from a journal

On a day off.  One lazy.  Now with some time to self and some Sauvignon Blanc poured, I think of the week ahead of me even though I don’t want to.  And the semester I won’t teach this summer.  Or the semester I won’t teach at the JC.  Choosing to write in complete silence, or to just kitchen sounds.  And for what… don’t know.  Just to write.

Told Alice earlier that I may be tiring of Sonoma County, of Santa Rosa.  So then what.  Don’t know.  Want to follow wine to some other place and shape.  Where.  Of course this writer’s mind goes to Monterey.  Teaching at the university, possibly, or one of the something like five community colleges down there.  Just thinking of course, but this time aloud and to Alice.  Mother of my little beats.

Again taking out Didion’s Magical Thinking ms and thinking of making it a reading assignment for me.  Put self back in school.  Learn how to do all this over, all over, again.  Be a student, have a devoted collection and stack of pages.  This day off I’ve been only twirled and twisted in thought, thoughts.  40…. Challenging self to challenge self more.  My life changed on the 29th, and then the other night with everyone here “celebrating” my birthday.  Why am I phrasing such in such a way, just where my mind is.

I re-focus and situate on the wine, this Sauvignon Blanc my sister made.  At first a but herbal and grapefruit tilted but now with more harmony and love-yell.  The wine reminds me to focus more on her, on all wines and songs that are said and singing to me in a moment.  Quiet house, me and wine, we talking.  Again, no music, just the ebb and pulse and poetry of our personalities, intermingling and interchanging the changing scenes of life and the Now.  While Alice and I walked around Spring Lake earlier I saw me at some beach café in Monterey or Pacific Grove and working on some book on wine.  On what.  The tasting room, walking the vineyard as I always do, meeting people from wherever and they commenting on my “impassioned speech on terroir” as one guy put it yesterday.  Everything wine.  Everything wined in all days, down there, by Monterey.  I see my writing spot, and I think SINGULARITY.  And then, wake up earlier!  Yelling to self before another sip, the SB now taking on more a vanilla or cream or soft silky melon-meant voice.  Not sure how to explain it.. but the shift in narrative for the wine is there. And who knows if my sister meant for this to happen.

After 4 in this day, this day that’s by all frames and decisions mine and for what I want to do, but wine has other ideas.  Taking last sip and putting plastic stemless bowl back to tile and me stopping.  What do I want, what do I really want to do as that one tasting room manager urged me to consider and meditate as he dismissed me from duty.  Something for which I was and am SO grateful.  So what do I do.  What does wine want?  As Joan cited, life can change and stop in a blink, a breath, an instant, a turn.  Turning to what, I don’t know.  I just know I have to perpetuate some peregrination of self, of me, who I think I am or want to be.

From left eye’s left corner, I see some table cover, one thin and paper and screaming 40 YEARS or something flaps and moves up and down.  I know, I know… I need move faster.  Holy fuck, I’m forty.  The SB calls me from the counter over there by the coffee maker.  Another, think more about Monterey, extend days by waking earlier so when you walk into that office you have no “expectations” as everything you wanted to do with the day you’ve already done.  Write.. Write MORE.

6/3/19

 

mikemadiganLeave a comment

5/31/19

Learning that there are not many places to take my teaching practice.  The only option, truly, is to start a school or some writing and reading camp or cove of my own.  This morning my meditation is curved, or cracked, something.  Mood, off.  Writing yesterday but only in Kerouac journal, at lunch.  Today, cannot let self eat out.  Need to work.  Plan for this writing seminar or set of seminars I want to teach.

Putting everything into this new education project.  And I’m not touting or boasting, advertising that I’m some writing and reading expert.  But, I have taught for a bit now, and have ideas to share.  Anymore that’s what teachers should incorporate into their classroom presence, that they’re sharing ideas and not telling students what to do.  Self-discovery, yes, but just following thought pursuit, Human curiosity.  Wondering why so many that are technically teachers want to be the one in charge, the one with all the answers rather than practice understatedness in their statements and lectures.

Made a couple more additions to document.  My character evens, balances, rights itself.  Educating self through this Now, this experience, this breath and intersection of intention and realization.  Telling self that knowledge is where I am, where I’ll forever be.  Remembering everything taught by Dad, Bob Coleman, and only a handful of instructors that contributed something true and truthful to my story.

Music in everything.  Even the time, much I loathe it.  8:33…. Only aim for today, points of learning, education, where I learn and ideas I want to, WILL, share with students, anyone taking one of my online courses or seminars.

Journal writing… Wrote one point for class.  Keep self in learning mode, more than teaching.  Reject teacher moniker, embrace the book carrier, pen mover, class to class goer.

 

mikemadiganLeave a comment

9am, Saturday

Finished piece for 8page, clocked in, done with morning tasks, and now looking at the Kerouac journal Mom and Dad last night vouchsafed, Kerouac quote on front and I’m more than tempted to touch it before filling the Germany journal they bought me on their last trip.  Stories tempting me, talking to me, confusing me, turning me around…

Tired, need another cup of this Sonic coffee. Writing self to liveliness, some woke state, some movement, in all of everything around me.

Co-workers singing some old commercial ditty and I laugh to self quietly.

Wake up!  I say to self.  More coffee… more.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

4/26/19

Clocked in, writing and working.  Feel workout from earlier.  Did some writing between reps, haven’t yet posted.  Sipping sparkling water now, will grab coffee for Road.  Planning on eating lunch at a Starbucks off that first Brentwood exit.

Shorter writing bursts, today.

Not much to do before heading out—OH WAIT, yes there is.  Need to get tablet.  Run across floor then back to desk.  But in a minute.  Settle in.  Sip water.  Happy with self for not going back into sleep.  Doing ab and upper-body workout.  Tomorrow need to be up at the God hour.  4am.  4am IS God.  I need be up then, or a bit before.

Little hungry.  Over 2 hours left in fast.  Which I think was for 12 hours, if I remember right.

Took an allergy pill last night.  Hope it begins its service throughout the day so I’m shielded and not overtaken by symptoms like yesterday.  Disrupting everything from sight to walk, to communication, to everything else.

More removed consideration of what I’m doing.  3rd person but for more of coure than just writing in 3rd pers’.  The idea coming from notes written by me on the performance of others, and then the Leads noting certain habits and instructional moments in their day, with their Reps….

 

Mike notices his desk becoming a mess, again.  He needs to remove the stack of papers from the JPR project weeks.  Take to shredding tub, or bin, at the floor’s other side.  Do that right away, he says to himself.

Mike also commits himself to write a piece of fiction from the tasting room.  That is his project for Brentwood lunch, to be take at the Starbucks off that first Brentwood exit.

Mike disposes of the papers stack, finishes sparkling water.  14 minutes till team arrives in building.

Writes a post-it note to self–  Go into the day acknowledging only elevating, enriching, and encouraging beams.

Thinks of what next to do before heading to meeting room…. Check–  Can’t say.

Get coffee.  COFFEE.  Journal and backpack.  Mike says to himself that the short story will be about a slow day in the tasting room.  How you can only wipe down a counter and windows so many times.  Busy work versus actual work.  Maybe.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

from another ‘nother journal …

4/17/19

Writing in too many spots.

No more on this laptop.  Noting everything, this morning.  Have a schedule for self.  Desired time for “cruising altitude” as Dad would say…..

Lost in a thought, not sure how to write.  Running at lunch, what to write from there.  Need a break.  Need to toss backpack, or just use for running gear.  Yes, the latter.

Organized desk a bit, plugged in laptop wife gave me.  Time for break, some journal jots, or walk to car to get running gear.  Or both.  How to optimize day… how.  Grade papers when on campus, then home for quick dinner, bed.  And goddamnit, wake…. No, won’t promise.  Will only do.

All the loose paper pieces and swarms around me, distracting, dividing my concentration and enslaving each parcel.

10:07.  Break.  Just for a bit.  Sparkling water.  And what else… running stuff.  Do I want to run at lunch, or take self to lunch.  Here I go overthinking, again..

Running.  I’ve decided, finally.  Need a snack, hydrate, get gear.  I can just see someone reading this years after I’m gone and noting something in the margin like, “Goddamn, just do something already!!!” I agree, just so you know.  Huh, there’s an idea for a book, note to future reader.  And another from yesterday, the ‘argument for me’ idea.  Like a very much stretched out cover letter and CV.

Different route today, for run.  Out 3.5, back 3.5.

 

10:30 – Done with a 90 minute challenge to self for morning.  Schedule done.  Or a draft at least.  My first, composed.  Team arrives in about 20.  Should go to car, get running facets.  Where am I running?  Just get out there and run, Mike…..  note for Reps, time sheet-related.  Old journal taken from backpack, should go through those pages, what I wrote when first hired, all this information about the internet I NEVER knew.

Seeing now why I stress the habit and practice and maintained habit and practice of journal writing so much.  To know you, your NOW, the Nows that approach.  What you want, why you want it.  Today is different, as all todays are, but I note that there’s something more paralleling about today with my aims.  The office, travel, running all over the world and writing about it.  The journal is a beacon of YOU, a place that’s more than a place, but a stage and bibliotheque or understanding and exploration.  The desk messy, and I don’t mind.  It’s honest, it’s NOW, it’s ME.  Why am I capitalizing so much.  No need to analyze or even lightly understand.

The journal teaches not so much ‘me about me’ but to see more clearly and honestly.  Fearlessly.  To not fear, to not question, to just madly LIVE.

Working on attitude, perspective, how I contextualize matters and then react to them.  If someone says something, and I find it getting under my skin or into my thoughts, echoing in me in any way, then pause.  Find sense on the page.  Make sense of it, of everything, on page.  In this “journal”.  And, honestly, if I can accomplish something of that magnitude and altitude on a page, is it really just a one-dimension and as-it-appears tablet, or “journal”?

mikemadiganLeave a comment