we, knowing now, pages and pages, FREED
Done with dinner, kids in bed and me not far behind.
No wine. Waking at 4 or before. Running at gym. Was going to do a “Garmin run”, running on the street for however many miles I wanted to put up, but I just don’t enjoy running when it’s dark.
So without excess analysis, speed work on belt. Hoping for ten. I’d settle for 8 or 9.
Tired, to bed early.
In the morning, new intensity for tuning lifts off.
Mike starts with the normal morning tasks. But he sees them differently. With more love, more curiosity, more pace intention and momentum. Mike tells Self that today will be let to go as it will and Mike will step in only when demanded, and by step in he means grab the wheel and steer in direction different.
Mike gets the necessary items for day done with surprising speed. He does in fact surprise himself. He says to Self he’ll be more farouche in his creativity and composition habit for day. And all days forward going. Misses class, still can’t believe what happened on Wednesday happened. Well, he can ‘cause it was raining dozens of cats and double-dozens of dogs. He needs coffee, he needs to walk around, he needs to itemize and inventory everything, be more calculated, or calculating, tally and examine his calculations.
Weather today, not making much impact on Mike’s perspective. He writes down three aims, visions, for day– A thousand words, run tonight, shorter sentences. Quite simple, to the point, contained and contributing to Personhood and character coherence. More than self-coaching or education, instruction, or even discovery or exploration. Self-sight. Being participatory in his read of Self. Self, always needing capitalization. You need to see Self as something prominent if you’re to progress, he says to Self. Mikes smiles. He finds something. And that’s another aim… always present tense. The Now is Godly, is God, is all Gods and Goddesses.
9:04. Mike gets another cup of coffee. His first here at office but third for day, morning. The morning with everyone walking around happy it’s Friday and excited about the Quarterly meeting and assembly, food trucks later, and of course beer. Mike vows to Self that beer will not be had. Not only does he not drink beer very much anymore, the marathon was much closer than he estimated. He needs to get into runner mode, extremely extreme runner mode. Get new clothes for race, go for run tonight, at the horrible least 7 miles, 10 if he can. He tells self that he will have sparkling water, and if there’s none in the tubs of ice he’ll buy one from the market, perceive it as a running expense.
Mike remembers that he has Monday and Tuesday of next week off. He will run both days, over ten miles each run, and NO treadmill. The morning sings more to Mike, encourages him more, has him centered and centralized in his own eye and poetic abide.
The office, Sonic as a company and character and business poetic voice has him feeling not so much fearless or invincible, but directed, set, assured he will get whatever he sees. His sight is strengthened by Self, Sonic, the day, the way of ways in the morning and approaching day. Mike tells Self that he will see his aims for day, that there is no other Road. The marathon’s closer, 40 is closer, the new year’s been here for now 18 days. Storm, Mike says, “Storm loudly and make music never before put to sound, to anyone’s ears or eyes, any senses.”
This means I’m a writer, the typical one, the one that jumps from journal to journal and project to project. So what did I do… oh yeah, started another book idea. Today. In head, walking from cafeteria where there was no open anything to get coffee, and then a longshot attempt up the stairs to that café up in the library. Could have sworn that would be open. Why isn’t it? Why is nothing open, where a student or teacher can get some caffeine, coffee, or Yerba-whatever. Nothing. In this building, it’s quiet. And I mean funeral quiet. Ghost town. Post nuclear wipe-out-everything silent.
With this new book, I’m here. On campus that doesn’t feel like a campus, but more like a stage that’s been left. Or closed. All the actors and actresses, stage crews and directors, producers or whomever, gone. Just leaving me. The writer with his new book idea. Another one. Where I’m sitting now, I’ve done so a hundred or more, definitely more, times. Sat here and wrote before class started. Collecting finals tonight, then, well, that’s it. The semester’s over. Then starts another one. One where I’m only teaching one class. To be honest, I’d rather not be. Seriously. I’d rather be traveling and writing while I travel and coming back with a new book. I know, why don’t I do that. Thank you, motional numb-twit. This new book, I know what I want to say. I think— No, I do. Just wrote the first couple sentences, here, with this knowledge of where I am, in this Now, and how I here arrived.
Now wine before coming to campus, which I thought of doing but tonight’s a no-wine night. Running tomorrow morning, early. 4am. The “God Hour”, as I call it lately telling myself that 4am is God and I need be faithful to it, or some shit like that. Quiet in this building. Probably the most quiet, and most isolated and alone I’ve ever felt here, in this building or anywhere on campus. Something new, like yesterday in that coffee shop. Could use a coffee now, horribly. But I type with what natural pace and blaze I have in these current ways.
Much of the new book I think, maybe, I honestly don’t know, will be an exploration of where I am as an “educator”. And questioning, essentially, if I’m even an educator, qualified to educate. Why, ‘cause I have a Master’s Degree? Not sure that’s proper knighting. Class meets in 17 minutes. Sweater off, hot in this room when I stepped in and sat and know I want it back, back on. I’m uncomfortable listening to my jazz tracks and before class I need be un my most formidable of characters, one passionate and loud and direct with his offerings.
The new book, not so much a disputing of college, the community scape or university, but … An exploration of? I’m just writing a book and hopefully I’ll finish the fucking thing, I’m saying to myself. Full-timer walks in, gets something from the other room, and walks out. Doesn’t say a word to me which isn’t surprising, but laughable and maddening concurrent.
Start your story and day’s page!!
1 – Woke at 04:00
2 – Ran 7.4 miles on belt
3 – Transfer money to business, and on credit card
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….
Sonoma County. A cup of coffee, quiet house finally, and thinking about where I live and all the time I put into the wine industry. What did it do for me if anything well of course it did something. What. What precisely. To write about wine. To never again set foot in a tasting room on anyone’s clock but my own. Transported last night by that Pinot, sitting on the wood floor of this Autumn Walk home, the floor bothering me but me sipping through it and writing through it, seeing my book of some sort of shape being finalized, here and there and taking me from here to there.
And of course it comes on, “In A Sentimental Mood”. Arguably my one Coltrane track that speaks to me like no wine or tasting room, not even the vineyard walks, did, do. Seeing me in the late afternoon, on my deck, looking out at my vineyard. Kids in house waiting for dinner. There are wines that do that, sometimes. Last night was one. The Bernardus. A Pinot. 2014. A vintage I’ve always thought was overlooked, or underestimated, underrated. I just thought, she fly me somewhere. Back to Burgundy or to some part of a Carmel or Monterey beach. I should be on a run right now but I couldn’t dismiss what me called, put me in this seat, instructed me to further be instructed and mentored by the Pinot’s physiology and psychology. She spoke with temperament and tenacity. She put me on a Road back to Monterey, back to the classroom. Yes I write about wine but more what wine embodies and connotes more than denoted. The inference of a Pinot bottle like that, to be in your current clock and time on clock like you’ve never before practiced.
Out of wine’s industry and in another business, one that allows and invokes more wine writing from me. Wine was the institution, the university if you will, its industry and all the tasting rooms over the years that is, and now I’m here. Helping build a business and thinking of a vineyard, my vineyard, the one I’ll soon see after achievements or certain goals that become ribbons or laurels. Laureling myself into new wined pages, here in the kitchen, in the morning, seeing and understanding toward what I’m headed. That Pinot did this, whirled and wove certain spells around me which I have no intention of dismissing. Keep me trapped, I beg the notes I remember…. Jazzy cinnamon lanes doused in smiling cherry cirrus, thin but not dismissible.
In Sonoma County, writing about another county and one of its AVA’s, just dreaming and planning, writing way there. And I ask myself, “What exactly do I want from wine, wine’s character aggregate and dialect. I don’t know if I know, yet. That’s what I love. That’s what wine encircles ideologically to me, for me. Just seeing where the Road goes, where your narrative’s to be thrown. So many want you to know that they know so much about wine and wine areas, growing regions, how the industry works and their story in the business…. okay, but then what. Why not be more professing of exploratory urge rather than advertising your fabricated mastery? Try going from there to here, where you’re just on your Road, seeing, perceiving, tasting, dreaming, writing and re-writing.
10/14/18
Up still. Moving still. I started my 4am story, the pages sequencing from this day forward with the antithesis of control. Going to get coffee. First expense of day. Moving money around, toward my business, and this blogs & chapbooks idea. Today, back in Berkeley. Hit a bit of traffic on way back to Sonic but time highly utilized for meditation, thinking of all the projects I now have hovering over me. Was contacted today to possibly do some wine industry consulting. Am raising rates, as the questioned project is outside anchoring sight of mikemadigancrEATive. I’ll see what happens.
In adjunct cell, nearly caught up on everything. Thought I was much more behind, but apparently I’ve been as tireless as I boast in these posts. I am axiomatic and pragmatic, to some sense. Just a couple notes for class, so far. Tonight I’m keeping simple. A think tank, blended with open mic attributes, associated with just newly generated thoughts and journal readings and who knows what else. Making a master list, a new one yes, of all my projects. I’ll inventory which ones I hit day to day, or try. 6:17 and need that coffee. Need to write whilst I teach and offer my ideas.
This morning being at gym— or let’s start with waking, alarm playing its odd tune looped at 4am and me sitting up, rubbing eyes and forehead, saying to self I can go back to dreams for just a bit. Then a commander, a sergeant of some sort in my character ordered, NO. Don’t you dare.
So I didn’t. I dressed, laced, grabbed wallet and phone and earphones, keys. Out door by 4:06 I think. At gym shortly after and on tread at 6.2 speed before 6:30. I had my eight miles, and when done, I walked over to friend from Sonic, Mr. Abraham, who was in the corner jumping rope like an over-caffeinated rabbit, so precise and so quiet in the swings and diagonal throws with the rope and his hops coupled. We talked for a bit, and I headed home. Paused in the parking lot as I hoped to. Smelled air as I saw myself doing last night when I thought about the walk back to car after 8, if I hit 8. And I did. Warmer than I thought it’d be. When home, sparkling water and look at oven clock. 5:52. All that done by 5:52. Before six. I have to make this habit. Religion. I said to myself sipping the bubbled H2O like I’d been lost somewhere remote and had only dreamt of thirsty ending the entire time.
Now I’m here. The typing helps, and I know the coffee will fully bring this writer back to his lively literary life. Need cinnamon in it, anything to keep me in my character’s code and courting till home when I open that blend from Napa. Or do I want something else? Do I have anything else? Need to budget for a massive wine purchase. Talking about wine wakes me as well. No surprise. Very much now up, flying over these keys and laptop and to all walls and borders of this shared adjunct office. Over and over, going over the morning. The alarm, tying shoes, drive there and back, the water, and me now after the eight miles, over twelve hour past.
10/11/18
Let ‘100’ students go early. Came to adjunct cell, and here I finally get a breath. Meeting after meeting at work, among other surprises, but I maintain my character composition and ready for tomorrow’s 4AM rise. I’m doing it. Going to write each step in this effort. Even the failures. Even the falls and follies. Now I collect, I envision me on that treadmill, hitting mile 8. Has to be eight miles. I figure if I get there by 4:20 I can with no problem or impediment get to my 8. Eating light tonight, especially after late lunch in field with Brandon, Chinese place I haven’t been to since I worked at the store next-door when it was still Long’s. When I was in graduate school. That long ago. 2004. Now I feel old. The run tomorrow will have me feeling young. And that’s not really the aim, just a change of habits. Even if I wake early and don’t work out, I’ll have risen early, and more than likely written something for either this blog or some poem, some chapbook idea, something.
4AM. My new topic. Wine is still there, here with me in my writing back and forth, but the hour of 4AM and what I do in a day, how I make use of every hour, every minute in those hours, now for example I could have very easily left campus and went somewhere for a glass of wine which I very much saw myself doing. No, though. I came here to write. That’s not to say I won’t have some wine after, maybe a glass at Whole Foods bringing in the Sonic of Burgundy journal, scribbling a bit, planning my run tomorrow and the marathons I plan on doing next year the year I turn 40.
No more concern for turning that age. Age, something numeric and having no contingency on quality or Personhood, behavior, story itself. Yes, my body may not move as it could when I was 16 or 18, 21. But, note what I wrote, “may not”. I can see myself waking tomorrow, having fallen asleep in running shirt, shorts. I put my shoes by the door, laces untied and spread to sides of shoes. All I have to do is hop in them, grab keys and wallet and GO. When there, stretch, then fly. Have music cued. Listen to music I’ll run to while driving there, the 24 on Industrial. I’m ready, after talking at lunch with Brandon about a change he made in his lifestyle and character way recently. And then someone else, a couple weeks ago, telling me the same. Then someone else…. My turn, now.
Ce soir, bed early. Writing should be done during day, morning. Always. Night should be meditative and preparative for day next. Always. The students, hope they’re using this time in some productive and creative way, and if not nothing I can do. I can only do for my story, ME, my health. 8 miles. Walking back to the car after the eight, I can already feel that air, see the sun still repressed and suppressed by night prior. Sky still purple, air feeling like colors I see— streetlights and stars, parked cars, little winds. All congratulating me, embracing me after when I just did, what I’ve started.
10/10/18
Now home. Today, sent me. Somewhere. Not sure where. This is more than work. This is more than a job, Sonic. The place where people walk around smiling and talking with each other, where they smile and greet each other and fall into a joyous back and forth about everything. I won’t get comparative, promised I wouldn’t do that in this sitting at day’s end. But today, did something. After my EOD meeting, on several worlds and ancillary topics, a conversation which I was more than merely invested in, I hurried on into the rest of the day and onto campus to give my most kaleidoscopic and axiomatic lecture yet, I think.
Sipping from a bottle Thomas gave me, and I direct further toward and into this meeting with self, me here having an inward conversation, hoping to come to some sort of useful singularity but maybe I won’t. Maybe this is just for the sake of exploration, for setting sail into some new thought stream. Where I’ll land. Not sure. And why do so many focus on destination? I know I do from time to time but even still sometimes we just need to relish and have internal dialogue and mediation on the trek itself… the voyage, the journey.
If I do manage to wake as early as I’ve drawn, tomorrow, I’ll work out while writing. Down here, downstairs, living room, in dark. And if one of the babies wake then I guess I’ll deal with it, I have to. A 90 minute workout, all core-honed, what I’m hoping for. I still feel Sonic’s office around my senses, all five, and the eighth, ninth. This Italian red proposes something different, as it’s something different in my usual sip pattern.
So I keep with kaleidoscope’s shades and telling. Don’t need to be yet privy to destination. I’ll get there…. I will.