7/8/19

Busy day.  Caught self overthinking a bit ago.  But resolved.  Don’t think.  Just move, act, create.

Going shopping for some new work articles, then home for dinner, little writing and bed early.  Tomorrow a 4am-er. Told Abraham I’d be there, and more than that I WANT to be there.  For me.  Try for 9 miles.  Then the next day, the next, and all remaining.

Rest of day planned to not any kind of boring degree.  Hear people around me in leave mode, but I’m still in the propelled personification I had this morning. Work, as an idea, and one stretching from wine.  I think about all the work that involves in winemaking, how strenuous it is, the early rises but even more than that, the containment, more than focus or fixation, but IT.  The IT to it all.  All this.

Setting out running uniform, or not uniform but you know what I mean, tonight.  Shoes out, untied, phone charged, headphones, everything.  If I can, leave before 4 like I did that one time.

Phone at desk set up, voice message and my name for in-office comm.  Only minutes from leave.  Day for tomorrow more or less planned.  Meeting in morning, out in Field later in day and for most of the day’s remainder.

Put trash cans out.  Can’t forget to do that… not that exciting a detail but one with which everyone is familiar.  In bed before ten, the aim.  Going over to-do plate, not so much a list just a bunch of slop on a plate.

4:50, been chewing this gum since before the meeting we just had, which started at 3 and Shannon and myself nearly missed having lunch out right before.  Work versus time.  How to approach, how to consider, how to be place and put-together as character, for character and story.

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Trellis Step Travel

And ’11 white, and ’16 red.  From Spain, bot.  In the quiet kitchen consistent with my vinified vision, speaking in poetic tongues and abetted stuns.  Character compiled in this sole presence and thought lot, caught in wine’s promise and spell, she tells me to stay, be still but keep in my truest move.

Haven’t touched the red.  Letting her wake as she wishes.  Shouldn’t say let, rather inviting her, hoping she wants to me as I her, after the week, this day, the introduction to a new story at work, learning a new style of business in a new way.  All narrated and keeping self in that vineyard block, the one I now see, the 337 Lancaster block right by the parking lot.  As the clock moves in its knotted ticks and tocks, me here with more sight.  Tomorrow in Napa which I haven’t done in too long.  On drive, notes hopes, talk to friend Chris while he kindly drives.  Expect nothing.  Plan nothing.  Write little Paginate the experience and story when it’s done.  Feel the early wake, just before 4 technically, speak to me.  Urging bed, urging rest, urging early wake for a run prior to drive over the mountain.

This could be one of the more agreeable and interesting, seductive and capturing white wines I’ve had in some time.  Why am I just writing about her, why am I not penning, noting the notes.  Don’t want to be like Parker and whatever that one guy’s name is, and then the other twit I always see posting about his attendance at events hoping to be taking seriously or as something of a wine something.  I don’t want to be a clown.  Am I calling them clowns, no.  Or maybe.  I just don’t want to resemble anything they do.  I’m present for the pages in the puddle, what’s transposed from and to the character by the alchemical atmosphere, right here, what I just sipped.

See clusters in a bin, in Spain in certain corners of this contemplative vein.  A light, airy beat of sea and cliff, some sort of sand and trees by a boulder.  Never seen it, but it’s on my out-of-body shoulder.  Letting the glass be, the wine, she, with a freeing frolic of echoing chords and singular notes.  Each, its own anecdote.  I’m not the writer du vin I was when I started.  I know that.  I’m older.  Shit, some days I just feel old.  But she assures me I’m fine, encourages more recital, more music… Only write music, musically, she pleas.  This ’16.

Now for the ’11, reckon.  Last couple sips of the Albarino.   Technically misspelled but this goddamn laptop won’t let me insert the symbol.  Fighting the tired, telling it to be gone or face a fight.  Nearly done, the red over there looking at me and reciting poetry I can’t hear till I sip, fully engage and stay embraced.  Wine, educating me as she knows I need new Newness in this Now.  8:44, just minutes before bed possibly.  No way to know.  And that’s what wine is, not knowing.  Letting time find you, and you drawing from the confines of the presented page.  Sip, scribble, learn, live.

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Decided on the breakroom for lunch, not one of those thinking pods.  Not hungry, so I won’t be distracted by food, and I think I’m good on caffeine so no coffee.  Chewing gum I took from my neighbor John’s desk.  Relax, meditation, thinking of this whole envelope to tasting room, or winery, or vineyard story.  Where I am in life and not that I have to plan how I want to be remembered or anything that morbid or depressing, but I’m definitely in the mind of ‘here and forward’.  So, here an forward, putting more in that envelope and not be tempted to ever take anything out.  Touring with my wines and writing people’s reactions to everything I pour.  Other day pouring for those two girls and how their favorites were mine as well and how that one wine brought a decided direction to our interaction.  Wine is not only in my story but IS my story.

The ’07 Dutcher  Crossing entity with which Jesse and I interacted at dinner the other night, telling me so much and reminding me why I am where I am, what I’m doing with wine.  How I want that ferocity and form, character and charisma in the bottles I pour, what I make from my vineyard.  Honestly, I expected something to be off, but the Cabernet thieved its own muse, which gave me a book title idea and shoved me into more wined realization.  We poured, Jesse and I after the waitress poured just a tasting room amount into our glasses, appreciating the olfactory steps from the bottle to our senses and were startled.  One sip, after glass tip where I could only notice a sliver of color decline and I’m still not completely certain I saw any, stunned.  We both were.  We shortly thereafter talked wine business and what we see in our soon-days of wine life. We talked about wine brokering, but that’s not really what I want of course and I don’t think he does either.  The wine spawned new thought, new direction. What’s in that envelope at home, the days onward.

Breakroom where I can’t break.  I can’t just read some magazine, or even the book from Father’s Day I was given.  But then I think of the title, Destiny Thief, and I notice more intersection.  Can barely wait for the tasting room, Sunday.  Seeing that Room as mine, how I discuss all wines, my favorite of course but more, more, more wined story and words.  And they are MY words, even if people take not kindly to them like my sister the other night when she thought I was referring to one of her wines, the three vineyard Zin blend, saying it was reductive.  She said sharply and with stern ire “It’s not reductive.” I corrected her and specified I was addressing the Sbragia Petite Sirah Dad opened.  She apologized, but continued to dispute my observation, which is her right.  I moved on and examined the wine more.  Still, still with that slow musty circular sense.  Either way, like with the two girls from Lancaster, there was an interaction from a singular wine.  That envelope, at home, will bring more of this.  More books, more muse and pages to thieve.

 

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…what Pinot we’re going to taste, of course, but more than that.  What he’s been thinking concerning his wines and how his philosophy has changed on wine since the last time we tasted.  How has mine changed.  How has all this changed… more than wine… my life, what I do for work, my teaching, my writing, my health and running, now I have a daughter.  When we met, I had little Kerouac, and that’s all.  Don’t’ meant it like that, but I had one baby.  Now, 2.  Wine is family as so many wineries and wine people say when it’s really some sales bullshit ploy they profess.  You can tell I’m especially lively this evening, even after all the wine I’ve tonight and today tasted. Need to work, need to write for wine’s thought, my thoughts on wine.. and what I think on wine, presently, but I need stay about her province.  In all respects of her respect and realm (and I hate that word).  It’s true, though, do note.  I’m imbued so, proved code.  That being to wine and the vineyards I always walk, that I have to walk.  Nearly every day—or, days I can.  Drove to AV this morning a bit early so I could stroll along 128 and watch the new vintage take its shape in front of me, like some galaxy forming, like some book being written by one of my followed penners.

Walking in the cave before day starts, and I don’t know what I’m looking at.  Something different, something more.. something.  Wine and I have a different dynamic between us.  I hear it, she, speak to me but I’m confused in my thoughts, and how I think, in the thoughts themselves.  The first time I noticed wine and what it, she, is when I lived in San Ramon.  And I’ve told this story a thousand times to whomever will listen, but that bottle of Blackstone Merlot that Mom suggested I buy…

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from another ‘nother journal …

4/17/19

Writing in too many spots.

No more on this laptop.  Noting everything, this morning.  Have a schedule for self.  Desired time for “cruising altitude” as Dad would say…..

Lost in a thought, not sure how to write.  Running at lunch, what to write from there.  Need a break.  Need to toss backpack, or just use for running gear.  Yes, the latter.

Organized desk a bit, plugged in laptop wife gave me.  Time for break, some journal jots, or walk to car to get running gear.  Or both.  How to optimize day… how.  Grade papers when on campus, then home for quick dinner, bed.  And goddamnit, wake…. No, won’t promise.  Will only do.

All the loose paper pieces and swarms around me, distracting, dividing my concentration and enslaving each parcel.

10:07.  Break.  Just for a bit.  Sparkling water.  And what else… running stuff.  Do I want to run at lunch, or take self to lunch.  Here I go overthinking, again..

Running.  I’ve decided, finally.  Need a snack, hydrate, get gear.  I can just see someone reading this years after I’m gone and noting something in the margin like, “Goddamn, just do something already!!!” I agree, just so you know.  Huh, there’s an idea for a book, note to future reader.  And another from yesterday, the ‘argument for me’ idea.  Like a very much stretched out cover letter and CV.

Different route today, for run.  Out 3.5, back 3.5.

 

10:30 – Done with a 90 minute challenge to self for morning.  Schedule done.  Or a draft at least.  My first, composed.  Team arrives in about 20.  Should go to car, get running facets.  Where am I running?  Just get out there and run, Mike…..  note for Reps, time sheet-related.  Old journal taken from backpack, should go through those pages, what I wrote when first hired, all this information about the internet I NEVER knew.

Seeing now why I stress the habit and practice and maintained habit and practice of journal writing so much.  To know you, your NOW, the Nows that approach.  What you want, why you want it.  Today is different, as all todays are, but I note that there’s something more paralleling about today with my aims.  The office, travel, running all over the world and writing about it.  The journal is a beacon of YOU, a place that’s more than a place, but a stage and bibliotheque or understanding and exploration.  The desk messy, and I don’t mind.  It’s honest, it’s NOW, it’s ME.  Why am I capitalizing so much.  No need to analyze or even lightly understand.

The journal teaches not so much ‘me about me’ but to see more clearly and honestly.  Fearlessly.  To not fear, to not question, to just madly LIVE.

Working on attitude, perspective, how I contextualize matters and then react to them.  If someone says something, and I find it getting under my skin or into my thoughts, echoing in me in any way, then pause.  Find sense on the page.  Make sense of it, of everything, on page.  In this “journal”.  And, honestly, if I can accomplish something of that magnitude and altitude on a page, is it really just a one-dimension and as-it-appears tablet, or “journal”?

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Pinballing

Slow, my pace, and character, inner-narration.  Can’t understand why and I’m not giving it too much more consideration or any contemplative effort.  Class tonight, and in no interest to go.  But I will, I’ll force myself, see what happens.  See what ideas and thoughts form.

I’m not lachrymose, or of low ebb, I’m just not fully in character.  Why.  What is this.  Guy plays pinball just to the left and front of me, and the noises disrupt my dimension even more.  Fuck, that thing is loud.  I ignore it as best I can and look further into what’s happening in my circuitry, today.  Got a small latte from the spot up the road which I shouldn’t have done.

Still slow, but with more framing and purpose in these types.  Didn’t think I’d get to writing today, honestly, with this mood.  Or whatever it is.  Not sure it’s a mood, either.

My next plan of attacking it is to attack self and self for having any kind of mood.  What the fuck do I have to be even minutely glum about?  Money?  Not hearing back from a wine country lead?  SO. WHAT.  I move on, dismissing and disregarding all of it.  Only present here, where I am and what I’m doing at Sonic.  Project now—JPR’s.  Never done them before and I know that’s part of my stress stack, but again I just vow to write reactions when I get back and see where they go.  Much of knowing your Now is to just walk into it and see what’s read to you.  I’m writing the story, but it’s also writing me.

I get a text message but ignore it.  I want to understand this, this Now, me in the Now, and what to do for remainder of day here in office.  Tonight in class, this entry very well may be part of the plan, this pinballing avoiding paragraph stream.  Am I fighting those shrieking ding and dong sounds, and the voice coming from the flat vertical portion of the machine.  Forcing self to write, forcing self to ignore it.

He leaves, but some corny battle-victory song keeps playing.  No one in this multipurpose room but a writer.  The machine silences, and all I hear are noises from outside—someone throwing something in one of the bins, some vehicle driving off the lot.  My mood shifts, into curious curvature.  Haven’t written in here in a while.  If I was at low ebb, it rose, even before the pinballer left.

Just going to see what happens this evening, with class, with the first discussion on the newest book.  Memoir, narrative, everything we’ve talked about so far this semester.  I forget about the wine country prospect, the JPR’s, this large room.  I fixate on me, my day, the quiet machine now.

Almost forget about my latte.

Tempted to try the machine.

No.  Stay here.  Look outside.  Listen.  I’m writing today, more honestly.

My own sort of game, I guess.

 

4/1/19

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