End day.

Tired from walking Castro District hills, and the hills and streets above that. Up since 4. Me. Again tomorrow but for run. To write. About the early hour, 4. What it does to you, your day. How you see yourself and the things around you. And at day’s close all is angled. In moving waves with an magnetic sharpness to them.

Waiting for pizza and salad. Having beer. Wine when home. Write about wine. Anything I have and I’m running low. Time to again build cellar. Start a serious collection. Get more intimate with wine and what she wants from me, from my writing. How she wants me to put her on a page, varietal to varietal. Whatever winery I visit and whomever I talk to, whomever for me pours. Like the lady the other day, also a blogger, and quite traveled. Younger than me by I’m guessing ten years and already with what I’m writing for. What I want to live and write. Start tonight. With Cabernet. Everything she has to say. Everything with blogging started with wine, sister-in-law suggesting so many years ago that I blog about wine. I did, but didn’t. Wasn’t consistent. Tonight, take the field again. Think I have a Cab in the “cellar”. Or collection.

Walking past certain houses in SF I saw me on that balcony, looking at the buildings from a hill, my hill, writing, middle of the day and drinking an SB from Dry Creek. Dutcher Crossing or someone close. There was a taste of my nearing future, so close it’s not a future. The tired could be talking now. I need wine to write. How much longer for the pizza? Should I order a glass of SB? Pinot?

12/8/18

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Kerouac has

all interpretation and meditations leaning toward more. More exploration, more scenes, more looking around and acknowledging Now. Nothing behind, all ahead and in front of me asking to be experienced. What am I doing here, accepting any order, any regulatory, any institution. More, on that Road, the music, lights, cars, families traveling in winter or whenever. Sitting on unfamiliar boards, me…

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05:29

Not the kind of run I wanted. Don’t see morning as loss, though. In any respect or touch. I did sleep through the 04:00 bell but woke by the 04:10. Tally win. Went to gym. 5 miles and some-hundred calories which I don’t emphasize but always interesting to see what kind of number I can put to board. But why didn’t I get to 9 or 10 as I yesterday dreamt? Water…. should have had more water yesterday and last night. Then, stretching. Pain in right leg, up by hip is easy warning that stretching be more emphasized in my running life. Here I now sit, though, post run, writing about running and what I want next. Pushups throughout day. And, more or less fast till 4 when guests start showing for Thanksgiving. Hard to not be hard on self for the run, but I can’t do that. As a runner, or the type of runner I want to be going into the two marathons first half of next year, I have to analyze. Deconstruct. 1, more water. 2, more stretching. 3, more core work in abdomen, pectoral, general center and sternum. Then, don’t start so fast. I know that had something to do with my 5-mile stoppage. I need to juggle the splits and intervals, speed stretches of the run.

Waking early is the answer to so much in anyone’s story. Even if it’s to wake early and be solitude-sown with your own thoughts. Waking early, earlier, is a demand that should never be ignored. More than a mere requirement.

Part of the business of running, waking at this hour. 05:38 and the running writer is WIDE awake. Typing on phone ad I don’t want laptop button pushes to wake the babies. Sipping cold coffee from the tumbler in car. Not much left. Sip slow, I tell myself. Don’t wake kids. My thoughts now go to vision, visions attainable then dreams that are still attainable but a bit distant.

Just caught self looking at word count. Why do I do that? Self-scolding after. Don’t do that, either. I fixate and form more focus in the Now. Where I am and what I’m doing. Cognition of character. What I want. How a writer approaching 40 will attain it. IT. Same thing they wanted before seeing Road. Narrative atop narrative encouraging more writing. I want coffee but coffee itself tells me to back off. Conversation last night with student, how my words reached her, showed her some benefits to trying new practices and approaches. Making me think…. what I have to do. Doing it today. Thankful for the Now, the craft, words collection, meditation. Here in the kitchen after a run with which I’m anything but thrilled.

I did it again. Looked at the goddamn word count. Same way I kept looking at how much time I had into my run, and how many miles. Qualitative and quantitative combatting for my attention and priority placement. Just write, I tell Self as I do students in the room with me. Measuring the day, not so much planning it while sitting here, drinking whatever’s left in this tumbler. Thought, stay thinking I tell myself. Keep your cogitation in a constant constant. It takes me to papers, papers I have to write. On literature, writing, thought itself. No more numbers, I order

05:47, 8. Now what. Sit on the couch. This tall boy chair is not so accommodating with this ache I hVe in right leg by hip. Now feeling tired. Don’t think I can fall asleep with the coffee I’ve allowed prance in circulation. And I don’t want to sleep, anyway. I will write this whole bloody day. Wine at table, family, appetizers, hopefully rain.

Just realized I left a book at work, on desk in my quasi-cube. Co-worker called it “my cube” the other day and I almost said something. Hate that word, cube. Reminds me of the Napa job, at “the box”. Forget it. Or not. Contributed to story…. The book I’m thinking of, want to read a bit of it. May be able to look it up somehow online but that’s not the same thing at all. That’s not reading. It scrolling, or skimming. Not even sure if it’s either one of those, honestly.

More than writing about running, I’m noting what I notice in health’s composition. Me– music, running, reading, writing, speaking and sharing ideas (not so much “teaching”). What I’m doing now I see as healthy. Not spending these early hours, this time here (now on couch), scrolling through some media feed social or other. But, with thoughts. My thoughts. This room, this day… now.

One of the guys with whom I work in field talked to me recently about taking more time to Self, establishing more rhythm in his daily motions and walk, speech, interactions with people inside and outside company. If you wake earlier, you will be allowed this. You can see more. You feel more and understand more of Self. You not only need to bring yourself to this place, but you have to desire it honestly. Not necessarily with purposes in mind, but just desire it for YOU.

Tired. Need to go to bed earlier. And again, drink more water. What if I were to close my eyes right now– Do I deserve that? I only ran five miles. STOP SAYING THAT. I switch my speaking pace and containment. On couch, looking around room…. hear nothing. No movement upstairs, no rain, utter sound void. Sniffle, hope no one heard that. Waking early, even this exhausted or tired rattle through my arms and face, eyes, has me pushed to more narrative, prose…. my running story. Anyone’s story.

Stomach. Telling me not to ignore it. Thoughts telling me to stop thinking. To lay down, rest eyes. Or, just sit quietly. After I…. no, no coffee. Sniffle again. Think I hear one of the kids. Writing over? I think.

Run eyes, core with storm, roaring and growling, a deep torque. I move.

11/22/18

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Didn’t get to writing the essay I wanted to over lunch, but not a big concern.  Didn’t go out to eat, which was a larger forward step.  And now, in one of the writing pods, points and spots of collection for me.  Too cold and uncomfortable in the break room for any reasonable or useful writing.

Sonic teaches me to monitor my progress, to self-educate more and self-teach, or even as much I don’t particularly like the word, coach self.  Didn’t get to write 1,000 word essay on the Kerouac climbing mountain quote, but I use the time I can after eating those two microwave burritos.  Not an exciting lunch by anyone’s standards, think it’s safe to say.  Track goals, coaching of self, education and lectures, repeat repeat repeat.

Little over 30 minutes.  All to self.   In this chair.  And I’m collected and composed, in my aims.  Not so much goals.  Not a fan of that word, either.  Aims.  Visions I’m convinced will become material and real.  Comfortable in this chair.  May need more coffee when back at desk.  Not focusing on time anymore, or what I should write.  I know this all returns and re-connects in some sort of audibility to wine.  Last night’s Pinot made by parents’ neighbor, can’t recount his name, but I remember not caring for him too much so when I saw the unlabeled bottle on their counter last night before dinner, that simply read “2015 PN”, I asked what it was.  They told me, his Pinot.  I poured some, not wanting to like it but I did and Dad let me take the rest home.  Once home and after kids were put to bed a little too late, I poured a full glass.  More expression and lesson in her laps.  The wine wanted me to pay attention to the Now and not think about the work week ahead.  To stand there, sipping, thinking of music, jazz or that slow chill ambient station, the one I associate with a play list you’d hear in a wine bar.  My wine bar.  Now in this chair, taste it again.  The wine, the kitchen, the outside air horrid as it might hang.

I repeat my wine words and thoughts and wishes, yesterday in the vineyard and my new wine column ‘vino dharma’, my visit the other day to Stonestreet.  Adhered to wine, thoughts and dream about full glasses and bottles on racks, travels to any country where I can taste and write about what’s sipped or spit.  Conversations with winemakers and farmers, owners and those that just know the history of where they work to some unusual and admirably obsessive condition.

Aim, writing, till I leave at 4:30— Wine sentences.  Not so much descriptive ones, but a wine sentence, of any kind or core.  Any wine sentence, of any kind.  For what, I don’t know.  I have enough to finish my book, or any number of books as I wish with all my observations, in and out of the wine world, or its industry.  But I want to focus on wine, what people say and what I say, people I meet for the first time in a tasting room like yesterday that guy from Boston.

More stories, on their way.  20 minutes left on this “lunch”, and I’m an eager storm of saying, observations, wanting to have all wine anythings bound.  Don’t even need to sell them, just give them away.  Wait, is that a smart marketing plan?  Do I need a marketing plan, or some sort of sales map?  Another aim, perhaps.  That.

11/19/18

mikemadigan1 Comment

Laptop again giving me grief.

So I open the bottle of Monterey Grenache I bought at Bottle Barn a bit ago. Not letting it sour or soil the soul of this sequence of time I have to Self. First sip, and I’m spoken to by subtlety’s illustrative principles.

It’s still not speaking to me, doing what it’s supposed to do. This it. An it. Not capitalizing, not surrounding in any quote marks, even the singular. It’s a thing. A monster. A devil. Guess I have to buy a new laptop.

mikemadigan1 Comment