Tag: English Professors

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Me, Wine Industry

And the morning… the morning… oh, THE MORNING.  

img_4768First thought was health, wellness and total wellness about my character and story and what I thought of course was writing, and singularity as I obnoxiously and tirelessly stressed to students this past semester.  Got a mocha, but no eats or one of those breakfast sandwiches I usually am self-stroked into buying.  Note: NOT. THIS. MORNING.  Everything different.  

Wrote sentence in “Happiness Project” journal, third or fourth straight day.  I have these thoughts about my own marketing firm, a creative hut for clients and creatives to intersect and profit and build mutual business.  And that will happen, one day, but the first project and priority, apexing and towering over any other entertainment… ME.  This blog.  My writings and lectures or essays, whatever you want to call them.  I’m starving right now but I not so much channel it as I do re-write the electric of its echo… new music and tunes for me, now at 08:44.  Have plenty of time to collect in this office, writing everything down, differently than it sounds in head—  “Do everything differently.” re-written as “Be another character, that character you see.” So, forward.  Two journals in front of me and you can tell I’m a writer, a recorder… this morning and all mornings.

On my marathon, ultra-run to total wellness, a state, an Equilibrium I remember writing about back in 2008 while lecturing at SSU, I breathe and listen to this jazz, write along side Mr. Coltrane.  I’m the writer I see, have seen, finally.  My health is my writing, what provides sense and music to each of my steps, and how humdrum and repetitive the tasting room can be, this sequence on pages negates and erases any bland consistency.

Love when I’m like this, with all these journals out.  Yes, I feel a bit cluttered but writers are so, such, right now with this very key touch, and this one, this one…. Day starting, this morning, a writer in the wine industry tired of the industry, some parts of it, but commissioning everything that wine embodies and asserts, intones and represents in what I do as this writer. 

Offering a writing course over summer, all Summer semester, “The sentence.” Building books from a single sentence, or some submittable manuscript.  Doesn’t necessarily have to be. Thesis or some proclamatory punctuation or stance, some memo tone.  Just the sentence being the start to something mountainous.  Had this statement signaled in head this morning, right as I left the shower, turned on fan, walked over to ironing board to put on what I ironed before shower.  My health, can permit no nay-say.  I will only speak the language of solutions.  With my writing, personal associations, when in the tasting room or on some tour, talking about the wines, any wine, whatever.

I’m a different writer.  I’m a different Mike Madigan. I’m just a writer.  That’s it.  Not some business owner, not in the traditional sense.  Just a writer.  Books and blog and articles and chapbooks, some poetry, something everyday to put into the world.  I start writing the first lecture for the Summer course.. harnessing what I recall feeling while lecturing in the English 5 class, and the 1A to lesser road.  I’m different, re-written and whole as a writer.  Learning from the morning as I always do but this A.M. has me sent to new Newness and rising, elevations and pagination.

(6/7/18)

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Readings/Writings

Mini-mini-mini Lecture 2: There is no help…

You have to do it yourself.. Completely a ‘DIY’ reality, this writing life.  That’s not to say you need be antisocial of hinderingly introverted, or anything like that.  It’s just all on you.  ‘The onus is yours’, I stress every semester.  So… Just start writing.  Then, pages collect.  And you only have yourself to credit.  Or blame, if nothing gets done.

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Uncategorized

Why Write?

Because you can.

Let me show you…

Lots of new lectures and writing prompts on their way.

Have any questions, just post it below…  #professormikey will get right back to you.

 

FIRST PROMPT:  Write a piece in 30 seconds… poetry or prose.  You only have 30 seconds, so time yourself, start writing, see what happens… GO!

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autre

Project A

Over 1,300 words.  Lecturing notes and pieces for my book, the MS due in March.. to be sent away, for sakes of teaching and student empowerment, making literature your own and being more of an active participatory reader and.. don’t wan’t to bore you, just note I’m very much alive this morning.  Cup two, Jackie awake, Alice and Emma upstairs feeding, and me ready for the day and this new singularized path I’ve decided.  Again revisiting the PhD idea, and BELIEVING I can do it.  But what’s my doctorate to be in?  Lit?  Education?  Philosophy?  How ‘bout a coalescing of all?  Loving this feeling this morning and the motivation I’m greeted by in my own home, this Autumn Walk Studio..

 

1/24/16

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autre

The Day So Far…

At the adjunct cell, but production and materialization of my aims is only progressing, steps forward in my career as a professor.. and just realizing, I started 10 years ago teaching, my first section at Chabot.. and I’m still an adjunct, but I say that with no bitterness only emboldenment for Self and my Personhood..

Ordered books, have to go to off-campus bookstore to get HST book and some other gifts for myself, then back home to see Emma and Ms. Alice.. Emma would be proud of her writer/professor father today, active and moving and not at all stationary in his writings and pages— the semester nears and I can barely wait to start it.  Coming back from the on-campus book store I saw Terry, the Dept. Chair, he offering a warm greeting, asking me how I was which I didn’t expect (I thought I’d get the usual dismissive nod, that I get from all, nearly, FT-ers).  I think he was startled to see me, an adjunct, here, working, ordering books, on my way back to the adjunct collective to do something.  In the typist now is an unfamiliar but savory fire, one that will get me to the Road, to my lecturing out of state..

And what students I’d hope would take away from an entry like this is to just keep moving toward your vision, the picture you want to of yourself see.  And define it yourself, scribe your own set of convictions..

Ten years…..  Can hardly grasp that actuality.  And I’m teaching myself more about that self as semesters progress.. as I progress, and age.  This year 37.. why.  And how, again I have to ask.. another sip of the free coffee from the tumbler Cathy bought me, and thank the Craft she did.  And HER, that she did.  Today I need to be tireless, and own my role as an adjunct, and have that catalyze me to where I want to be— the road.. traveling with my teachings.. lecturing out of state and in-state.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten about Stanford.  I never will.. and my aim for ’16, or one of the many.. to be on the ‘Palo’ campus by years end, if not to merely share ideas for a day.

Or have lunch.

I remember Dad’s joke while I was in the hospital there on campus, where Dad would say, “I went to Stanford…I had lunch there.”

I wrote earlier on the teaching blog about reinvention.  This idea and word emphasis, conceptual envelopment I run with after hearing Scott talk about how Glenn reinvented himself after moving here from Texas.. and Glenn doing so in his late 40s.  I’m still in my 30s.  Granted the beginning of what’s looked at as “late 30s”.. but, et alors!!! (SO WHAT!!!)  Life is shorter than short, in fact it knows how brief it is and it loves torturing us with such immediacy.

The lights in the adjunct cell go off, but I go on typing.. the coffee and my attitude today, this semester coming up and how I will light this department and the school and the thoughts of my students surely sur le feu (on fire).

11:13.. should soon leave, to the bookstore, bring home a hot chocolate for Ms. Alice.. see if I can help in any— OH!  I need a haircut.. that’s another part of this coming term..  I want to appear more the role of a professor.. but no clutter.. minimal weight.. quick and eager, compassionate and passionate.

1/4/16

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autre

a writer:  post 005

Who says writers have to be brief or short, curt.  What’s wrong with being a little longwinded in your thought streamings?  I’m at my most loathed of distance campuses, and the Story had me go into the adjunct hut rather than the quiet and removed lounge across the hall, which a character I’ve dubbed ‘Math Man’ has recently discovered and started to frequent.  Not sure if that’s part of my impetus for coming to this side of the hall this morning, but I’m here.  This final week of instruction for this angry adjunct.  No more of this campus, I think THAT is most of the reason I came to this side of the hall.  To feel like I’m done, to feel victory, to recognize I NEVER have to be here again.  Wish I had more coffee but the 3-shotter I sipped on the way over here from Sonoma/Napa still electrifies my inner-echoes and has me in full written character this morning.  Waiting for another adjunct, fellow writer and plainly lovely Human, ‘R’, to see if she can proctor the funny departmental exam for my class, one week from today, the day my daughter’s scheduled to land.  I’ll ask R first, then go to the Humanities office and TELL, not in any way ask, what the plan is for my time on exam day.  Driving over here, the fog, wanted to stop and shoot some pics with the phone but I didn’t.  Instead, I just drove, and that’s what the writer needed.  Just a drive.  The music as I now listen (but different station; on drive it was Thievery, now it’s Hutcherson).  This is just why I came to the adjunct hole, to feel like no longer I’m just an adjunct being tugged by nostrils semester to semester.  If I’m to be some template for my daughter, what a man should be and what a father should execute in his role (the future father of her children which in NO way I now want to envision– already I’ve decided no male on this planet satisfies even a tenth of the requirements I have preordained, to be with Ms. Austen), I’m to defy.

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autre

Day 82, excerpts (no edits)

…we’d be watching football and enjoying snacks and just hanging out as we did yesterday (told him this yesterday, before leaving for Mom and Dad’s, for dinner, where Mom cooked some beef dish with mushroom and carrots in a crockpot).  Now I hear him talking.. poor Alice, I’m sure she wants to sleep.  I’ll go up there and get him, and when down here with me I’ll write that cover letter for Dominican.. would love to have a class there, make that drive DOWN 101 to Marin, or Kentfield, or San Rafael, wherever it is down there, waiting for me and my words and instruction–  Hear the monster, my little boy making his way, sneaking down the stairs, in the dark, don’t like when he does that I fear he might fall.  “Then why don’t you stop in your project’s current proffer and get him?” I do just that and find him progressing to the condo’s bottom level, step by step, on him bum.  And now he’s eating his waffles, playing with cars atop the toy chest.  And I’m the observant father who tries to write and bring his project to a close and think of what to do next best for his family, bring money in and impress his students and come off as some sort of expert but I know that’s not possible.  And expert?  No.  But energetic, passionate, involved and immediate, present?  Yes, undisputedly–  Jack continues to bring me toys and items he likes to play with and I offer interest but only so much as I can’t help but think about it, this last Wednesday and how Alice is with me going back to being a fulltime adjunct and building my CV and teaching, lecturing, writing.. more coffee this morning and I’ll have the day’s 3 pages by 10, or before.  Alice said she wanted to go into her school, her office and get some work done, I’m only supportive as her passion is never flimsy or sporadic, it’s fiery and Roman and expansive.  I bend in awe, watching her prep and leave early as she does.. soon, this will be me again– well, I do wake at 5-something to ready for the 1A this semester.  But I mean a more viral and daily footing, practice.

Exterior stage, present and visible.  The day’s aloft, in flight.  Noticing a change in my writing habits, how I can’t leave the page and I fear this project’s end.  Most would say, I’m sure, “Aren’t you looking to finishing it, being done?” Or, “100 days?  Of three pages?  Are you crazy?” Well, yes, to the later, and NO to the former-former.  Once it’s done, I have to edit, all 300+ pages.  Yes, loosely, but I do have to read my entire MS.  And what is it?  A memoir?  A journal?  A nonfiction novel?…

I have to edit, all 300+ pages.  Yes, loosely, but I do have to read my entire MS.  And what is it?  A memoir?  A journal?  A nonfiction novel?  The character Mike Massamen will be more direct and shining on page; he’ll take the adjunct dilemma into his hands like other adjuncts don’t, and can’t.  He sees the others on campus and dread becoming like them one day.  He wants to be different, seen as a writer and as a scholar, one more in advocation of reading and literacy than the others; and he’ll never be complacent like the fulltimers, ever, even if he does eventually become one.

Starting a new poem…  for the whoso magazine on blog…..  Perambulating about the page in verse and meter.  Just finished it, I think, don’t want to make it too long.  Think ‘No Why Of’ might be a bit long.  And I can’t edit it, already have it posted–  Tired.  Think I may have whatever’s making Jackie cough as he does.  The father struggles, and he content on couch watching cartoons he requested.  To much in thought bay, so I put down the laptop and meditate, think of nothing, or as close to it as I can.

11:39, Alice at school and Jackie and I hanging out here at house.  Email Dominican contact and filed for UI just to do it, but it’s clear I won’t get anything as I made too much money in Fall ’14 and still make too much now with the 2 sections, SRJC.  Kinda funny to think I make too much money… WEnt for walk with J and Alice up to BV hills, up Woodview, and it reminded me of summer mornings at Steve & Linda’s; coolm slight cloudcover and that wild smell of morning and foliage and plants, guys playing golf (which reminded me of Sunriver, not Stever & Linda’s property).  Walking back down the hill we saw a sizable coyote.  Alice was alarmed but J and I were intrigued.. he yawns now next to me, could be nap time for him soon, forgot what Alice said.  But one thing I remember her saying, yesterday, was that I’m happy again, now that I’m not at the bloody winery again.. I’m reborn in my studies and in my passion, with my students and in my life as a writer..  Should write a letter to Dav today, respond to the one I just received, and follow my idea of Gorgeous American Grim.  Think this may be the most explosive idea I’ve had so far as an instructor, or “scholar”.  And I’m going to become more competitive as a teacher, like I will as a writer–  I can’t believe it!  I’m free!  No more counting the goddamn register and no more morning meetings that accomplish nothing and no more 30minute “lunches”, rushing out of my loft to get back on their foolery clock.

I’ll be back at Acre, later, but I don’t think I’ll have their coffee.  Maybe something else.  Think they have wine, actually, a glass of something white maybe.  Something to relax me and write smoothly and fluidly and with rich melody in every word I put to page.  And I remember the promise I made, to myself and readers and this project: after day 100, I start the novel.  But which one, Krystal or Massamen.  Has to be Massamen…

Categories
autre

mikeslognoblog, changed

Didn’t think I’d get past the day’s thousand, but I did.  Tells me something.  What I’m not entirely sure.  More evidence of readership, to this “blog”.  Which makes me happy, obviously.  Just finished beer.  So I’m due for a night’s cap.  It’s only 7:49p.  Odd.  If I went to bed now, just think how early I’d wake, for session, to remove 1,000 words for daily docket.

I won’t lie, I need a glass of wine, or something, and some Art.  A documentary on Poe, Plath, Hemingway, Faulkner, Capote.. something, someone.  Noise bothers me.  Especially lately.  Would have some decaf, but there’s none here, as there is in the Yulupa castle.

11% left in this thing’s life.  Have to plug it in.  Life support.  Hate that I have to do that.  Need to change positions, adjust my Literary rant.  That, and I’m down to 7%…

Now, plugged in.  Poe, what he intended for his characters, swirling through my deliberative boards.  What else will generate readers’ positioning more than the sinister– or, the justified?  I won’t deny what I feel towards the wine world, but I also, at the same second, thank it for everything it’s done for me, my writing.

Just opened my last Ale.  Have to slow down, as it all me catches.

Pretending like I’m having a beer with Mr. Poe.  We’d talk about everything from submission guidelines to self-publishing, to poetic principles, then to imagery, to certain gothic concepts.  And what is ‘the gothic’, as my grad school professor used to say.  She always used to call out, “The Gothic!” What is it?  I still ask to, till now…

8:16PM.  Nagging mySelf to keep with this thousand word continuance.  And I think of Poe, what he’d think of my content in this long writing wallop.  Still can’t believe the weather today.  How warm it was.. the California xmas.  This next semester, I’ll combat everything that’s expected, all the aligned.  I’ll support my students, any ways that I can conjure.

And how has the writer changed?  I’ve become more…  committed.  For my students.  Purge yourSelf to page.  I’ll never b stuck, as I have my students to motivate me.  They are my material.  You may think I’m crazy confessing such here, but I’m not.  I should be admired, copied even, as an educator.. as I commit to the young minds in their seats, listening to my words.  I’m humbled.

I skip to any skirmish for the student attending my class.  Any curriculum interfering with my lectures, my students passion for learning, or even simple aim to earn credit, will be instantly silenced by an instructor like me.  In ’14, I’m different.  Militant–  No.  Just intensely committed.

The “superiors”, if you could call them that.. think–no, KNOW–they have everything calculated, reduced to formula.  Are they interested in student experience, or funding?  That’s what I have to ask.  And I am.  Right now.

I find mySelf stalled.  Re-reading Hemingway, his thoughts on observation.. Life, Death.  What better affirms Life than Death.  What does Death do for this writer?  It’s lifted me, sent me to apexes, ones new, renewing.  If former students this skim, or even closely read, know that new seed indeed stream in twos, threes.

(12/25/13)

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autre

Candidacy Soon

Officially started my typing for a PhD application.  The Personal History Statement.  UC Davis, if I remember, only allows 4,000 characters, including spaces.  Which isn’t much.  I already have over 1,000.  Which isn’t much of a shock, knowing how obsessively, quick, I write.

Left work early today, around 3:30pm.  Now, finally having a chance to write.  Sipping some of the Meritage I brought home.  Only letting Self type with this sitting.  Then to newJournal.  Since I didn’t make it to my café yesterday, live as Hemingway did, I shall tonight.  Only sipping wine, scribbling my lines.  As simple as possible.  Have EH’s letters at my left.. hoping to dip into them tonight as well.  With TV off!  Anymore, I hate the television, nearly all shows it punctuates through its devilish screen.  And people like me, with my aims, don’t have time for that devil box.

My students, this semester, many scrambling to finish their college applications.  Then soon after, they wait for response, watching the mailbox, for that little wheeled cart to stop before it, the arm reach out with a little envelope brick.  That’s what I want.  And I’ve always told students that you can write your way out of, or into anything.  Shared that thought with yet ANOTHER graduate student today, also interested in teaching.  She currently student-teaches while earning her M.A. at St. Mary’s in Moraga.  Can’t remember the specifics of her focus, but I do, still, appreciate the impassioned octave within which she voiced everything.  That’s what I have, once again.  And at this point in my Life, I’ll devote everything to my teaching practice, literature, and moreover.. the WRITING.

This bottle, more illustrative than other bottles of this wine I’ve before opened.  Perfect for this evening’s sitting.  But it would certainly pair better with ink than this oblongly stalling laptop.  I swear, I hate this thing more everyday.  Only using it when I have to, from now on.  Seriously.  Know I’ve said that before, or something like it.. but I’m quite serious this time.  In the newJournal, centralized my thinking, energies, by making a list of everywhere my words go.  Only 7 items so far, which includes the journal itself.

Attempting a book club with one of my coworkers.  Our first project, my selection, A Movable Feast.  Of course, by Mr. Hemingway.  I’m glad I was allowed the choice of our first book, as I am allowed to travel back to Paris through EH’s memoir.

Poured my last glass…  Trying to think of anything else worthy of key pushes, from day.  Nothing rattles me now–  Well, was going to taste through the tanks at lunch, with Blair, but I never took a lunch.  I need to get better about that.  I deserve a lunch, everyday.  I need to just take one.  So all those wines, at that stage in their growth, at that time, whenever I would have taken lunch, can never again be experienced.  Will do so then on my own, Friday.

 

note: The wine now develops a rolling gallop of floral pulses.  Is that strange for a Bordeaux blend?

note: Don’t burn yourself out too quick with the writing for the PhD applications.  Take your time.  The writing you submit has to be the best you’ve ever put into another’s hands.

note: This quiet downstairs.  My glass, the plastic stemless, perches on the counter, next to the coffee machine [Keurig].  Can’t wait for my morning cups.  It was said rain would greet us all tomorrow, promised by the weather drones, but you know how that many times results.  Hope I wake at 5am, or earlier.  Haven’t run in I-don’t-know-how-long.  So at the very least, or as amiable substitution, I can write in harsh hours.

 

Time to edit, time to sip.  Then to journal [no longer calling it newJournal, as it’s not so new, in my view].

(11/27/13)