Brought self here, music.  Beats.  Playing over and over and taking me with them.  In directions I didn’t see, foresee, forecast.  The pages filling in this journal and I credit this, here, where I am, at Sonic.  Have to keep writing new ideas for me, my team, but just the ideas for the ideas themselves.  This coming year I will take what I want wherever I want.

Choices, decisions, destiny blended.  I don’t know what this is.. where I am, what I’m doing.  Consequence of choices or destiny, happenstance, intersection of all.  I do, though, acknowledge where I am and what I’m doing.  And from that there is love.  There is wander and wonder, aimless exploration, stories and new stories.  Feel like I’m dry, drought-stricken, out of words to put to page, but then I see the words are the act, are the subject— we need to write our thoughts.  Yes it takes work and time, but that’s what confirms life. What confirms where we are, who we are, and why this character we’re given does what he and she does.

Place— coffee, the table, the self.  The music I listen to, with electronic components, atmospheric beats with light hip-hop influence, easing my disposition and pace at which keys are hit.  Belle musique, I say to self knowing I need more of my study, more of my exploration of French.  Coupled with music, more, wine and travel, running… everything I seek will be no longer sought before 19’s close.  New year reminding me of life’s cruel curtness.  What can I do, what can WE do, but write.  Write it all.

Two sneezes.  Not getting sick, I order self.  I not only can’t afford it but it will disrupt my writing for the coming year… lectures and essays, no “I” in any of them.  Just the ideas.  Not much “you” or “we”, either.  Just the ideas.  Ideas are what propel life, intensify and color it, make it Art.

12/29/18

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Technology not cooperating.

Laptop not cooperating.  Keyboard not responding.  Tried using this computer in office, the word processing doc program, and its cooperation was shit.  So I’m typing directly to blog.  Which I never do.  But, these blogs I’ve made my home and soon my sole career and composition, so I type here.  I know where to find these words.  And frankly, I like this bigger screen.  Need a break from that laptop monster and this occurrence gives me just the warrant and excuse to use this actual computer.  I’m using the office, the desk, the chair, the room, imagining it my eventual office in downtown SR or Healdsburg.

Kids play upstairs, agreeing to let me work.  This is definitely a morning of a writing father, a jotting daddy who needs things to work when they don’t, and they continue to defy, so I find ways to write.  I’m a writer and if I have to the pen and paper are my most reliable and ready ally in any tech scuffle.

Kids upstairs, playing.  They don’t have these worries, or any.  Jack asks projecting his voice what I’m doing down here.  Think he’s up to something.  I know he is after asking what he’s doing and he throws down the stairwell, “NOTHINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG…..” I’ll trust him, or seem like I do even though I anything but do.  Don’t hear any thumping or falling of any objects.  Emma’s not crying so all much be composed, right?

Checked on laptop and it has no interest in cooperating, communicating, anything for me.  I come back to actual computer, the blog, the only anything I can use.  Day off but me self work.  There’s no such thing as “a day off” for writers.  I’ve forgotten about the laptop and now fixate on the day, later, a run I know I have to do but already dread, and if not dread than just want to think of anything to do so I don’t have to do THAT.

If I didn’t have this coffee, I’d be far more mentally disheveled and scattered, wrecked than I am now.  Kids play quietly upstairs.  The quiet is near unnerving– And there’s a funny noise.  Like a toy breaking, falling then shattering.  But I hear no vocal reaction.  This desk, the laptop, the morning, teaching me.  Lessons compounded and turned, around and in other directions for my story.  This writing pops.

Voices outside.  Neighbors starting their day.  “What are you guys doing?” My voices flies up the stairs from my office seat.  “Emma’s reading.” Jack says.

“What is she reading?”

“The puppy book.” Jack offers back, soft and in eased tone.

What are you reading, buddy?” I say.

“I’m reading the shark book then, um, I’m going…I’m going to read the dinosaur book.”

“Good!  Enjoy your reading!” I say to him as I say to my students before they read each other’s work in a class essay workshop.

Sip coffee and look down, under chin and see post-it, with note.  “Dear dad […] w  e love   yo     u”.  I smile then am interrupted in my enjoyment of a post-it with more life on it than I’ve ever seen by message from neighbor saying she needs her table back, the one she leant us for Thanksgiving.  I say sure and open the garage door and let her take it, return inside and ask upstairs how the reading’s preceding.  “We’re just doing a lot of reading, okay Dada?”

Back at desk, and the morning couldn’t be more for me if I had written it this way, or any way.  Neighbors wheeling stuff around.  Think there’s a collaborative garage sale sale going on.  Something like that.  What are they reading?  I hear Emma explain something to Jack and then he clarify what she’s attempting to elucidate.  Thinking I should go up there and read with them.

But, they come downstairs.  Slowly.  Emma saying, “Hey, Dada… what’s up?” I laugh and ask her same.  She then say something I can’t understand and don’t need to.  She says she needs to do something.  “I need get dressed.” The morning and its story cooperate where tech doesn’t want to.  And again, this shift in habit and writing practice teaches and reiterates dimensions to which I was already privy.

Writing my life, at this point in my life, to understand the story and my character and my writing, or anything, questions form.  Inquiries that will not halt.  I follow them, to more solutions then more puzzles to solve and codes to decode and deconstruct.

Jackie calls me up, I say I need five minutes.  Which I do and don’t.  I surrender the path that is the morning and day and just the sequence of songs in each set of numbers the clock reads play.  We wish for a lot, we Humans.  We focus on what’s absent rather than celebrating what’s present.  This morning reminds me to celebrate, to forget about whatever the laptop’s doing and just move, be mobile, be writing, be loving.  The babies upstairs losing their littleness and I age and we all age, so I capture everything.  Jack singing some song I can’t understand or identify.  Think it’s a Christmas  song, I don’t know.

Jack again demands I come upstairs and I agree.  Hear them playing and him trying to teach Emma about the functionality of some toy.  “Emma, turn it off!” I ask him to please be nice to her, he rationalizes “She doesn’t follow my rules…” Smile, back to writing more.  Love how they think, how they talk, argue and respond and in a micro-nanosecond turn their thoughts into something so convenient and obscure that only they can see connected dots.  That amazes me, their language.  Their thoughts and how they create and respond, occupy their time.  They never obsess over what’s not, only what is.  That, if anything this morning, more than that fucking laptop, teaches me.  I’m a student and they’re the collective professor.

Wonder how I’m doing in class.  My grade.  Do they like my blog, this after-laptop piece?

He calls again, little Kerouac.  This time, he doesn’t accept my excuse.  Up…..

12/2/18

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On break.

Got through small stack of papers.

This semester and I are now officially feuding. I will be sure there is not a single paper to evaluate.

All papers, graded when handed in.

My assault plan is to halt all before there is any assault, on either end.

Wake earlier. 4am, or face failure.

Sunday will be the grading day for me. Learning learning. More knowledge, more knowledge on knowledge itself.

Week 9…. oh week 9. Today’s lecture, on semester consideration. Noting your progress. I’m doing the exact.

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0706

In the home office, if you can call it that anymore. Pulled cold coffee from fridge. Kids play upstairs. As usual I’m not up as early as I want but it’s a day off so I don’t speak too hard on self, at least not right away. In this office, or room where things just find their way anymore, I think about the day I want to have. We can have any day we want. So what do we want. Yesterday thought about books versus blogs, what give more priority. Then today. What do I do with it? Ahead of self thinking of tomorrow and papers to grade. We only stop self from progression when we think too distant.

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#WildWednesday thought…

Start the day assured and convinced of your character, your story. Study your character’s steps and thoughts… learn from YOU.

You hold far more gems than you estimate. Step, and study. Make today something utterly different than any other that before it came. Recognize and self-ratify in your new reality.

(6/13/16)

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inward jot

Getting more serious about copywriting, this morning.  Putting together an ancillary business plan, or more of a serious plan really, to make money from my word familiarity and inexhaustible fluidity.  Connecting it with sales, brand narrative… have it be as non-formulaic as possible.  But more on that maybe later, maybe.  Need a plan for the next two weeks, writing for dollars, writing for my life.  First thing popping into the writer’s head— poetry, speaking words.  Rhythm, music, lecture, ideas, with a certain philosophy coat.  Not sure where to go from there— well, just start writing.  Right?  Or do you want to keep thinking about what you’re going to do, keep planning and brainstorming and shit… no.  Just act.  07:52.  Have over 4 hours to do something, to produce something.  And that’s the morning’s goal… produce.  Sell.

Staring at the backpack.  Want to empty it.  It encourages clutter, as I’ve said… so stop saying that, I say to myself, taking another gorilla chug of this French Roast, refusing to stop, refusing to wallow in any kind of mire.  Just keep moving… act.  Actuate.

Bag completely vacant, and upstairs in closet, never coming down or being used again accept for if I go hiking or on some photoshoot or writing mission, or something.  All these pieces of paper with poetry on them, forlorn scribbles— no, use them, make art of them.  What I plan to do… notes about wine consumers and dreams, goals, adversity, me, my kids, life, doing better… turn it into a lecture, into poetry…. OH, it feels amazing not to have that bag.  Clutter is a thought-tomb…

Copyrighting should read freely, be freeing when read.  No clutter, turbulence or syllabic rubbish.  I don’t know why it took me so long to empty that bag.  Have no idea what writings I’ll find.. there was even a small Mead memo book at the bottom of the bag and behind this protective cushion-like thing meant for a laptop.  Getting distracted by the little mounds and knolls of notes, papers, quick and rushed musings at the winery.  Dutcher Crossing, more specifically.

Jack this morning, showing me how skilled the is at solving puzzles…. I was hit, broadsided by obvious metaphor and education from my little beatnik… PUT THE PIECES THAT ARE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU TOGETHER.  I have everything I need for everything I need and want.  He would say things like, “See, Dada?  Are you watching?  Are you listening, Dada?” I sipped my coffee and observed his methods and his mild-mannered approach.  This pile in front of me, the poetry scraps and papers’ heaps, hold something, something out of which I will write something for reading… something epic and vast, grand and rhythmic for me and the world, for my children and people I’ve never met.  Cooling down now, wondering if I should go out and shoot some vines or something.. but I’ve already done that recently.  What if I didn’t let myself leave?  What if I kept myself here, in this home office, with my already-shot shots of vineyards and wine glasses and who knows what else, and these little pieces?  Something has to happen, right?  Well, yes, but stick to the copywriting… get to work.  Play and experiment later, if you can.

(6/9/17)

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