Perception, in the kitchen.

Running in the morning.  Ahead on timeline.  IF you could call it that.  Great day in meetings, dinner with parents.  Still hungry but not eating anymore.  Writing novel on her… her… the one wanting more… the character changing jobs, going for creative and not the expected.  I should go to bed, she orders.  I resist knowing I shouldn’t.  In Kerouac beat mode, on beat time.  So what then… more story, more in this kitchen.  Cards for the babies, Valentine’s Day.  What is that.  I’ve never known.

Going to have capping of night, then to bed go… running in morning.  Have to write more on the run, the run is life, is love is reason, is the counter to the counter, the counterargument to anything pessimistic.

Sitting in this kitchen, at the parent’s house… some could judge, and that’s fine.  I’m so focused on my control and centeredness of things.  Some will argue, object and counter-cross-object and puff their legalistic language in so many climates and shapes, but I just don’t listen.  Right now, I’m righted in my Now.

More than simple perception or sight, I don’t know how to define it and I really don’t know how.  I don’t care to.  I think of the poets I study, and the diarists I admire, like Ms. Plath and Pac, Hem with his letters, and Mr. Sedaris, and I find so much funny.  I’m going to delight in life, knowing some will say something.

Distracted by messages.  Should go to bed.  And keep with my stance, keep with my keep, assert the sight and acknowledgement of everything around me.  The world is funny, Humans are funny and barely deserve that capital.  No one in this kitchen but me. Running when it’s dark. So.. go.  Light jazz in back, and me just going from thought to thought, possibility to new newness with this new movement.  Some would maintain a detriment in my narrative, but the peripatetic jabs are only a lucrative tell.  Somehow, they ought be.

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wine page

7/3/19

Went out on my own, “Feet on the Street” as they say in this part of the company.  Just introducing myself, as I knew there was a chance of running into current clients.  And I did.  No deterrence.  This whole day thinking about selling and why some get anxiety when it comes to selling, and the possibility of conversion, that you might or might not sell.  Again, I learn on wine ideology and methodology.  Everything is from wine, for me.  Talk to people as you would if you were having a glass of SB with them on a desk in some warm weather, or sipping a stainless Chard on a dock somewhere in the San Juan Islands, or on a boat around the islands.  Do your job less, I said to myself walking up to that first corporate building in on of the Fountain Grove business building spots.

Department head sent out an email saying, basically telling us, that early departure at 3 is fine.  Told us to get the heck out of here and enjoy our weekend.  Which I more than appreciate as in the wine industry that rarely happens.  Every last dollar, every last dollar the mentality rather than making sure your sales force is satisfied with everything from day-to-day to how they see themselves in their role.  I’ll leave in a bit, I guess.  Go write somewhere maybe for a bit before meeting family in Windsor for the baseball game and whatever else is planned.  Looking around my new desk, and my place has already been punctuated.  Wine… wine… don’t fixate on the overwhelming population and propulsion of new terms and products and surrounding language.  Just see the person in front of you, I tell myself and offer to anyone reading this in any kind of sales post.  Just talk to as many people as you can, record everything, follow up, and don’t stop moving.  Not sure what else to say other than that, and I don’t want to talk about sales for this whole piece but narrating who you are and what you’re doing is nearly the entirety of what we think of as “sales”.

Wine taught me all this.  And the industry having forced me into disgust with it instructed me to gut-trust and find something else.  I did, and here I am, but still with wine-wound principles and sight, the Road to my Equilibrium purveying all the poetry and prose but more so poetry and music this writer ever need.  What will I have to do when with my own wines, but go door to door, just handing them out not really selling or even narrating anything, just saying hi and saying my name a couple times and handing a bottle of wine to whomever’s in front of me.

Office getting quiet.  I can tell people have left.  Think I’ll send my EOD in a minute then depart, myself.  Get a glass of something, somewhere.  Why does Sauvignon Blanc always sound good, and always sound like the most optimal and appropriate, optimally appropriate varietal and style, feel and song and vinified ride?  Don’t know, but I can see the glass in front of me, and by some odd extension see myself rising in this department far faster than anyone before me, and even faster than I now see myself ascending.  Why?  I’m not selling.  I refuse to sell.  I’ll only connect, talk, educate, create.  So many overthink sales and talk themselves out of it and into some undeserved low self-estimation.  The creativity and conversations will illuminate opportunity, and renewing zenith.

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wine page

6/29/19

Second to last day in June.  Will be in Sebastopol, today.  Alert on my phone saying I had to be here AT 8, but incorrect.  Not sure how that happened, maybe I put something on calendar as all-day event.  Anyway, two wines tasted last night.  What is an all-day effort is to write about each, 500 words each.  Sipping coffee from office as I rushed here from getting gas just in case I was wrong and did have to be here at 8.  Strong, but not at all appealing in flavor or, well, anything.  But it has caffeine, I’ll take it.  $8 more in envelop.  OR should I set aside for next Saturday in Napa tasting wines at whatever, however many dozens of wineries and tasting rooms and collectives there are.  Not thinking about it.  $8 to envelope, done.

Wine one, a Rose from Topping-Legnon, think that’s how you spell the winery and is the actual name, far too dark for your typical or even non-typical Rose.  Not much said through introduction on nose, with aromatic language and touch, then on palate a bit more expression and layeredness to her, but again nothing that confirmed or affirmed any distinguished identity.  Not that I didn’t like it, her, but again there was not much said.  That doesn’t mean the wine was bad, or missing something, or once more that I didn’t like it.  No.  There was just a compromised connection for some reason.  With only two glasses, really a glass and a half, if even that now that I think, we didn’t have that attraction.

Second, a Robert Young Cabernet, Spring Mountain.  At first, I thought something was wrong with her.  I don’t know what, like temperature damage or just a bum bottle.  Not in any way the case. After some air falling down the bottle’s neck, 20 or 30 minutes give or take, she was alert, awake, ready to communicate.  No more dreaming of another thrilling Cab from Robert Young. She was present, there, speaking to me and now I was ready for the page.  Of course I’ll write more later, but I can still taste that immediate pulse, the pronounced impression of the mountain, of the winery, the ’15 vintage which as many know had its own mood and shapeliness from the drought.  Don’t want to write about her like these published wine blatherers.  There was far too much there, far too much being sang to me there in the kitchen, from that glass.

Seeking more definition from wine, and last night’s second bottle provided more than what I expected.  To be honest, I just wanted to taste wine and not think that much about it.  I didn’t want to be a writer, not then, but again, the second bottle had a vision more consistent with my own than my own.  Convincing composition and what I said to myself in the last glass about 45 minutes before bed was, “I need a vineyard.” Pretty much the only thing I wrote last night in the Kerouac journal, watching the final inning of a Giants game.  Find myself thinking now, this morning in the office to this coffee and stop myself.  Just write about the wines, and what they say.  The Cabernet more and moreover speaking her song, not letting me stray from the vineyard rows again.

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from a journal

On a day off.  One lazy.  Now with some time to self and some Sauvignon Blanc poured, I think of the week ahead of me even though I don’t want to.  And the semester I won’t teach this summer.  Or the semester I won’t teach at the JC.  Choosing to write in complete silence, or to just kitchen sounds.  And for what… don’t know.  Just to write.

Told Alice earlier that I may be tiring of Sonoma County, of Santa Rosa.  So then what.  Don’t know.  Want to follow wine to some other place and shape.  Where.  Of course this writer’s mind goes to Monterey.  Teaching at the university, possibly, or one of the something like five community colleges down there.  Just thinking of course, but this time aloud and to Alice.  Mother of my little beats.

Again taking out Didion’s Magical Thinking ms and thinking of making it a reading assignment for me.  Put self back in school.  Learn how to do all this over, all over, again.  Be a student, have a devoted collection and stack of pages.  This day off I’ve been only twirled and twisted in thought, thoughts.  40…. Challenging self to challenge self more.  My life changed on the 29th, and then the other night with everyone here “celebrating” my birthday.  Why am I phrasing such in such a way, just where my mind is.

I re-focus and situate on the wine, this Sauvignon Blanc my sister made.  At first a but herbal and grapefruit tilted but now with more harmony and love-yell.  The wine reminds me to focus more on her, on all wines and songs that are said and singing to me in a moment.  Quiet house, me and wine, we talking.  Again, no music, just the ebb and pulse and poetry of our personalities, intermingling and interchanging the changing scenes of life and the Now.  While Alice and I walked around Spring Lake earlier I saw me at some beach café in Monterey or Pacific Grove and working on some book on wine.  On what.  The tasting room, walking the vineyard as I always do, meeting people from wherever and they commenting on my “impassioned speech on terroir” as one guy put it yesterday.  Everything wine.  Everything wined in all days, down there, by Monterey.  I see my writing spot, and I think SINGULARITY.  And then, wake up earlier!  Yelling to self before another sip, the SB now taking on more a vanilla or cream or soft silky melon-meant voice.  Not sure how to explain it.. but the shift in narrative for the wine is there. And who knows if my sister meant for this to happen.

After 4 in this day, this day that’s by all frames and decisions mine and for what I want to do, but wine has other ideas.  Taking last sip and putting plastic stemless bowl back to tile and me stopping.  What do I want, what do I really want to do as that one tasting room manager urged me to consider and meditate as he dismissed me from duty.  Something for which I was and am SO grateful.  So what do I do.  What does wine want?  As Joan cited, life can change and stop in a blink, a breath, an instant, a turn.  Turning to what, I don’t know.  I just know I have to perpetuate some peregrination of self, of me, who I think I am or want to be.

From left eye’s left corner, I see some table cover, one thin and paper and screaming 40 YEARS or something flaps and moves up and down.  I know, I know… I need move faster.  Holy fuck, I’m forty.  The SB calls me from the counter over there by the coffee maker.  Another, think more about Monterey, extend days by waking earlier so when you walk into that office you have no “expectations” as everything you wanted to do with the day you’ve already done.  Write.. Write MORE.

6/3/19

 

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5/31/19

Learning that there are not many places to take my teaching practice.  The only option, truly, is to start a school or some writing and reading camp or cove of my own.  This morning my meditation is curved, or cracked, something.  Mood, off.  Writing yesterday but only in Kerouac journal, at lunch.  Today, cannot let self eat out.  Need to work.  Plan for this writing seminar or set of seminars I want to teach.

Putting everything into this new education project.  And I’m not touting or boasting, advertising that I’m some writing and reading expert.  But, I have taught for a bit now, and have ideas to share.  Anymore that’s what teachers should incorporate into their classroom presence, that they’re sharing ideas and not telling students what to do.  Self-discovery, yes, but just following thought pursuit, Human curiosity.  Wondering why so many that are technically teachers want to be the one in charge, the one with all the answers rather than practice understatedness in their statements and lectures.

Made a couple more additions to document.  My character evens, balances, rights itself.  Educating self through this Now, this experience, this breath and intersection of intention and realization.  Telling self that knowledge is where I am, where I’ll forever be.  Remembering everything taught by Dad, Bob Coleman, and only a handful of instructors that contributed something true and truthful to my story.

Music in everything.  Even the time, much I loathe it.  8:33…. Only aim for today, points of learning, education, where I learn and ideas I want to, WILL, share with students, anyone taking one of my online courses or seminars.

Journal writing… Wrote one point for class.  Keep self in learning mode, more than teaching.  Reject teacher moniker, embrace the book carrier, pen mover, class to class goer.

 

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Typing on laptop, but not. 

By a proxy, proxy of this keyboard I plugged in, if that’s a proxy.  Never much understood the proxy thing.  But, my laptop is functioning.  Conditionally.  Sipping the Sanglier Pinot I bought the other day, my day off, but not wanting to lay it down.  “I’m gonna lay it down for a while, uuuuuhhhhhh…” I hear so many say, like they know so much about wine, and and what wine wants to say and how it’s to be read, and tasted.

You know what, I much like this more, this keyboard— Have to stop addressing tech, writing about it.  May have saved self something like, I don’t know… $2000, something like that.  I definitely need celebrate tonight.  Not running on morning but hoping I wake to write, or do something literary, writing something of some sentence sowing, that I can sell and “market” or, I don’t know….

Company event tomorrow.  No idea what to expect or see.  I’ll take it all as it presents itself to my story, to me, the one narrating.  No music, I walk on eggshells with this goddamn device…. How many battles have I had with devices, with technology itself.  And why do I keep having them.  ‘Cause I put myself there, in that arena, gladiator me on the sand or whatever that terrain versus the lion with saliva portrait-style jaws, for me, the writer expecting it to work.  I’ve been had, I ‘got took’ as I was once told.  Yeah, so….Need another glass of that Sanglier Pinot.  Need stay closer to wine and paper.  The journal doesn’t need another journal plugged into it to work, that I know.  Feel like a wobbling jester typing on this fucking thing.  Not so much a fault, but a result.  A behavioral outcome that need be studied, clinically.

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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.

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12/16/18

Semester ending this week.  English 100 tomorrow.  End of weekend, and so what it doesn’t matter I’ve been working at, away at, some project Friday and yesterday anyway.  Now, before bed, I’m seeing my office as more than mandated and decreed now, since today on an errand with little Kerouac telling him that one day I’ll have—one day soon—my own office and he can come play video games and help daddy tell stories.  This is all a story, I’ve always known but today spending as much time with little Kerouac and Ms. Austen as I did I see my narrative in more fixed amenity.  Being taught by them and by the day.

On new couch, writing for first time, jazz, one more beer….  4am again targeted.  If I do rise and fly when alarm cries, go straight to the coffee I made… that’ll help the writer be brighter.

Home from Katie’s, only having a sip of a wine I’ve never had… not telling me much but the thoughts go everywhere with its everything.  Notes and random chord changes, like this track, “Big Paul” by Burrell and Coltrane.  Everything explained…

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