Tag: fiction

Categories
autre wine

10:49

Not sure what to do.  Trapped in the house.  How I feel.  This shit is getting old.

Go to Sonoma?

Go for a run?

No idea.

Indifferent, indecisive…. irritated.

4:11

Glass of Caddis Chardonnay, thinking about that tasting room and Chris and the wine he makes.  Got a bottle of this, then one of each Cab.

Playing with design tonight and writing, more business ideas on the drive back, especially when I hit Kunde’s property border, droving further West to Santa Rosa where I’d stop at Su Casa to get lunch for family.

Had a veggie burrito, planning on light dinner.  Run in the morning, AVOWED.  Shooting for 6+

…

Emma comes in and says she’s getting Otter Pops for her, Jack, and his friend.  “Not for you, okay Dada?” Why not for me, I demand.  Because, she says.  I ask for further explanation and elaboration and she says ‘cause I’m old.  Then goes further to remind me that I’m not a kid.  Point appreciated.

Made list of points to hit in tonight’s sitting.  Just three, so far.  And might leave it there.  Done with Chardonnay, may get another glass in a minute.  Imagining myself making wine, spending my life like that… but I don’t have a chemistry degree.  So what.  Again, just imagining.

I’ll be writing about the Jonas wine tonight, made by Kunde winemaker and friend Zach Long.  Cabernet Franc.  Not many CF’s I’ve had that have made me write.  This one will.  I’ve tasted it a few times before and it there’s a distinct growl and purr to the sequencing suggestions from the being itself.

Sitting at the desk in quiet for a second, thinking about the next few years of my story.  What I want, how I’ll acquire it.  What I need to shed.  Know I just made that long list of projects, but I vow to contain it to a page.  Traveling, getting a getaway home like a friend just did.  Maybe two or three escape dwellings.

Before getting another glass of this Chardonnay, I look to see if my winemaker friend Bill of Desmond Wines has texted back.  Told him I was home if he wanted to bring by the case that I ordered and I’d pay on my patio.  Nothing.  Not yet.  I hope for a response soon, or tomorrow.  Eager to write about his wines, same as I am Chris’, or Zach’s.  Because of covid travel isn’t a possibility.  Doens’t matter.  I’l travel with pages and the sentences on them.  Taking covid out of the oscillation by not even addressing it.  No more.  Covid made me a fiction writer, possibly.  Wrote fiction before here and there but now I have to for mental manuscript and togetherness.

My winemaking character….  Needing further building.  Neil… crazy and erratic, not at all “by the book” but knows the book better than its author.  He scribbles notes while tasting on his bench, the wooden one his father made years ago…

Now more traits and behaviors of this character and how he approaches wine surface.  He opens three bottles to taste with his friend, Hunter. They go back and forth, spitting occasionally but scribbling notes, not full sentences, like rabid badgers.

Categories
autre

He’s had this blend before, more times

than he wants to try and catalogue. But tonight she says something different. A new tune, tone, move, clue. The blend stretches in a new orchestrated beam, a certain smirk to the texture’s work…

Categories
wine

Me

Now

Categories
wine
Day 9.  About conviction, about defiance, about all of us finding what we’re searching for.  Coltrane playing me and eased track.  Didn’t record my spoken word piece yesterday.  Was distracted by that bottle of Inspiration Syrah, the quiet of the house, and thoughts of writing about the wine industry.  When in my office, I see such a book taking shape, in not much time either.  Citing everything from the ridiculous pay, to the overwhelming focus on anything but get wine, to patterns and posturing from those patterns.
A truck passes me on 128.  Hate typing on my phone, but this is what I have currently.  Hoping for a day not at all busy.  Not at all preoccupied with the winery making its number for the month, but more my sanity, my sentences, this project and others.
This week in the office, I’m going to loudly and communicatively accelerate all movements and sights.  Why can’t I be the highest selling AE in my first year?  There is no law or rule or policy prohibiting such.  Actually, Sonic is the atmosphere that enables and emboldens such a progression to take place.  Whatever we do for work, we need not only make it our own, but have it teach us and be a measure of effort.  We should always seek to against ourselves compete.
Bed early tonight.  Wake at 5, 4 if you can.  At the end of 100 days, there will be a visual of such altitude, such attainment.  If I’m not the highest earner, I’ll have shocked everyone with what I’ve done.  Make calls, SET APPOINTMENTS…. just say hi.  Forget about return, certainly immediate return.  That’s a foot shot, I’ve learned, and an error the wine industry continues to seemingly want to make.  And I e never figured out why, why they expect such instant transaction and metrics ascension.  I’ve given up trying to learn, now focusing on my Sonic story and sense of new sense and story, character.
This writing spot, little spacious and sizeable inlet, used to write here in 2012 as I mentioned, and later in 2017 when working at the Foley camp.  Now, story is different.  Not at all fearful to question and defy regularity and policy, not that I was before.  But Sonic has shown me that one idea can prove purposeful and provide a purpose which pervades till your final day.  Such is now, such is me, such is my poetic and newly purposed immediacy.
What do I want from the day.  Peace.  Ideas for this week.  Ideas on growth, branding and rebranding but more than that…. CHARACTER.  Story.  Life.  Revolution.  Start acting like a revolutionary, I said to myself and some other people at Sonic a few months ago.  Today…. watch.  And won’t do so with malice or a burn-bridge intent, but to have my identity known.  For all in contact with me, not just for me.  If I’m not making sense I apologize….. you’ll see what I mean, shortly.
Categories
autre

Clear

Mike walks around his small barrel room.  He thinks of tasting, but just wants to walk around.  Look at them with no real intention other than to look, realize where he is, what he’s doing.  When he taught English at the community college he’d always talk about the “magic of the meta”. Not complicating, not overanalyzing, just knowing intimately where you are, what you do, why you’re there and the character you are as a result of being there.

He walks, can smell the wines but not as much as last week.  He hadn’t done a sulfur hit in a while, and that was intentional.  Didn’t want to scare the juice, or try to force it to do something or saying something, express voice it wasn’t meant to communicate.

Changing his mind, he grabs a thief from his workbench, the one his father built for him.  Picks a barrel, no method or plan, or foresight.  Just picks one.  Syrah, block 3, lot 4E.  In, out, seeing the color encourages Mike that he’s doing the right thing, that he needs to today taste.  Puts a bit in a glass, about two ounces, possibly a bit more.  Tasting, he didn’t feel anything he recognized since the last touch, which was…. Didn’t matter.  He spun the deep, night-like tide in his glass.  Put her closer to his senses, what was that.  He doesn’t know.  Mike dumps the rest back into the barrel, tastes from another.  Same.  What is she saying today, to him and only him.  Is she telling him to back off?  He doesn’t want to taste from anything else.  To gun shy, wine shy, now shy.

Mike forces himself to walk toward the other door, then outside to the block, “3-4E” as he wrote it in permanent on barrel head.  He looked at the vineyard, and only wants to walk.  The spell, in steps, around the block, blocks.

 

5/9/19

Categories
autre

Story notes

Mike gets to tasting room, early.

Counter still stained from reds, from previous day.

Opens register quick…

Music in.

Nothing calendar.

Mike reuses to be busy just to be busy.

Opens each wine in the flight, notes on each. He does this most mornings, but this morning he’s more than trenchant with and intent in each wine.

His focus should always be the wine, speaking it, connecting people with wines they love and that speak to them. Not going done a to-do checklist. What’s more important, he always says to himself, getting in character to speak wine, sell like they want you to, or arrange the kitchen area when it doesn’t need to be, do it ’cause it’s on a goddamn checklist?

Categories
Health/Wellness

Kerouac has

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

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

Leftovers and red…

Wine never needs to frame complicated. Wine should never direct prolix. She’s inviting, approachable, narrative and affectionate. What’s surrounded by curved glass reads a presence, a prophetic face and storm of versifying lines.

After a day, working, wine waits, debates her approach to me, my life and day and immediate room. The room, now, connotative in resonance, assurance, a perceptive seat. I’m at a table with her, being instructed, listening,eating leftovers and coaching me on Now, this doesn’t have to be layered or codified, and sort of sophisticated set.

Haven’t touched this glass. But the visual and nearness has me. Inward recite, and known night, thrown toward a lone vinified light.

9/19/18

Categories
autre

Notes

Guy with guitar, just stared playing again.

Doesn’t know why he hasn’t played in so long. Can’t remember when he played it last. When he bought it.

He just plays with the chords. Plays. He just got home from work. Clock hurls time at his eyes, 9:47. He has to be in office at 7:15 for a client meeting. He doesn’t care. He plucks, picks, strings. He thinks he’s playing chords dragging across the strings, but he doesn’t know. No cares. He’s playing. Just playing.

He writes a line. A chorus, or start of verse. He does this from now till one again, but not like this. Not with the strings out. “End of day, a little way from anywhere…” what next. No idea. Back to strings.