Again catching self in an overthinking maelstrom

I leave the house.  Come to downtown Santa Rosa, to Beer Baron.  A place I’ve only been once.  Ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, one I’ve never had before and don’t think beyond that.  Just enjoying this whim, this sudden cruise downtown.  Not sure where the direction of the writing’s going, and I don’t need know.  To the characters I was thinking of in the tasting room.  Yes…. The two that are behind the bar and want to get out of the industry, starting their own wine gallery.  That’s what they call it at first…. I came here just for this, for new ideas and brainstorming, not be at the drawing board but to draw a board of ideas.

All this before class.  All of it, of this, my new stories and wine thoughts, wines I’ve tasted recently, yesterday with the St. Francis Chardonnay then some Kobler Viognier when home.  Everything in the pages, on them, constituting them.

This place, a serious bar more than a restaurant or any wine bar I could see myself opening.  Earlier thinking of self as failed in some wine aims and dreams.  As the waitress just now puts down the glass, I find I’m not in any way “failed”.  Have I even really started?  What if this could be my office, everyday, I think.  Come here and work from noon to whenever.  Why not.

I stare at the Sauvignon Blanc for a bit before smelling it, and much before tasting.  I let it be a symbol, a reminder of wine’s life in my life, its presence and my past and present, all futures.  I won’t let self take a sip just yet, but rather draw my characters at their winery, at day’s end, having a glass of Pinot on the patio. They talk about just going for it.  Saving whatever they have saved and putting it into some wine business.  A brokerage, they think.

But then I as the writer put the idea on hold and think of how I’ll approach them, this story.  Their stories.  The wine story coupled with their stories and mine.  I stop everything and focus on them, Jane and Elly.  Jane out from somewhere in the midwest, always wanting to work in the wine industry, years ago and now here and tired of being tasting room locked.  Elly, from San Francisco leaving her corporate corner to be in wine’s everything.  She’s worked two harvests, then to tasting room as production for some reason just wasn’t her thing.  She knew why, and didn’t know why.  She loves the winemaking process of course and everything that goes into harvesting and fermentation, barreling-down lots and pressing, even the shoveling of tanks.  But the people in the tasting room and the words they’d say, the interactions with people, called to her and wouldn’t let her ignore.

I take my first sip of the SB and focus on me writing, what brought me here.  Then the two characters.  What we all have in common.  They of course, or maybe not so obviously younger than me.  I keep writing.  Till this is the ONLY thing I do.  Writing about writing and people and what they do for work. How work and our jobs, labor, determines so much of our character and how we estimate the world around us.

Think today is the day I finally killed overthought.  I’m not editing, or measuring, forecasting or worrying about how anything I write, type, is perceived.  I’m just moving and not allowing any stationary sets for this writer or any of his characters.  The two girls start a website, for anyone coming to wine country.  They see themselves as fashionable intel, something to make people more pleased with their choice to come to Sonoma County much the way I’m please with my election to come here and write.  Relax before class.  See me in business with son and daughter, eventually.  I quit the wine industry but am very much back in it on my own accord and set of terms, rules, and I guess some regulatory rattle.

Second sip.  Such real and truthful tropical body and bravado.  Nothing invasive or excessively aggressive.  This is a character that has me more into my characters and these new characters I’m writing.  I return to them and what they want, what would make them happy, what in wine they want to grow toward.  What do I want to be, grow toward.  Wine, travel, speaking on wine both metaphorically and immediately.  Tonight, open something new.  Study it. Let wine dictate my own fate, give me direction and more introspection.  Tempted to take the night off from class.  No.  Use it as speaking practice.  Not practice at all, the second sip says, and I sipped minutes ago.  Can still feel that tropical shock and rush, set of steps. 

I pick up the glass and nose what remains, which is a good two sips I’m guessing.  40 next year.  That’s where my head is.  And then what.  Maybe I’ve overthinking that as well.  Sure I am.  Look at the wine, focus on it… wine writer and journalist, one who actually writes and journals and doesn’t just take a blare of ridiculous shots of himself and other wine “experts” or “writers”.  Glass up again, sip….  Follow the stories, MY story.  Don’t think at all.  Just write.  What I tell the students, every semester.

Talking about writing, tonight. That’s it.  Beyond simple argument, or any attempt to persuade which was the chapter they had to read in that “Prose Reader”.  Or maybe that’s singularly what I should discuss.  I think about taking notes, but the wine says no.  Be in the moment.  Or be above the moment, flying and hovering above simple time and whatever that clock reads, dictates.

Finding that when you write down ideas, they speak back.  They instruct you on possibility and presence.  They talk back, love back, write back.  Thank fun to the Story, and everything, LIFE, for today.  For the embrace and blind subscription to whim.  To not sink into overthink.  To blog and jot against any overthought.

With he glass done, I slow.  Thank of the walk yesterday with my son in the vineyard and showing him the remaining clusters on the canes.  I had him taste a couple….  I thought of us, in business, how our visions of our company will differ and will be surprisingly in some places identical.  All this from wine.  Thinking of wine, living wine, writing wine.  Wine writing me, since my first day in the St. Francis tasting room, 2006.

10/22/18

mikemadiganLeave a comment

As someone who obsesses over work,

and what work he has to do, what I have planned the next day and the remaining hours of this day, I am honestly with nothing.  But I make myself write.  One student tonight saying one of her goals is, was, is to wake at 2am to get ahead in her studies and I assume write a little as she does write poetry and write in short lines, short stanzas, pieces that span only a page.  And I say ‘only’ out of awe, that she does so much to a page in only a page’s pulse.

Was nearly too lazy to write anything tonight.  Told self, “Just a hundred words, per blog.” But I can’t hold self to that.  Should I do what this student plans on doing?  Should I set alarm for 2?  Isn’t that the time of the artist, the writer and poet?  Didn’t I read that somewhere?  On my lunch today grading papers and writing in the Sonic journal as this goddamn laptop didn’t want to let me use it.  Of course, now, I do push the buttons and have a note in my writing normalcy.

Finish the fucking book, I tell myself.  Like my son said tonight as I poised to make his bed with new sheets, “GET TO WORK.” I am.  I say the same to self.  

Sip the Barbera I popped last night. It, she, more calm.  Me the opposite of anything tranquil at the moment.  Working in the home office which isn’t as common as I’d love to tell you it is.  But, WORK.  Work.  What I write about.  Force self to write when I don’t want to.  I do write about wine, but that’s not my only onus and thought light.

Now, I’m like a train with this, these writing thoughts.  I, not failed.  Not failing in my aims.  I won’t allow that.  No one should.  Why would you.  You are here, once.  And I’m not addressing the fact one only lives once…. I’m speaking to myself and you, that where you are, right now, the opportunity and life invitation to bring a project to completion is singular.  You see it once.

You are a train, if you wish be.  Some unknown animal of fruition, bringing works to an offering stage.  There are only stops that persist acknowledged.  So acknowledge none of them.  I see so many of these speakers and motivational-who-be’s profess all this counsel but don’t consider the most apparent reality… the audience member has to decide.  They only elect to act if they bring themselves to movement.  Tonight I could have just as easily poured this red from El Dorado, sat on the floor of this home study, went on phone and scrolled through some photo pour.  No.  We decide to draw, paint new plausible for our Personhood.  Decide to move, be alive, mentally, alive, wildly alive in all movements of your steps and actuating saunter. 

What work does for and to the character is animated in divinely lucrative chant.  Dodge the task, never.  Distractions and suitable sanctions to project-dodge are terminal.  The panacea, always, is preemptive production.  Never, labor deduction. 

10/15/18

mikemadiganLeave a comment

A Meeting

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.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Sonic Jot

Next day, the second where I feel like I’m on a rocket ship, just ascending and appreciating altitude.  Third day of victory, of production, producing, feeling my life and creative tide just going and rising and taking me with it.  On lunch now, peanuts and a ginger ale I bought from shop.  Stomach still a bit uneasy from that vegetarian burrito, yesterday.  Work today is more than enlivening and exhilarating.  I did feel this a couple times in the wine industry, but with no consistency.  Can’t remember the last time at Roth I had three consecutive days of pure life and topic ownership.  My story becomes its own storm, now.   Its own Now.  In this large warehouse-like quarter with Sonic everything all around me and everything that Sonic embodies, from the communicative facet to people just visibly enjoying what they do.  I’m definitely space-bound.  My work is no longer work but something that’s redefined and redrawn and re-purposed my literary purpose.

Walking someone through the office and into this break arena earlier, I could see the amazement and disbelief in her facial shape.  How the company encourages its people, how the “employees” are more so investors and partners, family members to the immediate and distant motions.  All motions overlap and intermingle, creating a creative concurrency.  Their own currency to be exchanged and interchanged…  I notice my own face change shape, sitting here.  Taking another sip, not needing any real lunch but just the snack I have and everything on either side— left and right, 12 and 6.  All these corners and visuals decide on magnifying my manuscript’s physiology, writing new one for this writer who anymore writes about work as he’s embedded and invested in work that binds to his moral and ethic etch.

I’m horribly saddened, honestly, when I hear of people going to places they hate for work. Of course someone could ask, “Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Yes, an easy question to ask, but not so easy to answer or attach any formula.  It’s not that they do anything to themselves, but haven’t found their pages, haven’t landed in their story.  What I recognize, appreciate and further analyze in my sitting here is that only now do I see.  Did I find not only a home, but a topic.  A book, and another one.  Me, a writer, literary guy, beatnik from the wine industry, now more fiery and eager and moved to words.  AT A TECH COMPANY.  But this isn’t some simple tech company, or start-up or wanna-be startup village.  This, here, the creative is basal, inherent.  Expected.  Sonic, like a university hopping around in exponent climates.  Here, you’ll hear people say how they write everything down.  You see other writers here, other thinkers, people seeking to enjoy where they work—  More than just “enjoy” it.  Live it.  Be it.  The IT, to it all.  What they do, yes, but more who they are. That’ how I see myself.

My story just arrived.  At 39.  Late?  No.  Lovely timing.  If anything, it’s more than punctual and optimal, just before 40.  This place has me forgetting I’m 39, if you should know, and you should know if I’m with your attention.  I just fixate on the day, whatever project to which I tend. The company’s name, Sonic, denoting and connoting sound, and speed, something audible, and then I think of course of music and being a literary bloke hear Kerouac reminding me that the only truth is music.  Here, in the break room and in the office proper, between enclaves and hamlets of encouragingly and electric and eclectically adorned cubes and desk, you hear it.  See, feel, then a sixth and eighth sense.  Someone you acknowledge or you think you do adequately but only know you’re there, in it all.

New writer, new vision.  New understanding and embrace of purpose.  I am writing a book, about this place.  More than a place but a dimension, a warp of time, timing.  Forgot about the ginger ale, peanuts.  Hearing co-workers talk of their projects and ideas while on lunch.  They don’t talk about any TV show, who’s dating who, where they’re going this weekend. But work.  WORK.  It’s not work. It’s more than passion.  It’s creative escalation and an impassioned saddle of axioms and projects.  Seeing each day as its own book, not just a chapter.  This is not a new chapter in my life but a new life, a new armada of books I’m about to write.  This day— what would it be about?  Learning, something new.  Spreadsheet.  Yes, me doing spreadsheets.  I was deathly afraid of them, before coming here, and up until yesterday still quite unnerved at the thought of toying with rows, columns, cells, formulae.  No longer, though.  My self-certain, assurance and general fortitude eclipse any anxiety.  Moving at a speed I’d deem supersonic, frankly.  And I don’t see myself working, I don’t.  I see the growth and the metaphysical and ontological model re-write itself over and over, from this company’s thesis. New song, everyday.  New chords.  New opus offerings and new interpretations of everything around me.  And, again, spreadsheets are part of this paragraph, part of this elasticized praise for where I now sit, in this lunching province. 

Stomach, solved.  Today did so.  Cured me of whatever that restaurants plate did.  And I forget it, universally.  I’m made more healthy and assembled as a writer in tech’s clef and step.  Anything past workplaces instilled, left, far in days behind me. Today’s book, then tomorrow’s, where I’ll be at Month 6, and yes I have a specific aim and tangible destination for such.  Never did that with wine’s world. I didn’t need to, as no such thought was ever invited or encouraged. The culture of not only writing and taking notes here, but education both from self but colleagues makes me feel like I’ve discovered some cryptozoological wonder, asking myself What is THIS? and Where am I?  Imagine that, being not merely in love with where you are, what you do, where one works, but seeing yourself as healthier, happier, more composed as an immediate consequence. 
10/3/18

mikemadiganLeave a comment

At school and tired from dinner.  Just a vegetarian burrito but still feel a bit of a food-tuned slowness coming over me.  I ignore it.  Chew gum I bought in cafeteria.  Have books with me for night but not sure how long I want to stay, to be honest.  Just talk to them, tonight.  That’s all.  Just talk to them about their Plath observations and thoughts on their essays.  Not planning anything tonight.  Nothing.  Everything on sight, on spec, in the moment, bottomless from the bottom of my mind.

Couple minutes before 6:30.  Long day, but not really.  Woke just before 6 with Jack, started shaving and didn’t have to iron any clothes so I was ready rather readily and with speed that doesn’t show most weekday mornings.

Want tonight’s class to be exciting.  Theatrical.  I say that a lot, “theatrical”.  How about animated, interesting or engaging.  You know what I mean.  You know what I want from tonight’s session.  Yes…. Rubbing my eyes… UGH, I think, Why did I have that burrito?  Focusing on moment.  My stomach has 30 minutes to digest everything and lose this full feeling.  Phone sounding, reps still in field, doing their thing, canvassing.  Feel bad I’m not there with them but I have to fulfill this, this obligation, this last semester.

Feel me get into professor mode, what to say when at class’ front, facing all the registered characters for the class I’m meant to “teach”.  Work… make it your own.  Don’t look at it as a task, but what you’re made to do—  NO.  Who you ARE.  

Have so much to grade and the stack keeps rising, heightening its attack and talk.  Another swarm to land tonight.  Life of a teacher, adjunct professor or instructor, whatever they want to call me today, this week.  How is it that they decide?  How is it that anyone or any institution or company can call me something, give a title or identity without me signing off?  You might say, “You did when you took the job.” Okay.  Though, I never agreed to a title that’s ever-changing, and I never agreed that anyone or any THING can decide when to change it.

Day catching me as it nods into night.  Feeling a bit more awake.  A bit.  Part of me does want to get coffee, but that will harm sleep.  And I’m going in circles in this quiet conference room and wasting me time to self, this time to build and collect and prep if I choose to.  I don’t.  I leave the day’s page blank and we as a class will fill it.  Idea by idea.  That will be our collective prompt.

Feeling like a professor now.  One who will be teaching independently by semester’s close.  Tell myself to stop thinking so excessively and I do.  I stop and just write, not in the Plath book.  Tell myself which quotes to offer but then retract as that’s a promise, a plan, a step back.  I just walk into the class being me, lecturing on writing and reading my loved author, and how they see her.  What’s their assessment of Ms. Plath and what she notes and narrates through her contemplative turbulence..

mikemadiganLeave a comment

The Glass

img_7604Late, and wine and music, thinking about the day and week ahead.  Day off tomorrow from office new but class later.  Going to put thinking in mode of close, already for semester.  The writing daddy thinking, thinks now, bigger than in past sittings.  Tonight, Pinot Noir.  Went to winery he just in the last month left, yesterday.  He misses it, wine, the industry.  Would he ever go back?  Fuck no, he says to himself.  He says it loud so he can hear himself think it and say it, and feel it more before the next sip.  He’ll have his own winery one day, something small.  That small little tasting studio and room where people, anyone, can just taste wine and talk.

He closes all the other docs on his laptop.  Focuses on his memoir or note or memoir-ish novel piece, he throws more Pinot into his circuitry.  And I’m tired already, even though I did manage a nap earlier, and after having some coffee.  Guess the writer needed it.  Mike looks at the wine, remembers his last days at that Chalk Hill spot, going into the vineyard his last day with the TR manager to do his exit and she saying this is how it should be done as he’d always talk about the vineyard and everything in it, how he’d walk it everyday.

He’d write it.  That tell-all.  Or something like a tell-all.  He wasn’t trying to expose anyone or call anyone out, or do any tabloid shit on his blog, he just wanted to write the wine industry, the bar the glass the towels the inventory.  Each turn, jot on a paper clipped by a spreadsheet metal clip-y thing.  He looks again at the glass and writes more notes about it, what he thinks someone from, maybe somewhere like, Indiana would say.  Some small town Indiana person, now a rich oil or farm behemoth.  “That’s nice, that’s like one of those Pinots that tells you what Pinot is, what it’s all about… I’ve had Pinots like this before, I’ve had a lot of them…” He’d heard lines like this, so many times before, someone trying to sound like something, some wine something, an expert or “connoisseur” or “aficionado”, or just a fucking EXPERT.  But it’s in his head.  He knows he has to write this down.  All of it.  He sipped the Pinot faster, pour another glass or sip right from neck. It’d changed, 

Wine speaking to him in octaves applauded, in his thoughts.  Empty glass, full head of wine visions, walking a vineyard again like he did at every wine he’d ever worked at.  He doesn’t know where he is in this session, and he doesn’t care.  The mocha, maple, cherry and milk chocolate from the wine speaking even several minutes after sipped.  He sees himself light up after writing about glass’ occupant, even after gone, even before letting it sing through a bottle’s neck like he were Kerouac.  Much to tell, more now later.  As a writing daddy ought do.  Much anew do.

9/23/18

mikemadiganLeave a comment

inward jot

9/21/18

Coffee.  Didn’t think I would have any but a nice bloke named Art helped fix the machine.  Something with the paper inside he said.  Not sure what that meant and I had trouble finding his repairing ability and magic powers but am cosmically grateful for the cup I now enjoy.  He had his dog with him, Murphy, a mix of pit and rot and German Shepherd or something.  Cute little guy that I though a puppy but really 8 years old.  Want a bigger property to have a dog for kids.  Working on it.

Out in field today, again.  Meant to wake early as I always do but needed more sleep, waking at 630-something then ironing some pants, into shower, getting coffee and wee treat for wife as she has day off, recovering.  Me in break room.  Saw co-worker who also enjoys Kerouac’s work, walking her dog as I approached front door.  Asking her how her morning was and she told me great, woke at 4:45 to go to gym, workout, and here she is.  The mornings, I need something from them.  More hours, more time, and I have only self to cite for not waking when I want.  Prophesying the next 8+ hours.  Selling with team, walking around the East Bay today, I believe.  Want today to be wild, more wild than any day this week.  Written, written madly.  Bag on table, person behind me getting napkin from some odd and stray little stack.  Writer at a tech company.  Love it.  Love this place.  What it does and what it stands for but I try to find more.  Not letting self get breakfast as I did the other day, and yesterday.  Yesterday having some croissant sandwich with egg, cheese, meat… felt disgusting afterward.  So none of that.  And none of the doughnut array a guy who next to me sits brought in this morning.  Was tempted.  Told him, “Maybe later.” But no.  Going for a bit of a literary fasting, ration, penury for sakes of prose today.

An office, versus a tasting room.  Then thinking of every job I’ve had, reflecting only now at 39, and where I’m going as I seem to in every entry… Do I want a snack?  NO.  Fast.. deprivation, a sort of literary and page torture training.  What will it do to the psychology of this writer, how he touches the keys, how he writes… what will it do to the book, book?  08:30.  20 minutes about, to collect.  People come in here for morning fixes, one man just now grabbing some dry cereal and some cold caffeine or coffee drink to pair.  This place fascinates me.  The video games, stacked chairs, a jungle of deliberation and fascination, like Duke and Gonzo in the casino, at the bar surrounded by lizard monsters.  I look around and see business, me building my story and “brand” if that’s what you want to call it.  I just want more, like everyone else.  The coffee to me speaks in radiant and radically riled voice and unspoken syllable sets.  Going to write everything down today.  From today’s poem, poems, to notes on team, the field, sakes ideas, me-ideas, everything around me secures the affirmation of dream-actuality transformation and actualization.

In ten years, I’ll be…. Don’t want to say.  By the end of the semester, well, I do want to say.  Teaching on writing.  Teaching independently.  Independent and NEVER dependent on the JC for classes and teaching opportunities.  This break room teaches me to write faster, write more, about the coffee and the coffee machine, Art and his dog Murphy, the people getting their breakfast bites, and me here writing like a beatnik having finally found his his IT, moving with supersonic insistence toward a storm of ideological adorned page-forms.  Seeing something, then writing it.  Living it.  Odd embodiment of passion and presence, passion for what’s in front of me and present.

Feeling a but of a famine rumble.  Ignoring it.  Writing rethought it.  If I had something to eat what would I have.  Certainly nothing in the fridge.  Then what.  What do I want.  What will I do if this ravenous inner-stomp heightens in any way.  Not sure.  Just keep with the words, the—  TODAY.  Today is the IT, the IT of it all.  The coup de foudre, for me and this book.  Not failed, in any pour, in any sound, in any movement or issue.  Today is all any writer should be focused on.  I’m here, at work, about to share ideas, about to speak to people, about to learn, about to be more me than the bloody wine industry could ever echo or hasten or hurry.  I’m finding not only work here, and nuggets of knowledge, but visuals that confirm the reasoning for why I’m here now.. to work over or about an hour early and diving into pages, a book project.

So many of us fear work.  I see that as a decision.  I see that as a surrender.  What do you want to do for the rest of your life?  The answer should always be “Everything.” Try everything, experience everything, WRITE everything. That’s what succeeds in solution, answers, happiness with I think everyone quests.  Everything…. “Try EVERYTHING” I started the semester with.  And now I the like enact.

More coming in for snack, something to eat.  The writer tempted, but I find gems in this starvation and deprivation, a re-allocation of self and functionality.

08:47.  Want to be back at desk, soon.  Start day.  Initial tasks.  Notes for field, for me in field, observations from yesterday.  Coffee already going cold.  I think of last night’s wine.  Which one.  The Rosé, of which I only had one glass, and the Barbera of which I think I had maybe 1.5.  OR two.  I deserved it, I reasoned, keeping the 1A class over 90 minutes which made for a 12-hour day, give or take.

Again quiet.  Sip again.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

9/14/18

img_7407Wine when home.  Day in field.  Cognitive throws clearing their way to my vision, my understanding and general concept and estimation of everything around me.  This Sophia’s Cuvée, Lancaster, 2015 I think has my thinking with not a single chain pain.  I’m on the floor of the lowest floor of the Autumn Walk Studio, going over conversations with T in car and at lunch, about wine and business, business… everything now I see as invitation and opportunity, a catalyst for amplification.  And I know I keep repaying that word or some form pro phylum thereof and, or, in.  But this is where the writer is, presently.  In business bliss and thought tryst. Made coffee for morrow, waking at 04:00 with no diffuse.  My life on it much depends and hopefully soon eventually ascends.  I feel and see it, for my babies and family and all those around me.  Sonic’s altered favorably, and with etching speed, my scope on work, on business and workplace forwards.

This Cab-honed set of sense tells me to take the night’s remainder off after this entry.  She understands I’m a writer, that I have something to maybe say, no delay, positive stray and fray in lyric-laden say.  Part of me didn’t want to leave SF, feeling like a Beatnik in my hometown, where I belong, where I only wanted to read poetry on street corners and in cafés, where T and I had lunch, but I studied.  Know, I know more now.  The wine professes to show only what mysteries and enigmas need be shows and set before in present’s block, lot.

Letting wine “open” in stemless plastic bowl on table.  Little Beats and wife upstairs done for day, away to dream plains and me just here being to be, in a state or irrevocable poetic pulse and session, sitting.  Tomorrow in office, learning more, feeding knowledge addiction, prophetic affliction.  Nothing thinking and just writing, must, my own trust and philosophy bus.  See self paling now on floor in typed stream and surf but only from long day.  I don’t aim for any attention as some do, as I sometimes do, right now I’m just a candid compositional bandit, only unhurt for attention and potential ideas bartered, commuted.  Something like such.  The house quiet, wine opened and more expository, telling me to keep writing and stop with any distracting dote, even if it’s to find some synonym.  That’s not genuine, that’s in no way truth.  Polishing your prose is the same as excess oak or using some additive or “add” to make the wine more ‘something’.  Got it, I say back to the red in cup.  And about my night go.

Still feel that fog on face, smell the sidewalk of 30-something and Balboa, Anza, Clement.  SF has not just my heart and mind but functionally and make and a situational duality, dueling with any nay-say and self-doubt, and moment-to-moment hell cloud.  So now, ending day, night, readying for next day.  4am, challenging anyone who thinks they work “harder” or with more cored and ordered force than THIS writer.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Noting everything I learn in the tech scene,

world, language, behavior pattern and way.  I’m one with a little reluctance, but I’m using what I know how to do well, and from there amplify.  Guess that’s my new tone and talk, ‘amplify’, and amplification.  Think it’s safe to say I won’t learn how to code any time soon, nor design sights, install internet.  I speak, I write, I guess I sometimes entertain, I speak (already said that, sorry), and story-tell.  That’s what I do, what I know how to do.  13 minutes left in break and my eyes are still on that coffee drink.  But I’d have to use my debit card.  Don’t want to do that.  Just make yourself another cup of coffee and let it cool off, I say to self.  People play video games off to right, and again I take the energy here much more with a welcome write than how I felt at the winery in final days at Roth.  And I hate to say that and keep mentioning that in these entries because I love wine, I love even the industry, or at least what I knew the industry to be before I was devoured by it.  I swear, if I would’ve stayed…. I don’t want to think about it.  Wouldn’t have been healthy, or beneficial to me, and certainly not the writing.

I’m eager to speak to this new hire, and see what the girl I’m working very closely with to a blessing’s believability, T, says.  Questions, educating, me being educated while I’m more or less educating from the less than 12 full days of life here.  I’m going to teach from what I know.. sales, speaking, not just relating to customers but listening, seeing what they need and providing a certain narrative and depiction of what Sonic is.  Not sure why I call it “office new”, still.  Habit, or just being a funny, quirky, language tussling and fiddling pen bloke.  I don’t know.

Less than five minutes and I just made my coffee so I’m prep’d for the remaining hours in my day, here in tech’s step.  I shouldn’t say that, I think.  This office is much more than just a tech spot, place of business.  I see Sonic as a consumer advocacy group as I said to T a few days ago and earlier today, I think.  I’m learning how to do not just better business but more coherent business.  More creative, more life, more education… I don’t know where to start sometimes when it comes to this new office.  Sonic.. and me, the Lit and writing prof’, put into a new book and new storytelling  assemble and vocal.  Doing wha tI can in the breaths last, make them last, looking around the break room and feeding from everything from the video game sounds to the conversations right I listen to but don’t at all.  New job, new words and walls, chairs and tables, coffee and doors.  Everything a propellent, ascending action and atmosphere from one character to ‘nother.  The observations and written reactions and reflections, MY business.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

9/9/18—

Photo on 9-9-18 at 9.08 AM #2.jpg

Son tells me this morning that he wants to be an author—  “I want to write books when I grow up, Daddy.  Like my workbook [that he was yesterday working on], I love writing.” I smiled and thought more about writing and how I write, or try, blog it all and while last night sipping the last of that Napa blend, now dead, I thought off the meta of writing, of writing about writing.  Why we write, why right now instead of taking a shower or doing budgetary shit, or driving up to Healdsburg early to do whatever, or doing anything around the house like most “real men” would on their day off, I write.  Think in poetic pulses, or try.  Listen to the dishwasher that I just put on, and think about notes, what I tell students about writing.  Or not tell, but share.

Harvest starting, or in some spots well into its due, friends of mine waking at 0400, then I wonder if I did the same what I could get done.  I can’t think about it or write it anymore, what I’d write and how I’d reach 3000 or more words if I just set my alarm and did it.  It’s not setting the alarm that’s the issue.  That’s more than easy, it’s effortless.  What if I rolled out of, from sheets and pillow and dove into prose.  This morning, a mocha.  4 shots which I haven’t in some time done, and saying to self, “Amplify, amplify… teaching, writing, the classroom, tech…” What do I want, what do you want, what do you want to amplify?  It’s literally that simple, as I see it.  Whatever you want, attainable.  You choose to subscribe to antithetical mind, if you’re not moving.  “Why don’t I have what I want?” or “…what I’m after?” Draw all thoughts.  Be more than AT the drawing board.  BE the drawing board.  Be moving.  Be in constant actuation and deliberation, forward and with your creative fire.

Since I started fiddling with writing, I’ve found it to be an exploration of my own thinking, how I generate thoughts and what I want from the act of writing.  Again, I could be doing anything right now, anything.  I chose to come here, to the island counter, sit, sip mocha, get to page.  My son telling me he wants to write, I need to write faster.  When he’s in middle school, or high school at the latest, I need be touring with these words.  Officially clocked into Day 3 of this challenge, or sprint.  A measure for when I’m forty.  Jazz in the room with me, and my thoughts go everywhere while still contained in looking at my son and high bright eager motioned expression when telling me of his book-borne ambitions.  Writing, seeing the association you have with words, and what they will do for you, to you, what story you want to tell.  I think.  Of this.  Everyday.  Me, writing father, adjunct for over 12 years, finally freed from wine’s industry to extend my written and poetic identity in tech.  Can’t say that’s ever been done, has it?  Just have to see, where all this will take me.  What knowledge I’ll pocket.  Quiet house, not used tot his so early on a Sunday.  Not even 0845.  Will be in 1 minute.  I feel rush, a rush in me to get things done, to finish a book, to put it out there— about journaling, writing everything down, blogging, seeing everything as material.  Even this plastic baggie of change that I’ve collected over the past couple months.  What do I do with it?

Setting budget for day, week.  For the first time in a while, since leaving the wine world, I’m quite comfortable.  Thank the craft.  Setting up the other blog so readers won’t see adds or other garbage to the sides.  I’m revolving and cartwheeling in thought and thorough thoroughness of my Personhood.  The Healdsburg Square will see me today.  WILL.  I’ll precipitate with my written will in whatever room I write.  The bakery?  The grocery?  Can’t stand those flies, though, at Oakville’s patio zone.  Every time I try to write through them, I am shoed away, like I were the fly in their annex.  Where else in HB is there to write, I think.  Flying Goat, I guess.  Find a spot there, though, is time arduous.  So I think somewhere else, possibly.  SHED?  Yes.  It’s indoors.  And their espresso is some sexy fuel-quake love I’ve never tasted, or haven’t since Paris.  And, if feeling well into my Beatnik notes, the beers on tap are all those that speak to a Madigan, one like me who writes.

Back hurts from run yesterday, the 10 miles which was a war to do.  So I stretch while sitting and writing, breath in this kitchen air, look left and see crumbs from the little breakfast treat I took for the baby Beats.  So much around me, so much to tell me, tell me where to whim, where and how to write.  This semester, possibly and more than likely my last conventional term, I invest every cell.  All tables and chairs, with this poem I just started writing, new Newness and pages, streams of collection and meditation.

Yesterday I wrote, “Enjoy and use your scene.” Mine, now, in this kitchen next to the bag of coins and my depleting mocha, the poetry journal, my wallet and the cash I was counting to my left, reminds me I’m alive, so alive and into this year, summer ending, that amplification is the only remaining route.  Winemaker friend of mine, yesterday, saying how he was at a wine tasting and the wines spoke to him newly, in some different or hip way, calling them hipster wines.  Didn’t ask for elaboration, but was put in assertion, asseveration in my wined story.  I always come back to wine and what she says to me, what my fictive figure, Kelly, does her first week in a tasting room.  This scene, room, page, more than fanciful and enjoyable.  Back to poem…

mikemadiganLeave a comment