Three days left in year.  Today counted.  Coffee in nook at work.  Break before work, or work before work depending on how it’s looked at.  As I noted yesterday, again I caved, having lunch at a nice spot actually on I believe 4th and Balboa— sorry, 5th and Balboa.  Don’t regret the chicken sandwich and fries I had with co-workers, friends.  But I should have gone to café.  Of course today I set out for same, but I dismiss the dilemma and set self in now where I’m set in this nook, at this new table and chair, writing spot for a writer going into a new year, on his second cup, made in the back office where you proceed down a somewhat sizable hall with glass offices on either side, then that one magical room with the coffee.

Phone, journal on desk, or table, right now it’s my desk or that’s what I have self convinced of.  Writing meditation, the morning, Saturday, next three days off with the new year cartwheeling toward my pages.  Not only learning, I always say that— but instructed by the intersection of one year, then another.  Me growing in story and character… we all grow, or don’t.  That’s a decision.  Yesterday at California and 7th, “Not everyday’s a treasure chest but work feverishly to get what you get.” Jotted before crossing street to next block where reps were speaking to people at their doors, remembering Plath’s words in Bell Jar chanting ‘I am I am I am’ in every street pavement square and at every stoplight. 

Music in everything.  If we don’t see IT that way, then we’re only living, going to work then coming home and sleeping.  The worker shouldn’t see work as work— they shouldn’t work, they should be passion explorers, and if they don’t like their job, their “work”, make it something’s that not only liked but layered in love, loved.

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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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11/1/18—

New lunch spot in Berkeley.  Crepevine.  Ordered Denver Omelette with Coke.  Eating by self on a lunch break, finally.  No reps or leads with me.  And I love my crew, truly love.  But I needed a minute or set of minutes to self, to collect.  To write.

Lady brings over Coke and I’m more than content with my choice.  Other lunches I can cite I regret ordering what I did and not spending the time writing or doing something for writing, blogging, business.  Something.  The music of the day is more than just an encouraging nudge, but a direct instruction to make everything of the day I want it to be.  For a minute considering dropping the only class I have for next semester, but then rationalize it a marketing opportunity, and speaking practice.  Or, not so much practice but a training lab or ground for ideas new.  I see the chef or cook making my plate.  This town, as I’ve always seen it, one of activism of course but art, people and poetry, art and music, expression and freedom.  So I write in the same sense and sameness.

Chef brings over brunch.  Looks indescribable, if you must know.  You must know, I tell myself, and you. These Road notes, city to city speaking Sonic engaging the population and principle communities.  I want just a couple more sentences.  Tell self to put down just a couple more, older guy on other side of restaurant with wife and friend, looking at menus while group of younger girls sits outside and laughs, enjoying their mimosas and talking to each potter like they haven’t seen each other in ages.  This is what I do.  Write at cafés, restaurants, random places and what’s happening— Chef tosses a bunch of clean silverware in the holder at distant 12, on the other side of the counter.  Cook is on other side prepping plates, cooking or boiling, simmering something.

My time in Berkeley before working with Sonic is limited, to be brief.  I came here a couple times when I lived in San Ramon, early 2000s.  But now I’m here quite regularly.  And the feel and voice is perfect for where I am in my story.  Looking for more, more stories and more people, more experiences that contribute to my business identity and aims.  Sounds of the restaurant move me, provoke more.  I’m right where I need be.  This is where my story really begins its composition and construction.  If the Roads of Sonic and I never intersected I wouldn’t be here with this view of Shattuck, eating here, with this cold Coke, the omelette, the sliced sourdough toast, the ladies just outside the window at the small table eating salads.

Nearly done with lunch, thinking of getting a refill of Coke so I can write for a bit longer, just stay here and enjoy my time, the time to me to collect.  Lady sees me either getting ready to leave, or that’s what I think she thought I was about to do but I ask her if refills are free, she says yes and rushes to get me another.  All that remains on plate is some of the country potatoes and the sliced sourdough, which is surprisingly sour.  I’ve never found sourdough bread sour, really.  These slices are.  Not to their detriment, just I notice, that’s all

This will be my last meal out, in field, for a while.  That’s what I say now but who knows if I’ll hold to that.  Want to open a store, store front of some kind, or at least have my office set up.  Yeah, that’s what I really mean.  Just my office, my blogging hut, little literary parlor, outside home.  I pick at the bread, again.  I’m unusually relaxed.  And not just here at Crepevine, here in Berkeley, but today.  Today is a day for me like few are.

Catch myself spacing out a bit, and pull myself back to keys.  UPS driver a couple tables behind me having something for his lunch break I calculate, then chef tells one of the girls from outside group that he’s going to bring out some specialty crepe, complimentary.  I look up at see Chef holding crepe on plate with some mint leaves around it and a birthday candle.  Woman comes back in to check on it carrying her little one.  Candle lit and Chef’s daughter, I’m assuming walks it out, carefully.  She looks uncomfortable in each step, like she’s never walked out a candled plate before.  Hear them all singing, then clapping, then nothing but cars on Shattuck and the music they have playing in car.

What’s right in front of me, what I write about.  At least now.  And maybe onward.  Take fork into hand scooping some peppers and bit of onion and potato, bite.  Wonder how I’m still hungry but I only had that cereal at desk this morning.  I look down at a more barren plate and realize I am still hungry.  Need to wait.  Need to write, what’s here for me in Berkeley, my new writing city, the streets and communities and the more collective community of this area.  Couple more bites and push plate forward with napkin atop.  I’m done.  Now, just sipping the Coke refill and typing.  Man walks in and asks questions then leaves, thanks the lady for something.  Directions possibly.  I can see this as me when I’m on the Road, like this but more expansively, in other states and countries.  What’s in front of me, my topic.  Restaurant staff ever-observant of what happens around them, who’s here and who’s walking by and the ones that actually stop here.  And am I ever please with my election to here stop, order the Denver, sit here by window.

Readying to leave.  Walk over to crew in the Safeway parking lot.  Chef talks to hostess, which I think might be his wife.  He jokes with her about a dollar bill, about money or something.  All in fun and good.  Feel a bit tired, sip Coke, more people come in.  Rub right eye once.  Then I tell self not to leave.  I don’t want to leave.  Pies in display case behind me and to left, chef and consistent cook laughing about something.  Wanting a shop of my own…. But of what.

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As someone who obsesses over work,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10/15/18

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The Glass

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

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

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

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

9/23/18

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inward jot

9/21/18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again quiet.  Sip again.

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8/27/18

img_7066

English 100— Week 2, Meeting 3.  

Not sure how I’m going to make it through the semester, possibly my last.  And I know so many people that, like the wine industry when I left, are saying, “But you’re so good at it… people love you when you…” Yeah, well, time to move on.  Being an adjunct over the past 12 years has only obstructed and interfered with other efforts and endeavors.  Tonight’s class went well, though.  Essentially lecturing from the heart and nearly no notes.  I didn’t wing it, I trusted my Self.  My ability to lecture and share/generate ideas.  I’m concerned, though, about when the semester really gets going, becomes a nonstop storm of papers.  But maybe it doesn’t have to be, I think.  Tomorrow will be easier, with me getting out of the office at 5, not having class till 7.  Can get some grading done, and that’s the key, stay on top of that paper-stacking foulness.  Have to stay in calm’s pose.  This is just Day 1 of such a day.  30 minutes to get from Sebastopol Road and whatever-street to SRJC.  I can do it.  I will do it.  Rewarding the writer with some Cabernet the sis gifted me the other day when I stopped by.  Need it.  And yes, NEED.  Poured self a soothing pour, needed and deserved stemless goblet full of the Bordeaux bull.

The English 100 class has me humbled, frankly, after tonight.  After the quickly compiled and accumulating prod of stress making it nearly difficult to focus on the drive from Roseland’s district to campus.  But I did it.  Today.  Rest of the days?  Well, I have to.  That simple.  I’ll wake early, hopefully, when wife does for her bootcamp whatever, make coffee tonight and start chugging right when I get up.  Grade a couple pieces, if I can.  And if not, then write—  This semester.  All projects not only on hold but pushed into a literary coma.  Will only think of waking when the last grade is submitted.  And that’s the key, to all of this.  The grading.  The thing that holds me up semester after semester and what always affects my mood in the most torrential and terrible way of ways.  Just put a fucking grade on it, I tell myself.  But do I?  No.  Procrastinate, instead.  Fool.

This semester, my last or no, will be my best, the most enjoyable for me and anyone registered, and the most self-educating.  The office new, today my first full day, will serve as my freeway for self-discovery and building not just a career but creative life and fold, dimension, self-sect.  This will work, and it will be challenging, demanding, painful… but like I told the students tonight, as I do every semester, “the main character has to hurt.  And guess who the main character is in your story…. YOU.” Beginning week two, I centralize in this project, logging the entire semester.  I, not failed.  Not in any aspect or tilt, pan, scene, theatre.  Today affirmed my elation in December’s end.

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Wine, Literature, Me and There

img_69121A meeting went excessively better than I forecasted.  Hoped or thought, or wished.  Now home, sipping some Nebbiolo from a friend’s winery, and thinking about how tomorrow is my second-to-last day in the industry.  I’m sipping slow, partially watching some writer show.  Can’t get my thoughts away from this wine, what it’s saying to me, how it congratulates me on re-write of my relationship with wine itself by leaving the bloody industry.  By leaving, I get closer, with distance, I’m even more THERE.

Don’t know what I’m tasting, wouldn’t know how to describe it to someone in the tasting room, and I don’t have to anymore.  Described it to friend managing the winery as  a charismatic and convincing character.   Wine… wine will always have me, in some way.  The words and the stories, the sipping and the sensory elevation and atmospheric promise…. Anyway, I’m sipping, after my lecture, or first meeting with the students, I’m more coherent and convinced of my mission.  To blog everything.. the wine and the lectures, work and this Room.  I’m closer to There.

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Short fiction, me now. 

One of my characters littering his studio floor with sheets of short verses and poems, some haiku streams and anti-form pieces.  He gathers whatever he randomly picks up from the floor.  He reads them lightly, not wanting to find any errors as he knows he’ll be tempted to re-write or somehow correct.  Each poem should be a snapshot and taste of the Now, he says to himself.  Right at 5pm, he pours himself a white blend, something from Anderson Valley, and reads some more from the past 8+ hours of scribbling.  He has something, something to sell, just from a day.  Pours another glass, writes another page.

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Reaction to this morning’s story, “New Policy”…

It’s obvious, with roots in my own life, from years ago working at the insurance office, and me wishing self closer to home, near Mom and Dad, laboring in the insurance office with an agent who yes did teach me a bit about selling I guess but always loved to flex.  That he was an agent, licensed, with his own client list and office, that he was he and I was me.  At the time I didn’t have any wish to make wine, but in writing the character Jack, named after my son most obviously, I now want my own bottles.  My own label, labels, to do pouring out of state.

And the title, also teaching me something after a re-read….  My policy, of not settling, not doing something just to do it.  Not having any more jobs but a catapulting of passion and working from that propulsion.. me and wine.  Everything has to be vino, oeno-.  Wine, forever, with this story… creative in wine’s wheel, MY policy.  And above anything, even wine and writing and writing about wine, making wine… to be HAPPY.  That is everything.  Talking to Mom and Dad recently about life and the composition of one’s life, all that brings and demands, happiness is the apexing apex in priority.

The character Jack to me holds a cliff of innocence but as well determination, and a bit of ire.  Ambition has to pull in a slight venom, I feel.  And when you’ve dealt with something for so long, eventually you just say, “No.” Saying no to that desk, to the office, to the character he sees everyday.  Rick’s and his own, in that office, at that chair, with all the insurance policies and clerical obligations and specifics I wish I had more time to write, but I only wanted this piece to be about 500 or so words.  Not too long.

Funny, as I write this reaction in a quasi-cubicle, at a winery, and I couldn’t imagine again being trapped in something like this, with no life around me, no view.  Certainly no wine.  Wine forwards in defiance, in separation from occupational normality.  That’s the purpose of this story, really… separation.  From doesn’t make you happy, from what keeps you from what you want.  Wine is the liberation, the leader in autonomous act.  Wine, realizing what I have to do with my winemaking aims, wine writing aims… here in the character of Jack, and what I wish for my son.  I want my son to work, of course, but if I can I want to provide him opportunities so he doesn’t have to deal with people like Rick, whose real name was Roger.  The short story allows for teaching and sharing of ideas like this, about the workplace, as decisions to leave are usually made in an instant.  Sometimes it’s not premeditated, or designed.  You just tell them, “I’m leaving.” The office can be a spirit-polluter.  And, the only way to be cleansed is to wholly depart.  And wine, all the magical facets and specifics in her configuration and metaphysical and physical makeup, abet.

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