Tag: Novelists

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New Everything

Not five oclock but close enough.. 5:41, had a thought last night before falling asleep of beating Kerouac at his speed, writing a novel faster than he did. AND, with the end of this semester is the end of many of my self defeating way when it comes to writing. One of those being blogging, to an extent, that’s why the teaching blog has to die. I will submit only pages to students, not tell them to go to some post. And with this novel I complete in TEN days, today being day one and I’ll use the 17 I have for the Massamen novel, I’ll shop it, traditionally, sending it to, yes, agents and publishers. I don’t want to but I want to play THEIR game and destroy them at it.
Fridge stopped humming, and when I push these keys it echoes in a way, the act of pushing them, you didn’t hear in the condo– got confused by the syntax of that sentence for some reason. Anyway, I’m up writing, and I think today is going to be rather magnanimous, and yes mostly with the writing but as well with meditation, just sitting and thinking (what I’ll do when back from Petaluma Campus). So quiet, and close to these other houses, or maybe it merely appears that way with all these windows. No dreams to write of, last night or this morning. I just find myself in a certain meditation, now. And what better than the first session of this kind in this new Autumn Walk house. Cleaning up this bloody laptop, using the Comp Book for novel writing, and then typing, have to plug in the printer after the internet guy comes. Want these pages printed, and no obsession over editing. I don’t have time to edit so monstrously. They get the manuscript they get. And that’s that.
Not so much wanting coffee. And I just noticed I indented in this paragraph, and I haven’t been doing that from my disgusting blog habits. The only way for me to be happy with myself as a living American writer is to print, to have books on shelves at bookstores across the country; to submit and have they say or write back or even email me a ‘yes’. Another instructor at the JC with me, Craig, a full-timer is now retiring. He’s the one who gave me a second chance and brought me back to the JC in Fall ’12, when Jackie wasn’t even a year old. Should write him a letter from the P-Campus, just let him know he’s appreciated from my corner of teaching or pedagogical efforts, of from this writing disposition, whatever I do and whatever whoever I am.
5:54AM– And that’s another thing I’ve had trouble with, or troubled myself with any idea of a novel.. that I have to have these time stamps and informational anchors as to where I am time-wise. So I’ll only do so in these worklogs or journals, and maybe sometimes in shorter pieces, but NOT in the novel. The reader needs to work hard and estimate for themselves where I am. And it saddens me, my blog, that I posted those pieces yesterday, had been thinking about doing so for DAYS prior, and now it’s done, and it’d be bloody forgotten if I weren’t such a devoted writer, that I wasn’t proud of it as I am. Going to print it, I think, and sell it of course, filling in those income gaps I mentioned in the haircut sketch. So quiet in this new house and I again think of Newness and doing things differently with the end of this semester, the end of any compromising way or habit connected with the writing. And that’s today. And that’s the novel. The long piece of quasi-fictive flexing I’m about to put out into the world and not just on some blog of mine. And my character, him wanting wine and teaching and writing and just to be himself and manytimes by himself. When watching his nephew, Jack, all the parents on his buddy’s new block appeared, their children as well, all playing while the adults socialized and chatted and tried to chat with him, but it was too much; too much activity and too much speech and too much aggression with them being “neighborly”. “I’d seen you here before with Jack but didn’t know you were Jim’s friend and Jack’s uncle…we’ve been waiting for you to join us,” one of the wives, Amanda said. It’s just not what he wants. He loves his nephew but doing that whole thing, sitting in one of those chairs on the driveway eating chips and guacamole like Amanda and that other lady did, isn’t him. He needs quiet, he needs his mind completely tethered to what he’s doing and or what he’s trying to do: LECTURE. WINE. BE the adjunct he wants to be, not the one They’d have him be.

And speaking of Jackie, I hear him coughing upstairs.. should go check on him and stop being so selfish with this sitting and how much I’m seeing and reviving myself as I’m doing with this new novel idea.
After 6, 6:04… This is when the morning starts; Jackie wakes wanting to play then Alice gets in the shower I get my coffee or try and the stress cakes itself to my mentality like that mold from the condo, disgusting.. what if I didn’t stress at all, this morning? What if I just let the Story carry me, and not me it? Light found its way to this room much faster than it did in the condo, much more a writing space for me with the wood floors, and the new bar stool Alice and I assembled last night, and that kitchen island which I decidedly adore. This is a writer’s house I know, so I need to write with more organization, less clutter and clots, more curb-appeal if you would, to use one of my aunt’s real estate terms. I’ll make it quick with the 1B meeting, then fly to the library and work on the novel.. I’ll shoot for 3 FULL pages, and not stop, stay caffeinated, and not look back, not edit obsessively or excessively.. purity like the unfind and unfiltered wines of Arista. Be the best novelist I can and show Them they have to publish my work, there’s not choice in that matter. That I will be read.

7:05 and J’s watching a cartoon, I’ve all but completely cleaned the desktop of this device, finding old writings that I’ve somewhat forgotten about. See? that’s horrible. I’ll post all of them to the blog and print a couple, TODAY, atop my noveling obligation. The morning quick, and I too quite quick. One cup down, another cued, take J to school then go straight to PC. Then start with the last word that I wrote in the Massamen piece.. and go from there. And exercise in my appreciation of singularity, this novel is, and all will boil down to–or be LCD’d to–WINE. A love for it, and an exploration of it. Not just drinking it! No.. wine is about observation and Art and growth, thought and freethinking and freedom. Not so much wine itself but the idea of wine and the atmospheric perpetuation of what wine tells– now I know, some somms will say “what the hell” or “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Well I merely consider the origin of such a remark, from a sommelier, and I stop. I approach wine as my character does, as a professor of Composition, Literature, Wring, and TRUE ideas.

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autre

New Cask

9:18 and at the Starbucks on the old block, Yulupa.. dealing again with a mood this morning but I refuse to let it wrap me any longer, and why should I? The collection, ‘interim stratum’ was published and now I just have to push and push and push it on readers and wouldbe readers. “Keep writing,” I tell myself. I don’t have to be stressed, I don’t have to be in a mood, and I don’t have to let anyone get to me. I thrive in transparency and affairs with wine and writing and literature and my own independent thinking, and with this coffee. There’s no judgement of me here, there’s no lack of faith, only support and jazzing vibes and the ZEN I need. After this I rush to Arista to be enveloped in more Zen and beauty and Literature. I will only grow in what I want and know I did my best and those strings Emerson spoke of, being true to myself and not letting any perception of me or what I’ve never done or what I do execute on page slither to my senses, ever! And I disregard that I pocket another number, an additional age, nine days. I don’t care and others shouldn’t either, ever, and not with this one especially, pushing into the technical “late thirties..” Goddamnit, why did I write that? I just acknowledged it.
I stretch and yawn and am bored with my words already, probably from re-reading the pieces in ‘interim stratum’.. oh well. Just heard someone here, a woman waiting for her coffee say “you attract what you want to attract”. Huh, I think, unexpected counsel in this corporate coffee brothel. I sip my coffee but it’s colding, or cooling, not interested in and or my present inferno. Want to write the dream I had last night, or sketch it, no more than 250 words, short like Kerouac’s sketches, and have it be more imagist than narrative, but how do I do that? I’m an imagist writer, and narrator, so I’m a mess, Mikey-a-Mess, again. Sipping this coffee more than slow now as I need to use the washroom, but I won’t give up or stop I need to accumulate in Zen and Self in this entry and shake this mood and forget about the negative claws that follow me. Transparency, my love with writing and words and Life, the characters around me and wine.. the making of it and the story in it, not quite or empirically the wine itself or the act of drinking or tasting it– not so. In fact that’s such a minor and trivial part or experience of the experience and story OF wine. If you must know, I’ve always held that the act of drinking wine completely if not overabundantly minimizes and degrade wine. Look at all the pictures you see on social media of people DRINKING [wine], and even tasting it to bring attention to themselves, have their persona elevated so that they’re look at as some brand or icon or authority, like the sommelier movement– that is NOT for an exploration or appreciation of wine as a artful and cognitive, LIVING, entity. Rather, it’s so the sommelier can be recognized as a sommelier, or “somm”. Watch that ratsbane documentary, and you’ll see that the “somm” is more interested in their image and appearance rather than the wine. There is no respect for the wine is haphazardly drinking it, or sipping it, or even blogging about it as so many of them do.
9:31, and I’m tired of this place. My mood returns and puts me in Montresor’s mind. I fear for my writing, my character, and the characters around me, what will happen to them in the next entry…..

Whomever embarks upon my insult, will enjoy the fruition of my revenge.

(5/20/15)

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5/15–

IMG_6163Thinking of Wellness and the notion of practicing it from when I woke which wasn’t too long ago. Only act left to execute is dressing little Kerouac.. keep blogging, all day… Still not totally convinced the teaching blog needs to die.. actually, it’d add to my Newness in adjuncting, if anything.. thinking now that it should stay alive, and keep the posts short! Same with bottledaux.. post post post! All day. More is better, where some see as less being better with their models and modes, and that’s fine, but for me as a brand I want readers to see me as tireless and always writing, ALWAYS!
Will take a fifteen minute break today to post prose to bottledaux, the MOCK SOMM piece I wrote last night. And what else.. just everything and everyone is material.. writing the wine world and what’s in my head as a writer and teacher and how Wellness will be attained– should set up the coffee machine in this Autumn Walk fort.. will find it tomorrow when Alice and I look through and ATTACK the boxes in the garage.. no clutter synonymous with Wellness. Not letting anything or -one under my skin or into my head less they have a beneficial additive for the writing. Jackie needs me now, done with his waffles and we need to leave earlier as his school is all the way across town, now.

At the Starbucks on Yulupa after dropping off the little BEAT, and I listen to everyone around me, many going to work or watching after the kids or just out on a Friday, maybe the day off for them, wouldn’t know what that’s like but I’m doing just what I planned and IMG_6164listen to the salsa music falling on me from the ceiling circles, knowing I need travel for Wellness, and need Newness, never enough, for my Wellness. Didn’t run yesterday as I didn’t have the opening for, and didn’t work out with weights from same reality. I’ll wake early tomorrow morning before work and either run or lift.. so far, just a breakfast sandwich today.. and getting ready and stressing and venting to Ms. Alice as how I couldn’t find a single fucking piece of clothing, not attired peace: Wellness is 90, 95.. no 98% mental and cognitive, and I might even assert ‘spiritual’, and I never say things such. But I realize that my spirit and Wellness rely on Equilibrium of mind. Thoreau said “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” And this reminds me of Michael Browne and when he affirmatively uttered that “blind people can see and deaf people can hear…” There’s more than what greets our senses and when we realize and truly souse our Selves in this scope, more is visible, more is writable, and more is to be lived.. oh, this moment and its value, my Composition book open and me looking at all I’ve scribble over this semester and the one before. I’ll never leave the classroom, but I’ll be free, freer.
9:04, should leave soon to get that early lead in the day. Want to walk away from this café with three posts, so I should give Self till 9:30– writers and Time. We lose, eventually but we can make it difficult for the clock to stop us, or worry us, or have us stuffed in a worrybox–

IMG_6165MOCK SOMM piece posted, now I have to rush this entry.. will do third post from winery.. today I listen, and barely talk, write it all down.. no podcasting, no video.. just pictures and prose.. that’s it… looking for 300 words from winery, from the garden, find the Wellness and ZEN I need for this pageset.. 9:17, and I feel like I’ve already reached a thousand words.. have I? Speed writing and typing and living but all with peace and Wellness and Equilibrium about my lettered shout. Two younger men have their coffees, walk past me then stop to get cream and sugar– who are they, I wonder, and what are they doing today.. where do they work? What are their dreams? Do they alway want to “get fucked up” as one of them, the one with the red hat and holstered knife to his belt, just said they did last night. Now they talk about a friend who just got fired, “They took all his shit,” he said to this friend that still waits for his coffee. “Did he call his union rep?” the other said.
“No. It’s all fucked up.. his hand’s not even healed..”
I imagine the story and what they want to do and what happened to this friend of theirs. Reminds me that I need to be, MUST, be self-employed, by these writings and the scribbles and the lectures.. literature.. came across the Poe quote from ‘Red Death’, where he narrates “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”… The workplace, the Man, the Devil, continues to show itself as death to me, never having our lives in consideration, or at least substantial consideration. “I feel bad for him, fuck…” the knife kid says before they both have their cups adjusted with the cream sugar and whatever else. Exeunt.
And me as well. Nearing departure time but I don’t want to rise from this chair and I think I deserve to be late a couple minutes as this morning and the move and little Kerouac even have all decided to challenge me. But I’m calmed in mind, quieted musically in my epicenter, no quakes, no tremors, no disruptions. And this be what the writer takes to his day.
Fulfilled.. oh this pouring of Time into my advantaged cup.. calculated, a bit yes, but mostly lovely chance. In no box, this writer, and the day’s lesson seems to be all with Wellness, and how I pocket it and write it and have it recorded into my foremost functionality.. Namaste.

Not bothered, by a
thing, no, I just stamp and stamp
and affirm no– each

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autre

Autumn Walk, session 1: “O frabjous day!”

On same couch but different structure. And what’s going through my head? Everything. Everything of life and chances and possibilities… With this new house and the writing.. had an upgrade instituted for blog, to deem it a “business blog”, as I couldn’t upload or post any more photos as the media memory was full. So now the Bottled Ox is a business man, one writing and now needing to live from the writings.. Alice leaving early in morrow so I’ll write somewhere in this new structure, and where, backyard or front patio? Backyard would be lovely but I don’t have any chairs.. so maybe upstairs, on bed.. need coffee… where’s the nearest café? Let me think, on Hopper? Not used to this side of town, so that’s Newness. The Newness I’ve wanted and still want. Sipping the rest of that Porter Creek Pinot.. lively but a little oxygen contamination. Can’t believe I’m here, that we’re here, the Autumn Walk base. Driving home from the Crawfish event at Arista I thought about the two words: Autumn. Then ‘walk’.. To walk autumnly.. meaning with calm cords and frequency.. Autumn, then Walk.. so “Autumn” is the modifying lens to my walk, THE walk, the rhythm and consistency of Life, the living of it all.. so the writer thinks, and overthinks it further.. the what of this new walk, my AUTUMN’d saunter.. a new chapter and novel and story– wait, I know what to do in morrow.. I need internet to post the Kosta Browne narrative.. so go to nearest café, do that, then write freely– this new beginning and new castle promises so much to the writer, now I see more, and in this sight and freedom and Newness I know what’s before me, finally: the ROAD. MY students, present, past, would most be proud of the adjunct, shedding the adjunct chains and being what the others only TEACH but never do: actually write and live from the writing and see things that are only written and dreamed of: the dreamed BEAT– me and I don’t stop ‘cause if I do I die. And I’m not ready for that finality, not even faintly.
I feel like I’m in someone else’s house, housesitting or even haven broken in, invaded, but this in mine, ours? How? So much to cognitively sort and conceptually gather, and how, when– The writer’s dumbed by the Now, and the Newness.. need another sip of the Porter Creek Pinot.. hear Michael Browne’s words again and trap myself in the interpretation.. the river, the barrels, wine, and colors– shades and tint and deviations of perceptive promise– again, when, what, when again?

Dad set up a workbench in the garage for me. And there I will aim to be more crafty, crafting, but I’m sure I’ll use it for writing. AND, my sagacious and instructional patriarch attached [if that’s the proper builder word] a beer opener, perfect for the novelist after a day pouring or adjuncting or just when I need something alongside a blank page. 10:06, in our new house, and I know I should bed, and I will.. hopefully waking early to come back down here to the couch and more write– be that writer that capitalizes on the new, the Newness.. the novel comes and soon finishes, and I can see more wine and travel and thoughts harness to pours and the reds I enjoy– Pinot and Cab and Merlot and Cuvée I made in ’12 with Blair. I just see something tonight, reader, that’s all I want you to know– and yes, as I always do, but tonight it’s different, I indulge in the singularity of the house’s significance and that I have to pay for and support this and I’m more than motivated to– and what a story! What a rile for this diarist! Thinking of where I was five years ago: and adjunct, two classes, I believe at NVC, and pouring PT at St. Francis Winery. And now: a writer who just won’t stop, that’s admirably obsessive and in the novelist’s coma, the page churning: words being my opiates and simply smattered in artistic sense. Yes this is a ramble but it’s delightful, a dimensionally taciturn exposition. Contradictory, I know, but the multitudes multiply and I’m mulled in my muteness, as I need be– wine wine all the wine time!

So quiet here… In the condo you could hear the speeders on Yulupa, driving up towards Bennett Valley Road or West (or North) toward Hoen, or 12. This is all strange to me, this new house and this Autumn zone; quiet and family-geared and cozy, close, comfortable, equation’d.. so now what, I’m here, with the Newness and structure I sought, but it’s only plausible and attained from Mom and Dad’s intervention– they intervened, and intervention, like there was a problem– my nihilism, ME: Nietzsche, just for a second–
Wine gone. And I see how much I adore that nothing’s turned on yet– not TV, no distractions, no noise, only these words and the session– yes on a laptop but still, reader, only words. I yawn, seeing what is and what’s not and that I can’t stop in this first session. Can’t wait for morning coffee, for the rush of writing early here, in this new Walk, this new roll, rhythm, BEAT– me in this chair, hearing motions new and stories tha tI have to translate: all the children on this street, no knowledge of life or what is or what will be, and I envy that but don’t mind observing– life, LIFE, I tell myself.. hear Jackie.. he’s uneasy with this new place, and I don’t blame him, not at all, me too, but I try to write, try to translate, boxes, everything in boxes, and off and odd items next to me on couch; a printer and stuffed animals and pillows I haven’t seen in months. Where did these come from? Where were they at the old place? And how did they get here? WHY are they here? They have priority, prominence? I’m lost, not at sea or in this new neighborhood but in my own thoughts, even with how confident I am in the singular approach.

(05:09:15)

session 2, morning next.
8:03 and everything’s a first this morning; Jackie coming into our room (yes he slept the whole night, waking at 4-something and calling for us but then going right back to his dreaming).. and then we getting ready, teethbrushing, showers and dressings and arrangements other: first waffle, first goodbye with Alice driving little Kerouac to SAC to see his Grammy and cousins and aunt Jenn in from DC. And now me here with my Miles Davis and coffee and the laptop, here in the kitchen, on the island, island writing if you would in my Autumn’d slowstroll.. and everything’s about a type of piece for me now here in this collection, couldn’t stop writing even if I wanted to, and soon all these neighbors will know me, my family, and that I write, and that I’m always writing, and what will that do who knows but it will happen, this new synergy with elements atmospheric, scenic and conceptual and tangible. Have to get in the shower eventually, but not going to concern Self with that now– this log, or diary or journal, blog either way, now a documented business.. I need to get that overhead back: my first goal. Post both this narrative and the KB article when at Arista, first thing. Next week, last of instruction regular, and what do I do but build for the coming terms.. another 100 section this Summer.. the first meeting will be discussion, of Life and what motivates characters and what TRULY pushes the story forward. Again, maybe, just an idea, and just something for the adjunct to entertain, listening to Miles play– and jazz like that, jazz in this morning and in this coffee, a large like I get on T/TH mornings this semester. Slight scratch in throat, may be a cold or something finishing its novel but I won’t let it be visible, no publishing no slowing the writer this morning or ever again.
In this new house, the Autumn Walk office (ha!), I set new vision in motion: no distractions, and more more MORE writing from the novelist, or writer, or diarist, whatever I am, I just write– and I’ll write more directly from and toward my character.
Brainstorming for day: pick one wine and write about it all day. The RRV Zin, ’12. $45 price point and wildly musical and harmony’d with initial sensory contact. I’ll pretend it’s my wine, that I made it and that Arista’s featuring my work, my writing if you will, in the tasting room for the day. And on the note of selling wine, I think I found a way to sell wine online– may cost me a little with initial startup but I think I may try it.. do additional writeups on bottledaux and sell from this other hosted site. Stumbled across it yesterday and didn’t have enough time to investigate, as I met these two delightfully charming ladies from the city, and wanted to better know them, AND.. turns out they have a writer friend, one like me, writing wildly and quirkily about wine and the reaction and the enveloping story.. no nihilism about Mike Madigan this morning, or ever again! And this proclamation not so much any kind of ‘first’, but certainly the renewal and the fact the renewal is being voiced and written and venerated in this kitchen, in the new base, in the first of I’m sure thousands of islandwritings, it very much is it own shape of ‘first’.

And for class Tuesday, both sessions: 5 pages is that magic mark, I feel, no matter the aimed-for size of the MS. Five is when you know you’re serious, when it, the writing, has life, that it’s a standalone piece, that it has voice and conviction and its own punctuated and individualized flavor about its pace and progression. But the maintenance is the myriad, where so much can happen.. and oh that thesis, that centralization, the core of your conviction, so what now to do from here? You all know I value singularity and building upon those solitary ideas and words and images.. but there’s more, so much more.. the piece itself, and your motivation for composing it! Imagine yourself reading in front of a crowd, a group of concerned people, be they students or citizens or professors, or just unknowns in a crowds. Deliver your position with not only confidence and authority, but an enveloping love of your own idea! Show the reader these five pages are YOUR five pages, and read them with vigor, with unusual connectedness to your topic!

Just some introductory thoughts for Tuesday… What else can I fit into my remaining minutes? Technically only one, as I should be in shower at 8:30.. but I don’t want to stop with my types.. a story, a short piece to submit to Alma.. but she said she would call me and didn’t. Probably busy, I’m sure, so no blame.. just heaping eagerness on my character’s part, and it’s not just part of my character but the whole and the whole is a wholly riled writer with this new chapter and new base and slew of ‘firsts’, the new scenes and dialogues that will change everything– so official with the blog being a business, right? Not so.. just more urgency and I need to not slow in my writing ever anymore, so minimize wine intake, as alcohol only slows the writer goddamnit!

I let the remaining Syrah fall into my character and I just thought. About everything. I felt like I should be having some seismic and revealing revelation but no. I just sipped. And that’s it. No swirling, even. No ‘nosing’. And none of that horrid slurping they did. I couldn’t even listen to myself do it. So just sip. And I did. Thinking of the bottle, the label, how I chose the bottle ‘cause of the label. And there I was, just sipping, and looking at the label. And living in a chair. Spot for me. With a deeply convincing varietal, and type, and Time, and rhyme to everything in the room. The wine wanted it this way.

(05:10:15)

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Actually Seeing

IMG_5970This morning, oddly rich purply-blue sky, weather on NPR saying possible thunderstorms and I’m not surprised. I had to rush myself out the door this morning and break the nostalgia of what today is, or beings with it: taking possession of Autumn Walk. Like Mom the other day noted, a new chapter. And I listen to jazz and sip my coffee here in the adjunct office– and again I have to make self just write, write! Don’t get held in reflection.. write it down! So.. the meeting with Michael Browne yesterday, what started from a saving of tips with his friend to producing a barrel of Pinot (the last bottle of which I saw on the wall of that magnum room), to now having a serious wine operation and world of his own– will save for later MOCK SOMM article. Today, meeting with students, the 1-on-1’s again. 5 pages due, at least 5, on Tuesday, then draft on Thursday, then final submission well following.
Love this song, ‘Delilah” by Hutcherson. I have to stay in type and reading of my texts and with my handle on the adjunct world and role and reality. This morning in my mail slot in the mail room (surprised they even give me my own, but…), a copy of the “union” paper, a voice for adjuncts or an attempt anyway. Talking about privatization models and how adjuncts are part of that… I’m already exhausted. I’m in a mood this morning to only hone on what I want, and what I want is not to be a part of that at all.. still teach and lecture on Literature but in my own capacity and context, and with my own delights, those Paris Review interviews for example. Baldwin may have to be revisited in Fall, as I don’t feel I took away all that I wanted, I didn’t have time this semester, with the house and the work at Arista and everything else– or I just didn’t manage Time effectively, which has been known to happen. A symptom of being a writer, I’m sure. But I persist in my passion and my prose, the stories.. with another piece published by the wine website, my narrative on not drinking wine to think about its concept then returning to sips.. then I think that if no students show today I should complete a standalone piece of fiction, or even if they do show. Start writing after I talk to them.. thinking of the walk through that production facility and walking on that catwalk, touching that puncher on the rail system.. making wine, making wine that people love and want to drink and want at home with them. Versus living the rest of my life a struggling adjunct… You tell me! What’s the more enjoyable election? And the more practical, for that matter….. I will get my hands on some fruit this vintage and go forward with it, produce it, and I want it to be Pinot.. every word from Michael yesterday ordered me to do what I want and not be dragged around, just do what you want, Craft, create, be happy with your passion and make it your job and if it’s a true love you’ll never hate it (reacting to what one of my 1B students the other day offered, ‘never do for work what you love ‘cause you’ll wind up hating it’.). I see the logic and I don’t. But either way, the adjunct tussle is not any longer for me. I will teach, but there won’t be that dependency, and I’d love to teach just one class, a 1A or 1B or 5– staying critical in my approaches to literature and what I’ve always prided myself on: Onus, and making that writing your own and building your ideas for what you want to state.. one student in the 1B, ‘R’ I’ll call him, showing more vigor and intensity with this project than he has with any other effort this term, already having 7 pages typed! I was humbled and motivated my self.. I want to print! I want to submit! I want to be like a student again! And I say that all the time but this moment’s different.. again, taking possession of Autumn Walk, Jackie not stopping in his growth (his sentences and logics becoming more pragmatic and sharp, and ‘timed’ which keeps the writer ever-alert), and wanting another child.. growing for my family and with them. I’m getting a bit emotional, yes, and slow with sentimentality but I have composure and focus.. oh reader look at me now to this jazz and in this adjunct cell meant to imprison us but I only grow like inmates in hardened facilities.. knowing where I’m going and how I’ll escape..
So.. wine.. last night finished that Reserve Cab from Kunde Family Estate. And the palate withstood the oxygen invasion over the 24 hours since last touched.. nothing compromised or curved.. the coherence of the wine’s sensory scope was still quite anchored and, as I used earlier the word, ‘honed’. I attempted acquiring the constituents of the wine’s process and conceptual edifice, if you would, yesterday from my friend Zach (winemaker at Kunde), but didn’t hear back. And it doesn’t matter. The wine was resplendently luminous in its harness and I’m ever-riled more to make wine this vintage.. wine made by a writer and a writer with more growl and ferocity and spleening virulence than he’s ever had– NO controller or manager or hasty-witted moldwarp owner jabbing at this writer from their bile-posed not-so-ivory tower– EVER. I’m autonomous now and with certain written pugilist complex, which is beneficial, reader! Don’t be mistaken!
I take another glance at the article about the adjunct who was brought into a full-timer’s office only to be yelled at, and want to toss this fucking thing in the rubbish bucket by the door. And my contempt isn’t with the full-timer but with the adjunct, all of them! Why do you let them do this to you? Why do YOU do this to YOU?? No more.. okay, calm down, this is the coffee talking and as my brother Dwight will tell you, I become quite the page-bull when I drink coffee, especially a rattling mediumroast like this.
Wonder if thunderstorms will actually greet us today. I wonder then how that will affect the writing and how I’ll be mood-wise stepping into Autumn Walk.. how.. how.. what will this new Chapter bring and how will my narrative be shaped?
Can’t wait to meet with the students that do actually show. Last Thursday, and on little sleep from waking with little Kerouac, I was brought to elevation I’d never before felt. Especially with.. well with both sections.. but the 1B, the talk with ‘M’ and ‘J’ (whom I call “Mr. Kerouac”) left quite the note with me. That I actually TEACH. That they are engaged and that I am making a difference in their scholastic progressions. Too bad the politics soil it all. Or almost all of it.

Autumn. Walk. The Fall season, closing the novel only to begin a new one, like Mom said, and to ‘walk’, saunter as Emerson did, not to rush– I see great and grandiose significance in this new home, this new book (not so much a mere chapter, I’d offer to my empyrean and sagacious mother). All will become ordered, now, coherence, and beaming with promise. That’s what I was thinking this morning, standing in the kitchen and staring at the red curtain which acts as a door over the glasses and plates that remain, Ms. Alice demonstrating her wonder by having nearly everything packed and prepared for transport. 6:44 now, and I’m eager to see who shows, and who doesn’t and who wants to exchange ideas and what ideas I exchange with them. I’m putting it all on me, the Professor– no, WRITER– no, ARTIST– no, Thinker– no… Now I know.

(5/7/15)

Categories
autre

Deciding to Attend

Attend what? This session. I told myself that I wouldn’t write anymore today, to just relax this evening, but the ’09 Cab I opened told me to write, and to dive again into Baldwin’s essays. And how he views the world, America, himself. In the Paris Review chat with the interviewer he said he needed isolation to come to terms with who and what he was. And now with this second glass I think about who, truly, I am. And what, the ‘what’. WHAT, am I?! Nearing 36, and I have no idea I know, and I know the ideas will provide some sense but I need more, more sense and vision of what Mike Madigan is. I love Baldwin’s confidence in the face of oppression, in the white man’s world. In all the pieces I read I not only sense and read but taste a sense of fearlessness… That’s what I want in my ‘what’. But as well, in the PR interview, Mr. Baldwin asserts that first-person narrative is ‘terrifying’. And he also says the reader has no reason to trust first-person. I don’t agree.. if anything, the reader doesn’t need to preoccupy with “trusting” the narrator but rather consider their experience, or the tale. Being open. I mean, if it’s fiction, it’s fiction, it’s contrived by the denotative delivery. But what I thought was encouraging, just a couple words later: “…why should you need this I? How is this person real by dint of that bar blaring across the page?” It’s not a matter of needing the ‘I’, but rather considering the ‘I’ for what its ingredients are, conducting a character analysis as you move through the manuscript, and not to determine if that narrator is trustworthy or reliable or even worthy of readership, but just to process the professing prose. To completely write-off the first-person, the ‘I’, is unjust, unfair and too sweeping.
Maybe this is the Cab talking, this bold and vampiric ’09, that dares me to take on Baldwin, to readdress Joyce and his swirly swampy and granulated paragraph streamings… I don’t know, but I’m in a Literary tumble this evening, and the wine and its lecture and story and ‘I‘ only push me further, and I can’t stop, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. This is more than a blog post but a realization of what I’m to do, and that only ‘I’, this writer, can build the career he wants. Everything’s a piece in the novel, everything, and with us about to move to Autumn Walk I need take this prose with more precision and dogma, practice.. tomorrow, the meeting with the winemaker in RRV, finally, asking him questions and responding to his wines– yes I will try to stump or moreso challenge him and find what his views are while at the same time putting mySelf in the student’s seat, learning from his winemaking philosophies and his facundity. We’ll see. I’m not going there to one-up him or show a writer-versus-winemaker form, but to learn. Remember, I want to make wine too!
Last sips of the Cab, and I’m full from dinner, the tacos this ‘Cinco de’. Can’t understand how quickly the semester has past me flown, raced, like it doesn’t care how sensitive I am to Time and its duty. I need another sip… All I can say is “DARK”. Not the most expressive fruit fold on this wine, nor olfactory leaps, but there’s incredible texture and the most anomalous clasp to the tactile reception.. wooing and musical, yes, but I feel there’s more to be told, in a few more years. I don’t want to say “after aging” like some do, but there’s more to be said from this bottle.. don’t rush! And that’s what the wine’s telling me, with the novel and with the semester and my career as a writer: DON’T. FUCKING. RUSH!!! Okay, okay, I say. I’m understanding now, I get it. I’ll slow down, but not in this session, and not with today. I sent writings to 2 locations, 2 publishers, and I’ve posted to the blog a couple times as well– today’s a victory, I’m writing like a dominant penman, very much I feel. And yes I could be prepping for the next classes, but I’m very much of the thought I deserve this time in the nook, yes? The wine, again, telling me to decrease my Literary BPM. BEATS…

With nothing more to mold in this sitting, at this nook table, in my punctuality, I retire, resign for day, night and look forward to morrow, my morrow, the interview with the winemaker, yes, but more, more and more for the novel– remember, I’m a writer, not a bumbling blogger or “wine writer”– I’m thinking about my ‘I’, my story, and MY book. Not the expected– ‘oh, you’re in the wine industry, you have to write about that, and watch what you say…’ No, I’m without lid, and what’s the wine world going to do if I freely speak, and quills are summoned?

(5/5/15)

Categories
autre

Chatty Adjunct, a thousand words

No writing yesterday but for some notes and now I’m here in the adjunct office… Saw something yesterday, a video by a guy I’m not so much a fan of but I certainly respect his entrepreneurial edginess. He spoke of Monday and how everyone whines about it and how they’re missing out on opportunity, that they’re alive and they need to wake up to what’s around them and what they can do, and they just need to work and make the moment their own– oh how it feels amazing now to write, it’s own form of medicinal with this coffee and all these papers around me– which reminds me, I need to submit that piece to NPR, the perspective on being an adjunct, but I need to garnish the piece with an image, that or this stack of papers, what always follows us and– oh that video… Yes, well anyway I just found it encouraging but what I’m after as a writer is unfettered and unqualified autonomy. While in the parking lot I took a picture of the empty lot to show what some adjuncts experience and observe on their teaching days, if we’re not between three campuses teaching six classes like that lady I met at PC, the Humanities Professor. My waking this morning is gradual. I’m not pounding the coffee as I can usually be seen doing. Yesterday at the winery, a bit slow but just enough to keep me thinking about wine and how I’m only going to do the ‘wine thing’ at my pace and with my vision and writing style… Independence is what I’m after, with any and everything.

Ugh, these stacks of papers.. not really prep’d for the 1A, except for a sentence-by-sentence and paragraph-by-paragraph approach to what they brought today, 3-5 pages of writing, typed, for workshopping and expansion.. words, too, having them focus on singular words.. and debating– or not debating but interacting with each other on a critical level concerning their topics. Have to think further, and I have to cut myself off from this session in a bit so I can outline the fluidity of what I want to “teach” today. Will work up a rubric for them, by next class.. but for now they should be focusing on the IMG_5926consistency of their arguments, and the paragraphing (balance and length and depth, what have..).. Just keep encouraging them to write, and to not forget about their voice and why they chose this topic. Should be posting this to teaching blog, but that’s another new thought of mine, and one that I’m certainly following through with: the teaching blog will stop when this term concludes. I have to focus on the bottledaux concept and what that can build into.. opportunity and I’m with that opportunity as an adjunct, and how this guy in the video said to make it, whatever your ‘it’ is, make it yours and your own and don’t let anything lower you. I usually don’t consider much of what these motivational types state and affirm but this bloke made a little sense, I supposed.

So many adjuncts whine, and I’ve been one of them and may have been this semester but no where near what I used to be. Now I’m making it mine, now I’m using it ALL as writing material, blogging about it and capturing my early of early mornings any way I can, like taking a couple seconds to snap a still outside my car, of the empty lot, signifying that it’s all on me, that I’m in this by myself, that I can make this into my own story and don’t have to succumb to ANYTHING– 6:26, think I’m ready but I want to empty some of these papers and odd books (which I don’t know why are in my bag), the Poets & Writer’s IMG_5927Issue, and everything else into the car. “Travel light always,” I remind myself. Coffee reservoir lowering, and I’m more awake, the speed increases and I’m ready to be that speaker at the end of the semester not the visibly exhausted adjunct. No, I’m here very much alive and refuse to be refused! I’m speaking, with words and thoughts and– Think it’s time for a new Comp Book. I restarted from the first sheet in this particular, writing on the back of already accessed pages, but it just looks cluttery, sloppy, not me. Restart, I say to myself and I will. OR, I can use the legal pad I took from the mailroom, from our insulting supply cupboards. Yeah, I’ll do that..
What a morning so far for the writer.. seeing what I see and believing in Self as I do. Wish I could spread this to other adjuncts, so they don’t have to gripe and complain and the can see themselves as brilliant, and the tenacity is all you need, as Bob Coleman told me nearly 16 years ago. How has time escaped as it has? Bastard…
At this point, this is probably just being read as adjunct/writer bafflegab. Feel something coming for the day, another in this saga of revelations and what’s to be held for the writer and what I can do for myself, more so that something ‘awaiting’.
Looking at the lot picture.. and I’m here, on campus, ready to teach and be seen as ‘the professor’.. what a powerful position, and what a helpful one! For these students that find English and writing and Literature impenetrable, here I am to introduce new, more Human and encouraging approaches. That’s the problem with many of these full-timers, the approaches and embraces and practices of pedagogy are outdated and simple stale. No one can say mine are such.. no one!
Walk to car, then come back to pack and teach, pen at ready, close semester with explosive lectures and ideas and don’t tire, ever! Dive headfirst into your coffee and teach and scribble and think MADLY!

He assembled his elemental and mental assembly, prepared, growling with ardency, no one could do what he did nor how he did it nor with that vigor, he knew. (6:39AM)

(5/5/15)

Categories
autre

Day 1 – In Wine

Putting out boxes. This is all a novel I tell myself. Group, 20+, later. Focus on the sale, I order of Self. Speak of wines as I always do, from the Literary angle and with recital tones, the stage posture– my Beat. Speaking of wines as characters and stories and songs. Need espresso, just one shot to have my motion fully molded and motioned; a consistency and constancy today that I’ve never had. This is ALL a novel, novels within novels for one grand novel opus brick of a manuscript, one so heavy I’ll have trouble carrying it to the publisher or store or to a reader’s hands, shaking and tired from pouring for people I’ve never met and will more than likely never meet eyes with again. I’m writing everything down. Everything. Ev. ‘ry. Thing. Write. Write it all. All this wine evidence and the people coming here from wherever and however. Today, this day, my company built in a day, a company started on this wine blog, this Literary attempt to deconstruct wine and assign it new surreality and textualized tonality and temperament. All the day’s notes: Lit & Wine. Focused in and on my work. Making wine a visual argument of sorts, of all sorts and my sorts are in this novel sorted.
13:37, no one. No one at the bar, no one to talk to. I’m bored but not angry as I was yesterday with the overwhelming Omaha Beach-like invasion of the bar, the lush rush as my co-workers call it. But now, I’m bored and annoyed, no wine coming from the bottles, no one sipping and saying the silly shit they say. I’m a novelist with no novel, no fucking pages precipitating. Edgy, irritated, trembling with anxiety.. where are my pages? Me, no, not even a taste, I’m waiting, waiting till there’s someone to taste with, someone to share a deconstruction with, to elucidate that character in the bottle and speak of how wine elevates the admirer’s soul, the sipper’s sense, sensibility, they become sensitive and susceptible to the poetic strokes of this Pinot– I’m not tempted to sip, not even by this ’99 Burgundy, old world, that Lalo brought in, not at all. Is my character changing, ‘cause I’m not sipping? I don’t know yet. But, quite sure it’s front fore.
Close to 5. And I want some wine. No one in room with me, no one, no sippers they all left. I’m not angered by my refrain, but strangely pre-occupied by the novel, this novel in a more worldly book, one that’s a universe to this meek moon. Thinking of a sip. Or three– But I move on and move my thinking to other others. Talking to Lalo today about business models of wineries and how business could be grown and aggrandized. I think about my label, my own wine place and identity bottled and writing about wine– the process, MY process and what I observe each vintage; how the bins look when they’re empty, then filled, then pressed out to barrel, shoveling the skins, or ‘must’. Scribbling notes about the wine I make, again not necessarily how I make it but what I’m thinking while I make my wine and what I see and hear, feel around me– the scene and tanks, barrels, even the yellow jackets. All of it. My wine world paginated with all its dimensionality and diversity; the auditory, tactile, visual, olfactory… What I envision and what I hope for with the product end. But there is no end for a writing winemaker like me, ever. And why would I want there to be?
Right now I write from John Ash not sipping a thing but this water with lemon and imagining myself here as a winemaker talking to other winemakers (they often hang out here with their favored beers or cocktails); I’d meet them here with premeditation, accumulate and scribble secretly more ideas, for the novel and what to do with what’s in ‘bbl’. I try to now listen in on conversations but I can’t pick out a one.. I focus on the feel and scene of what’s around me– wine country, the life, the barrels, the crush pad, the stage and stories. And the literature connected. This reminds me of that first chapter of Moveable Feast where Hem talks of the café with indignation and praise concurrent. I only laud what’s at all sides mine; my speech manipulated as I fear the bottom of page. I don’t want to hit any bottom, or see any flat, nothing plain, no plain’s flatness and crazying infinity. I want those higher atmosphere slices and sights. In wine– Dreams, aims, sights, views– share this with the students, be a student myself again. OF wine. What it is and what it embodies, what it does to the moment and gathering, the conversation and story, like last night at Jason’s watching the fight, me beginning with the single-vineyard project, sipping slow, then ending the eve with that odd red blend. IT was all around and about and acclimated to wine. Wine! And OF wine. Of Literature, the story, this novel; the theory of writing and writing about it, and if not wine then anything one’s in love with; the actual, and conceptual, the dreams and the dreaming.

Home, and I have a, or ‘the’, last glass of the McCrostie Pinot, here in the nook thinking about the novel and how my son already loves his books and fights with us before bed to stay up later to read his favored MSS. Good for him, I think. And good for the people coming into the tasting Room, finding new wine loves, new characters and stories, new interpretations of Pinot or Chardonnay, or Zin, and walking away with bottles, giving the glass’d contents a security in their respective domiciles. And that’s what wine is, in many perspectives and confessions, a place, or sense of.. new story, and this story, the novel, this new manuscript and day and stage of the writer’s life, with this new house and this new vintage and the poems in my prose. I find myself confused now, thinking about ME making wine and my sister and the character based on my sister– posted something earlier to the blog that I want to re-write and re-re-write and write again over till the original sketch is never again detected. OH the day, the new me and the new novel.. would love to have more wine but I need to keep writing, and thinking about how harvest is not just ‘around the corner’ but just down the block, it’s here and waiting to be recorded by a novelist, and the novelist has to make wine contemporaneously to understand his subject– I don’t have to go to fucking UC Davis, and conventional education with wine is not always, and manytimes never the answer. Look at my brother, KAZ. He taught himself how to make wine, he conducted his own research and had his own experiments, and here he is, respected and with his own projects and manuscripts and story, one that I will never be able to hold eminence over or even alongside.

9:45, and I’m beginning to tire. Wine done, but the wine fascinations won’t go away.. ha, funny how They used to tell me to sell a fucking fantasy but I see now that I can live it and sell it in my own way sincerely and now have to conveniently contort it, I can be honest and just talk about my bottles with heartfelt avidity. But I can tire from my ardor, and that’s what’s happening, but it won’t be like this for all days mine– soon I’ll have my office and a place where I can retire and retreat to to write my fiction, and pile more novels and maybe all won’t be bloody ‘best-sellers’ but I don’t care, no, I only want to live from the pages and I have to have those page circulated and baptized in wine, the fermented and the cared-for fruit that enables the story and the characters and bring the guests to the room, making it not empty and me energized and not disenchanted. And this I’m very much obstinately averring, as I have to– The wine depends on my staunchly trenchant penchant for the wild scribbles following a sip.
I wonder how many I know outside the wine and “academic” shiftings write as I do, how many are over a thousand words for the day, how many want a novel, how many have a subject or topic or loose aim, or the keys at their beck? Am I unctioning Self in what holy vacation begets? No! I’m just wondering, and I’m telling my Self not to be so hard on the writer– oh why have you not left the TR yet and why aren’t you on the Road yet and why why WHY? Don’t worry about it, I tell myself.. ‘Mañana, mañana.. tonight we don’t worry…..’

REWRITE OF EARLIER SKETCH: “Percentage Onlyness” — Krystal skipped about blocks with thinly rich alacrity and keenness. She found herself caught by her own preoccupation. What augmented tones and angularity would the vintage carve, she thought. The Chardonnay couldn’t be done the same, she thought, even if those marketing louts thought that it just had to be done, what did they know, working from their cubes and with their spreadsheets and highlighters and red pens? The shift, explosively summoned by the currency, the Now, the all and the call around her. She saw the flowering and could only wait and count and plan and not care what they would throw at her, like that question, “What did you do to the blend?”

The laptop attacks me and become accusing with what I type and how I am and how I want to type fast.. “You’re too sensitive,” I can just hear it saying. “Wow,” I rile, “how perceptive, you’re calling the writer ‘sensitive’, brilliant.. again, how perceptive!” Time for bed. I need to have an enriching sleep so I have no time for this nagging, this negativity from the laptop; bloody device, negative repeater.. I see strength in my repetition and my redundancy and my usage of singular words; their own worlds and expansion invites. To bed, and I’ll try to sleep but I know I’ll only think of the novel, the pages, the wine and what I noted at Ash, to my water. Tomorrow I’ll taste through everything, and note all the stories and voices. Just as I did with that ’12 Dry Creek Zin.

Watching footage on news of the Nepal quake.. I couldn’t cover that, journal it as a journalist and be objective.. how could anyone? Too much hovering over and in and firing at my layered reasoning. But the layers aren’t reasonable, not all of them. I’ll find reason, and be reasonable tomorrow. In wine, wines.

(5/3/15)

Categories
autre

More on the

wine exploration, my new attitude and forum for the bottles, tomorrow. And in morrow, early wake. This morning out the door late from the easing of little Kerouac… but before I forget, prompts for morrow writing: 1, meeting with 1B students; 2, stop at Cellars for tasting and MOCK SOMM material; and 3, the SB from VML I sip now– oh, and 4: the Comp Book, how it fills and how much I must have forgotten. I know there’s a gem or dozen in there. I have to wake early, a Hemingway session, write the MOCK SOMM piece on the Pinot from Porter Creek. With this new wine campaign and writing momentum, I’m noticing more about myself as a writer and lover of wine, what I sip and how perceive it sensorily and meditatively.
The VML SB tonight has more melody to its words and overall ‘sip thesis’. More coherent, and more definite language to its composition. Everything I’ve shared this semester with the students has taught me something in the way I interact with Art, and wine, and Life,

always wine always mine--
always wine
always
mine–
and my own ideas. but I have to dive further into these puddles fermented, and link it closer to Literature, return to my vinoLit anchoring, what had me blogging or start blogging in ’09, what my sister-in-law suggested.. and yes, I rejected her at first but I’m glad I started these blogs and just putting my reactions into the world, into reader’s thoughtful realms. And now, more mature and more energetic and more focused from having a son and thinking of how he’ll one day read his diarist father, I’m more set to subdue any self-doubt or defeatist disposition. I too think of my students this semester and how hard they’ve worked and how farcical it would be if I didn’t throw more of myself into this new writing momentum, this newly catalyzed revolution about my words and entry pattern.
Tired, took a nap earlier but have since been sluggish and a bit moody, but I remain with my speed and sight with wine and the thoughts connected, everything from the MOCK SOMM column to the writing for that website, to wine itself, and what I make this vintage and what I’ll write about that, the process and how the fruit will look when it comes in.
There, alarm set for 5:20. And I will be writing. Then after dropping off little Kerouac, to the pool, and I don’t know for how many laps, as many as I can handle I just want to swim and stay healthy so I can write and be around for my children and have more energy, achieve that Wellness that Phoebe writes of.

Ready for calling the night, ending this fiddling with the synthesis of sentences wrapped and wound around wine. Wake early, I’m telling myself, wake early and write and post and show the pages to an already literarily-deprived world.

Oh, and tomorrow’s the first day of May. 36, soon 28 days at front. Need to get in that pool at ’24’, swim like I’m evading a shark, or one of those jellyfish with the poison that could kill like a thousand men with one perforation.

always wine
always
mine–

(4/30/15)

Categories
autre

In Adjunct Office

And tired. No mood for anything, even with the coffee posing its puissance.. After 1A go to bank, then to home, and after 1B work around condo.. nothing Literary about the day, or that I can see so far. This morning’s climate and stage brings fog of that blue-brined purple, and the mist away burns like its frightened of all the cars coming to park in the nearby lots. The coffee tells me to toughen up, that it’s not doing its job for nothing that I need to forget all that stresses me and think outside the box like it’s been telling me for years, and like I told myself the other day. “Which box?” I react, “This office? This adjunct office? This adjunct role? This patternized dehumanization? This one? This?” It just smiles back. I get it now, now I see what it wants me to see.
Interviewing a winemaker tomorrow and I’ll take more notes that I ever knew I was capable of taking– I’ll record everything he says and everything I observe and I’ll limit my article to 1,000 words.. four pictures.. maybe a video somewhere else, separately.. but I’m going to learn and step onto his property, that tasting room as a journalist, a wine writer not so much just a writer who loves stories and successes and people who thought outside the box and executed something to their benefit, betterment.. and he’s a dad, of three kids I remember, I believe accurately. Anyway, I’m quite sure we’ll share staunch similarities..

10:03, home, tired, diving headfirst into more coffee and readying myself and my ideas for 1B– the Critical Thinking section where it can only be loved, how they think “Critically” and show their liveliness from page and from their souls. This morning in 1A we explored the plain of career, how we choose one, “what we do now and what do we want to do, and what will that do for us.” I very much participated in this discussion and listened more so to what the students had to say. They taught me, an immeasurable amount about dreams and what brings them happiness and what they want, how they see themselves in whatever ‘career’ they target. I’m finding that work and what we do for a living and how we react as receipt of that career is much what defines us as characters. My interview with the winemaker was cancelled for tomorrow, on their call not mine, but I’m writing anyway.. I will stay busy and get caughtup with my novel.. Right now, I just enjoy the freedom of my writing and the quiet of the condo and seeing myself away from chasing assignments and simply pouring– I want wine to be more than intimately arched in my paragraphs and short pieces, articles or what be–
Listening to jazz and just relaxing in my home, or my home for the next couple weeks or so. The move before us, my wife and I, and so much frenzy and disorder, not of our doing that’s just how moves are I guess. That’s always been my experience.
Still feel like I’m in that office, ‘cause I’m in adjunct mode. And is this what I want, being an adjunct? Yes and no. I don’t want to be dependent. I want to teach a class here, there, and not be harness to this indenturedness.. coffee coffee, where are you?
There.
Made.
But I wait. Don’t want to jitter too fiercely. In fact, I should break from the page, and just relax, listen to the jazz, this track by Steve Lacy.. and daydream. Feel like I always have to be moving and shaking and productivity– the dilemma so human, and so fearful, “Am I using my time wisely?” I always self-interrogate.
I re-read my notes on Baldwin for the 1B, on ‘Down at the Cross”, and expand upon fantasy, and what fantasy is, and how I as a writer and thinker and lecturer want no part of it– no disillusionment, and that’s what They capitalize on, the chairs and deans and whores of trustees, the president.. I won’t let them play me anymore. Wine and Literature.. my life’s remainder, how I want to be seen by my children as I’ve said.. so today’s different, and my mood’s elevated from this morning in that goddamn adjunct cell. This office, this condo floor, on my floor with legs extended, laptop atop, has me centered, in MY Wellness, ZEN’d for sure, and I’m grateful.. I’m poetic, and I’m speaking form the coffee (cup 2 me awaits in kitchen), so so so… Now I jitter, but more a jitterbug than anything, dancing with Grandma as she told me she did long ago with Grandpa.. so much in my veins now and am I vain for expressing so? This is my work, my career and future I write– each moment its own standalone..
Have to get in the shower in 4 minutes, and this laptop dies. Don’t want to stop, don’t want to leave my ideas and this spot on the floor. First sip of coffee tells me to think outside the box and don’t follow your schedule, getting in the shower so you can leave on time and be at Petaluma campus and go over Baldwin and speak to students barely interested and have no urge to be aware of the movement he represents– I shouldn’t say that, not all of them, but when I look at the students and see that annoyed stare at the wall behind me or at their notebook, like they’d rather be doing something, anything, else, and that coupled with how we adjuncts are just tossed, tossed around, into whatever sections are leftover, I fall further into surrender. Oh, and I still haven’t heard from SSU. Of course.
My office is me, the character and these thoughts I carry with me; how I hear jazz, how I react to the day, what I’m needing to say, share through these sentences.

(4/28/15)