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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Tonight. I pull a Pinot.

No real pragmatism to it, it’s just what I pulled. The only bottle on the top shelf in my cellar, really closet. Long day as always on a Tuesday with the class I “teach” from 7-9, I get home have a little dinner and tonight the wine comes after. Again, no real planning to it, that’s just what happened. First sip, not that blown away, or into it. In fact, if you should know, I had to convince myself, talk myself into this note, writing at all. The wine helps. Wine seems to always help. Actually, not seems to but immediately does. Wine is my topic. What I come back to. Soon as home, after the day collecting data in Petaluma then 90-plus minutes of Plath lecture, I’m here. With an Argyle Pinot. Think a ’16. Too tired to get up and look at label. And who cares. I’m here with wine, just sipping with all ease and no analysis. No even much intricate consideration as I always do. Just me, the wine, this time. And all times.

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Notes

Guy with guitar, just stared playing again.

Doesn’t know why he hasn’t played in so long. Can’t remember when he played it last. When he bought it.

He just plays with the chords. Plays. He just got home from work. Clock hurls time at his eyes, 9:47. He has to be in office at 7:15 for a client meeting. He doesn’t care. He plucks, picks, strings. He thinks he’s playing chords dragging across the strings, but he doesn’t know. No cares. He’s playing. Just playing.

He writes a line. A chorus, or start of verse. He does this from now till one again, but not like this. Not with the strings out. “End of day, a little way from anywhere…” what next. No idea. Back to strings.

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inward jot

img_7243Not writing much yesterday, and now getting to keys today, the first day back after long weekend.  Not sure where to start other than even though I was directly bitten by the wine bug on Sunday with the Italian wines tasting, I’m back in business mode here in my newly told tech steps.  Thinking about what a real business this is compared to and not compared to, just autonomously, the wine industry.  Everything from training and the creative, to the guy educating me on everything that’s in the office and the operations of the business urging I make this my own, that I can make it my own, that such is encouraged.  In many respects, I can’t believe I’m here.  But I am.  And I don’t focus on nostalgia or overthought.  I’m present and knowing what my focus here will be.  Storytelling.  Educating, speaking, writing, as L—the guy doing the training modules for me—said he did, does, writing everything down.  Taking lots of notes.. precisely his language.  And I’ve known that about myself ever since ever, but arriving here and starting my training and learning more about the company has punctuated my already known identity.  Frankly, I don’t see a lot of me changing, just improving.  This office hired me for me, who I am, who I’ve always been.  I see so much, now, in my story, in the Mike Madigan the wine industry questioned and made myself question.

Brought lunch today, a microwavable breakfast bowl… which I guess makes this brunch.  Some people around me playing games, others talking, and me in disbelief and total belief of where I am, what I now do, then only able to believe it.  That this IS the reality.  45 minutes to write, collect myself in this pages set, this blog, this room, this table where I do touch-and-go’s on a bland breakfast bowl.  Should have put some sauce on it, in it, something.  So now I just go over in my head what I have to do for class tonight and—  WAIT.  No class.  Today’s some teacher in-service day, or some activities day I of course can’t attend as I’m here, in the office new, where I put all storytelling strides toward.  And I see more story… someone in the wine industry for as long as I was leaving entirely and finally getting to enjoy wine for wine and not part of some industry, now in tech not being excessively tech-lifted but making it his own.  Using his strengths as a lecturer in Literature as well, a fondness of words and rhetoric, his own composition for this new job he years ago never would have thought he’d have.  I’ve taught myself about self, my self, the person writing this at lunch, working at lunch on his story, knowing where he’s going… this is more than an exciting time for me and my writing, my narrative, but a sped and animated transcendence from patterned circuitry to a more mobile manuscript.  True thought and understanding of placement and thought arrangement and assembly.

I’m a literary wine bloke in tech.  Huh….  I have to write that.  I will.  I AM writing that, sitting here in this break room, with this bowl of eggs and minced sausage bits, petite potato squares, or rectangles.

9/4/18

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cuvée kismet

img_9931…don’t second-guess your thesis, or multiple directions and “directives”, as that one manager years ago used to repeat.  The wine, in its wandering herb-purposed posture and verse storm wields more code, more metaphysical boards and shadows, certain mysteries then unmasked and me tasked with saying more about the wine when I ordered sell to talk about writing, about writing for self, about the students tomorrow.  Sonoma County… all we’ve recently seen, and me since moving up here with family from San Carlos… remember that house, on Bayview Drive, so often and often even more dream about it.  Tonight’s prose strays.  But I’m on the floor, in a relaxed posture, pseudo-stance.  This is what I’m expected to do, I’d think.  What does this book want from me—  discovery, of me and my relationship with writing, why I write, what I want students to write for themselves.. posing to Self, “Do I teach?” Thoughts revolving and diving themselves over and over in my head, at the end of this day where I was a wine industry bot, welcoming people like I wanted to talk to them then taking notes on what they say, like that one guy who repeated, and I mean over and over and over, “…Rose… I’m getting rose, lots of rose on the finish… see, I can tell if there’s Hungarian oak on this or French… yeah, I have a really discerning palate.  I do.  Ask any of my friends… they plant rose at the end of the vineyard rows…

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