Now
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.
Music.
Looking back at the writer.
When the day ends
planning for the next should
always creatively catalyze.
…yes more coffee. Doesn’t cost, and he should. Presses button, small cup than the last. Sets budget for week. 8am, should get in shower, or not. Just ready self by washing face, putting comb through hair, shirt and sweater and ready. Mike doesn’t know what else to write about the morning. 4am wake, but he’s written that how many times. Exactly, he says. Knows today has to be antithetical to prior days, carries. Write everything down. Literally everything, even if painful. No wine during week, only running and early ups. To gym like his friend Abraham, another with more than impressive system. Mike sets his mind to running, to travel, to photography. Needing more, he looks at his phone, shots taken from yest– Mike realizes he left his camera in Chris’ car. Shit, he thinks. He hates it when things like this occur but then realizes it’s not a deal at all…
In this
is narrative maze.
5/25/19
Each step.
Know your steps and know
your Now.
3/3/19
This. This morning. This is for you. This is yours. You have the morning, day, week, month, everything you want by deciding so. Candle going, at laptop’s side. Meditation with latte. Wife deciding on snow gear for kids, upcoming trip. Me, with the candle, something never near me when writing, seeing more Newness.
Fire, tempting me to try new avenues and expressive streams. Morning, a bit sluggish from last night going to bed late and after dinner and wine with wife. Melissa on couch listing prices to me for their snow trip approaching. Tahoe. Morning telling me to write faster, morning telling me to write more in Germany Journal, map how you get There.
Kids should be home, soon. More photos of them. Their steps in life, my story, the story itself. More thoughts and considerations this morning than I forecasted. What do you want? I keep asking self. Above everything, not citing health of me and all near and loved, travel. It has to be travel. Every continent. As many cultures as I can see, feel.
What’s the plan, wife asks, for day. Good question. No plan. And maybe that’s what needs to be. Life isn’t excessive deliberation, but deciding more in what’s already present. Yesterday, not in Field with sales squad, I replayed repeatedly the walks on all streets. Blocks. Districts and meta-districts. Truly wanted to be out there with them but couldn’t as that would’ve been day 6 in a row. Which I don’t at all mind, but is against Sonic’s stances. No quarrel, only putting myself there with them, imaginarily. People in San Francisco, the battle to find a parking spot and the daily inner-problem solve of where for lunch. The plan for today is today, to not plan but to live, talk to both babies, ask them questions, learn from them. Being with them is the demand satisfied, wanting them to teach me, instruct me how to get to those travels.
They already have, but I need more.
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.
1/6/19
Been writing in more than one place for the ’19 story. Oh well I say to myself with another glass of sparkling, Jackie over there playing on the tablet my mom and dad bought him this past xmas. Nothing I’m writing lately I’m liking. Certainly not loving. So what’s the bandage for that? One part of me says just write free, with less shackle and inner-hassle. What’s that mean I don’t know so I re-focus on Jack. The day he and I have had, his sister too. She now off with wife and wife’s friend and wife’s friend’s daughter to Target to get who knows what. Kerouac has some inner dialogue with himself regarding the game, if it’s a game or some scholastic, learning program…. “Jack, what are you doing? What are you playing with?” He gives a bit of a mumble but I’m not convinced that was directed at me. He goes back to doing that, whatever that is. He rests the right side of his face in his right palm, right elbow on right inner-thigh as he sits on floor, legs crossed and lightly locked. We just spent the past couple hours watching football. Playoffs. Or postseason. Chicago versus Eagles, in Chicago. Eagles pulled it by a point. Just one. I of course was on CHI’s side for various reasons—none of which I’ve told you so I guess I shouldn’t write “of course”—and so was Jack. Both us disappointed in the result. But we move on. He with his game, or learning program, me with words and this morning before our together time, and time with his sister, a 7-mile run which I now feel.
Hoping to get some reading in, tonight. Hemingway, Coelho, Plath, Hughes…. Not sure I’ll touch all four books, but one of them I’m rather confident. Need to write more poetry, read Hughes more, and other poets like Cummings, Plath of course, Yeats, and from that collection of several poets I was gifted years ago. Today teaches me to not work against existing momentum, ever. What you want to do with the day is one matter, what you’re able to do and what you can do with what is present is quite another write.
Writing everything down…. Jack, quite poised and careful how he touches that screen. Face Ibn right palm, again. He says nothing to me on his own, and I don’t want to break his connection to his current action so I just push these buttons while I look at him. My little boy who daily loses his littleness to time— Time, that fucking animal, devouring all of us as a matter of duty and functionality, normalcy. Why I deplore normalcy, the patterns. The expected. The unavoidable tumult of the clock. I look at reflection, mine, and can see changes in my face, around the mouth and eyes. Forty this year— fuck. Have I lost some of my awareness and writing ability? Am I starting to fade? Looking over at little Kerouac, my little beat. He’ll keep me young. His sister, too.