in all forms visible and invisible.
Start your Road to something you’ve only had as a vision or dream, THIS MORNING.
Ides.
Of March. Still not feeling one hundred, and the morning for me is odd, little things happening here and there that aren’t worth page presence, but I’m thinking of 40 and how it’s now quite close. Wanted to wake this morning to run but the facets of whatever bug I have were still dominant. Went to be last night I believe just before or after 8. Woke this morning to wife telling me we slept in, around 7:15 I believe. So, rested, me, yes. But I’m off. In nook with jazz in ears and 4-shot latte, needing today to do something. Looking for other income possibilities, to one day have that house in Monterey or Santa Cruz, on the Oregon Coast, then I remember– Where are you, Who are you, What are you doing. Don’t look for anything. Got it, got it…. Kerouac in Big Sur cabin re-assessing everything around him and in his story so do I now in this morning with this latte and with this cold or whatever I have. Throat still a bit pained, not so much a nasal note, but I’m not my fullest of full selves.
Wife and babies going to Tahoe with fried and her daughter. You’d think I’d be thrilled with the time to self. Not. Not at all. Didn’t see babies last night, and won’t tonight and tomorrow nuit. Know that’s affecting my mood and how I’m composed, now. I’m sure of it. What if I pulled an all-nighter, tonight. Didn’t have dinner with my brother, Jesse, and just ordered in, typed until I found more of what I found this morning with the idea and purposing of classes online. Not so much an English class, or writing class, or ever reading, but FINDING self in the literary. March’s Ides, this Ide, moves me one way, the back into Self to find more Self, seeing self in classroom and staying in classroom.. not needing to look for ANYTHING.
3/3/19
This. This morning. This is for you. This is yours. You have the morning, day, week, month, everything you want by deciding so. Candle going, at laptop’s side. Meditation with latte. Wife deciding on snow gear for kids, upcoming trip. Me, with the candle, something never near me when writing, seeing more Newness.
Fire, tempting me to try new avenues and expressive streams. Morning, a bit sluggish from last night going to bed late and after dinner and wine with wife. Melissa on couch listing prices to me for their snow trip approaching. Tahoe. Morning telling me to write faster, morning telling me to write more in Germany Journal, map how you get There.
Kids should be home, soon. More photos of them. Their steps in life, my story, the story itself. More thoughts and considerations this morning than I forecasted. What do you want? I keep asking self. Above everything, not citing health of me and all near and loved, travel. It has to be travel. Every continent. As many cultures as I can see, feel.
What’s the plan, wife asks, for day. Good question. No plan. And maybe that’s what needs to be. Life isn’t excessive deliberation, but deciding more in what’s already present. Yesterday, not in Field with sales squad, I replayed repeatedly the walks on all streets. Blocks. Districts and meta-districts. Truly wanted to be out there with them but couldn’t as that would’ve been day 6 in a row. Which I don’t at all mind, but is against Sonic’s stances. No quarrel, only putting myself there with them, imaginarily. People in San Francisco, the battle to find a parking spot and the daily inner-problem solve of where for lunch. The plan for today is today, to not plan but to live, talk to both babies, ask them questions, learn from them. Being with them is the demand satisfied, wanting them to teach me, instruct me how to get to those travels.
They already have, but I need more.
2/28/19
Wrote 1111 words to start day. Relaxed in my nook at Sonic. My Sonic jots, becoming more energetic and consistent, more enlivened and electric. Sonic is not a platform but a page set for me to fill…. New identity for me to explore. Why Sonic works, from such encouragement. The wine industry and all the tasting rooms with which I collaborated never did this, or anything encroaching on such. MY wine business, approaching. I’m not giving up on wine business, and certainly not wine or my vineyards, my vineyard walks. This morning’s writing, telling me to have a conversation with wine, with self on the relationship with wine, wines story and the words that play from wined thoughts. The Robert Hall Cab from last night and night before, telling me to relax and be more eased in my wined chimes and lines, when I sip and to stay away from analysis but throw more height and color, more energy and effort into reaction, speaking wine. Not for the wine, but with her.
New blog started, soon. The u-sentence. No quote marks needed. More and more I hate punctuation. Anyway, this new blog is so closely associate with this blog, bottledaux, where the intention is to know your Now better, so I can know MINE more closely and intimately. Be FREED. You need start the day with YOU…. A proclamation, or thesis, or assurance, or provocation. So many words to choose but the intention is the same.
Face feeling itchy and uncomfortable. Now I wish I did leave time to shave, or somehow budget twenty or twenty-five minutes for such. But if I would’ve done that then I wouldn’t be seeing the word count of this morning. And yes, I’m giving word count attention. Why not.
Where am I driving today, with team? Hoping for SF. Berkeley’s fine, but anyone knowing me knows SF holds my heart.
2/21/19
Santa Rosa, Ca. East Wind Bakery.
Feeling the ten miles. Already finished a 4-shot latte so no caffeine ordered here. Surprised I made myself actually do it, order a bottle of water. Going into work later, close to 11. Brentwood again, and again tomorrow, day next, and next week. Which I don’t mind, at all really. Love the quiet, and frankly it’s a transition welcoming and welcomed, easing and eased after so much time in the city.
Not my first time writing here, but my first morning typed sitting like this, first time when I’ve had to go in late and decided to locate here. Can smell the pastries, croissants, muffins and cakes, espresso and coffee, and I’m tempted but won’t answer.
Last night’s talk with 100 class throwing new momentum at me and me the same with and at it. Talked about narrative, closed my section on Sedaris and began speaking on Hemingway, how he narrates. Shit, looked in bag for my copy of Feast but not there. Think I took it out last night or this morning, put on desk in home “office”.
Studying how I made this morning happen, how I woke at four and drove to gym incredibly and surprisingly awake and ready to run. Bed early, last night. Ate lite dinner on campus—ham sandwich on whole wheat, no cheese, bottled water and plain Sun Chips. And at work, light snacks throughout day and leftover quesadilla pieces. Planning on waking tomorrow to write, 4am… want to write the book on waking early, at my time at 4am but I understand and wholly, perceptively appreciate that not everyone has such as their time. Be it 5 or 6, or even 7, it’s attainable, more than attainable, with the proper preceding practice and habit. Then, maintain the habit and practice. What writing is, or what Hem’ has me seeing I need do, with discipline and general written way, principles.
2/14/19
Work early. 8am now, clocking in at 8:50 or so. Forgot headphones adaptor in car. Tempted to run out and get but why I then think, just take in the breakroom voices you hear from the nook. Work with what you have, with what you have, Mikey…. If I’m to know the Now and be freed from it, this is what I’m utilizing and implementing into the morning’s prose.
Out in the Field, today. In office all day yesterday and in knowing where I am and what I’m doing, I ignore time. The ten post-it notes to self I brought to class last night and shared, hours after lecturing on Kerouac and Madness here at Sonic, I’m in a different place. And in this different place wondering how I place the beaming benefit of the contrast, and finish my two essays. Didn’t make the deadlines I put before self. I know. Month over in two weeks, the time I have to finish my book. Different movements will manifest different Me’s. So, one different act—didn’t get the headphone piece. Usually I would have, as you might know, especially with music become more and more a demand and decided direction in my story.
Rain, light. Room now completely quiet. I’m not at work but in an office of my own, for more pulses in this page set than I can tally. The breakroom, now, has intermittent landers. People coming in for coffee, or some breakfast they pull from the fridge and pay for with that self-checkout box standing to the left of the refrigerating storage. What do I want from the day—or more immediately and tangibly what do I demand from now. The, Now. We all need to have this discussion. So I’m having it. Again. In Santa Rosa, Ca. Just 15 or so minutes from my house. Narrating to self, SELF, for sakes of more Self, more understanding and questioning where I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. No qualms or quibbles, none at all, but I maintain the conversation.
Yesterday I spoke on Madness and how madness is love and creative, how it’s its own form of freedom, accentuation, its own manuscript. Vowing to live more madly, right now in this nook. What I want is what I have, and what’s before me will supply and sequence more proliferation of ideas, get me to my travels. Why travel. Why not. Why not see the world and have sittings like this in cities like Prague, or Lisbon, Cairo, New York…. Montreal, and of course my love-city, Paris. I need it. I need more. To understand self, narrator of and to self, share my findings with other so they can see what I see, in themselves and what’s around them.
Someone walks in, laughing, obviously content where he is, “Good morning, guys.” Followed by a few more warm ha-ha’s. Today a day of the Valentines, where you’re to love everything, everyone. My babies this morning, excited to be allowed to eat a little candy their mother bought them, and have some party in class. I step back, did this morning earlier and do know, to see what’s evolving in this day of love, or cards, candy, smiles, balloons and parties. The Now, estimating it, appraising it, deconstructing it and the Now you want to have. The reality that you have that reality is a reality to love and celebrate. I start laughing to myself.
I look out the window to parking lot see a delivery truck. Think they deliver linens or supplies, or something health-oriented for businesses. Abraham, my good buddy, my workout buddy whom I astronomically admire for his early wakes and workout routine walks in. I ask him if he went this morning and he offers “Hell yeah, e’ryday!”I again smile and see a new possibility in waking early. If not to workout then to write, finally finish my essays, and if not that then make a dent, one substantial and meaningful in the book. Writing I did in field day before yesterday on tablet emailed to self, one page, possibly the first page in book, tonight edited. Or, tomorrow. We need difference, we need contrast if we’re to pass the envisioned and land at the actual.
Just saw someone peek their head in. They were gone before I could see any face or eyes or right ear. Could only see a collar and shoulder. My breakfast sandwich, gone. Will fast for day’s remainder. Write for book in lunch’s hour, wherever in the city I’ll be. Possibly the Castro, or Noe Valley. Not sure yet. And, observe. Yesterday talking to Tasha for our mid-month check-in we talked about the power of observation and how not always one needs to be directly involved, interacting, present and talking, but watching. Cataloguing observations and reacting from there, an idea I echoed and argued last night in class with the 100 group.
People see me writing, say hello, walk out class door after scanning their badge, her badge, nice young girl from Inside Sales. I observe them, they me possibly, then time persists in its insistence. Amplifying from where I am, observing the little contained mess I made on this table with the sandwich bag, napkins from Starbucks, my phone and keys. I arrange, re-arrange, make my writing space more spacious. Done. Now with the time I have left, set aims and visions for day—Writing at lunch, at desk more post-it notes to self like yester’, and notes for field today. Set an observation template, if you would. For the Sales Leads that I observe daily but as well for the day itself. Everything from words I hear, people seen in streets, street lights and stores, cars and crosswalks, what bags people carry, what sounds steps make, everything.
I’m at work early writing because that’s what I do. That’s what I have to do. That’s my story. That’s what keeps me healthy, you could say. Alive and mentally alive and living and exploring my character and the story the character’s given. Passing the visions, and about to land in rooms actual. The travel, the hotels, lobbies, airplanes, tickets, engine sounds, taxis…. The story sows a new narrative. And in that, I better know the current Now, and soon step pervasively and definitively free, freed.
thought
The day isn’t after you.
You are after it.
Like a wolf, salivating and enveloped in starvation.
Typing on laptop, but not.
By a proxy, proxy of this keyboard I plugged in, if that’s a proxy. Never much understood the proxy thing. But, my laptop is functioning. Conditionally. Sipping the Sanglier Pinot I bought the other day, my day off, but not wanting to lay it down. “I’m gonna lay it down for a while, uuuuuhhhhhh…” I hear so many say, like they know so much about wine, and and what wine wants to say and how it’s to be read, and tasted.
You know what, I much like this more, this keyboard— Have to stop addressing tech, writing about it. May have saved self something like, I don’t know… $2000, something like that. I definitely need celebrate tonight. Not running on morning but hoping I wake to write, or do something literary, writing something of some sentence sowing, that I can sell and “market” or, I don’t know….
Company event tomorrow. No idea what to expect or see. I’ll take it all as it presents itself to my story, to me, the one narrating. No music, I walk on eggshells with this goddamn device…. How many battles have I had with devices, with technology itself. And why do I keep having them. ‘Cause I put myself there, in that arena, gladiator me on the sand or whatever that terrain versus the lion with saliva portrait-style jaws, for me, the writer expecting it to work. I’ve been had, I ‘got took’ as I was once told. Yeah, so….Need another glass of that Sanglier Pinot. Need stay closer to wine and paper. The journal doesn’t need another journal plugged into it to work, that I know. Feel like a wobbling jester typing on this fucking thing. Not so much a fault, but a result. A behavioral outcome that need be studied, clinically.
1/23/19
5:35. Not 4 but still early. Last 4 days off. Will have to adjust or at the least, very least, pace self and connect to day. Meeting 2 with class, finally. Not sure how I’m going to get in 3000 words today but I’ll fit what I can into the day’s composition. Tempted to close eyes for a bit but won’t. Daddy mode nears… the struggle with both wee beats to be dressed and with teeth brushed. Nothing extraordinary. Same thing every parents goes through in the A.M. to some degree. Can hear them moving in their beds. Not moving, me. Need the meditation, the quiet. Sitting in dark and putting letters in some kind of order for day’s order has sight and thought everywhere. What to do with the day and where I’ll be in 12 hours. In classroom readying for class. Then after class. Go to bed early and hopefully wake to run or workout.
Mike sits in the room, the home office. No lights. Dark. Thinking. The day, what he has to do, first thing to do when in office’s do. How does time see him, how is he using the time he has right now, now…. what is he choosing to do and why that. This tells him something, again, again. He needs to do more. But what— Never mind that. Today everything would be for the classroom. What he’d teach. He’d be a teacher that’d be more than a simple community college teacher. He’d be something else. Him, but just in a classroom. He’d be in sync with the course outline or whatever, but only so much as he wanted. He wanted more, needed more, wanted and wanted more from his days. Anything that resembled a pattern or some repeated motion or obligation, some to-do he saw as poison. A toxin that would eat him whole and not even spit him out or digest him.
1/18/19
Mike starts with the normal morning tasks. But he sees them differently. With more love, more curiosity, more pace intention and momentum. Mike tells Self that today will be let to go as it will and Mike will step in only when demanded, and by step in he means grab the wheel and steer in direction different.
Mike gets the necessary items for day done with surprising speed. He does in fact surprise himself. He says to Self he’ll be more farouche in his creativity and composition habit for day. And all days forward going. Misses class, still can’t believe what happened on Wednesday happened. Well, he can ‘cause it was raining dozens of cats and double-dozens of dogs. He needs coffee, he needs to walk around, he needs to itemize and inventory everything, be more calculated, or calculating, tally and examine his calculations.
Weather today, not making much impact on Mike’s perspective. He writes down three aims, visions, for day– A thousand words, run tonight, shorter sentences. Quite simple, to the point, contained and contributing to Personhood and character coherence. More than self-coaching or education, instruction, or even discovery or exploration. Self-sight. Being participatory in his read of Self. Self, always needing capitalization. You need to see Self as something prominent if you’re to progress, he says to Self. Mikes smiles. He finds something. And that’s another aim… always present tense. The Now is Godly, is God, is all Gods and Goddesses.
9:04. Mike gets another cup of coffee. His first here at office but third for day, morning. The morning with everyone walking around happy it’s Friday and excited about the Quarterly meeting and assembly, food trucks later, and of course beer. Mike vows to Self that beer will not be had. Not only does he not drink beer very much anymore, the marathon was much closer than he estimated. He needs to get into runner mode, extremely extreme runner mode. Get new clothes for race, go for run tonight, at the horrible least 7 miles, 10 if he can. He tells self that he will have sparkling water, and if there’s none in the tubs of ice he’ll buy one from the market, perceive it as a running expense.
Mike remembers that he has Monday and Tuesday of next week off. He will run both days, over ten miles each run, and NO treadmill. The morning sings more to Mike, encourages him more, has him centered and centralized in his own eye and poetic abide.
The office, Sonic as a company and character and business poetic voice has him feeling not so much fearless or invincible, but directed, set, assured he will get whatever he sees. His sight is strengthened by Self, Sonic, the day, the way of ways in the morning and approaching day. Mike tells Self that he will see his aims for day, that there is no other Road. The marathon’s closer, 40 is closer, the new year’s been here for now 18 days. Storm, Mike says, “Storm loudly and make music never before put to sound, to anyone’s ears or eyes, any senses.”