2/23/19

Santa Rosa, Ca.

Sonic.net.

 

Wrote another thousand for book idea, or effort, or whatever it is.  In dark here in office, writing and collecting listening to Coltrane of course and easing into day.

This morning, much more eased and agreeable than yester’s.  Onward, with coffee, music, poetry, THOUGHT, reasoning what I want and how to get there, to my There.

About 20 minutes left to self.  Then into role, mode, actuation and actuality of one working on a Saturday.  Will be in city tomorrow with family for little Kerouac’s birthday.  Excited to not have to drive, walk around the streets with no other intention but to do just that.  Think we’re hitting the Exploratorium and I don’t know what else.  Either way, the writer needs just such a day.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

1/25/19

Lunch at desk.  Writing everything down as I always do but with more craze, more wild and rich, loving recklessness to my steps.  Pizza here in office.  Pizza Fridays.  Everyone looks forward to this.  The company, so generous it’s nearly overwhelming.  Love it.  Learn from it, I do.  My company will be in this exact track and train of thought, tradition.

May start another blog—no I won’t.  Promised self I wouldn’t do that.  The idea would be something involving client and customer communications.  Not so much “customer service”, but how the work is relayed and worded.  So much in business is done not so much wrong but with unnecessary obstacles.

Brought 2 pieces of vegetarian pizza back to desk.  Saw others doing the same, eating at desk and watching a show, or playing a video game of some type.  I need this time to write.  I don’t need to think, I don’t any longer and I promise my self loudly this, time to think.  Just move.. all around blogging, and I will trap everything here.

I must wake early, tomorrow morning.  And run.  Ten miles, minimum.  Walking hills in Sebastopol earlier with Field Sales team, taking the hills like I were racing.  I walked them, yes, but with the same attitude as one running, like “I am doing this, I am taking this hill, now, NOW.”

Field Sales, an interesting voice and beat, beast.  One of constant motion and depend upon, demanding a tireless momentum in re-writing your presentation, your words and how you deliver the words.  Audience awareness, not so much brevity of speech but containment.

Where you are, what you’re doing.  More value in that than you estimate.  If you take a second, and inventory what’s around you, all the topics and ideas form their own idea den and paragraph lab.  You feel inspired and moved, exhausted and creatively ablaze in a way you’ve never known.  The holy contour of life wraps itself around you, begins instruction.

Need another piece, and maybe another.  Hungry earlier while walking the hills, Mike was.  Now, still hungry.  Mike, eager to go to this event, which is celebratory of past year’s successes and advances.  Like a rally, or gathering at a spot on Rohnert Park.  Not that far away but just far enough where I can enjoy a Coltrane track or five, maybe more.

Two friends from another department but that sit in the same isle as me here in office leave.  Taj and Leah.  Both kind, very inviting and helpful when I need some inquiry quelled, and they both like wine.  Asked both of them if they’d want to have a glass with me at the Rohnert Park spot they both said yes, told them I was thinking about getting more pizza then they tell me, or reminded me, that there’s food there.

 

“What the fuck was I thinking?” I say to them.

 

They both laugh.  Taj tells me my stomach’s telling me to eat.  I agree.  But will wait till RP.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

12/17/18

img_9588After driving around Santa Rosa for up an hour, just a handful of minutes deprived, I land in Railroad Square, Aroma Roasters.  Only written here once before.  To get self out of this mood I need difference, different acts and thoughts, places, even drinks ordered.  Got a latte, put cinnamon atop.  Just too first sip.  On right track.  OR some track, on this Railroad Square.

Feel history here, in this coffee spot which is anything but excessively polished.  A bit cold, no heater that I can.  Lucky to have sense earlier to dress self with this Dutcher Crossing jacket.  Semester ending today, in my history book.  Part of my history.  Thinking today of nothing and everything, getting closer to year’s end and the year I turn 40.  Went for run earlier, and to stop at 1.5 to pee then back to belt to continue speed work, only to do 3.5 miles more.  Walked away from belt disturbed and upset, shot some hoops, then home for water, a couple bowls of dry cereal, shower then out.  Meeting students in about 3 hours and 40 minutes.

One Up, One Down.  Coltrane.  Would put into quotes but I want it part of my language.  Not stealing but borrowing.  Thoughts today, all for the day.  Thoughts today and right now what I’m doing in this new writing spot, this new café, in its webbed visual enigma, developing character and story. Nothing but the in-the-moment-ness of the day.  Railroad Square, Santa Rosa.  Came here as I’m never here and needed something new, but what happens when this gets old.  I need more New, more Newness.  New experiences and new sights, new character if I’m to grow as a thinker.  Or not so much “grow”, but appreciate and do something my children can look to, I guess be proud of or brag about to their friends.  Is that selfish to want that, absolutely.  I’m a dad, who writes, isn’t where he wants to be necessarily or fully, yet, with ‘career”, but getting closer.  Have to credit Sonic and the owner with his embrace of whim and creative lawlessness.  

One idea up, then another up. Trying not to think, trying to be as in the moment as I’m able but then my head goes to synonyms and the inherent insecurity of me as a writer, wondering if I should be implementing new words or some synonyms, or something… some young man in front of me getting attention, just standing at my end of hall way, think he’s waiting for the bathroom but I can’t be—  Yes he was.  Now I can’t see him.  Lady in corner I think writing, not sure what… I’m too aware of where I am, thinking too much, and that’s much of my problem.  Why did I drive around as I did.  Why did I cruise all the way up 12 only to turn left on Mission, then right on Montecito I think it’s called, then right on Middle Rincon then right on 12 back toward downtown.  I couldn’t make up my mind.  That has to stop.  Look how old I am, look what I’ve put self through with the wine industry and all those fucking tasting rooms.  Just ramble and rile, storm from a journal but this is my, the thought recipe, now.

Mom gifted me last night a new journal, one bought in Germany I believe.  Just the right timing, as my mothers seems to have a perfect record of actuating.  Another idea up, another, now a swarm in flight.  Feel like I need a scroll like Mr. Kerouac.  Just sit here and in one sitting, multiple by 20 or 21 have my thoughts book in fruition form.  Done.  Able to read wherever.  Music in ears from Mr. Davis telling me to slow my intentions and follow jazz in the flavorful and various clouds it puts before my story— pages blank then full, then stuffing a drawer or some plastic tub then into the garage no more.  I can’t do that to self.  The latte agrees.  All the writing I lost in, on, that goddamn external hard drive, heart just cracked in half and knowing I have to let it go, so publish everything you write, everything you put to page.  A new writer, today, with a new journal, a new coffee type, or drink, a new chair and back room, in the city I’ve lived in for far too long.  Need a new spot, go for walks with family on paths not yet set.  New, newness…. Less than 3.5 hours till I collect final submissions.  My students even do it, write something then edit (sometimes) then print and publish, submit. They do what I belabor over, time and time and……..  Woman sitting at the table I was only for a minute maybe two with her business planner, some coffee drink, same size of mine.  Then another planner it looks like.  Me planning my days remaining till 40.  Don’t want to look at counter I have in this word doc, just below this paragraph.  Keep going… characters and characters captured for books or blog, and this blog taking new shape with studying the Now, knowing it more than intimately but its circuitry and all the compiled voices from room to room.  I re-situate the laptop so the writer behind me can’t see, if she’s even looking which I highly doubt she is.  All the driving I did to get here… just be free I tell myself, just write and play with the chords and notes of your own Now and, then, the current track, still Mr. Davis from his Flamenco Sketches.  I’m not sketching self, a new self, into a new year, new age and thought peregrination.  Newness, the most warming and assuring, re-assuring of spirits.  Writing everything in my new Now, with all its Newness and accumulated notes, song.  My own mood, once, only an hour ago vitiating penning intentions, now muted.  A mummy.  Decaying, and eclipsed by latte waves.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

End day.

Tired from walking Castro District hills, and the hills and streets above that. Up since 4. Me. Again tomorrow but for run. To write. About the early hour, 4. What it does to you, your day. How you see yourself and the things around you. And at day’s close all is angled. In moving waves with an magnetic sharpness to them.

Waiting for pizza and salad. Having beer. Wine when home. Write about wine. Anything I have and I’m running low. Time to again build cellar. Start a serious collection. Get more intimate with wine and what she wants from me, from my writing. How she wants me to put her on a page, varietal to varietal. Whatever winery I visit and whomever I talk to, whomever for me pours. Like the lady the other day, also a blogger, and quite traveled. Younger than me by I’m guessing ten years and already with what I’m writing for. What I want to live and write. Start tonight. With Cabernet. Everything she has to say. Everything with blogging started with wine, sister-in-law suggesting so many years ago that I blog about wine. I did, but didn’t. Wasn’t consistent. Tonight, take the field again. Think I have a Cab in the “cellar”. Or collection.

Walking past certain houses in SF I saw me on that balcony, looking at the buildings from a hill, my hill, writing, middle of the day and drinking an SB from Dry Creek. Dutcher Crossing or someone close. There was a taste of my nearing future, so close it’s not a future. The tired could be talking now. I need wine to write. How much longer for the pizza? Should I order a glass of SB? Pinot?

12/8/18

mikemadiganLeave a comment

No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

mikemadiganLeave a comment