5/17/19

Too many kids in Starbucks so had no choice but to take the expensive, or more pricey route at Toast Eatery.  Place with a diner feel and a cute menu cover with a smiling toast piece offering a thumbs up.  Know I’ll regret this, or cite self for lack of discipline after.  Or I won’t.  I won’t. I need a new writing seat.  And hear I am.  Ordered the Denver om’ and a coke.  Asked the chap what he thought of the Denver.  He said it’s good, he loves it, one of his favorites.  Of course it is, I thought.  Well, mine too, no matter where I go.  Day elevating even further, knowing I can’t control how many people come to the door for the Reps.  But, I can offer insight, instruction and encouragement.  Realizing at this table against the wall I don’t control much.  None of us do.  And instead of fighting, love the fact that control is figment.  Imaginary.  Enjoy and write from the absence of containment.  And what we call, perceive as, control.

Pleased that I go to lunch alone.  Writing.  Feel my essential and immediate poet here, more than if I were to even find a seat or small wobbly shifty table at that juvenile den Starbucks next door.  Writing in SF as I want to.  Sip coke set it down. Hear something in the pan.  Either the peppers or onions to my Denver.  No idea.  Early tomorrow morning up for even in San Mateo.  Where I’m from.  Years and year ago, last, at Serra High School.  Can’t help but fixated on time and what it’s doing, how it moves with everything involuntarily moving with it.   It again, I let go, stop tries to tame and or tackle it.

Prince’s 1999 on, and I thing this is 20 years ago he sings of, and even earlier when he wrote and recorded.  This diner, designed when.

Plate here.  Small break.  Keeping screen on…

Simplistic appearance but a shapely cosmos of flavor riles and tells, turns and altitudes.  I’m refusing to let anything of me fade, none of my aims by addled or maladopted.

Taking momentary away from plate.  Thinking about driving back to Santa Rosa.  When do I leave.  When do I wake tomorrow morning.  Pack all running effects, tonight.  Tomorrow morning should be for me, more than for anything else.  Clothes out, write a little as soon as I. Up.  About waking early, before anyone else.  What earlier hours do to vision and understanding of the Now, of the self.

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5/1/19

Last hour about to start.  Have to write final essay/submission sheet.  Promised to have it ready for students last week, I believe.  And I felt stupid, quite stupid not having it ready last meeting.

Wrote assignment.  And now, 51 minutes remaining.  Love the feeling of having all my work done, but still get a bit antsy or shaky when I’m this, like this… too productive.  All wonderful, especially now with this new movement this month, the month I turn 40, of scribbling everything.  Or like now typing everything.  And this will not be a valetudinarian effort.  I can’t incur the results of such.  Placed, present, me.  Now and onward.  40.. fuck.  Can’t believe.  But it’s here.  This month.  28 days from this Mike Madigan you read now.

Need a glass of something.  SB.  Or a beer like Monday.  What… I can’t decide.  ‘Cause I think obsessively, excessively.

1492 words for day, before this sentence.  Columbus, explorer.  I feel like an explorer, to tell you truth.  Now I’m just getting silly in thought.  Sipping the cold coffee in cup on desk.  When did I make this cup.  So long ago I can’t remember.  Who cares.  Sip.  Helps to wake me. Feeling the run, still.

Think I may have one sip left.  Wine on brain, wine and where it is, is always to me and in my view… the rows. Those forming clusters.  In this last hour, I write wine and about wine, for and from wine.  What about it.  What else can I say about wine in this last hour, now 36 minutes, after writing essay assignment for my last teaching term for the foreseeable anything.  Don’t care.  Wine is there for me.  Wine is always there for me.  When I’m running, when I’m not.  She urges me to run—NO, tells me to so I can alive be longer, taste more of her geography and shapely ideology.

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This morning…

This block, though… not going away.  Thought yesterday while on the corner of Lake and Funston, then started walking on Lake toward 12th, that I write a set of writing rules for self, not really anyone else of for some limp purpose of composing a ‘hot-to’ of writing’, but just for me and something I reference when feeling, well, like this.  This morning.

First, write where you are and what you’re doing.  Focus on singularity.  One thing, or person, word or scenic ingredient.

Then, write freely.  The only type of writing is freewriting.  Some might assert that all writing needs structure, and I simply respond with two motions—1, what is “structure”?  And 2, “What if it doesn’t, then what?”

I’m seeing more and more the more I attempt to have my writing be a certain way or present itself with certain attributes on page, the less it’s me.  Them ore insincere it is.  Not that I only want to relay what’s happening—the who, what, why, where, when, how and whatever else like a journalist or tech writer—but be fully present.  Like now, in the office.  I notice the mood shedding as I’m moving, doing what I want to be doing in my office, working, sharing observations and self-instruction that I’m convinced will, or could, help someone else.

One from other department walking into building, saying with congealed, slow-moving emphasis good morning, and then not saying anything.  Not many calls coming in, for that department.  Not much heard other than my typing.  Honestly the loudest thing on the floor at present.

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4/18/19

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Sales team here in about ten.  Been nonstop since day started, noting and thinking trapping thoughts about everything from wine to writing, teaching and education to sales and selling something.  De-emphasizing book idea for a minute, more so fixating on not letting any thought go, not letting and notion or possibility (hate the word, notion), story and narrative, last night’s class still in my behavior I can see and I’m in learner’s stride as well as professor’s.  What do I want to sell…. Nothing, honestly.  But then, everything.  All these approaches to writing, reading, reading the scene you’re in, the wine you sip, the work you do.  Everything I do in the classroom as an educator of English, Reading and Writing, is here.  At this desk.  Like when I used to list writing projects on a piece of binder paper in Math class, freshman year of high school… music projects, script ideas, novels, visions of poetry collections.  Almost too many dreams or sights, but is there such a thing?  I see now at my older age, yes.  We shouldn’t contain ourselves excessively, though.

 

Wine and what it’s done to my story, teaching me not only about sales, but about organization, what to read and how to read it, how NOT to write about wine.  Everything, truly…. Wine it’s fair to say has taught me more than most worlds and stories, characters and scenes.

 

Today, observe more.  Talk less.  WRITE.  Collect.  Learn.  Read, WRITE, be taught.  At this older age, 11 days and 1 month from 40, I’m moving faster in my project and prose pace.

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from another ‘nother journal …

4/17/19

Writing in too many spots.

No more on this laptop.  Noting everything, this morning.  Have a schedule for self.  Desired time for “cruising altitude” as Dad would say…..

Lost in a thought, not sure how to write.  Running at lunch, what to write from there.  Need a break.  Need to toss backpack, or just use for running gear.  Yes, the latter.

Organized desk a bit, plugged in laptop wife gave me.  Time for break, some journal jots, or walk to car to get running gear.  Or both.  How to optimize day… how.  Grade papers when on campus, then home for quick dinner, bed.  And goddamnit, wake…. No, won’t promise.  Will only do.

All the loose paper pieces and swarms around me, distracting, dividing my concentration and enslaving each parcel.

10:07.  Break.  Just for a bit.  Sparkling water.  And what else… running stuff.  Do I want to run at lunch, or take self to lunch.  Here I go overthinking, again..

Running.  I’ve decided, finally.  Need a snack, hydrate, get gear.  I can just see someone reading this years after I’m gone and noting something in the margin like, “Goddamn, just do something already!!!” I agree, just so you know.  Huh, there’s an idea for a book, note to future reader.  And another from yesterday, the ‘argument for me’ idea.  Like a very much stretched out cover letter and CV.

Different route today, for run.  Out 3.5, back 3.5.

 

10:30 – Done with a 90 minute challenge to self for morning.  Schedule done.  Or a draft at least.  My first, composed.  Team arrives in about 20.  Should go to car, get running facets.  Where am I running?  Just get out there and run, Mike…..  note for Reps, time sheet-related.  Old journal taken from backpack, should go through those pages, what I wrote when first hired, all this information about the internet I NEVER knew.

Seeing now why I stress the habit and practice and maintained habit and practice of journal writing so much.  To know you, your NOW, the Nows that approach.  What you want, why you want it.  Today is different, as all todays are, but I note that there’s something more paralleling about today with my aims.  The office, travel, running all over the world and writing about it.  The journal is a beacon of YOU, a place that’s more than a place, but a stage and bibliotheque or understanding and exploration.  The desk messy, and I don’t mind.  It’s honest, it’s NOW, it’s ME.  Why am I capitalizing so much.  No need to analyze or even lightly understand.

The journal teaches not so much ‘me about me’ but to see more clearly and honestly.  Fearlessly.  To not fear, to not question, to just madly LIVE.

Working on attitude, perspective, how I contextualize matters and then react to them.  If someone says something, and I find it getting under my skin or into my thoughts, echoing in me in any way, then pause.  Find sense on the page.  Make sense of it, of everything, on page.  In this “journal”.  And, honestly, if I can accomplish something of that magnitude and altitude on a page, is it really just a one-dimension and as-it-appears tablet, or “journal”?

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Waiting for haircut

time. No time to waste and no time to wait. All minutes are instructional, all times in your story narrate something to you, teach, they demand your direction and response. Gems compile right in front of you. Eyes should be ever present nets. Catch everything.

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Breaking from work for a bit.  Need cereal. Need more coffee.  And, notes.  More notes.  Studying what I do here as a Field Sales Supervisor.  I’ll be honest, I detest the word, supervisor.  I’m proud of my position, I guess, but more so proud of being a part of this.  Everything here.  All the facets and dimensions, atmosphere and narrative nuances of this building, this business.

This morning has been especially meditative for me.  More than others.  Maybe more than any other since working here, I’m pretty sure.

I don’t deconstruct it, or analysis it at all, very much, no not at all. I just keep self moving, keep studying where I am, this building, the idea of speaking in “the Field” about what we have here.

One segment of erudition in this, is THIS.  The idea, the fact that all this precipitates from an idea.

Today I examine all ideas, write them all, no matter how silly or unrelated to anything here or with me… written.

More than a supervisor, today, I am a STUDENT.

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Breakthrough In A Room

Notes to catch up on, and other directions pushing and pulling this morning.  On a fast, for I believe 16 hours.  For no other reason than discipline.  Last night the discussion with students on Wright’s Black Boy coerced me to re-think memoir, to rethink writing in its principle territory.  Writing, especially memoir or personal essay, or “creative nonfiction” a genre or type tag that I frankly loathe as what nonfiction isn’t in some degree and walk creative?—Demands more honestly. More boldness, more rawness and the moment itself in all its obtrusiveness and oscillation of concentration and code.

People walk into the room, this breakroom, I think new hires as I’ve never seen them before.  Or–  Friend Taj walks in.  I tell him what I’m writing about more or less and what we spoke of last night in class on Wright.  The Human dimension and collection of facets, emotions, observations.  I tell him about the student last night who said he can’t relate to the characters in the book as he didn’t live as they did, or didn’t see what they saw.  I disclose to Taj how I asked the student “Do you love anything?…Have you ever felt pain?…Do you have a mother?” The student I think felt a bit overwhelmed or confused maybe by my response, but I stood by my point and I at least wanted him to consider it.  Taj sees where I’m going with the thought framing and delivery.  He’s since left the room, after getting his tea.  Now a lady makes coffee or something from one of the machines, and I think fixes it or installs a new filter, something.

I’d be not much a memoirist or narrator if I didn’t put to page I was again sparring, fencing, or just plain boxing with a mood this morning.  Similar to the one I felt yesterday before the Pinballing piece, and very akin to what was over me last week.  And, honestly, I’m bored of feeling like that.  I need Newness.  I need be crazy and more wild and flight-prone.  Just taking off and not asking permission from any control tower.  The JPR project here at work very much was not so much a cause of the mood but a set presence in the mood’s movement.  I stop it all, taking this 30 minutes or so to this seat, these keys, going over in head what was discusses last night, and that one student, AGAIN, reading for class and having us wanting more of the words, more story, wherever it was going.  And that’s just it, he had us not knowing but wanting to know.  There was not so much excitement but obvious atmosphere and personality in the characters and what they may have been doing, or not doing.  This student not only shows promise as a memoirist, essayist, but as a teller, narrator, truth-teller.

Now, I plan the day.  This fast I’m on, what notes I have to input, and how the book’s going to tell EVERYTHING.

Details:

-8:17am

-Coffee cooling in old tumbler, black, bought as xmas present

-More people walk in for either eats or free coffee—eats, as I can’t see them, obstructed by newly-built wall which denies view of fridges

-Me, Mike Madigan, only one in here, certainly the only one writing memoir, story, any poetic effort to capture a Now

-No more oscillation, new code

-Sip coffee again

-8:20

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