Finally.  I shouldn’t say that, though.  I know.

Hunger catching me, I take a bit of the cheese pizza that I bought for the kids.  My babies, missing them this morning and driving here I thought of them and felt my soul sink, that I needed more time with them over the weekend.  But how could I have had more?  There were things scheduled, scenes already set.  Plainly, and I write this all the time, I need to wake earlier.  Last night didn’t sleep all that well, so ce soir I’m going to those sheets and pillows unusually early as I told wife.  See if I do it, and if I do hopefully it’ll trigger an early wake.  If I make a project of 4am, who knows what it’ll do.  I’m certain contribute to what I do here at the office new, this tech gem that found my story with a quickness and timeliness that very well could have saved my life, I see. In many ways.  Not just hyperbole.  I’m vocally convinced it did.

Have my eye on one of those canned coffee drinks in the shop’s fridge.  Not sure why I’m stuck on that at the moment, but I am.  I love the surroundings, here.  Do I miss the walks around the crush pad, in the tank rooms, in the cave?  Yes, I guess, but even those started to get old. They were just the same, replicated in each curve and angle, scent from barrels and tanks, cave rooms and tables.  Even my day yesterday in friend’s tasting room annoyed me, a bit.  People coming to taste wine but not really understanding them so they didn’t buy, or did but only a bottle here and there.  Thinking the next time I’m in a tasting room will be when I have my own. My own flight, offerings, when I’m pouring the wines I and/or my sister’s made.  Wine… still in head, don’t be confused. The industry though, as I’ve so many times in days recent said, put on the pages of this blog, is no more in my manuscript.  No more counting register, drying glasses, making those infernally pestering cheese plates.  No more.  Sipping what remained of that Pinot last night, and not much mind you, I thought of how just a moth ago, August 10th, I was in that room.  Behind the bar.  Pouring for people, giving tours, walking ‘round the crush pad and strolling with a joke or two cued into the lab to greet my buddy Chris… an act I do very much miss, as I loved the wine and winemaking discussions with mon ami, Mr. Chris… talking to the winemaker and asking him about growth in the vineyard.  Just under a month ago.  Time, here, flying faster than anywhere else.  More than enjoying myself, more than growth, but lesson that I need capture everything.  Note everything, and I do as there’s a lot to this new job of mine.  Field Sales Supervisor, a title which sounds rather industrial and clinical, boring and emotionless.  But its not, and certainly not how I’ll make it my own.

My pep, a strain to contain, hold or quarantine.  I’m learning too much, and not just about tech and the internet, client and customer relations, but about BUSINESS.  Am I a business blogger, now?  My knowledge need speaks from this new business I’m in.  I didn’t have this on property, certainly not behind that bar pouring down a tasting flight.  Meeting another fellow new hire after this lunch/typing session.  I know what I’m to say, then don’t.  I’ll learn from that, as well.  This is all learning. My business in this business, in this office, new, is learning, helping others learn.

9/10/18

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Standing and Writing 

Photo on 3-14-17 at 10.47 AMCoffee.  A day off.  But I don’t want any kind of a day off.  Busy over the week but that’s no permission for non-submission.  I’m writing today, and that’s all there is in my character and mind. Today I’m Jack Kerouac.  More than Kerouac, or Hem, or Carver, Faulkner, I’m ME.  I’m the me that had wine last night and doesn’t have to worry about speaking wine from having to speak about wine, today.  I’m free.  I’m free of wine’s industry and telling me what to do, busy tasks for the sake of staying busy… no.  No more.  I’ve said this before, but I feel obligated to again put such in these day’s pages—  Wine is what I write, wrote, again write.  Not the bloody industry.  Or maybe I am.  Maybe I should.  Again, my tell-all of wine’s world and functioning and lack of.  But that’s not where the knowledge is.  That’s not healthy to obsess, and to do some tell-all is from vindictive voice.

Head a bit foggy this morning, from that last glass of whatever blend that was.  Think Merlot and PV and maybe something else. Martin Ray’s Bordeaux varietal project.  Still see myself having my own label, someday.  Some little tasting room… but enough dreaming.  What am I making happen, forcing to fruition today?  A run.  And not on a fucking treadmill.  Just plugged in the running watch, that Garmin thing the wife-ish person bought me for xmas or something.  She bought me one of the best models and I have not used it satisfactorily.  So, then, a run.  Write and write and write….  I descend upon self whenever I don’t write or don’t hit some word amount, and I know why then have no idea why.  Today, new.  The Newness invites me to travel from thought to thought as Neal and Jack went from State to state.  I think about my life, where I am in it, riding from house to house on appointments yesterday with that tech whose name I can’t remember and so horrible I feel as we had quite an enjoyable day.  Finally eating lunch in west county, Occidental, eating sandwiches I bought for us under a tree, watching people drive by on that narrow main street drag.  The first house, not a house at all but a traitor on a bigger property, Windsor.  Felt bad for the bloke, later in his life and that’s all he had.  He was of elevated soul and disposition, saying “I’m great!” Then I felt bad for being bad.  He’s fine, Mike… I said to self. When we called to make sure he was home so we could do, or the tech, DAVID, could do what he had to.  Left Windsor then went to Healdsburg to connect something at this lady’s house, who lives with her photographer husband.  This house I found especially interesting as the house had a beautiful side area, completely shaded and set up like a cabana, or gazebo bar or lounge area.  Then in back of main structure to their shared studio.  Walking up small and steep little bright dark-blue stairs to a loft, the studio area itself where her husband’s photog equipment and her web developer area situated, catty-corner to the other.  There was a couch which I can only deduce was either a little gathering spot for the artists and their musings, gatherings, or a waiting area.  I thought to myself this is just the studio I want, just the office I’m aiming for.  I saw my office in a second home, in Healdsburg.  Just blocks from the square as this dwelling was.

Then in Occidental, we drove out, out to West County’s distant dimensions.  The lady’s house had some flawed connections, or some blockage in the phone line itself.  I didn’t quite understand what’d transpired till after we’d left and David to me explained.  What I thought was quite literary about this house was the envelopment of those tall redwood trees, if they WERE redwoods.  How nice it’d be to have a place like that to write, to have a studio or some office to finally finish my fucking book.  Then to lunch.  Saw one of my former students, which was quite startling and pleasantly perfect for the educating day I was having riding along with my new tech ami.  While the sandwiches were being mad eI used the restroom in the Union Hotel.  The original Union.  It felt historic, which it is, but something else I couldn’t place.  Not haunted per se, but something, something was there, something had been there, there were years and years of vacationers there and however many stories and characters… something there had me.  History, wine, wine’s world and town, more history and directions.  The Roads…

While in the deli I looked at what wines they had.  Nothing too commanding or provocative, but even still I thought of what it’d be like to be just passing through the town, having lunch with whomever I’m traveling, opening a bottle of something, and just watching, observing the town breath, learn from it.  Since being with this new company, I’ve seen more possibilities in everything, everything that makes this writer who he is, how he wants to be seen.   From the writing itself, to business interests and aims, tech, blogging, photography, wine and food, Sonoma County, my running, health, truly all parcels of my person.  Now seated, and measuring, forecasting what I want at the end of this latest 30-day whatever.  Not sure if it’s one of those challenges, or just some new representative sample.  Of what I do where I am, when I’m there.  What I do with time when I have it as I do now with the babies on their first day of weekend, a day off for us all, watching their little cartoon from under their little blankets.  They lose their littleness by the day, and I know will one day read this, or one of my pieces or books.  So this 30 days, which was shoved into action really from curiosity and something I saw from one of those business/speak self-proclaimed authorities to know fucking everything about everything.  So I answer with humility and curiosity, hoping the humility eclipses.  What will happen in 30?  I stand back up, look at babies, knowing I need to have them ready for wife character in under an hour from now. 

To the Road.  MY, Road.

9/8/18

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