me, knowledge need, pages and pages
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.
There is no happenstance in patterns.
In YOUR patterns.
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
Sonoma County. A cup of coffee, quiet house finally, and thinking about where I live and all the time I put into the wine industry. What did it do for me if anything well of course it did something. What. What precisely. To write about wine. To never again set foot in a tasting room on anyone’s clock but my own. Transported last night by that Pinot, sitting on the wood floor of this Autumn Walk home, the floor bothering me but me sipping through it and writing through it, seeing my book of some sort of shape being finalized, here and there and taking me from here to there.
And of course it comes on, “In A Sentimental Mood”. Arguably my one Coltrane track that speaks to me like no wine or tasting room, not even the vineyard walks, did, do. Seeing me in the late afternoon, on my deck, looking out at my vineyard. Kids in house waiting for dinner. There are wines that do that, sometimes. Last night was one. The Bernardus. A Pinot. 2014. A vintage I’ve always thought was overlooked, or underestimated, underrated. I just thought, she fly me somewhere. Back to Burgundy or to some part of a Carmel or Monterey beach. I should be on a run right now but I couldn’t dismiss what me called, put me in this seat, instructed me to further be instructed and mentored by the Pinot’s physiology and psychology. She spoke with temperament and tenacity. She put me on a Road back to Monterey, back to the classroom. Yes I write about wine but more what wine embodies and connotes more than denoted. The inference of a Pinot bottle like that, to be in your current clock and time on clock like you’ve never before practiced.
Out of wine’s industry and in another business, one that allows and invokes more wine writing from me. Wine was the institution, the university if you will, its industry and all the tasting rooms over the years that is, and now I’m here. Helping build a business and thinking of a vineyard, my vineyard, the one I’ll soon see after achievements or certain goals that become ribbons or laurels. Laureling myself into new wined pages, here in the kitchen, in the morning, seeing and understanding toward what I’m headed. That Pinot did this, whirled and wove certain spells around me which I have no intention of dismissing. Keep me trapped, I beg the notes I remember…. Jazzy cinnamon lanes doused in smiling cherry cirrus, thin but not dismissible.
In Sonoma County, writing about another county and one of its AVA’s, just dreaming and planning, writing way there. And I ask myself, “What exactly do I want from wine, wine’s character aggregate and dialect. I don’t know if I know, yet. That’s what I love. That’s what wine encircles ideologically to me, for me. Just seeing where the Road goes, where your narrative’s to be thrown. So many want you to know that they know so much about wine and wine areas, growing regions, how the industry works and their story in the business…. okay, but then what. Why not be more professing of exploratory urge rather than advertising your fabricated mastery? Try going from there to here, where you’re just on your Road, seeing, perceiving, tasting, dreaming, writing and re-writing.
10/14/18
Just sipping some Monterey Pinot, wishing I’d de facto be sipping it in Monterey. But I’m here right where I need be. Babies upstairs in their dreams. Me with glass left, and thinking about what the wine announces to me. She’s exuberant, evasive and pensive in the sip contact but when glass is down I’m left reciting something to self with which I’m unfamiliar. About wine and my eventual vineyard, Jack and Emma laboring, assisting, with block inspections and sorting, even olfactory consideration when in lab. I look down at the glass and prolong the next kiss. I seek to wait, fancifully I want her to wait. Tonight wine principally and this writer have a discussion about us… our past and future the constant current of thoughtful and philosophy currency with me on this wood plank ground. Wine and I will ne’er be chasm’d, or sent to separate sets. We’re coherently coded and with each other arrested. Effusive ebbs in our sittings, walking around juxtaposed enclaves, France and San Francisco, somewhere in Mendocino, Napa, Santa Barbara, Monterey. This Pinot has me on the beach, there with wife when we’d visit her parents when they there lived. Monterey has always riles and magnified Pinot Noir for me in ways my county cant. Not sure why, if its the vocal raspberry and cherry painting or the terrestrial spice equation. I don’t know. I’m not trying to know. I’m caught and I’m smitten, I’m stolen from where I am on this study floor.
She reminds me to stay in wine’s page and paragraph cascade. I would never use scores, I will never write those flabby flop-drop reviews the “experts” or wine “writers” cook in popular pubs. I’m here, with her, this Pinot as she sways and plays in her versified daze, having me in my analytically excessive maze. This is me, what I write, how I write. Wines like this do just this to me, and I go to sleep seeing my vineyard and the Madigan babies doing something out there, either hounding the rabbits or counting rocks, vines, or looking up at birds above certain clone blocks.
I’m back in Monterey, on sand, sipping this and scribbling something either significant or just for the moment itself and that’s just what wine should be each occasion, each breath and turn of head and looking at rocks, the seals on the Monterey docks.
The wine now mollifies, has an oceanic framing to its recital and prophesying, perambulation. Holding the glass to nose and typing with one hand, right, she instructs me to do just this THIS, for relationship’s sake, for understanding composition. Not just the wine but writing itself. Wine is writing. I’m. Not just writing wine or “about” wine but pushing these keys for the writing act itself. Composition. A 1A class. In seat and reading each line for its meteoric assembly and accentuation. I’m caught, newly coded, shown IT. What all this around is for, and why I’m here, doing what I’m doing with wine and literature…. Exacted in newly vinified habit. Monterey, her Pinot Noir rows, me, words, thoughts, sights of years from now, and now. My newly set Now. Another moving of puddle, she says more, now singing. Rocks and sand, sea Highway 1, Carmel, the tasting room, the first time I went to Bernardus.
Did first hold right before five. After that, push-ups and planks. Some sit-ups. Not really counting, just wanting to keep motion continuous. Set stop watch, not a countdown. Just keep the motion motioned, what I’m telling self. 05:12.
Conscious of the noise and mood of the morning. Everything I do on this hardwood or just wood floor make a sound, loud thin and audible. Like an airy crack, or crackle. Wife leaves for her workout offsite. I start coffee. Vowing tomorrow morning with the day off I’ll go to gym at 4-something. Not only enhance the shape I’m in, but start a new way, new story. Yes another promise, more so though a plan than remark avowing anything.
Can already feel the little I’ve done. In legs from hold, abdomen from pushups just a moment ago tallying 100, and arms from planks and pushups. Time for coffee.
Didn’t post thousand words from last night before class. Will today from whatever coffee spot I can find in the Sunset. Sight 1 for day is that, coffee and composition in the City. Second, hit a few doors with the reps. Then, a poem while walking whatever avenue we’re on. One of the views yesterday from 28th and something, I just looked out at the ocean like I saw something or someone in it. The air’s olfactory makeup told me to keep walking and keep watching. Feeling some goal or aim, some aspiration or creative desire sprint from San Francisco, for me. And if it weren’t for Sonic I wouldn’t even be there having these observations and reflections.
05:31. Waking this early, a badge of sorts. Hear son move around in his bed, and if he wakes early and breaks this sitting, I don’t mind. It’s part of the story. Part of the story but the whole of who I am– writing daddy getting in whatever time I can to write. At work at my desk between little addresses of some spreadsheet, or organizing, or prepping for some meeting. The subject is me. The story, each page, and I never need be sorry.
The workout, over. Me on couch in qualified dark, fan light overhead on my dim setting so I can have some isolator writer mood in here. I keep forgetting it’s harvest right now, and so many of my vino people are out there, right now, pulling clusters from rows and into bins, into a gondola pulled by tractor, a driver up early and away from his family, doing what he needs to them feed.
05:36. I feel like one of them, right now. One of the early. One of the characters they defies law, the expected, that doesn’t sleep in. They can’t. Their minds won’t let them. Mine won’t let me. At all. This morning I’m alive with Sonic and supersonic thoughts of speaking, words, fearlessly sharing ideas from one city to next on work, business, writing everything down and so many say that and never do and if they did, my god, it would not only help what they do but wildly and poetically shape their business and their place and placement in it.
Could go back to bed even if a writer wanted to. Hell, even if my body and functioning orders em to. My thinking’s of a beatific defiance this morning, and only accepting sentences. As a workplace, Sonic tells you to be more of you, it challenges me and how the wine industry never could– Telling me to not only keep doing what I’m doing, but intensify. AMPLIFY. Diversify. Play with form as you do in poetry, poet. And more. More.
05:41. I ask myself where the time went and nowhere, nowhere. It’s still very much presented and around me, present. Gifting me with this couch and all the musing I need for a day in the city. Will I wake as early tomorrow, or early as I have written… I have to. I know how I’ll feel if I don’t. I know my mood if I won’t. Set alarm, every movement today for tomorrow’s early steps and words, lines, however many miles I run on tread or however many reps I finish. Not waking early, and I’m citing hours like this, is in no way literary. Writers don’t sleep in. We can’t sleep, for the most part. We deplore rest, and idleness. Just laying in bed and scrolling, sitting on couch watching a show, or just hanging like a coat from some hook, some executed prisoner from a tight meanly knotted and enclosing circle.
05:47. I love this. I do. I don’t have to think about what to write. It’s right in front of me, blatantly. No sun or suggestion of it through the glass door to right. This is true morning to me. When the sun steps and straight lay stands communicating with the world, its day. It’s started. The day is off and you better find a way to catch it as right now you’re surely not ahead if you haven’t been up. I’m here, knowing I’m ahead of the day. Time again, my topic. Twelve hours from now, I could very well be in traffic. On 101 somewhere. San Rafael, the Novato narrows, Petaluma. Somewhere. I have twelve hours to do something to my story… I do it. Start the timer. 12 hours. Get to work and collect in writing for a bit, then attack tasks. Reps get in before ten, so we head out early. Quick, this Friday. My writing will equal, rival, buzz by pacing.
Son definitely awake. 05:52. I could get a stet in day, again. Teeth and shower, dress, pack, take stuff out of bag as to bring laptop for written lunch and be lighter while hiking the SF streets. Keep the motion motioned. To halt is to fall. And I can’t. Not this close to 40.
Diet for day… Coffee, only healthy snacks, no full meals till dinner, and then do note to lightly eat. Speaking of my beloved coffee life… I sip…
10/5/18
Next day, the second where I feel like I’m on a rocket ship, just ascending and appreciating altitude. Third day of victory, of production, producing, feeling my life and creative tide just going and rising and taking me with it. On lunch now, peanuts and a ginger ale I bought from shop. Stomach still a bit uneasy from that vegetarian burrito, yesterday. Work today is more than enlivening and exhilarating. I did feel this a couple times in the wine industry, but with no consistency. Can’t remember the last time at Roth I had three consecutive days of pure life and topic ownership. My story becomes its own storm, now. Its own Now. In this large warehouse-like quarter with Sonic everything all around me and everything that Sonic embodies, from the communicative facet to people just visibly enjoying what they do. I’m definitely space-bound. My work is no longer work but something that’s redefined and redrawn and re-purposed my literary purpose.
Walking someone through the office and into this break arena earlier, I could see the amazement and disbelief in her facial shape. How the company encourages its people, how the “employees” are more so investors and partners, family members to the immediate and distant motions. All motions overlap and intermingle, creating a creative concurrency. Their own currency to be exchanged and interchanged… I notice my own face change shape, sitting here. Taking another sip, not needing any real lunch but just the snack I have and everything on either side— left and right, 12 and 6. All these corners and visuals decide on magnifying my manuscript’s physiology, writing new one for this writer who anymore writes about work as he’s embedded and invested in work that binds to his moral and ethic etch.
I’m horribly saddened, honestly, when I hear of people going to places they hate for work. Of course someone could ask, “Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Yes, an easy question to ask, but not so easy to answer or attach any formula. It’s not that they do anything to themselves, but haven’t found their pages, haven’t landed in their story. What I recognize, appreciate and further analyze in my sitting here is that only now do I see. Did I find not only a home, but a topic. A book, and another one. Me, a writer, literary guy, beatnik from the wine industry, now more fiery and eager and moved to words. AT A TECH COMPANY. But this isn’t some simple tech company, or start-up or wanna-be startup village. This, here, the creative is basal, inherent. Expected. Sonic, like a university hopping around in exponent climates. Here, you’ll hear people say how they write everything down. You see other writers here, other thinkers, people seeking to enjoy where they work— More than just “enjoy” it. Live it. Be it. The IT, to it all. What they do, yes, but more who they are. That’ how I see myself.
My story just arrived. At 39. Late? No. Lovely timing. If anything, it’s more than punctual and optimal, just before 40. This place has me forgetting I’m 39, if you should know, and you should know if I’m with your attention. I just fixate on the day, whatever project to which I tend. The company’s name, Sonic, denoting and connoting sound, and speed, something audible, and then I think of course of music and being a literary bloke hear Kerouac reminding me that the only truth is music. Here, in the break room and in the office proper, between enclaves and hamlets of encouragingly and electric and eclectically adorned cubes and desk, you hear it. See, feel, then a sixth and eighth sense. Someone you acknowledge or you think you do adequately but only know you’re there, in it all.
New writer, new vision. New understanding and embrace of purpose. I am writing a book, about this place. More than a place but a dimension, a warp of time, timing. Forgot about the ginger ale, peanuts. Hearing co-workers talk of their projects and ideas while on lunch. They don’t talk about any TV show, who’s dating who, where they’re going this weekend. But work. WORK. It’s not work. It’s more than passion. It’s creative escalation and an impassioned saddle of axioms and projects. Seeing each day as its own book, not just a chapter. This is not a new chapter in my life but a new life, a new armada of books I’m about to write. This day— what would it be about? Learning, something new. Spreadsheet. Yes, me doing spreadsheets. I was deathly afraid of them, before coming here, and up until yesterday still quite unnerved at the thought of toying with rows, columns, cells, formulae. No longer, though. My self-certain, assurance and general fortitude eclipse any anxiety. Moving at a speed I’d deem supersonic, frankly. And I don’t see myself working, I don’t. I see the growth and the metaphysical and ontological model re-write itself over and over, from this company’s thesis. New song, everyday. New chords. New opus offerings and new interpretations of everything around me. And, again, spreadsheets are part of this paragraph, part of this elasticized praise for where I now sit, in this lunching province.
Stomach, solved. Today did so. Cured me of whatever that restaurants plate did. And I forget it, universally. I’m made more healthy and assembled as a writer in tech’s clef and step. Anything past workplaces instilled, left, far in days behind me. Today’s book, then tomorrow’s, where I’ll be at Month 6, and yes I have a specific aim and tangible destination for such. Never did that with wine’s world. I didn’t need to, as no such thought was ever invited or encouraged. The culture of not only writing and taking notes here, but education both from self but colleagues makes me feel like I’ve discovered some cryptozoological wonder, asking myself What is THIS? and Where am I? Imagine that, being not merely in love with where you are, what you do, where one works, but seeing yourself as healthier, happier, more composed as an immediate consequence.
10/3/18
forwards but my own beat and sight.
Storms of it.
In your own pages.
Late, 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