Tag: Mike Madigan

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Health/Wellness

Notes—

Character Kelly, can’t decide on direction of her, in this current short piece.  But then it comes to me, me seeing her drinking some red blend that her cousin gave to her for her 21st birthday, four years ago.

Not going to write any more than that, saving all ideas for the short story collection, due in 10 days.  Hoping I keep with this current character, this writing challenge.  Not a challenge if I don’t it so deem.

Taking a break from basketball and catch, and kicking a ball back and forth on our street with son and watching one of his favorite cartoon movies, or I think it’s one of those Pixar movies… anyway I’m trying to stay busy while spending time with son on this “Daddy Day” as he always calls it and brags to his sister who still has to be in school.

I take a breath, see more of the character and what to do for her.

Son on couch, blanket over him, we both resting from our outdoor back-and-forth’s.  Monday… writing as a father and still trying to be Daddy.  Makes me think of a writing piece, some idea, a direction— a role, a new job… huh…..

Categories
Health/Wellness

06:36

Coffee.

Day off.

With son.

He’s going to show me things today… teach me, I’m sure. Quiet house with coffee, thoughts, visions, and frustrations… why am I typing on this phone, again?

Enough. Done.

Comparison– the winemaker that’s in the vineyard as much as in the lab, on the crush pad, tasting. Then, the writer who only types and the other who had colonies of overwhelming towers of filled notebooks.

Got it.

(6/11/18)

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

Cabernet now… I’m here, idealistically and really. 

img_4908Just siping wine at the end of a day off, taking notes and reading my own notes, and thinking of myself as a different writer, a writer I thought I was and now am and am going to be.  So…. End of day, like some business bloke burgeoning and, like I’m in college, on the SSU grid and going from village to village, wondering what girl will find me a writer, look at me like I’ve published something, or self-published something.  I prefer self-pub, as you know, or don’t know, but if not then now yes… handing my manuscript over to some company makes me want to flee, escape, quit writing altogether..

This 2012 CS, putting me in new mind, of some kind.  I’m watching a show that I thought I like and was really into on some level as the character primary’s a writer but now I’m just annoyed with everything the main does, and all the ancillaries are just asinine… should be listening to Coltrane.  TV is cancer, and a vicious, carnivorous bastard of one at that.  Need more wine… drink more of this Cab my friend gave to me.  He, a winemaker for I don’t know how many labels.  Me, marketing and selling, spending time in the tasting room.  Should I Get into production?  Am I too old?  Yes.  In a fucking word, YES. 

On the floor, ass hurts, more wine, and thinking of utterly dismissing the wine industry only to embrace it madly.  More madly and creatively than I ever have in other days and on other pages.  This Cabernet is quite unnerved with this writer, I’m sure.  Not giving me any notes, no suggestion, no mode or songs, voices or character.  It’s making me work too hard.  God.. fuck.  Okay, just another glass.

Categories
Health/Wellness

05:58…

Nose airway obstructed, so I’m up. With not much to write other than I’m awake only wanting more sleep. Made self coffee, as why not. Day off today, but I’m sure much of it will be spent like this, sniffling and being sick. Why on my day off, I’m asking. No answer expected for or from the bottled ox. So I must note more, with everything on my head, dancing around these thoughts are like lightning storms touching down in bolts, to streets, wherever they please. Can’t remember the last time I had a cold…. this is a sign, signaling of something. What I don’t know trying to interpret but my thinking doesn’t seem to be its normal state, or functional pattern… in tasting room just over 12 hours ago, and I saw it… saw everything. Me away from there and not having to do anything but write. Finish books. Away from any anchor, or bag of bricks that slows me. In writing about health, being alive for my babies and family, mental heath is really what I’m addressing before establishing any new workout pattern or running goals. Up this early, spending my time in the quiet before Jack wakes, and he’s always the first up, is what’s needed. It’s more than healthy, it’s life, no matter how slow and pained I am with these sniffles. Nearly stopped writing and stared off with another collection of thoughts, but I halt myself, like dog owners pulling the chain attached to dog’s neck ordering it to stop. Composition, character, the utility and presence, identity in this act, writing. True, I’m writing on my phone, but I’m still writing.

Starting to feel a little better, but still sniffling, still with a small sinus head aching, but nothing that will stop me from doing just this. Writing. What keeps me alive, healthy, interconnected with the atmosphere and immediate elements of the room, the day. Getting frustrate typing on this phone with my thumbs… none of my studied writers wrote like this, obviously. Should be writing, solely ink… REALLY writing. So why aren’t I. Good question– actually a dumb one. Should already be doing that.

Can breath a little better now, looking ahead and over to a box of old writings, old journals… what’s in there I wonder. Writings from I was with old girlfriend, living in San Ramon, working at that racist insurance agent’s office… of when in grad school and I moved back to Sonoma County Boeing never to again leave…. I feel a sudden rush realizing how time has typed it’s way by me. Encouraged. Like this morning getting up with this cold and sinus-something I have a new day. A new notebook. What do I want to do with the rest of my life– and no exaggeration, not at all a hyperbole spree. I’m sitting on this couch downstairs seeing everything in front of me taunting me with interconnected lesson and rich elevation and healing quality, qualities.

Pen on paper, Plath waking up early to write two to three pieces, Kerouac on the ship writing while mates play cards, cook, or……. I’m a different writer this morning. What happened. This, more than healthy. This is more life. Life I needed, life where I’m finding more in my character. But, I’m typing on my phone. SO? Like I say to students. The important and crucial appellation of me and what I’m doing is in the act. Not being complacent or lazy, or taking this breath for granted, or the next one, the next one, next… The world outside waits for me and what I have to say, I wait for what I have to say, wondering how the story will be affected. How will it. I have to write and see, not just wait.

Hear daughter coughing upstairs, and this sitting, this peace will be broken soon. That’s fine, I say inwardly, knowing that’s what’s to happen. I can always write later.

Brought daughter to her mama…. back downstairs but hear little Kerouac moving and awake and soon he’ll be down here, drawing pictures as he now likes to do before anything else with his day. Time with my babies, contributing to more than just my overall health and sanity, sense of all around me, but of me and why I’m alive, why I’m here and what I’m to do here. Maybe this is just the way I should be writing now, on this devilish device and not with open journal… not with ink, but like this. Ontological intention of it all, diving into my story with more voice and voracity. One day, and I always think about this, my kids will read this, my books, and form opinions about their writing father. If I’m some college course, what would they write about me? About this entry?

Hear Jack talking to Emma in our room, on the bed, asking her questions…. “Where’s Dada?” He asks. “I’m right here, buddy.” I say from my writing cushion.

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

Quiet

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

Wine Industry.

Sales is not about getting into any character, it’s an embrace of your already-present self and speak. You want to sell more? Don’t act. Truth sells. Script recital is wretched.

Categories
Me, Wine Industry

from morning jot

I write whatever comes to head with this beat playing in my ears.  You, writer, and one reading if you write, need be always free.  Even if you’re focused on one character, create and type, write freely in him, her.  Kelly tells me to follow her, to her apartment, to her creative corner in her apartment, which is less than 500 square-feet in the city but more than she needs.  She’s a minimalist of sorts, but wants so much for her day, for her story.  She write in her journal, keeping track of everything she’s done creatively with the day, so she can see her actions, make sure sh’s doing something to get out of ‘the box’, as she calls the ad firm where she works.  She wants to see everything, the world and more than the world.  And me, just writing her, wondering about my character… where I am and what I’m doing.  Coffee spot before the day takes off… feeling my age, but only ‘cause I tell myself I am.  I’m not.  Write lecture notes for the day, like I do on days teaching.  One of my former students, one from the past semester, works here.  New to position, but I can tell she already has handle on everything, everything.  Quiet in class, not saying much but I see and feel the thought in her character, the way she views and surveys literature.

This morning’s freewrite, fighting off exhaustion.  And I think it’s gone.  Hate feeling like that, first thing in the day.  Woke this morning, before 4, with wife and babies, to help them get ready for the balloon fair, wherever it was.  Colors and music, food and other toys and treats for kids (intended audience).  After they left, I felt awake, saying to self, “Stay awake.  Don’t you dare fall….. fall……..” And, to sleep.  Back into dreams.  Woke, only to go back, till just after 7 when I went upstairs and threw this lazy writer into shower.  I’m fascinated by that early hour, around 04:00.  I took a couple wine bottles outside, and the to-go boxes from KIN, to recycling bin.  I remember stopping, looking around, listening to feeling more of the wind, the street.  I wanted more of it.  Why did I go back into dreams like a surrendering slug?  Ugh… can’t let self be in that frame, thinking or meditative, anything.  All over my brain and circulation, my story, this morning with more to say and think than I know how to productively put to page.  I need this book done, the next one, the next….  The other day winemakers insisting I taste from two potential blends, two final blends of a wine disturbed all over the country and I think a bit of international presence as well.  I was looking for character, and a pure, honest prose to its progression.  In the wine industry, I’ve learned so much about myself that I don’t think I’m me, sometimes.  The tasting room has re-written me.  And, for manuscript’s boon, to be sure.  No detraction or erosion of self.  But, I do know, now, this morning and for some span, I’m a writer.  That’s what I will die doing.  No doubt in this writer’s mind.  If the industry wanted to get rid of me altogether, I’d be fine with it.  I’d thank them.  When let go from the Sonoma Valley winery, the TR manager, a character I for the most part deplored, urged I seize this as an invitation to do what I “really want to do” as he put it. I agreed, agree.

Categories
Health/Wellness Me, Wine Industry
Categories
Health/Wellness

I’m moving with unusual confidence this morning. 

img_4825Bobbing my head to this beat, my beat, the beat of this music and the writing itself with all these people around me, wondering what I’m writing, I’m sure, or not.  Doesn’t matter to me as I’m doing it, my IT.  As I lecture on essays and structure, I see today as a new thesis, a new experimentation with form and paragraph balance, punctuation and words.  The morning, a bacciferous manifest.  I keep bobbing my head to my new song, track after tack in under ten minutes here at the coffee shop.

I know Mike Madigan better than I ever have, today.  Just with this morning.  Some feeling or mood, some inward jot and elevation that consumed my life, every inch and parcel to it.  I have a drive ahead of me, and I know I’ll be with thirsty ache for pen, paper.  Let the ideas cook, simmer and set, settle.  ‘Cause I will settle for NOTHING with this brief time I have alive.  Nothing.  My oeuvre oscillates, giving me more momentum.

This is addictive, I can tell.  When I feel like this first thing in the morning and attains new way and wave to page.  Imagine… everything is yours.  All of it.

Wait, you don’t have to paint any visions in head.  It is.  It already is.  Right in front of you.  Right now. 

Categories
Health/Wellness

One of those mornings where you know.  You just know. 

Photo on 6-13-17 at 8.00 AMWhat you’re to do, keep doing, and you see that you’ve been doing it, your IT, the whole time.  Now, just time to intensify.  In all directions.  That singular thing you are, what you do, now time to set yourself into a madly creative blaze and bravado— one unstoppable and tireless, one that attracts you even further into what you do.

The morning sings to you in all its corners and turns, with each minute changing on the clock.  Even ten seconds forward you feel more bold, more fearless and eager to do IT.  The IT to it all, your all.  If you encounter this sensation, ever, don’t pause.  Don’t think or deliberate excessively or even mildly.  Just act, react to the atmosphere of your voltage-folded and unfolding day.  It’s more than just a positive vibe, but a newly told thesis in your story, your character, getting closer to your there.  Move… move more… write more of your manuscript this morning.  Of course if you’re like this wild scribbler, you’re writing… but, whatever you do, whatever creative universe has you a leaping luminary this morrow, follow.  And yes, follow it blindly.  Keep with your keep, your current current.

The only mind you should accept in your life is one as this, where you know.  You know where you’re going, what you are— the who and the why.  Complimenting your composition and currency in the early hours.  Let it carry you till bed beckons, and even then resist sleep and fight to hold this new animation.  The day presents itself, offering new ideas and sight which you utilize and empty for this mission of yours.  You know what the end-call is.  It’s yours.  Your story, your life, your movement, manuscript and beat.  It, your IT, has landed again, this time with more gavel.  So… go.

(6/8/18)