knowing now, FREED
for birthday. And this shit is STRONG. I feel like I could write a whole collection of short pieces right now and bind it and start selling, changing things forever, getting myself a car, one that I want to drive, and that small house in Monterey or Carmel.
Little pages on me at all times… pen to paper. Be a real fucking writer, not one of those blogger idiots that “write” “notes” in their phone and forget about it. Use to be me, but here meet the new me.
Nice to meet you.
Cancelled class this morning, as I had that meeting and another meeting at a winery down the street. All day been thinking about selling, and how selling should be more artful and genuine. More on that later, maybe. Either way, I’m home.. focusing on me in this freewrite which is assured to be short, abbreviated. I’m on my knees, in front of couch as phone transfers pictures to laptop. Goddamn tech, Hemingway never wrote like this. So I stop and move to the kitchen counter, the island where I’ve so many times wrote. Helping my friend out today at Hook & Ladder had me thinking about wine and wine language, how I talk about wine, and my helixing of the education and literature surfaces… then my tasting this morning at the old Stryker property. A lot through my head, my character, possibilities all around… ALL around. Done transferring photos so now I concentrate on this, my “platform”— ugh, hate that word. And pour myself some of the Hook & Ladder Rosé. Light of course, but anything but gutless. I find this bottle—not sure what it’s a Rosé of—ardent in its storytelling— crisp and lively and dexterous in all its moments, or “palate progression” as my buddy Devin today said.
Title for book— ‘inwardoenojots’. Don’t like the title ‘cuvée kismet’ anymore. Was just a tentative title but still, was part of what went though my head while pouring with Devin in that somewhat stuffy, cindery room. Funny with that last modifier, owner being a firefighter, but anyway I’m with wine-purpose today, more than I’ve ever been I think. Done with Rosé glass, wondering what tomorrow wants from me. Today the vines get a sincere jolt of heat, brought closer to their self-pollination. Me getting closer to something, but I’m not sure what. Well, I am, I’m just not sure what shape it’s to take. What… what. “Brand myself, then everything else.” I just said inwardly. Not so much in jot form, or wine-influenced, but… present. In my circulation. In my sight and senses. Learning from today that there’s purpose in my movements, in how I speak about wine, in how I see wine, how I taste it.. from the Sémillon this morning to the Chardonnay I had at H&L…. I belong with the vineyard. This is not a negotiable exercise or echo.
20:37, with Pinot from Hook & Ladder and I’ll be honest, I want to throw myself at this wine, and all the H&L wines. Yes, started from a firefighter’s conception but as well the approachability of it all. And not just Hook & Ladder Vineyards/Winery. Wine principally. The puddle in my glass has me feeling so majordomo, so captain-like, like Dad in that race car around the Vegas track— “This is a blast!” He said. And this is. This, me sitting not he floor with the air conditioning blowing right on the writer but I don’t care… I have my wine and my moment and this floor, hard on my ass which makes it smart but I’m smarter, outsmarting any shot the cosmic cannon darts my way. MY way… wonder what it is. It has to be a blast, blasting off, off to the cosmos somewhere as a wine writer, or journalist, or diarist— Why do I have to have a fucking title? I write. About wine, yes, but other existential pillars as well.
Getting cold under this vent. Take another sip of the Pinot… it’s Pinot I poured, right? Can’t remember currently. Oh well. I’m not like every other wine journalist, every other, some Napa gnat who sees themselves as one working with “luxury” told from their zip code. Maybe I’m over-analyzing. I do that sometimes. Many times. Ask my students, or anyone I work with. Deep pull forms his Hook & Ladder Pinot and I feel Earth getting closer.. more dactyls of truth and earthly scope— what, then, me, in this oenological symmetry. I know nothing, now, and I love it— I’m like one of those tourists from Iowa, or Minnesota, or Nebraska, or anywhere visiting “wine country” for the first time. I’m enamored, I’m taken, I’m now bold, and emboldened and stage-told. No need to teach a class who I’m being taught so much. I’d rather be a student, anyway. That’s more a ‘blast’ than anything.. learning, selecting and pocketing knowledge to which you’re introduced rather than being the dope at class’ head. I’m a student, of wine and writing and writing abut wine and this floor. Aujourd’hui, a semester concluded and catalyzed. A new inward-oeno-jot stream…
Back from lunch and I’m ping-ponging between work and the book, my poems I’ve been drumming all day, even wrote on in the vineyard, leaning against and old, discarded barrel creekside. Looking up and out the window to the vineyard at a day which could more than easily be a postcard. But I have to work, be focused and professional in such a beautiful place. How is that possible, how is that fair, how is that something that I’m not supposed to entertain possibilities to? See me spun, still spinning in this swivel chair, looking out at the edge of the Cabernet block, wanting to skip away from this desk and out to the deck, and onto the field, into the vines, take more pictures. I’m greedy with images now, since getting more serous and persistent with photog’.
Thought of a character Wednesday in class, with the English 100 group– winemaker, 39 y/o, suddenly quits drinking. Not ’cause she has to, just to see what happens as a result. That, and she wants to think more clearly, she wants out of the wine industry. She hates the industry for robbing her of her passion for wine, the vineyards, process. They made it too ‘industry’ for her. She wants out. So before one tasting with the corporate people, called in to do so on her day off, she stands in front of them at the head of the long boardroom table and says, “I can’t do this.” She leaves, for travel, traveling around the world and taking pictures, keeping a photojournal, online. Yes, a blog. But she also scribbles in a little notebook her late-grandmother bought her just before she died, three years prior. She, Juli, knows this is when she has to do it. She buys herself a new camera, walks around some of the vineyards she used to source from, then books her first flight.
She feels alive for the first time since entering the industry.
In the adjunct cell and I immediately started grading the English 100 papers when I sat down with this cannon of coffee. Now the adjunct takes some notes in the “holstered journal”, as I mention it to my students. Not sure where to go with this sitting just know I’m back on campus after taking Monday off, enjoying a day of writing and Self time to measure and contemplate, further deconstruct realities and possibilities. Dickinson said something like “I dwell in possibilities.” I do, too, but I want to more dwell and act from made actualities. Something immensely gratifying that I brought about, and I’m right there, I’m right there.
Hear doors opening and closing in the hallways. I’ll say, for some reason today, I’m so glad to be on campus, or ‘back’ on campus. Ready for both sections, but I’m not sure they’re ready for me and the energy I’m about to catapult at them. Time, 11:42AM, and I have more than enough time to meditate before class and collect myself here with these exposed Composition Book and Carpe Journal pages. ‘Nother sip of coffee and I think more of what I want, but maybe I should stop, think outside of the box, right? Noticing now, and of course at my old ass age, that I continue to have the same reality in certain respects and confront the same results on account of my practices don’t change that much. Well, now they are, will— no, ARE.
Uncomfortable in this chair, so maybe I should walk around the library till I find one of those chairs by the window, or one of the windows on the third or, better, fourth floor where I can see the entire SRJC world right there, write about the seasonal change and how today’s cooler than the last three angrily heated installations. I’m not stopping for anyone or any thing. NEVER. When the alarm on my phone sounds (set for one hour, to get all my prep and grading done), I’ll head for the bibliothèque. And I’ll go right upstairs. Being in this office is much part of the problem with experience excess similarity in existential momentum. (Wrote that down, “Existential Momentum”, for classes, then a sentence: “You don’t like it? Change it!”)
Another sip… Thinking of the wine I had last night, that Zin from Truett Hurst. How it was loud, both with the jammy thing and alc’, but somehow harmonizing and melodic, musical and narrative. I’ll write about it, and another Zin I took home yesterday from Dutcher, tonight. More wine writing, from me… NEEDED. Again, change that momentum. Wine and its industry doesn’t have to be the fang-set its in the past been. With this voluminous yay-saying yodel of mine across the page in recent months, I’ll change everything about how it registers with me, and fellow industry characters.
Alarm sounded, 11:51AM, but I don’t want to get up. And why should I? This moment’s mine, right? That’s just it, though, Mikey… Make it more your own by leaving. Going to the library. Be in the presence of goal-chasers, the driven young student who wants to transfer, graduate then go to grad school, or begin their career. Student noting me a few weeks ago, about how she graduated law school and passed the state bar on her first try, emailing me thanking me for all I’d done for her. How she had a 1-point-something GPA at SSU then took my class and was somehow enlivened beneficially. That’s the feeling I want to experience, over and over, over. Repeated. Yes that’s selfish, but it’s from helping others which makes me think it’s not as selfish as other endeavors. I could be wrong, but I’m just writing freely. Maybe too freely.
This office, which I ALWAYS call the ‘adjunct cell’, is more freeing than I credit. Why? I’m liberated from the commotion in the hall. I’m all to myself, thinking for myself and the benefits of others, most immediately my students, and I can just collect. Like I do on a run, after some brutal stretch in the sun or some uphill scuffles and then the ground evens, or is slightly downhill. You collect, you recover, you sprint on. (Wrote that, or some derivation in the Carpe as well.) Right now this isn’t an office, or a cell, or even a room. It’s a ship, taking me from one “possibility” to the next actuality. Reward, rewarding my Self by pushing, moving with agility and unusual acumen. Forgot I was uncomfortable in the chair. Well, actually, now I’m not. In fact, this is the most relaxed I’ve been all day.
11:59AM. Now into the afternoon. You know, I’ll just head to my classroom. My plan for the day is to not ask for too much student participation. Do most of the speaking, presenting. And not to show off, or gloat, or be too aggressive with my young colleagues, but to throw self back into character. I have no regrets about taking Monday off, taking little Em to the doc, but it takes me out of character a bit, frankly, makes me lose momentum. I won’t have some lazy, gradual immersion back into instruction, but a forced placement of my educator self back at the front of that room. I realize how stretched and wandering my thoughts are, but that’s enjoyed by the author. From last night’s Zin sips to taking the babies to school this A.M., to me now readying for detachment from this shared bureau (office, in French, I just learned), to the walk to Maggini Hall where I teach the 100 class… all purposed. All purposeful. Free now, which is why I stayed in this once-odd chair, where I have to sit up straight but not too straight otherwise the back hurts— and the back part is too far back to lean back… But I don’t care. The moment’s mine, as is the page and my class, the students’ eyes and hopefully ears. New day, new story, new fold, new form. Carpe… CARPE!
Thinking this project, the whole ’30’ effort’s to take a different shift. And no, I’m not giving up or surrendering my aim of going 30 straight days with my writing in some musical and expanded direction to get me closer to my travels— I’m changing the mission, reorganizing efforts and resources, the same way a general would in war, do what’s best for the mission. So.. instead of being so focused on 3 pages a day, I will produce 1 standalone article, of at least 500 words, everyday till the last day of this current sprint which is August 18th. Thought this morning on run that if I was to just blast through 3 pages a day for 30 days, much of that writing would be lost, or just left to rot away in this laptop. BUT… if I focus on one strong article per day for 30 days, I have a healthy number of pieces that I can post and re-post and re-use or submit for whatever, wherever.
In adjunct office now. Don’t want to teach but I’m going to make myself. Time is 5:16. Should do a couple pushups… why not.
Done. Huh… surprised how quickly I did those. Waking early tomorrow morning, to get my article done. Tonight I’ll write down possible topics.. and they have to be unique to me, my aims, what I want to talk about when on the Road… Keep thinking, “Roman candles, Roman candles… Burn, BURN!” I need be, I need do. And so should you. So burn on, let’s burn together and get what we want. No more settling, no more dreaming. Time for doing, attaining, ready ourselves for a handle of the tangible. When we’re in our dreams, where we see ourselves. We won’t just ‘see’ anymore, but enjoy directly and tangibly what we’ve always wanted to see. We’re there… We’re there…
Two poems to type. Won’t tonight. Feeling lazy and tired from morning run. 8.5 miles, surprised self— Didn’t expect to go that far. At desk with nightcap, felt like being naughty and I was opening this ’12 Lancaster Estate Cab. Running out of wine and I was in a wine mood, so what’s a writer to do? More and more ideas flooding my form today in the tasting room as I sold the winery’s wines, thinking of how I could and should be selling my own writings like mad. I mean that is the goal, right? Stray $10 bill on desk, under cord from laptop to phone— wonder where it’s from then I remember, tip from some guy from Nebraska, from today. Tempted to take my wine outside, that Summer temp’ with nearly scribed breeze pattern. Starting pile of poems to type— one I wrote today, saying “Door open, come sip/with a scribbler”. I started with poetry, need come more back to it, its rebellion to form, and within such standing situate in its own form. The Cabernet I’m tilting into my talking now telling the writer to keep with verse, don’t budge, just keep going. I’ll be on stage soon, reading. That’s what I want. And the blog, keep with the freeness of prose, like poets in their throws. Both poems, saying something about a moment, and strike back at time for being what it is— something that ages us and steals moments. My verses and lines are meant to immortalize moments. My moments. Make them OUR moments.
I can see tonight is meditative. Coffee already made for morning, sitting in the tumbler urging me to set alarm for 4 or something and wake early like Sylvia and finish two or three, maybe even four, pieces. Permanently returning to poetry, and if this is a “lifestyle blog”, then it’s the stylized life of a poet, with his constant playfulness with form and verse, rime and meter, setting his own style in his sensibility and structure. Before I go upstairs, need one new poem written, just typed so I don’t have to type it later and put myself in a position of procrastinating like I am now. I remember writing poetry in that intermediate algebra class (no caps, intentional), my first moments of practicing zen, but unintentionally, some sort of meditation to escape that classroom— seems like lightyears ago, and here I am, finally coming together into some sort or code of coherent character, returning to poetry but being more mathematical about it, or at least I will be, that I ever have been with anything else. My “style” is dependent upon a return to studenthood, learning and re-learning about what’s around the writer. Two babies, a wife, a winery, wine— and here at the desk: son’s blankie, one of my belts, phone and Happiness Project journal, stemless plastic glass of Cab, the Garmin, that $10 bill, a pen and some random business card from a grower…
Don’t have time for readings right now, or going to any readings so I’ll broadcast the poems from here, my house. And if this doesn’t “work”, meaning change my reality as a writer and heighten exposure, then I don’t know what will. Just as people who can sing LOVE showing their voice to any crowd or small group that will listen, so will be me with my verses and meters—
Clutter enclosing around me, why what.
In the regulatory stuck, clock nothing but a short story cut.
Quaking poems and verses in my structure, so complicated,
one of the candidates but I never wanted to be nominated.
Feel like I could perform now, have another glass of the this LE CS and rime all night, until I have to have some coffee to stay awake, somehow make it to class and barely have adequate vigor to lecture and share what I have to about Esther.
Starting to feel the morning run, that 8.5 catching Mike. But I don’t let myself stall or stop or pause or slow. Not even for a second. Don’t think I’m going to finish this entry, much I want to. Should let myself be lazy, just sit in front of the TV and watch something trashy, like BRAVO reality TV or something that low. So what do I do? Would love to read some Plath, or Kerouac, or Hem… need to make time for one of them. I skim through Plath’s entries, or one of them, but I’m too tired and angularized by the Cabernet to give her respectful read. SO, I put her down. 37 as an age so far has not been able to mute or muffle or even slightly slow my growl and relentless rile.
Everything is poetry. Even the past writings from years ago intended to be prose, I’ll soon revisit and recapture them and conform them my poetic placements and cosmos. What I find in this, this day and night and day, this 10th of the 7th month, is gift; a telling of reason and rationale, leaning to one side and that side is of art, voice and truth. Me here next to Plath— no, I know I should wait for morrow. SO maybe I will, for once.
Next day, around 4:42, the whole day with family and me calling in my class tonight, just wanting to stay home and organize myself, have a beer on the patio. Need to collect, consolidate, build this poetry base I’ve started— By tonight, I’ll have seven isolated performance pieces.. some more scribbles in journal—
Interrupted then but back now, 10:12, with coffee already for morrow made and a Lagunitas ‘Lucky 13’ at right. The positive atmospheric pulses around me envelpo with such ardent angles I can’t stop with my coursings.
Don’t think I’ll type any poems tonight, as I’m too tired, too guilted by calling in this night’s meeting (even though I need to, for…), and I just feel like typing on this couch in my office— the couch that was in the living room’s now in the bottledaux office. Alice’s grandmother’s couch now situates in the other room, and I couldn’t be happier— thought earlier about just living the life I want to as a writer, writing and releasing and not caring, like so many of the artists I “follow” and admire. Another sip of this ale, look at phone but don’t pick it up, can feel the Road getting closer, and all boxes just eroding. Imagine that, them imagining me on the Road, thinking “Oh fuck Mike Madigan and his blogger shit—“ And that’s fine. I appreciate their thoughts, honestly. And even more honestly, I need to be more furtive with my passage and projects. Just go from scene to scene while hush-hush-ed-ly doing what I’m doing with the aux operation. And with NO negative accumulation. Only positive. My babies (Whom I just checked on upstairs, seeing both of them sleep, thinking to myself how lucky I am and even thought I don’t believe in any one god I know that something else has given me a tumult of terrificness with those two wees) will have a happy father, one who comes home from HIS office and tells stories. That’s it. That simple. And when he returns home from being on the Road, he’ll talk about the food he ate, the paths he ran, the coffee he drank, show them pictures and talk about the people he talked to in small villages overlooking some river way down in some narrowly vortex’d valley.
Everyone I know or even distantly know is traveling. And I’m sick of it. Old friend from the old neighborhood, someone I love and respect, posting footage of a lightening storm in Nebraska. I can only concede my jealously and imagine what I would be writing if witnessing that, standing under that cover sipping some coffee at an hour I shouldn’t be and just challenging those lights and flashes to prompt me. Older I get the more impatient I get but yet the more fearless I form with my lack of formality and fortitude, thinking I’m to be held under by anything or any whatever but in the past it’s been me that’s held ME under and back and far from the fortune— WHAT THE FUCK. Now I realize this? At 37?
10:38— bed has to be soon and close, nearing like a lecturer— Alice goes upstairs and me to soon follow, saying “Stay off my couch..” jokingly, she knowing how happy I am to have those cushions in my home office. Nearly tempted to call in sick tomorrow but I can’t, I need to see those vines outside “my” office window and get further ahead on the copy projects I have— and oh shit, have a blog entry due soon. So much for the writer to do, should I hit that fucking coffee now, do an all-nighter? Of course not, but it’s in my head, and for a reason I’m sure, but I’m not sure what or who’s the reasoner, not sure it’s me as I’m not that reasonable now, after this night’s capping.
Nearly done with the day, night, sitting. Another sip— toasting to myself to Dad and how at 70-whatever he can still move shit better than I can— still mobile and insightful, acute and astute, precise and meditative in a way I wish I could be for my babies.
Tomorrow morning, with that coffee I tonight brewed, I become a fiery A.M. Hunter S. Thompson— not caring, but too much caring a cosmic narrative blaring, telling the story of a fed-up adjunct and wine loving runner-writer-father. Expansive introspect, commence—
Sipping with Self, a sordid scribbler.
(7/11/16)
in the mood to write. Or do anything. Not even— ugh, not a mood so much as it is exhaustion, with my habits and ways and what I want to change. Have to edit everything I wrote yesterday at the dam, in my car… sitting in the conference room with only my laptop, bag and papers in the adjunct cell. Other adjunct said she needed some time to talk to a student, which I deduce infers privacy but if that’s the case then why the hell is the door open?
She tells me she’s done, so I come back to the cell and start typing, and even more confirmed that I’ll only do one class in Fall. Hoping for a 1B, that’d be amazing.. be known as the writer of the department; the adjunct that only teaches ‘cause he wants to, not from having to or a need for the money.. he wants to. He wants to empower students and share ideas and encourage students to make ideas their own.
Coffee, getting cold but I still sip. Payday in 4 days. Budgeting like mad, not getting that couple-days-a-week gig at the tasting room as I don’t want to (not sure I brought this up, so nevermind… just know it’s my decision, something was offered I’m merely not pursuing it). My third job will be me, my writings and selling them the same way a painter does his work. And all from necessity. I’m not inventing anything, as the expression promises, but I’m certainly doing something, I’m moving, “hustling” as some LOVE to say repeatedly, repeating their own self-indulgence and putting it on an inexhaustible repeat. Annoying.
She left, the other adjunct, leaving me, just me, me and this coffee and an upset stomach. Is that from the coffee? Hard to tell. Still have to inventory writings— no, I’ll just start with today. One thing I’ve seen about the winery’s management crew, they are poignant and precise with inventory tracking. I the same need be.
About to check my checking acct, which I don’t want to do, but I keep thinking to myself.. self-awareness, self. aware! And you can’t budget without being self-aware, and honest with finances.. so let’s see….. Not bad. Not where I want to be, but not bad. Even have enough to pay myself… a little. Need more income, and that will come from my printings.. or somewhere from my writing. No more jobs, no more pouring, no more “hours”. More pages! More readings! More ME!
Went over numbers.. think I’m in a positive place. Thank the Craft. Last week, financially, was the most stressful that I can remember. Just have to learn from it, watch expenses, budget, BUDGET. Even the $4 I have in wallet will be budgeted—
Had to go outside to listen to voicemail from Alice. Lovely outside, and I’m reminded I will cancel my gym membership, FOREVER, and run around the Autumn Walk Studio. May get in a nap, more than likely not, and not sure I even want one.. but for sure a run, shower, prep for 1A.. maybe print some ideas rather than just throw them to the blog.. what do I as a 1A student want from my professor tonight?
After the day’s length and intensity, I’m drained and very much surrendered. The mood has landed on my shoulder and has its tail around my neck, vengeful little tail around my neck. But then gone after a glass of port, then another. Never, and I mean NEVER, do I drink port. But I feel like Kerouac sitting in that chair looking out the window, having his friends visit. Won’t reach 3000 words today, or by 12AM tonight and I’m more than eased with that. The barrels, just sitting there, seeming to do nothing but so much doing internally— makes the writer think about, well, everything.
Alice telling me she wanted it quiet in the room upstairs while feeding Emma after I asked her if she wanted me to look for the remote. So downstairs, here with this port, me the same— quiet and thinking, reading and envisioning, and making sure this is my last glass of this Dutcher port. The writer need wake early, 4AM, or 5, for the 3000. What if I hit my number before the Dry Creek drive? MY book nears, I know, and I feel the first flight, my first travel to a show, a talk or booked lecture on writing and blogging, SELF-PUBLISHING.. budgeting for pages and publication of Self… I have to thank the port for this. But I can feel the effects pattering about my shoulders, forearms and fingers, disrupting the session. So I space my sips.. think of Dad on the Road, landing a plane then going to his hotel room. Why didn’t he write? Or maybe he did. He does write, Mr. Madigan, and quite finely, but never pushing it anywhere, though he very much could like with the short story about his last flight on the 737 with the shrinking time surplus. I remember reading it years ago, when we still lived in Bayview, and thinking how believable it felt, the story imposing its feel on me the reader, like I was the pilot stressing over time.
This Autumn Walk studio is expansively different at night. No Jackie imposing his reign down here, throwing whatever and playing with his toys, demanding more time watching cartoons. And with Alice and Emma upstairs for their feeding session, leaving me down here, to write, for the first time today at actual keys, not typing on my fucking phone, which I hate, and don’t even consider real typing, more pushing, that teeny frantic thumb aerobics— so annoying. Much Capote had his comments on typing, what would he throw at these phone-addicted barnacles? I feel like the old man at Dutcher, and I hate it. Not that the others make remarks or make me feel that way, just the volatile writer has himself in such column. Need another sip of port. Hate thinking about or talking about and especially writing about my aging. How the fuck did I get this old? Port sipped, and sipped angrily. Done for night. Coffee at ready for morrow, last of the k-cups I was gifted for xmas. In the morning I’ll write a thousand, do pushups, then another 1k, then duplicate. This moment euphoric, morsel madness. I’m closer to IT.
(3/19/16)
4:02, tasting room. Open till 6 but I’m not sure how many more people I’ll see. Strangely patted in sterling greying cloud octaves, outside. Tomorrow, needing wake early, at least try, my morning magic number shape of ‘4:00’— if I don’t I know that will mince my composure— police walking past tasting room, odd, then two tourists like they’ve never been to wine world, then I think a local. Postmodern swirl of a day, possibly precipitated from weather’s amended atmosphere since there is no wet fall. Wined, my thinking, as ever, stay writing, no stopping, pages at ready…
Three pages written for day. All to be sold. 11:48, and I need a nap, horribly. Thinking of the Cab I opened last night and my relationship with wine, writing about wine, how I haven’t been doing much wine writing of late.. why? Is it ‘cause I see it as a job? “Then don’t!” I tell myself. So tonight at some point I post some wine reactions, to the last three wines I’ve had, opened at home and been moderately impressed by. Wine, writing about it.. there’s something there. Something. Yes, a job, but one I create for Self.