I have the EOD face.
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”?
He can only think about when the day’s going to be over.
Found the above line from an earlier entry. Have no idea when it was typed or in reference to…. Decide to take day. To self. To write. Now I notice myself procrastinating with writing. Or not procrastinating, but evasiveness. There’s something missing. With wine, there’s something never missing. In wine nd thoughts of, there’s everything. And not in what I sip, what you pour into the glass. At all. Today I collect on wine, and what I’ve done with wine. Yesterday driving to Chalk Hill, visiting CH and Roth Estate. It felt different, but the same. Then again different. Like I could make it mine, somehow. Like I could be there and not be there as I used to and just think, write and react as needed. An encouraging katzenjammer, as I sipped Chardonnay walking down the main channel of the cave. Of course wen to that room I used to call “The Mikey Room” and remembered some of the tours I gave in there, speaking about wine as I do, and how one man from I think Indiana or Iowa said that’s what I need to, “Yeah, that’s what you need to do…” he stressed. When I asked him what precisely he said write about wine as I talk about it. How the Syrah was a decisive ghost that made engagement irresistible, that it was a being that complemented your being and elevated your should and life sight.
I do think about today, and what I need done by time it’s “over”. What’s that. Make some contacts at a couple wineries, locally. Have my call at around 3:30 with…. Can’t say. I want to, I do, but I don’t want to jinx it, especially if I put this on blog which I more than likely will. Want a vineyard walk… have to get lunch fro wife and I, around 11-something. Wine reminds me of time, what I do and don’t of it have. More not. Time passes as I type this… last night in that final glass of Rosé watching some movie, and thinking of my friend who left where I now work to go back into wine, to be with what she’s passionate. I advised her not to, but she did anyway. No, I don’t wish I would have done the same, at all. But I want to revive my passion for wine. That’s what this sitting, this day, my drive in a matter of minutes will be about. More voices from wine, more literature… more visions and rooms and writing in those rooms. Don’t back off on wine, I tell myself, thinking about THE first winery I ever visited with Mom and Dad— Ridge, in the Cupertino mountains. Think that’s where it is. Santa Cruz Mountains, I want to say, technically. The drive up, Mom and Dad talking about “futures they were picking up”. I’ve written this before, but I now I want it more known.. when this started, when wine and I first met. I associate it with family, with Mom and Dad and that drive. I could have spent time with friends, somewhere, doing nothing at all productive or shaping in my story. I was with them. In their car. Driving up that cliff, knuckles white and all kinds of odd tints and shared. Me wondering about winer and what was so special about it. What is so special or meaningful about wine. What is the thesis or centrality, narrative nexus to this book, this blog if I ever turn it into some book-book-is thing on wine. What do I want it to be. Don’t know. Maybe wine doesn’t know, either. Maybe we write the book together.— YES. Why have I never thought about that, thought of it that way, before? What I need from today, wine’s voice. Wine’s time. Wine’s music and jazz, visuals and work, writing assignments. Wife’s sister years ago, nearly ten full to be honest (and I’ve written this before too, several times) basically ordered me to blog singularly, and write singularly, about wine. Okay.. okay… today’s a re-start, a re-play, a re-write, a re-education. On all wine courses and decisions, senses, tells.
Looking at wineries close by. Forgot it’s only 9:30-something. None are open. Don’t want to taste, want to listen. Want to see people sipping, hear what they say. Hear what the wine orders them to voice. Recently gave a talk at work, that “wine isn’t wine”. And it isn’t, not past the puddle in the glass. It’s what I’m after today, it’s that drive up the Cupertino hill, looking over that sharpest of escarpments. Voice, people, characters… aims for day. What I want by day’s close. I guess I hold the same thought chord at the moment as I did whenever I wrote that above line— I can only think about “EOD” s they in the office say. I want to know what wine will have said to me. Who I’ll meet, have met, what stories and curiosities will be rotated and revolved. I want to know what and who I’ll be with wine— what wine will have ordered me to write, do. One thing now in sight, not sipping. Observing. Staying sped in these types, finally finish my wine book. My thesis of wine not being wine, but wine being us. Wine being the planet, the soil, the drives to Chalk Hill to see your best friend while he pours from behind bar and you remember when you did the same, not all that long ago.
Want to buy wine books, seeing anything with a grape cluster, vines waking from dormancy, little leaves teasing us with vintage volume and voice. A couple wineries open in a bit. Thinking about Healdsburg, its square, Lioco…. Thumbprint, that one room close to H2 and then… Stonestreet where friend Gary works, has worked for substantial span. Have always enjoyed their wines, whenever I go in and Gary so kindly pours for his wild wine writing friend and answers every question I caffeinatedly catapult at his standing again asking for the same pamphlet and ancillary literature I did at last visit.
Waiting for haircut
time. No time to waste and no time to wait. All minutes are instructional, all times in your story narrate something to you, teach, they demand your direction and response. Gems compile right in front of you. Eyes should be ever present nets. Catch everything.
Truth
1/23/19
5:35. Not 4 but still early. Last 4 days off. Will have to adjust or at the least, very least, pace self and connect to day. Meeting 2 with class, finally. Not sure how I’m going to get in 3000 words today but I’ll fit what I can into the day’s composition. Tempted to close eyes for a bit but won’t. Daddy mode nears… the struggle with both wee beats to be dressed and with teeth brushed. Nothing extraordinary. Same thing every parents goes through in the A.M. to some degree. Can hear them moving in their beds. Not moving, me. Need the meditation, the quiet. Sitting in dark and putting letters in some kind of order for day’s order has sight and thought everywhere. What to do with the day and where I’ll be in 12 hours. In classroom readying for class. Then after class. Go to bed early and hopefully wake to run or workout.
Mike sits in the room, the home office. No lights. Dark. Thinking. The day, what he has to do, first thing to do when in office’s do. How does time see him, how is he using the time he has right now, now…. what is he choosing to do and why that. This tells him something, again, again. He needs to do more. But what— Never mind that. Today everything would be for the classroom. What he’d teach. He’d be a teacher that’d be more than a simple community college teacher. He’d be something else. Him, but just in a classroom. He’d be in sync with the course outline or whatever, but only so much as he wanted. He wanted more, needed more, wanted and wanted more from his days. Anything that resembled a pattern or some repeated motion or obligation, some to-do he saw as poison. A toxin that would eat him whole and not even spit him out or digest him.
1/14/19
Laptop suddenly working. Don’t get it. Doesn’t matter. It’s getting replaced. First day of new semester. Class starts in 4 min, 1 hour. I’ll be in classroom earlier than that, obviously, if there’s not one of those mindless instructors that is in no way aware of the possibility that another teacher may need the room. Introducing narrative, tonight. The singular idea that will dominate the semester. Narrative…. telling stories. Telling your own story. Knowing your story. Just wrote that last sentence into journal. The Germany journal. What will the students this semester be like. I keep wondering but with so much need to know. It will take a while term to know.
No lunching out, today. Must say I’m pleased with my discipline and poise, for once. Need at least 2k for new laptop. Just updated the OS, here in office. See if this does anything. Doesn’t matter like I said. Quiet in the adjunct cell… good to be back on campus, in Professor Mikey mode. Sharing ideas, knowing students and the student experience better. Put quarters in pocket to go get coffee. Could use a coffee now. Beats always drink coffee, no matter time of day or how it may impact sleep. Who cares. Off to get a cup. Don’t worry, small.
6:15. Back in office. With decaf. Decaf. I ordered decaf. Mainly from being charged and directed in energy enough from today itself, training new hire and now in my element of elements sharing ideas in the classroom.
Everything out on this desk, in this shared office like every other semester on the first day. 17 minutes for computer, in whatever it’s doing. Who knows if it’ll work— WHY DO YOU KEEP THINKING THAT? You’re shedding it anyway, that devil thing you call a writing tool and think a necessity.
Another note in journal, for class— Your decisions in how you read and write, and immediately write from your experiences, or write your story, make loud your thoughts in the present.
1/6/19
Been writing in more than one place for the ’19 story. Oh well I say to myself with another glass of sparkling, Jackie over there playing on the tablet my mom and dad bought him this past xmas. Nothing I’m writing lately I’m liking. Certainly not loving. So what’s the bandage for that? One part of me says just write free, with less shackle and inner-hassle. What’s that mean I don’t know so I re-focus on Jack. The day he and I have had, his sister too. She now off with wife and wife’s friend and wife’s friend’s daughter to Target to get who knows what. Kerouac has some inner dialogue with himself regarding the game, if it’s a game or some scholastic, learning program…. “Jack, what are you doing? What are you playing with?” He gives a bit of a mumble but I’m not convinced that was directed at me. He goes back to doing that, whatever that is. He rests the right side of his face in his right palm, right elbow on right inner-thigh as he sits on floor, legs crossed and lightly locked. We just spent the past couple hours watching football. Playoffs. Or postseason. Chicago versus Eagles, in Chicago. Eagles pulled it by a point. Just one. I of course was on CHI’s side for various reasons—none of which I’ve told you so I guess I shouldn’t write “of course”—and so was Jack. Both us disappointed in the result. But we move on. He with his game, or learning program, me with words and this morning before our together time, and time with his sister, a 7-mile run which I now feel.
Hoping to get some reading in, tonight. Hemingway, Coelho, Plath, Hughes…. Not sure I’ll touch all four books, but one of them I’m rather confident. Need to write more poetry, read Hughes more, and other poets like Cummings, Plath of course, Yeats, and from that collection of several poets I was gifted years ago. Today teaches me to not work against existing momentum, ever. What you want to do with the day is one matter, what you’re able to do and what you can do with what is present is quite another write.
Writing everything down…. Jack, quite poised and careful how he touches that screen. Face Ibn right palm, again. He says nothing to me on his own, and I don’t want to break his connection to his current action so I just push these buttons while I look at him. My little boy who daily loses his littleness to time— Time, that fucking animal, devouring all of us as a matter of duty and functionality, normalcy. Why I deplore normalcy, the patterns. The expected. The unavoidable tumult of the clock. I look at reflection, mine, and can see changes in my face, around the mouth and eyes. Forty this year— fuck. Have I lost some of my awareness and writing ability? Am I starting to fade? Looking over at little Kerouac, my little beat. He’ll keep me young. His sister, too.
…each measure and note, chord and riff. I become disconnected from my typing, writing, what I am and who I’m saying, what I’m saying. Not that I don’t like it, but I don’t feel it as I think I should. Is it the words I’m putting to page, where I am? The air-conditioning in this store coming on and apparently blowing right on me. Struggling to struggle, bumbling in my own thoughts and wishing I wouldn’t’ve come here, stayed home and wrote there. Hemingway looking right at me from the cover of his book and ordering more fortitude, for me to toughen to not have any kind of mood, t hat I can’t afford it— and I know I can’t afford it. New beat and new beat from me on this page, this day before a new year of self-study and sensibility.
New Year, new book, new me…. Go for a drive. Leave this Starbucks. Take your mocha — or latte, sorry— with you and be in the day, enjoy freedom, look left and right and see your new office. Weather outside, encouraging, bright and sagacious, suggestive and antagonistic. Suddenly feeling awkward sitting here, writing here, having brought self here. The air now is aggressively and metallically frigid. Can’t write like this. But Hemingway did, in that Café and elsewhere, where the odors were consuming and the weather was “bad”…
Love.
And more LOVE.