5pm

Leaving office in a bit.  Feeling self getting stronger in the AE character.  Everything from contract progression to speak of the services and everything we offer, as well as the day-to-day movement of someone in this character. More than building a “funnel”, or prospecting, or even selling, but new and decided acknowledgement and study of your abilities.  Ones you didn’t know were there. Ones that surprise you irreversibly the second you discover them.  I’ll write it here, again, this is all writing.  It’s all narrative, the excavation of your own psychology in your work.  What you do, and having it be more than just ‘what you do’.  Who you are, the composition of your Now.  Could be said that this has been one of the more educating weeks or my life.

Brainstorming new writing routine… points every day to hit:

1 letter

1,000 words

1 haiku

1 poem

Write in newest journal, any length, could be as short as a sentence, or even singular word

1 blog post to bottledaux blog

……..

If I think of anything else to add to list, if you know me, you know I wil.

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Wine… what do I do

with her, now.  What do I write, narrate.  Rather than think about it, I just summon stories from the tasting room, and then think of all the vineyard walks I’ve taken self on.  Then how I need a new wine to write, tonight.  Not the same wines I’ve been drinking, lately.  All the St. Francis bottles.  Something new, something I’ve never known.  That Howell Mountain Cabernet from Robert Craig.  Maybe.  Too early in the day to think about that.  So I draw my tasting room, the one I own.  My crush pad, the barrels, how I’ll narrate my story, how it all started with the idea of wine and literature and the literary, narrative qualities and reality of wine.

She’s a whole question, worldly inquiry that I can only blindly follow and chase.  Wine. She always introduces something beyond what’s sipped.  It’s so much beyond what you see, and what think of, what you want from wine.  Abundance, thought, life, the reality reminded that you’ll be gone one day.  Everything around you is temporary.  You, are temporary.  So the story need be lived wildly, madly.

Much why I woke as early as I did this morning, and why last night while having that last sip of Sauvignon Blanc all fear and anxiety I had from days recent just flew away from me like it was bored with me.  I had nothing more to offer in terms of victim, victimhood.  It was done, because I was done.  She elevated me, again.  Again.  She always does. With her visual, with her movement and music, all of it.  More than nuance, or some flavor suggestion, but helix of ideology and possibility, dreaming and the dream bowing to a created, composed reality.

I’m being taught again, all over again about wine and what she really means.  She reminds me, again, that I am only to write her, to her and from her.  I will.  (6/5/19)

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5/23/19

Wine.  All I can think about.  Somehow making it, its business and industry do more for me.  Six days from 40.  Feeling immeasurably better than I did.  A little sinus pain but other than that I’m essentially fully recovered.  And the here-and-there cough.  Writing, teaching, how the semester’s gone, and I’m on my own with these thoughts, or not.  What’s in my head I don’t know right now finishing this latte, about 50 minutes from when I need leave and head straight for office.  I’m overthinking, a lot, I just said to self just noticing looking out the window and up seeing clouds wondering if it’s going to rain a-goddamn-gain.

In the Richmond District again, today.  Windy again, more than likely.  How to make today different, as I always say I’m going to.  How…. Maybe take a step back.  Observe more.  Say less.  Make notes, or not.  How about just BE, in the moment on whatever street.

Why am I writing, now.  What do I want.  What do I hope to hold.  Wine, or travel, or both.  Yes and yes, but something else.  What I’m not particularly clear.  Mom has often recommended I stop writing for a bit, collect then return when something constricts me.  Thinking now may be one of those walks, stops.  So, I stop.  Put laptop away, and only note in the Kerouac pages she bought me.

 

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from a journal

5/11/19

Early in office.  I can tell people, some, don’t want to be here on their Saturday.  Thought walking down the dark hall to get coffee that I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have it another way.  Coffee and blueberry bagel, I picked up from spot just down block.  Thought they were CLOSING closing, for good.  Guess not, after asking the girl behind large glass display case that no, no they are not closing.  At one time they were thinking of moving, but no closing.  Shared my relief with her and left after paying with quarters.  Only $1.50.  No debit card usage today, and no cash.  Investing in my businesses more vigorously and with more tell and precision, closer to 40 I step.  The morning, complimented by music in right ear, beats and instrumentals I’d have playing in my wine shop, or tasting room.  Still think about it, literally on basis that’s multiple-daily.  This morning when I woke up I thought of having to spend the night at my store like the one guy I met years ago when working for the advertising firm in Marin where I was invited into a guy’s office at a Mexican restaurant and the man had a bed behind his desk, to the side of his file cabinet.  I always remembered that and think of it now, getting closer to 40 yes but even more near to my business.  I know wine will answer everything for me. She always does.

8:01.  59 minutes at my desk.  Noting on day, on what I need do for and with team today, then tomorrow.  Tasting with a winemaker I’ve always admired and followed, and a bit a friend of mine, Michael Browne.  My tasting with him was over 4 years ago, when he still partially owned Kosta Browne.  Part of me wants to plan my questions, write them out.  And I might to a degree.  But if I’m to write as the wine writer I wish be seen and remembered, I’d prefer the preponderance of it be unplanned.  Wine shouldn’t be an excess of structure. I remember myself saying once.  Just now writing on a post-it, that wine is more chance than anything else, a reminder to not forget about the moment immediately before you.

Notes in other places, on wine and what I want from wine…. Wine from last night, nothing too crazy, and the vineyard walk I committed self to, tomorrow.  As soon as I’m on Lancaster’s set, I’ll be in those rows.  Must be, continuously.  The rocks and soil contrast from one parcel of the property to next.  Being away from the industry as I have, and very much by choice, the vineyards more me call now.  I hear the birds from one close of Cabernet to the other, then the Merlot and Cab Franc behind it.  Each lot telling me something about what I’m doing and why.  That’s what wine is, why I’m in it so fiercely.  Wine is this morning, these things I demand do and what I’ve done from the bagel to the hallway walk, the office and the drive to Berkeley.  Wine calls for more of me, more of my writings, all of them. Each day and sight, thought and track I listen to.  To control and contain pace, put the paragraphs in the order the time, MY time and MY sitting, call for.

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from a journal

5/10/19

Friday.  But you know my opinion and stance on Fridays.  So what.  It’s Friday yes and to some that’s something, but I don’t care.  I’m working tomorrow, and the next day, the day after that.  I’m a blogger, writer, writer before a blogger and always noting something, so days off are days of others, not me.

Resolving to not spend any more money, today.  Not one penny.  What about lunch.  I need something to eat at that time, always do.  So what do I do.  Use change.  Yes.  Get as many quarters as I can, that’s lunch.  The quarters don’t matter, today, this meaningless Friday.

At the coffee spot same as yester’, with a 4-shot latte and the back table all to self.  About 40 minutes to self before I have to get to office to be a professional.  Professional.  What.  I’m learning.  Educating myself closer to 40 I get, knowing that all I want is the world, every Road I can find, any wine I haven’t tried, and sip and scribble overlooking a street, a canyon with a river somewhere in Switzerland.  That’s my most vocal and mobile and noble of “goals”.

Every morning should be this, time with self.  Friday or whatday.

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from a journal

…part of me disconnection from this.  I do still want to teach, and I will, but as I wish to.  How do I wish to… with essays, notes, posts, writings that share some reality of not just me but a character doing something, trying to reach There.  With class just a touch over 2.5 hours away, I think of my writing spot, Steele & Hops, where I recently had wine and wrote in journal, made notes of day and wine itself.  On this morning’s 14-mile trek, where I maintained a per-mile pace I never thought I’d hold, I replayed yesterday in the tasting room.  Replayed my life in and with wine.  How for the past four or five days or so, I’ve only wanted to write wine—about her, what she’s done to this narrative, and how even with sharing ideas in class whether 1A or 100 I’m deciding the text and topic as I would a wine in front of me, the character in and the voices of and in, the where and how—the metaphysical inference in that creature.

She urges more prose, or poetry, that I blend both.  That I have my way with her way and say, that the story and run into that world, here in America and on other continents sipping something looking at something I’ve never seen in any scene, just as I’ve never sipped what’s in that glass, she relays equations and not so much a need for anything to be solved.  That would mean a stop, some wall, something blocking the writing and the empirical exploration of MORE.  Her facetiae provoke me, to more about what I sip and finding more in that vineyard, more in this stuff and uncomfortably temp’d conference room.  She triangulates and then further multiplies her being, her revenant continuously steering me one way then ‘nother in these pages.  On property yesterday, it was like a ruling, something was decided, by me though only partially.  She instructs this, more of the vineyard on this screen.  More of everything that I sip…

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