from a journal

5/10/19

Friday.  But you know my opinion and stance on Fridays.  So what.  It’s Friday yes and to some that’s something, but I don’t care.  I’m working tomorrow, and the next day, the day after that.  I’m a blogger, writer, writer before a blogger and always noting something, so days off are days of others, not me.

Resolving to not spend any more money, today.  Not one penny.  What about lunch.  I need something to eat at that time, always do.  So what do I do.  Use change.  Yes.  Get as many quarters as I can, that’s lunch.  The quarters don’t matter, today, this meaningless Friday.

At the coffee spot same as yester’, with a 4-shot latte and the back table all to self.  About 40 minutes to self before I have to get to office to be a professional.  Professional.  What.  I’m learning.  Educating myself closer to 40 I get, knowing that all I want is the world, every Road I can find, any wine I haven’t tried, and sip and scribble overlooking a street, a canyon with a river somewhere in Switzerland.  That’s my most vocal and mobile and noble of “goals”.

Every morning should be this, time with self.  Friday or whatday.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

3/3/19

This.  This morning.  This is for you.  This is yours.  You have the morning, day, week, month, everything you want by deciding so.  Candle going, at laptop’s side.  Meditation with latte.  Wife deciding on snow gear for kids, upcoming trip.  Me, with the candle, something never near me when writing, seeing more Newness.

Fire, tempting me to try new avenues and expressive streams.  Morning, a bit sluggish from last night going to bed late and after dinner and wine with wife.  Melissa on couch listing prices to me for their snow trip approaching.  Tahoe.  Morning telling me to write faster, morning telling me to write more in Germany Journal, map how you get There.

Kids should be home, soon.  More photos of them.  Their steps in life, my story, the story itself.  More thoughts and considerations this morning than I forecasted.  What do you want? I keep asking self.  Above everything, not citing health of me and all near and loved, travel.  It has to be travel.  Every continent.  As many cultures as I can see, feel.

What’s the plan, wife asks, for day.  Good question.  No plan.  And maybe that’s what needs to be.  Life isn’t excessive deliberation, but deciding more in what’s already present.  Yesterday, not in Field with sales squad, I replayed repeatedly the walks on all streets.  Blocks.  Districts and meta-districts.  Truly wanted to be out there with them but couldn’t as that would’ve been day 6 in a row.  Which I don’t at all mind, but is against Sonic’s stances.  No quarrel, only putting myself there with them, imaginarily.  People in San Francisco, the battle to find a parking spot and the daily inner-problem solve of where for lunch. The plan for today is today, to not plan but to live, talk to both babies, ask them questions, learn from them.  Being with them is the demand satisfied, wanting them to teach me, instruct me how to get to those travels.

 

They already have, but I need more.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

2/14/19

Work early.  8am now, clocking in at 8:50 or so.  Forgot headphones adaptor in car.  Tempted to run out and get but why I then think, just take in the breakroom voices you hear from the nook.  Work with what you have, with what you have, Mikey…. If I’m to know the Now and be freed from it, this is what I’m utilizing and implementing into the morning’s prose.

Out in the Field, today.  In office all day yesterday and in knowing where I am and what I’m doing, I ignore time.  The ten post-it notes to self I brought to class last night and shared, hours after lecturing on Kerouac and Madness here at Sonic, I’m in a different place.  And in this different place wondering how I place the beaming benefit of the contrast, and finish my two essays.  Didn’t make the deadlines I put before self.  I know.  Month over in two weeks, the time I have to finish my book. Different movements will manifest different Me’s.  So, one different act—didn’t get the headphone piece.  Usually I would have, as you might know, especially with music become more and more a demand and decided direction in my story.

Rain, light.  Room now completely quiet.  I’m not at work but in an office of my own, for more pulses in this page set than I can tally.  The breakroom, now, has intermittent landers.  People coming in for coffee, or some breakfast they pull from the fridge and pay for with that self-checkout box standing to the left of the refrigerating storage.  What do I want from the day—or more immediately and tangibly what do I demand from now.  The, Now.  We all need to have this discussion.  So I’m having it.  Again.  In Santa Rosa, Ca.  Just 15 or so minutes from my house.  Narrating to self, SELF, for sakes of more Self, more understanding and questioning where I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it.  No qualms or quibbles, none at all, but I maintain the conversation.

Yesterday I spoke on Madness and how madness is love and creative, how it’s its own form of freedom, accentuation, its own manuscript.  Vowing to live more madly, right now in this nook.  What I want is what I have, and what’s before me will supply and sequence more proliferation of ideas, get me to my travels.  Why travel.  Why not.  Why not see the world and have sittings like this in cities like Prague, or Lisbon, Cairo, New York…. Montreal, and of course my love-city, Paris.  I need it. I need more.  To understand self, narrator of and to self, share my findings with other so they can see what I see, in themselves and what’s around them.

Someone walks in, laughing, obviously content where he is, “Good morning, guys.” Followed by a few more warm ha-ha’s.  Today a day of the Valentines, where you’re to love everything, everyone.  My babies this morning, excited to be allowed to eat a little candy their mother bought them, and have some party in class.  I step back, did this morning earlier and do know, to see what’s evolving in this day of love, or cards, candy, smiles, balloons and parties.  The Now, estimating it, appraising it, deconstructing it and the Now you want to have.  The reality that you have that reality is a reality to love and celebrate.  I start laughing to myself.

I look out the window to parking lot see a delivery truck.  Think they deliver linens or supplies, or something health-oriented for businesses.  Abraham, my good buddy, my workout buddy whom I astronomically admire for his early wakes and workout routine walks in.  I ask him if he went this morning and he offers “Hell yeah, e’ryday!”I again smile and see a new possibility in waking early.  If not to workout then to write, finally finish my essays, and if not that then make a dent, one substantial and meaningful in the book.  Writing I did in field day before yesterday on tablet emailed to self, one page, possibly the first page in book, tonight edited.  Or, tomorrow.  We need difference, we need contrast if we’re to pass the envisioned and land at the actual.

Just saw someone peek their head in.  They were gone before I could see any face or eyes or right ear.  Could only see a collar and shoulder.  My breakfast sandwich, gone.  Will fast for day’s remainder.  Write for book in lunch’s hour, wherever in the city I’ll be.  Possibly the Castro, or Noe Valley.  Not sure yet.  And, observe.  Yesterday talking to Tasha for our mid-month check-in we talked about the power of observation and how not always one needs to be directly involved, interacting, present and talking, but watching.  Cataloguing observations and reacting from there, an idea I echoed and argued last night in class with the 100 group.

People see me writing, say hello, walk out class door after scanning their badge, her badge,  nice young girl from Inside Sales.  I observe them, they me possibly, then time persists in its insistence.  Amplifying from where I am, observing the little contained mess I made on this table with the sandwich bag, napkins from Starbucks, my phone and keys.  I arrange, re-arrange, make my writing space more spacious.  Done.  Now with the time I have left, set aims and visions for day—Writing at lunch, at desk more post-it notes to self like yester’, and notes for field today.  Set an observation template, if you would.  For the Sales Leads that I observe daily but as well for the day itself.  Everything from words I hear, people seen in streets, street lights and stores, cars and crosswalks, what bags people carry, what sounds steps make, everything.

I’m at work early writing because that’s what I do.  That’s what I have to do.  That’s my story.  That’s what keeps me healthy, you could say.  Alive and mentally alive and living and exploring my character and the story the character’s given.  Passing the visions, and about to land in rooms actual.  The travel, the hotels, lobbies, airplanes, tickets, engine sounds, taxis….  The story sows a new narrative.  And in that, I better know the current Now, and soon step pervasively and definitively free, freed.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

8:13

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.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

1/18/19

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.”

mikemadiganLeave a comment

I did it.  I said I wouldn’t, but I did. 

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.

mikemadiganLeave a comment