8:22 AM. Writing verse.

Have a consuming and crippling curve and tide about me this morning to write verse.  Have a track completed by EOD, whenever that might be.  Have a hunch we’ll be dismissed around 12, but I can’t confirm.  Have 5 couplets written in first verse.  Trying too hard to rhyme… have to let the language drive me and the thoughts and intentions to the piece be only a passenger.

Two more couplets for first verse.  Yesterday driving home, saying to self, scolding self a bit, that I need return to music.  Record my tracks, gig where I can, record however I can since all my old equipment is in the garage and who knows if it works or if I remember how to work it anymore.

Not in the mood to do anything work-associated, but I know I have to and I know it’ll carry over to much in this new year, both Sonic projects and those wholly mine.

Verse 1, done.  Going to time self for the other two, starting with when I take a break which’ll be in…. 90 minutes, maybe?

Cold outside, but perfect for a run.  So much I want to get done today, in however many hours I have here.

Wrote a small piece, poem or verse, something.  Note of significance is that it’s a sovereign slice of expression.  Very much noticing that thinking is what holds you, what impedes creativity and expression, self and your SELF if you’re an artist.  Today, I’m building my conversation—not “network” or networking.  For sakes of building audience, yes, but to have a more whole and rounded conversation.

Noticing even more in these past three to five days that thinking is the impediment.  No more thinking.. in fact I’m putting that on my list of 2020 prompts.  And that’s what they are… not resolutions, or even aims as I said yesterday, but prompts.

Thought about tidying up desk but then discerned it as thinking and deliberation, too much thought.

Work, should ALWAYS be doing what you love, what’s not work but YOU.  Your identity, your immediate reality and realized rile.

2nd verse started with a couple couplets, and into the third.

Everyone around me snacking and in holiday honing, and I can’t blame them I just cant stop with this inner and numbing push to pen verse… be the poet I’ve always been but away from it walked.  I return here and there, now and then, but now this morning I can do nothing but.  Thinking of Jack, that interview with Sylvia, the Yeats poem that haunted me since the first read which wasn’t even that close of a survey of his lines.

A beat in my head and sight, said and right….

Okay, probably should do something.  Love being here and in this office, with all the conversation and new knowledge.  All of this is poetic, more than verse more than compilations of oration and pages to be read at some reading or other.  The verse, the thought of it, everything I’ve read and still read, started this…

12/24/19

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10/27/19

Again evacuated.  2017 on repeat. Up since 3-something-AM but I’m now awake from latte and writing this in Haley’s room.  Melissa’s little cousin now not so little in Med School.  There’s something everywhere, I know, but I think I’ve had it with Sonoma County.  And wine.  Wine people and the industry of course…. Driving here just after 4am, thinking to self this is the first day of the remainder of my life.  Meeting a man earlier, 90-something (93?), and realizing that I will no longer edit, censor, hold back, but be more profuse with happiness and elevating echo.  And poetry.

Writing about blogging, blog about writing, everything on blog… embrace more and tell more the role and “title” of blogger, what it means if anything.

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PIIE

Poetry.  In. Is.  Everything.  Wrote a piece while standing in line at the Starbucks down the street. What I bring here with me.  Last night in class talking about destiny and future, what we will be, how we get there… and blocks to getting that.  We are the blocks, often.  Or rather, we allow the stalls and falls, the walls that we see and have ourselves sold are there.

No run today.  Want to make sure right foot is okay.  Hurt a little on run yesterday, but not obtusely or loudly to the point where I had to stop.  The heat stopped me, obviously.  Can’t think of what to put to page, or what to do with this day.  Feel self getting a bit sluggish and deflated from the day-to-day.  Not complacent or numb, anesthetized in action, but wondering how to change pattern and habit, here.  What…. POETRY.  In every bloody thing I see.  Thinking of that Plath interview I played for the 1A section, and myself I don’t know how many times, where she said that someone can write about anything with an informed and I think she said free mind.  I know what she meant, or I think I do.  And my former student Amber, now posting so much about Plath, I’ brought back to origins, initial intentions with my writing life.

Look left, she’s on my shelf, with other literary beacons, instructors.  I’m looking to them as to what to do, next.  How do I approach today differently than others.  HST would say, Just get out there and take a ride, you already got the ticket kid…” Something like that.  I can believably hear his voice saying those words, same voice as in one of his interviews.

Wrote quick piece.  Haiku.  Student messaging me if she has to type her reaction or write extensively in journal.  Have to grade that stack as well, the 1B section.  Power may go out again today, I’m honestly hoping class is NOT cancelled.  Want to write a lecture for today, speak it….  POETRY.  In everything.

Goddamnit, get up earlier.  If could have two hours of writing before the day even starts…..  Do.  Not more thinking.  Poetry is about thought, NOT.  Poetry is about reacting to your immediate scene and sight.  Where you are, what you’re perpetuating, actuating.  Don’t see myself getting knackered by such a practice, with all I want to do and how I move and how I assume all projects and beats.

Deke myself out of pattern, usual steps and jigs.  First no more caviling.  Step, celebrate, speak, make a verse of each sitting and step.  Think of the reciting at North Light Books, or in Berkeley when in graduate school… quitting prose, and if I do play the paragraph parade it’ll only be free entry, nothing of stoic structure or stance.

Mood gripping me but I’m parrying its kicks.  Like Dad said, “At my age, I can’t afford mistakes.” I, yes younger, put self in same mind.  The same thinking and philosophy.  A kamikaze is ME.

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Day 9.  About conviction, about defiance, about all of us finding what we’re searching for.  Coltrane playing me and eased track.  Didn’t record my spoken word piece yesterday.  Was distracted by that bottle of Inspiration Syrah, the quiet of the house, and thoughts of writing about the wine industry.  When in my office, I see such a book taking shape, in not much time either.  Citing everything from the ridiculous pay, to the overwhelming focus on anything but get wine, to patterns and posturing from those patterns.
A truck passes me on 128.  Hate typing on my phone, but this is what I have currently.  Hoping for a day not at all busy.  Not at all preoccupied with the winery making its number for the month, but more my sanity, my sentences, this project and others.
This week in the office, I’m going to loudly and communicatively accelerate all movements and sights.  Why can’t I be the highest selling AE in my first year?  There is no law or rule or policy prohibiting such.  Actually, Sonic is the atmosphere that enables and emboldens such a progression to take place.  Whatever we do for work, we need not only make it our own, but have it teach us and be a measure of effort.  We should always seek to against ourselves compete.
Bed early tonight.  Wake at 5, 4 if you can.  At the end of 100 days, there will be a visual of such altitude, such attainment.  If I’m not the highest earner, I’ll have shocked everyone with what I’ve done.  Make calls, SET APPOINTMENTS…. just say hi.  Forget about return, certainly immediate return.  That’s a foot shot, I’ve learned, and an error the wine industry continues to seemingly want to make.  And I e never figured out why, why they expect such instant transaction and metrics ascension.  I’ve given up trying to learn, now focusing on my Sonic story and sense of new sense and story, character.
This writing spot, little spacious and sizeable inlet, used to write here in 2012 as I mentioned, and later in 2017 when working at the Foley camp.  Now, story is different.  Not at all fearful to question and defy regularity and policy, not that I was before.  But Sonic has shown me that one idea can prove purposeful and provide a purpose which pervades till your final day.  Such is now, such is me, such is my poetic and newly purposed immediacy.
What do I want from the day.  Peace.  Ideas for this week.  Ideas on growth, branding and rebranding but more than that…. CHARACTER.  Story.  Life.  Revolution.  Start acting like a revolutionary, I said to myself and some other people at Sonic a few months ago.  Today…. watch.  And won’t do so with malice or a burn-bridge intent, but to have my identity known.  For all in contact with me, not just for me.  If I’m not making sense I apologize….. you’ll see what I mean, shortly.

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