Blazing through tasks like there’s nothing in front of me.

11:18.  Just finished delivering pieces of candy throughout the office. Felt good to spread love and poz vibez.  Today has been a loving one, one educating and freeing.  Going to class tonight eager and ready to make it everything I want.  Something for me.  Something to know more about my Now and to be FREED.

 

11:55.  Feel like I get it.  All of it.  Never felt this before, ever.  More than simple empowerment, or some freedom sentiment or sense.  But… like… I understand.  I see Self, in the Now, I am Freed and freeing more of my character and story.

12:07.  Brought lunch, the pieces of quesadilla but somehow tempted to eat out. No, I tell myself.  Go to the café and write, then heat quesa’ when back.  Eat at desk while working.  Budget still not done, but did pay off credit card a bit more.  No word from any of the wineries I contacted.  I’m done.  I’m officially retiring from wine.  Don’t even think I want the wine shop, anymore.  Maybe have my own label like Calluna, maybe, but even that I don’t know.

So full of thought, in this breath.  Again, like I get it all.  I understand where I am and why I’m doing what I’m doing.  Madness… Freedom… Individualism.  I should get out of the office.  Will.  No caffeine, no soft drinks.  Water.  Hopefully they have bubbly water.  Pretty sure they do, Pellegrino or some similar type.

12:54.  Resolving to stay here, go to breakroom, nook if I can, and write.  For tonight’s class, loving shoves for self to run tomorrow morning, early.

No more thinking.  About money or spending a couple bucks to get a sparkling water with the ques’.  Who cares.  Next week will be tight, but only from making progress.  Last night, last dinner out in some time, do note.  Next thought… to work, how to spend day’s remainder.  How….  See?  There I am, thinking again.

 

1:42.  At desk.  19 minutes left on lunch.  Snacking on trailmix.  Bought cherry sparkling.  Almost finished.  May get another.  Everything today for tomorrow’s early run.  Running on treadmill, hoping for 7-9 miles.  I’d be happy with that.  Pretending like I’m getting back into running all over again.  Revisiting and reassessing my reality as a runner.

Phone screening at 2:30.  May want to get in a walk.  Should I do that now?  Overthinking, goddamn you.  Water, notes, snacks, voices, voicemails, phones, discussions on what to do next.  The office is exceptionally alive today.  I mimic, I study, I love it all.  Each ingredient and inclination, ebb and view.  This place is beyond study-worthy, past useful.  This is IT.  The IT of it all.  My IT.  IT provides insight and understanding that nothing else could, or would ever hope that I had from being there.  The other places simply didn’t invest in me or those around me.

14 minutes left.  Water.  Gum.  On the menu.  Not that I’m trying to diet or necessarily eat less, but just control what’s contacted.

Two people walk into the zen den.  I feel defensive, like it’s my space and room and terrain being invaded.  Silly, but just what I feel alive as I am today.

 

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2/20/19

Two minutes past when I wanted to be writing.  Yesterday in Brentwood, having to walk about two miles to my car, thinking and taking pictures, enjoying the sun and how it hit those hills.  The drive back, music and thoughts of vocational banality, and now, finally, I experience no such thing.  I do credit Sonic but as well I credit the way I approach what I do here, my perspective as soon as I sit down at the desk and tackle tasks.  Obsequious this morning and much lately especially in Brentwood yesterday, walking with the Reps and one Lead down streets and hearing what people had to say about their current internet and how long they’ve lived there, their homes….  I took note of architecture and the front doors, how many of them were in what was a mock-bell tower.  All that was missing was the bell.  Reminded me of sister’s winery and how at the hour the bell sounds, often starting or plainly scaring anyone in the tower right at that sound-time.

8:23. The nook, mine.  All mine.  At least for the next 30 minutes.  Class tonight.  Still no sections for Fall.  That could change, but in no way do I hold my breath.  In.  NO.  Way.

Thinking at lunch I’ll go to that café, whatever it’s called just down Sebastopol.  Get some word done for tonight’s class.  Just checked email, nothing from students, or nothing important anyway and no notice of classes for Fall.  Letting it go.  Completely.  Hear someone walk into the breakroom.  Tempted to see who but I resist.  Putting self in classroom, taking notes, student and instructor.  Have ideas pummeling me from all angles and my voltage increases and refuses to cease in any regard.  Learning that I’ll always be learning, about how to approach time for lunch to what I do first thing in the morning, to notes I notes to self and for more strengthened self, to questions.  More questions, capturing observations and studying them for the day and how it presents itself to me.

Wipe nose.  Better not be getting a cold, what little Emma has.  Coffee still hot.  Have to use restroom but won’t.  Write, write more… start writing talk for 3/9.  More or less know what I’m going to talk about.  Freedom, how individuality muffles the vocational banality, and how we decide to be free.  We decide to live more jazz-like, musically and poetically.  We allow walls and ceilings to dictate sight.  Or, we don’t.  Or, we just don’t believe in them.  We express and live, and speak, wildly.  Create from such practice and habit, maintain in that manuscript.

8:37.  Rise time will be at 8:50.  Now what, I think to self.  Bottledaux, the name of the blog.  My blog, yes, but just a blog.  This morning and just now I said to self, “Pouring it all out.” We all should.  We should all be our own “platform”, or gate, or door, or bridge.  We decide the composition of the bridge convoying us from one scene to another.  But, how do we want to see ourselves?  All that matters, all mattering, ever.  This is the thesis to bottledaux, I’m understanding.  How do you want to see yourself… All mattering, ever.  YES.  Now, typing, sipping coffee when I can before diving into a list of tasks for day and enjoying my Literary lunch.

 

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In car. Lunch.

Ate what I bought at Sonic’s in-house market. Sandwich, Cliff Bar, sparkling water, with the peanuts I had in desk drawer as a little side something. About 30 minutes left. In car, hear wind and people talking on 26th Street or behind me somewhere on Shotwell. Not sure what part of the city this is but it’s interesting. Rained as soon as I exited vehicle right when I arrived and now skies, blue with thin and depleted clouds.

Will leave Field around 4:30. May get out in a bit and walk. More steps. 14 hour fast turned into a 16 hour one— Actually 16 hours, 9 minutes, 23 seconds. Stopped timer on phone after first bunch of peanuts were bit. Only inconsistencies are this morning’s latte which I excuse and an almond I accidentally ate shortly after while grabbing the small pack of almonds from desk. Ate one to see if it was stale or odd. While chewing, I realized what I was doing, kept going in jaw interval, and continued with fast. These fasts are teaching me not only about discipline and self, vision and singularity, but thought itself. Having a thought be actual and not just conceptual, hypothetical, imagined.

Man behind me a bit and to the side, speaking loudly in Spanish to someone over phone. Part of me wants to get out and see him while the writer-Me orders holding position. And I do. Driver’s seat of this company car. Dried skins from peanuts, sandwich container on floor. Will clean when I get back.

Different musics on the drive down. Thinking of everything from the previous day, and how much of it I can write, or could write from memory. Learning I can do so much more aptly and genuinely better than I thought. Learning I don’t always need be writing. That walking on these SF streets and living is writing. Have always known that and been aware of such approach to writing life, but now I feel and self-active I’m thought in ways I never have.

How much time left now. Don’t care. See the man on his phone, after he walked to the corner of 26th and Shot’. Can see his face. Back to me, and wearing hood.

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2/11/19

Up from nap.  Tasting earlier at J, then KIN lunch.  Cancelled class for night.  Angry no sections in Fall for me but utterly elated.  So why in this mood.  Don’t know.  Now hot coffee.  Needed.  What to do for night, spend time with babies.  Trying to add paying projects, from wine to teaching…  Going to work late, tonight.  Committed to.

Thoughts go in one direction, then another.  Need to train them to be on singular path, singular straight, in singular yet compounding and varying effort.  Luckily Sonic encourages someone like me.  Tomorrow, heading into day like a bull, a hungry and tireless bull.  Wake early with wife as she will for her morning workout class.  The coffee pulls me from this cloud – Interrupted.  Man knocks on door I go to door somewhat agitated and defensive.  He sells cleaning services of rugs, carpets, interiors, something.  I take his car but by my disposition make it clear I’m not interested in services nor conversation.  He points out there’s a Hello Fresh on our stoop or patio I say thank you and hollowly thank him for coming by, pick up the Fresh box then return inside.  Put everything in fridge then back to types, coffee.

Wife leaves to get babies and I stay behind to plot, plot something.  What I don’t know.  Just keep thoughts in tow.  Like I wrote this morning being taught by the day and all decisions, everything around me.  Put on a beat, start writing, more, not hearing from certain contacts has me feeling nothing.  I need look and converse inwardly for more flight, more wholeness, completed character and beat.  MY beat now, NOW, is of harmonizes garrulousness. Each figment and frame around me begging to be written, put to page and sown to prose.  I feel stalled, not so much confused.  I solve the stall by just moving, just typing, inhaling the rest of the medium roast, or most of it.  Travel, right there, waiting for me.  The classes I’m to teach and the vehicles I’ll be in—planes, rented cars, buses, boats, ferries.  Everything is right there, here ahead of me.  Like Sal, Dean, Plath and all her aims and dreams poem’d and prose’d.  We think too much, far too much, rather than just rolling and being redolent in what’s already present, creating from there.

No new cup.  I pull a copy of Road from my home office, an office which has decided to form itself more as a landing for the babies and their toys, drawings and raincoats rather than a writer’s corner, the initial intention.  I start reading from a random spot, where Mary has an idea about hitchhiking.  I see Mike Madigan as one now hitchhiking, destiny’s the driver, or maybe Mike is the driver.  Either way, I’m going where the going’s going.  Writing everything, everything… tomorrow in the office, even before I get there, write the entire day.  What I want, what I want it to contribute to.. each thought scribbled then later spoken.  Known to self and the world I’m in, each character around me.  I’m Dean’s whim and Sal’s written method.

The man who knocked on the door in sales mode, much older than me.  I pity him then with anxiety and an overtaking eagerness seek to mimic him.  Selling, unafraid, just getting out there like the Field Sales Team I work with, doing what you have to for realities of building business.  Maintaining that business.  You ask yourself, at some point, some point—“What do I want to do?” I find myself there, again.  I’m not leaving Sonic, no way.  But there is more I want, as you know.  Work, what work should do, and Sonic has taught me that it should be an invitation to know Self more intimately, to understand what drives and decides your character.

5:07 and I write freely, refusing to be webbed in meditation and excess contemplation of character essence and my narrative.  Just write to this current beat, and see what self sees.  I know where I’m going, I see the hotel rooms, the views, me waking early and writing in the lobbies—what I want for work.  So I go get it.  My wine business….  Little of the blush I opened last night.  Decide on that rather than more coffee.  Want to again narrate wine as it’s a literary and beatific centricity essential to my functionality.  It’s natural for me, it’s ME—rhythmic and redolent, ready with song and eagerness.  Thoughts over more thoughts, the thought of me doing something for the rest of my life—one singular thing, act, practice and maintained habit.  Wine poured, and I see my shop, store, whatever you want it called.  I play with ideas of me showing earlier and writing from a desk before having to take inventory and do what’s not entirely the most enjoyable or fun facets of being a business owner.  New experiences, new characters, voices, sights, sight as imperative determiner.

First sip and my memory tussles with me.  The race on Saturday.  Registering for marathon and only completing half.  The rain that fell in the last mile ordered me to accept the narrative shift.  To not dismay or despair, but to more joyously blare and what I did run.  Up the rocks and steps, the inclines that were more than inclines but more geographic intentionality to challenge me.  When across the finish line, or not-so-finished line, I was given a medal of fake metal and went to tent for shelter and otherwise unappealing snacks.  Then had a beer.  Then just looked around me, thinking of what other shored there are on the planet.  What else I haven’t seen.  Where else can I write–  Interrupted again, now by former student seeking essay advice.  The Now of me orders more order.  To work.  Work more for ME, for my family. To speak and speak with fearless vessel and flight.  Rhythm, beat, beats, music.  I remove myself from my stall.  I’m on my Road, arguing from each thought.  Today, while tasting through those wines in the J Lounge with wife, I saw everything.  Felt everything.  This is more than Philosophy, and more than academics, more than life.  But, thought.  All thoughts.  Living in and from each.

 

Self Note:  Be appreciative of the Now—It gifts you with reason and questions, more Road and sequence than most estimate.  Love it all, write it all, see more Self in all beats.

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2/10/19

Morning following morning of marathon that was only a half for my, my thoughts are on and in literature, writing, teaching self and being taught from experience.  I don’t see yesterday as a victory or a defeat, but a prime lesson.  Instruction on everything.

Morning with family.  Kids on couch with their mama, my over here at kitchen island, writing, in Kerouac’s novel, wanting more of what Sal did, what Dean did and thought he did.  In travel, in wine, in music.  The wine I had last night, bought with son at store.  Jack telling me we need to buy some wine so can “do some business” as he put it.  Everything I need for my Road, for my travels, here.

 

Mike thinks about his day off, what he wants from it, how to approach it.  Thoughts, everything in thought, what’s in his thinking and the ideas that pass that he won’t remember, that he won’t write down.  Mike Madigan, analyzing himself and what he does.  Wanting to feel what Sal and Dean did in the car, at the jazz clubs, at all the unexpected locations with new people they’ve only known for so long.  The reason and reasoning, thought and philosophy to everything from people at a house to beer and tacos, to the sound of cars being parked in a lot, crazily.

Mike forgot about Sausalito, about the marathon, about running altogether.  He thought about wine, again about self-publishing and wine, what to do from there.  New ways of approaching wine and teaching, books… Sedaris’ essays, Plath’s poems, Kerouac’s novel, Hughes and all his pieces.  Mike would re-read Road, note every sentence, including the first where the narrator lets readers know this is about him, Dean, how he felt right when he met Dean then onward into his life.  Mike has a son, daughter, since knowing them he sees the world with more reverence and hesitation—How does he live every moment as deeply as he can?  Why does he spend so much time thinking and overthinking rather than writing, living?  He didn’t have an answer.  Not this morning.  He wouldn’t.  He didn’t need one.  All he needs is them.  Those two.  Their mother.  The house.  Writing father seeking more reason and reasoning in everything, all that he does and what’s around him in his current scene and current.

Thought—everything in the appreciation of Now.

Living is literature, he finds.  He’s always know this and Mike has always seen wine as more a literary presence than some chemical or agro result.  Mike returns to wine, for this thought.  Sitting at the kitchen counter and looking over at the bottle of Grgich Merlot, ’14, that last night he explored and let speak to him.  He refused to let wine leave him, or him leave wine.  He’d write each sip, even if twelve essays or pieces or sketches came from the same bottle.  Wasn’t that the point?  Each sip, different.  Each second there is more in the jazz of what you poured.  Maybe this is the business little Kerouac was talking about, yesterday in the Oliver’s wine isle.

Wine speaks to Mike in a way it hasn’t, ever.  She tells him to move, move quicker.  Edit nothing.  Just express.  Self and the Now, thought and reasoning in what you sip, the appreciation of the Now… no going back, now.  The story is set.  Now he writes.. Several books.  With wine.  A marathon of book output, then another, then a marathon of written treks in the vineyard rows.  He sees it.  All.  All sips and steps.

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Woke with morning

with definite and defined mood. Like I’m bored or something– no, like he scene needs changing. That I should write a novel, write something to get me on the road. Guess I shouldn’t be writing when in a mood or funk or what.

In line at Starbucks, long line which only antagonizes it. I breathe, order my latter… some loud blender noise, lady asking me if I’m waiting to order or for order, something she could have figured out on her own. I need to sit. I need music. Need the caffeine and quiet, my own seat. No more crowd.

Will more than likely be a long wait. Adding to it. I don’t allow the addition. Writing through and past it… people around me corralling themselves to their orders, mobile and in-house.

 

In my writing nook in the office.  So much more me with this room, contrasted to the loud and crowded, shove den of Starbucks up the street.  Feel like I can’t write this morning.  Nothing.  Not a note, not a paragraph or even my daily you-sentence.  What now, what now… book due at Month’s end.  Quiet in here, jazz in ears.  Just what I need, but I need travel, more than the coffee, more than any wine.  Travel.  Seeing.  Living.  I’m panicking, panicked.  How do I write. I literally just asked myself that.  Just write.  Do what you tell the students to.  The students, more writers than I am this morning but I can change that and this mood and the plainness and repetition of days.  Plan.  Won’t write it.  At least not immediately.  Soon.  Don’t stall.  Not at all.  Not a squandered second.  Write everything.  I’m coming out of it.  Don’t overthink and don’t think, as Mom advised use what’s around you.  What you’re doing.  Driving to Berkeley again today.  Yesterday with the Richmond-San Rafael bridge out having to go through Vallejo then down 80 and my navigation taking me on some not-so-scenic way.

Need to call about Fall class, if they have one for me.  Rather hoping they don’t, if you must note and record what you can.  The classes at the JC now begin to run together, blend like dumped paint down a parking lot drain.  Nothing hits me, anymore.  And when students offer attitude, I get bored with it whereas before I was I guess you could say a bit amused, but ended it with one sentence with not only put me in confident posture, but assured me I was deserving somewhat of what I’m doing.  Now, I’m passionate, and that’s it.  No interest in grading, no interest in classroom management, only in the lectures I offer.  The ideas.  The thoughts on writing and what we’re reading, now Sedaris, and journal keeping and contribution.

8:28.  No class available, Fall.  Can’t say I’m sad or even lowered by the reality.  In fact, this mood, IT, is damaged.  It shifts in its advance, away from me. It sees me getting more vocal, more entrenched and trenchant in my day, what I’m doing in this office, with this blog and the book I’ll have finished by 2/28.  Short month.  Short life.  The marathon, already here.  How do I feel, honestly.  A little nervous but FOUR HOURS to myself, to run, be by myself, write in head, see the ocean, be in the immediacy of other runners, only glazes me in affirmation and a creative functionality I’ve not known, ever.  So tomorrow, waking at 5, sleeping in running gear hoping such will put this writer in more character to finish with a time I’m not ashamed of.  In fact, that I’m eager to write about.  26.2 miles…. Start slow, feel and get sense of morning, surface, air, people around me, me in the day itself.  I’m assembling, re-writing morning and me in it.  No more of that mood in the coffee line.  I have to stop with that coffee stop on Stony Point.  Even if I were to have had cup in hand sooner, the mood would be there as there was no place to write and that same clown with the long white cord stretching across the floor to his unattended laptop while he talks to the oddball in the fedora by the window… not my routine.  Not anymore.  Not attempting to have that be in my morning.

8:34.  Lesson for this morrow…. Write through it, out of it.  If something’s taken away, add something, yourself.  I will.  My courses, my books, everything.  I will hit 3000 words today.  I need it.  More than need it.  My body and character, here in page placement demands it.  Not so much philosophy or psychology, but the Now-ness of what’s here, now.  How did I get here, how am I in a position to ask for classes to teach, hoping there’s one FOR me to teach.  You can chance whatever you want, I’m seeing and I know I’ve written before.

 

Mike sees the morning differently, with stark and encouraging contrast, than he did just an hour maybe less, earlier.  He works on his essays and articles, notes, some projects formal and others not.  He re-writes himself as a writer.  Not concerned with any rules or overuse of “I”.  Nothing.  Today, that day he’d hoped for, where a formula would be disclosed, where a key would be handed to him and if not a key a book, blank, all pages for him to fill.  A new table, new lot, new connection to self and what’s meant.

8:41.  He’s more than eager for the day to land, approach and antagonize him.  He gives himself to the page, solely the pages in front of him.  Sip latte, need new topic, a novel, an essay, something.  He just keeps writing, he can figure all that out later, he reasons.

Mike relishes and celebrates in and from the singularity.  Of where he is, in the office, in that nook in the breakroom which always has seen his own.  His office, if he couldn’t yet have his own office.  He moves money from one account to another, for his office.  How much is rent, in Healdsburg.  Probably astronomical.  He’d put money away, anyway.  Mike could see the table where he’d write, the door, the books on shelf, then the travel, speaking at campuses about writing and if you want to teach don’t be dependent on the institutions.  They depend on adjuncts, as long as they know they can depend on them.  The need is mirroring, but not.  If you don’t have a class, it’s no pain to them.  If they don’t have an adjunct to fill a class, they have to move.  They have to maneuver.  They have to pain.  Mike’s temperament again leaps with more luminosity.

 

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2/3/19

Deciding not to replace laptop, but use as I am now with external keyboard.  Will get own keyboard, own mouse, maybe a mousepad.  Little Kerouac not sure what he wants to do, stressed about the options, not wanting to go roller skating or go to kids’ museum, nor hang out with a friend… he’s restless, anxious, for reason in an ebb of indecision and defeatism.  Not much I can do but listen, don’t indulge nor provoke.  My own errands, soon.  Right now, the laptop works, with these external bits.  Strange.  I move on.  Don’t obsess, don’t fixate or stress over the actuality that is, here with this odd, outdated clunky keyboard.

Need my own office.  Will have by year’s end.  Well as zero debt.  Getting close with the latter.  Have to build project list for day, year, right now.

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2/3/19

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Haven’t been writing as much.  Blaming it on this laptop, the one wife brought home from her school.  Not used to its feel, the keys’ sounds.  Easy excuse, easy scape’.  Coffee and kids, Super Bowl Sunday, hoping to run as I did yesterday on treadmill putting up over 7.5 miles.  Marathon this Saturday.  Still don’t have motel booked.  Jury duty possibly tomorrow, this week.  Notice to left, going online to see if I have to “serve” or “perform” my “civic duty”.  Never understood that, still don’t.

Eased day, today.  Should have woken earlier, but that’s my consistent joke, isn’t it?

Don’t have to call in and check till tomorrow, I guess, around 4 or 5 or something.  After 5 it said.  Coffee, need more.  Jack lets out obnoxious stretch with roaring sound either to get my attention or provoke me.  I keep typing, learning poise and composition.  Happiness in what I do, where I am.  Not wishing for anything.  Class tomorrow, grade papers somehow—Had dream last night/this morning, and I include this morning as the end of it ran up to me waking ot sounds of kids playing upstairs.  Dream had me in classroom, first day, people filing in late when just before I thought I’d have a thin section and the department would cancel it.  Told students that were coming in announcing how great it’d be to work with me again to sit down and we can talk after class.  I even ordered the class to be quite so students could read what they just wrote during and in-class assignment, or prompt, something about Philosophy, or which thinkers, 2, did they find important and instrumental in their life.  I myself wrote Plato and MLK.  Explained a bit why, then woke.

When I teach Philosophy at Stanford or wherever, coming from teaching English at the CC level, of all levels of English, I plan to focus on Now, the magic of the meta, immediacy’s gravity and importance, first.  Before addressing selected texts and other exercises.  Definition, going back to my conversation with Bob Coleman in ’99, “Definitional Clarity” as he put it.  Defining Self, where you are and what you’re doing.  Does that presence make you happy… happy and health and the tie therein and of.

Today I feel like propelling joy and Equanimity into the world, in a multiplying and self-supporting stream.  I often voice and repeat “poz vibez” to people in my life near and everywhere I can.  This morning I embody it as I never have.  There’s no reason for stress or angst, or frustration…. Jackie just said something I’d rather him not say and I tell him that’s not nice, and he responds, “Hey, you be quiet, Michael…” Usually I enter into contest with my little Beat.  But not this morning.  I laughed quietly, smile, am still smiling typing this sentence.. told them both I’d go to Starbucks and get what we all deem “Daddy Breakfast”.  Some morning pound cake for little Kerouac and a chocolate milk for little Ms. Austen.  Speaking of Jane Austen, I wonder if I can order all her books online.  Want to lecture on her, or at least write essays on her work and read them.  But I’ll start with Ms. Plath… “…If I’ve killed on man, I’ve killed two….” Sad I’m not lecturing on her this term, but soon again.  Or maybe I can, print some copies of a poem, either “Daddy” or “Lazurus”.  Ideas in tow and I try to inventory and get what I Can to page but they swarm with more frazzle and roam than I can wrangle.  I go on with the morning, into it, and wait for the game.  Today’s, and mine own.

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