Woke up just a shadow after 5 this morning. No mood to write. Sipping water now after only a bit of wine and craft beer. Need to finish a book, that dream, or dreams, last night, this morning motioned. In the city today, in the 10-month office of that startup, having me wound in thought like hyperactive cat, or something. Not sure what I’m thinking right now, tired as I am. Just knowing I need to finish my the book, or not—yeah, maybe I don’t. Maybe I just need to post more. To this very fucking blog. Put everything into the world, every thought. A book will come later, won’t it? I’m tired and shouldn’t be writing. Just before 10, should just go to bed so I’m assured a run at lunch tomorrow. Need one, after how I ate today… the breakfast burrito, then that Italian chicken sandwich in Novato… then pasta for dinner, and a dessert (which wasn’t too heavy and crazy). I know, it’s the exhaustion that has me overthinking. SO, bed, writer. Go to fucking sleep. If you want that office in Healdsburg, or the city, or offices in multiple towns like the show shop you met today, with two spots in NYC and one in Australia? Or was it two in Australia? One in NY? Bed… Couple more sips of the iced water…
1:26am
Odd dream, so I’m awake. Not a nightmare, but odd, and it was third person. Main character being chased, and I only observing. Felt useless as a character. Is that’s what’s keeping me up? Definitely how a writer would look at it. Write your book, the dream or dreams tell me. What’s chasing me, or the character I’m writing is the story.
Have to be in the office at 7 for a ride along. Wonder where we’re going. Last time I had one of these I was newly hired. Yes, I remember, the Friday of my first week. Now I’m coming up on a year. Writer at a tech company.
Not ready to go back to sleep. Even if I were I wouldn’t be able to, more than likely. So…. what.
7/30/19
Flight plan for day. Be mobile. Move around. Go outside the usual print of the day. Don’t have to start moving for a bit. Physically moving, that is. An ’09 Chardonnay last night utterly stunned me, how it was still alive and saying something, wanting itself known and heard, felt. The post-it on my desk, reading “Circles Paths Questioning” so much in line and tune with last night’s screw-top Alexander Valley Burgundy. The Chardonnay writes the day’s flight plan, where we’re to land, what our altitude will be. Today, all music… all song. Each scene and movement in this tech office is a track. Walking back from leaving the lunch I brought in the fridge I cringed a bit thinking how today could be just another day, mirroring yesterday or others past. Then I said no, no, I’m pronouncing my proclamation to have today be all music.
Latte starting to work, grip soul and structure of this day’s story. Asking me, or making me ask self, “Would I produce a Chardonnay?” Not sure I would. I’ve thought about it, and in these entries talked about it. But serious consideration of Chardonnay production…. Not sure.
Was shown something that has me afire. Now I vary and make more colorful my approach and productivity composition. Not limiting self to one thing, one path or promise. But multiple. A myriad-esque approach to this, what I do as an AAE. Interesting role, this is. Putting me more and more in a vineyard in Bordeaux, or more than likely more immediately here in Sonoma or Anderson Valley. The person showed me not knowing what was in my head, where I was in the week’s story. Which makes it all so much valuable more.
Sip latte, wondering if a run will happen today. Think it will. Right now still moving a bit slow and only wanting to explore this new idea I have… not writing it here but in the Kerouac journal. Haven’t done so, yet. This idea is so consuming and seductive that I may need to take a break, go for a walk and sit in breakroom, or outside in back of building as I did that one day.
Business cards all over desk. Part of puzzle. What is success, being successful… far as I can see it’s not stopping, and reaching some peak of total creative and functional autonomy. Distracted by the idea itself, now. It’s more than value, more than a monetary potential, but….. not sure what it is. What species, what phylum, what form or category, sub-category. It’s present and I hear it. The IT to it all.
This is not just simple mobility, staying moving. No. It’s…. why do I have to define it? Why not just build from it. I will. For my vineyard, small little wine story. And yes, I’m thinking now, Chardonnay has to be in the rally. Today, a Chardonnay, one like last night. Seemingly past its presence and persuasive power but not at all. Not thinking, just writing.
7/29/19
Run at lunch. On phones all day. Just a minute ago booked my first appointment. In final 15 minutes of day. Desk, a thin scatter of ruin. Papers and notes, papers with crazy whirlwind’d notes. Teaching self to not think about it. Let the day end, drive up to parents house for a bit to check on it, maybe have a beer, and go home. Need to write at some point tonight, and wake early for more prose in the morning. I just yesterday cemented a conviction. My winery. Or label. Have to have one. But I need capital. Don’t want to be a slave to some investor tribe in some shiny highrise thinking they know what goes into wine and winemaking and speaking your winery’s narrative.
Bought a Rose from Medlock last night. Totally shouldn’t have. Wasn’t expensive, but I did break my budget promise. Either way, one of the best Rose offerings I’ve had in a while. Maybe one on my eventual menu, pouring it out of tank like that footage someone texted me, of my sister speaking to some VIP group touring the crush pad/production facility.
Could use a Chardonnay. Nothing red. Luckily when I went for my lunch run it wasn’t too hot, but after just taking a break and walking to my car the sun let its force and fierce fire known. So, yeah, no red. Last night at the Medlock event the guy behind the counter told me someone just ordered a full glass of Cab. And it was BLAZIING in AV yesterday. Not sure how anyone does that. And it’s their proclivity, but not mine. Not me.
Tired from that run, every so often and now more frequently stretching, yawning. Was on a conference call earlier and I had to mute the phone as I was yawning so much and with audible volume that shocked even me. Wine has never been more warranted. Vowing to write 500+ words about whatever I’m sipping. OR, what it makes me think of. Chardonnay always puts me back on that boat trip we took in late ’07, down the Mexican coast. We sipped Chardonnay on our deck. Hoping to go back, with only one glass tonight.
Trellis Step Travel
And ’11 white, and ’16 red. From Spain, bot. In the quiet kitchen consistent with my vinified vision, speaking in poetic tongues and abetted stuns. Character compiled in this sole presence and thought lot, caught in wine’s promise and spell, she tells me to stay, be still but keep in my truest move.
Haven’t touched the red. Letting her wake as she wishes. Shouldn’t say let, rather inviting her, hoping she wants to me as I her, after the week, this day, the introduction to a new story at work, learning a new style of business in a new way. All narrated and keeping self in that vineyard block, the one I now see, the 337 Lancaster block right by the parking lot. As the clock moves in its knotted ticks and tocks, me here with more sight. Tomorrow in Napa which I haven’t done in too long. On drive, notes hopes, talk to friend Chris while he kindly drives. Expect nothing. Plan nothing. Write little Paginate the experience and story when it’s done. Feel the early wake, just before 4 technically, speak to me. Urging bed, urging rest, urging early wake for a run prior to drive over the mountain.
This could be one of the more agreeable and interesting, seductive and capturing white wines I’ve had in some time. Why am I just writing about her, why am I not penning, noting the notes. Don’t want to be like Parker and whatever that one guy’s name is, and then the other twit I always see posting about his attendance at events hoping to be taking seriously or as something of a wine something. I don’t want to be a clown. Am I calling them clowns, no. Or maybe. I just don’t want to resemble anything they do. I’m present for the pages in the puddle, what’s transposed from and to the character by the alchemical atmosphere, right here, what I just sipped.
See clusters in a bin, in Spain in certain corners of this contemplative vein. A light, airy beat of sea and cliff, some sort of sand and trees by a boulder. Never seen it, but it’s on my out-of-body shoulder. Letting the glass be, the wine, she, with a freeing frolic of echoing chords and singular notes. Each, its own anecdote. I’m not the writer du vin I was when I started. I know that. I’m older. Shit, some days I just feel old. But she assures me I’m fine, encourages more recital, more music… Only write music, musically, she pleas. This ’16.
Now for the ’11, reckon. Last couple sips of the Albarino. Technically misspelled but this goddamn laptop won’t let me insert the symbol. Fighting the tired, telling it to be gone or face a fight. Nearly done, the red over there looking at me and reciting poetry I can’t hear till I sip, fully engage and stay embraced. Wine, educating me as she knows I need new Newness in this Now. 8:44, just minutes before bed possibly. No way to know. And that’s what wine is, not knowing. Letting time find you, and you drawing from the confines of the presented page. Sip, scribble, learn, live.
Throwing myself into this project. What project? What is it meant to accomplish I’m not sure but I have something new here, a book, maybe. Again this morning I see a day ahead of me, one to do something and record everything. But enough promising, enough cyclical prose, this cold coffee I made last night orders and loudly notes. This house, like a parallel plain with no kids. The quiet is unnerving, really. I stay working, productive, typing. No wine to speak of last night and I’m quite glad if you should know. Was too tired, too drained from day and wasn’t in any kind of oeno-analytic act or mood, desire. Not at all. Building my collection again. Becoming a “professional consumer” as I told my friend yesterday at lunch. What the hell is that. I don’t know. But it sounds cool. Sounds like a job I’d want, could designate to self. Couldn’t I? Of course. Where do I start. One bottle. When and where do I get it. How ‘bout Oliver’s on way home. Done. Agreed. Get two. One for immediate consumption or at least near, proximal drinking and the other for never. Drink it when you’re fucking 70 or something. Forget about it. The project becomes wine-burdened as I knew it would. It had to. People call me all kinds of wine names and distinguish as some wine-whatever. I’m none of that. I don’t want any of that. I’m a recorder, recording everything, about wine and all else. The day in front of me will feed me ideas for this professional consumer curiosity and who knows what else. Wine leads, I write alongside not following but blindly in tow. What am I after tonight… Pinot? Cab? Have too much of that with regular shelf-pull. How about a Zin, or a Rhône blend, or a….
Standing and Writing
Coffee. 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
Today… bit by wine bug, working an event at Idlewild
pouring Italian wines, all quite rare, friend from company I worked at expressing how happy she is for me now, now that I get to enjoy wine as I should as a writer and blogger. “Are you still writing about wine?” I told her yes even though I haven’t been, much, in days recent, but after today all I want to do is hop around Italian wines, and Italy, explore the entire fucking planet as much s I can and taste as much wine as I can, in any tasting room or villa, or terrace, wherever I can. Was in the ‘IW’ TR from about 12-8:15, listening to my friend Thomas speak on Italian varietals in the Mount Etna area. I’ll admit—well I don’t actually have to admit, but…-I don’t know Italian wines that much. Really not at all, till I started helping out at IW. Now I get to have fun, as I should with wine, as anyone loving wine should.
Now that I’m home, I can actually have a full glass. Was quite cautious sipping in the tasting room, Labor Day and all, and the CHP was out like the Panzer Divisions in Warsaw. I was sipping a bit, spitting, but more so listening, thinking of where I am in my wined story and how now I finally get a wined story. Me, now in tech, and I have not even a microscopic regret, will some day I swear have my own little label. I’ve written about this so many times that I’m now actually annoyed I wrote it again, another vow, another promise, but today told me… give everything to the office new, to tech, so I can play in wine. And not just for that, but my wine life is a gift from other work. How can I blend wine and tech, and beyond some silly rating app? That’s obviously too much the obvious approach. My thinking goes to discussion, to conversation, sharing of information yes but more informing other consumers.
Wine is calling me back, but not in any professional capacity. Like Bekah said, enjoy it as you want to. I will, starting with this Rosé. Blend of Nebb’, Dolcetto, Barbera, and I see some cove, the Mediterranean, me not having anything to do but write. The wine bug has bitten me several times today, warned me to stay away from the industry and if I go back it’s for my own tasting room which will be invitation-only. Friends, family, or friends or family, and family, of either. I see after today what wine should be. Not a competition, not a status-anything. Nothing the industry promotes, certainly not some corporate blob-glob pretending to be family-formed. I’m sipping wine, seeing myself somewhere, knowing that what I’ve seen in wine and wha tI now appreciate and feel is what I’m to do in the tech world. Much now answered, much now seen, a gem trove told and gleamed.
I just thought of something. Wine is a
story in a story… part of the collective narrative. My addiction to knowledge and learning more about my story and life’s principle consistency. Wine is an ingredient, a brick in what wall. No walls around me, but the wall on which I sign my name over and over.
Thinking this morning of what I’m to do for the rest of my life… THE REST, of my life. Writing, yes, but trying to decode life, purpose, knowledge itself, and share carelessly what I find. One gem in this morning— ignore what stresses you. Literally, just turn it off. Think of your dream home, some business you want to start, your winery, your children… focus on your There, and you will get there.
08:30. At winery.
More thoughts on a new step, a new direction and new knowledge, experiences, writings and whatever else the day has. Can’t stop thinking about the call, yesterday. Newness, what I’m looking for. Heaping storms of Newness for the writer. Should have taken the day off, honestly. For sakes of, well, so much. Short stories about the tasting room and wine and work, teaching… everything in my head circling. At a pace I can more or less manage, but still the thoughts me provoke. To think more. This morning’s early wake affects me, presently. Hard to think and write, but I do so anyway, poems speaking to me and me writing them down after this entry. Mumbles, in head, new choruses and verses to recite. Deciding that certain paths need end, and end when I order them ended.
Spoke yesterday with someone new to company, and we talked about traveling with our own wines, pouring them in other countries and states, and here in Sonoma County. Dreams… the visions, thoughts becoming tangible and what surrounds you. No more dreaming, no more simple envisioning and hoping, the wish-listing writing I feel like I’ve been doing for years. Writing, like this, the healer, the purveyor, the deliver system in this solitude which can at any moment broken be. Sure someone will walk in, sit at their little cubicle place, spot, and start their work day. Writing… the cure. This new possibility stemming from yesterday’s call, lights and lights, new illumination and education. For me, the babies…
Need a day. May leave early, today. In fact I’m nearly assured I will. When home, rest. A bit of writing, obviously. Poems, record them… songs, whatever else there is. Alway something to compose, jot in the July Journal or somewhere else. Festinating in this chair, on this page, language’s acolyte. There’s always something new to write, always a new song, always more tracks to deliver. Waiting for email… for something, but that’s the block that I don’t need. Just keep writing, I tell myself. Learning to nurture the nature of the forward, my books, my pages and stories, the creative of my moment.
This office is far more agreeable than the Napa office I worked in 2011 and just a touch into ’12. Not sure why… maybe knowing there’s vineyard just on the other side of that wall, I don’t know. But I’m not as unnerved. In fact I’m not at all, with the crush pad crew just below me, racking whatever barrels they have to, or in the lab testing alcohols or acids, what be. I’m at more than a winery, but temple, a place of instruction and learning, knowledge, what I think I write about anymore. Knowledge.. learning from each moment, each sight and observation, each serving as a standalone piece. I don’t need to dream or contribute items to any wish bay or list. Everything’s here, where I am, where I’m being sent, to this new story, a new stage.
Waiting.