Tag: Wellness

Categories
autre

I need to breathe sometimes. 

img_2955That’s it.  That’s what “mediation” is to me.  Collection.  Regrouping.  And this morning I do so early, with my son waking me up, ordering me to come downstairs with him and watch cartoons.  He suffers from allergies as I do, sniffles at my left.  We arrived down here at about 5:54AM, and at first I said to myself “fuck it’s early.” But I survive, will survive the day, thanks to an early jolt from the coffee I made last night— cold now a bit, but still doing the necessary, waking the writer and starting the day.. “Wake up… wake up!” I say to myself, look left and smile as Jack is more than ready for his day.  Why can’t I have his energy and eagerness?  Why am I so goddamn old?  Breath… regroup yourself, writer.  When the coffee’s colder like this I can drink it faster.  Not sure that’s a positive, but that’s what I’m doing.  Not sure if this is a meditation or some sort of lecture to myself.  Just keep writing, wake up, beat the shit out of the day, like it’s some thing that owes you something.  And doesn’t it?  It owes me material, three thousand words, a way out of regularity.  Path to Wellness and thought and what I want.  Again, that end-game being Travel, my own office, and just writing freer than freely— my freewriting skips will show others that writing is always a meditation and should always be a reflection of your thought pattern.  So enveloped in my meter and sentences that I don’t hear Jackie’s cartoon anymore.  I just see the words and how the day’s going to develop.  Material.. dialogue.. people from yesterday, from New Orleans that couldn’t believe how gorgeous the property was, telling me about New Orleans as I couldn’t stop with the questions and confessing my obsession with the city— the man was an artist, having his own gallery and loving the feel o f his own city, how it forces him to paint.  Could see myself in their city while talking to them, waking early as I did today, going downstairs to the lobby, readying for a run, coming back to write, then prepare for whatever lecture or talk I had that day.  I want their city for the jazz, for the food, and all the sensory talk; smelling the cooking, hearing the jazz, gawking at the building designs…

Categories
autre

An Adjunct’s Thoughts on Voice

It’s not just who the student is in that paper, the strength of argumentation, or the structure and paragraph balance, but the impression of character.  The impression they provide of their character as well as the impression that’s left on our character, as readers.  It shows us how much we should care about the topic, which in my class is always elected, never enforced or prescribed.  Voice is urgency and the connection to a topic.  You could say “passion”, sure, but voice, true voice, or ‘Voice’, has to be felt.  It’s more than something just quantified in a rubric.  It’s more than a piece of the grading criteria or some requirement.  It shouldn’t have to be required.  The student should want to be heard, read.  Should demand it!  I understand that in the context of an assignment being an assignment the Voice can be compromised, or rehearsed, or tailored.  But, students shouldn’t let themselves do so.  The instructor of record shouldn’t allow it, should go to exhaustive lengths to prevent such!  As educators, we should advocate Voice above even mechanics, or some patterned “balance” the course outline says we should embrace in our pedagogies.  If a student doesn’t have a Voice, they don’t have a written identity.  They’d just be reciting and regurgitating “facts”.  That’s not writing, at all.  That’s recycling.  Encouraging Voice is prompting students to be more thoughtful with their work, to be more self-aware and selective with their word placement and sentence construction.  Yes, finding your own Voice much less being aware of it is challenging.  All the more reason to stress it in class sessions, throughout the semester.

Caring about a topic…  Expecting students to care about their work.  How is any of this possible without the accentuation of Voice?  Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Students come to the JC “taught” to write a certain way, to have this cozy and predictable structure to their writing.  This detracts from Voice, and does not help them establish any identity neither as a student, human, writer or thinker.  The academic world is always, and I do stand by “always”, trying to force students to write a certain way, never meeting students where they are.  Why?  Why the obsession with structure?  Why not the equal preeminence of the student’s own thoughts and experiences, how they see an issue?  Why not hear what they have to say, how they connect to text?  Five-paragraph essays…  Summary then analysis…  That’s formula, that’s anecdote.  There’s NO Voice in that.  That’s assignment.  An assignment of Voice, antithetical teaching.  Students are more than what they paginate, what they submit.  They came to the class with a life, and they’re still living that life, developing that story.  Let them tell it.  With their own patois.  This will coax more candor from what they submit, and strengthen them for the next class, be it 1A, or 1B, some Critical Theory course or Lit survey.

A radical idea, I know, enlivening students to think for themselves.  But, just try it.  You may just be impressed.

Categories
autre

Waking up…

Coffee, help me.

Writing the day.

Feel something amazing to soon me shape.

Categories
autre

Veggie Sandwich.. First of Many

Categories
autre

Tomorrow morning, another clash

IMG_2872

with 4AM.  But I’ll rise from the sheets like a resurrected something and do what I’m meant to do at this stage in the story.  CHANGE.  Did something radically different today…  At lunch, co-worker Ryan went to acquire sandwiches from Dry Creek General Store, or ‘Dry Creek’ as we chisel it down to.  I ordered a vegetarian sandwich, which I don’t think I’ve ever done.  Diet today consisted of plain bagel and mocha this morning from sbux, veggie sandwich, veggies when home with cheese quesadilla, and the leftovers from Alice’s chicken parm.  Now, coffee and mint-chip Milanos as night’s capping.  3rd day of no wine, beer.  I gain more elevation like an excited new pilot at the yoke, soaring past clouds, seeing what was behind become furthest from any simple farness behind him.  I’m him, gaining elevation, looking at my decaf cup, knowing I’ll do this tomorrow, that I’ll wake at 4AM, beat that hour till it means nothing, till it has the feel of 6, or 7, 8, or even 9.  Soon it’ll feel like sleeping in.

Forgot my little pages in the car, I realized when I landed in the tasting room.  So I made one from some scratch pieces I cut up a week or so past, stapled them, scribbled when I had the chance.  One marking:  “I’m the hardest-working, quickest writer in the world.” That’s how I want to be seen.  And yes, to an extent image does have importance, prominence in my mind.  I’m a writer who wants to be not “the best”, but recognized like none of the others are.  So I’m here at my home study’s desk surface, 10:06PM, when I could be in front of the TV like so many others are, watching some fatuous reality show or watching the news repeating the same story over and over again and whipping and washing their own biases—

IMG_2871

English 5 in the morning, 1A in afternoon.  Tomorrow, back in professor mode.  Have to do everything different.  Have to make it not just exciting and educational, enriching for me, but getting me closer to the Total Wellness I’m needing.  I won’t lie, I was watching the news earlier and I saw Trump has all but the GOP nom’ in his pocket.  This makes me… well, it makes me fucking sick.  But he’ll be confronted by everyone and everything, all political parties and sects, divisions and directives in this country.  Some are worried, thinking about moving out of America, but not me.  Why?  1, there’s no way that droning hedge-pig is reaching the White House.  And even if he did, I’m not going anywhere.  No WAY, will I let a fobbing idle-headed flap-dragon like Donald Trump move me out of MY country.  If he does somehow reach Washington, then he can have it.  I’m not changing, and neither should you.

Tomorrow morning…  4AM…..  Do you know what you’re up against?  This is a Mike Madigan that even Mike Madigan doesn’t know.  This MM is strong, stubborn, focused, and with a stasis that even the most disciplined and lethal pugilists would envy, study.   Tomorrow, tides not only turn, they will BE turned.  By me.  These colloquies, inner edicts, narratives.  My story changes, now right before 37.  The writer I am is becoming a ‘was’, an exiled ‘was’.

IMG_2873Still one Milano left, a bit more coffee.  May just eat the cookie and sip once, spill rest into kitchen.  Have to get ready for planned scuffle with that hour, the 4 o’clock basilisk that currently has me with a back against a wall of would’s, imagined pages written at a cruel hour but certain to produce material and story that would carry me to the Road, to my travels; extensive dimension alternate that would keep me in this trenchant talk.  But I’m not as wild as I want to be in these typings.  Fucking why.  Why can’t I completely let go and deliver what the universe wants me to?  Fuck what it wants me to do.  What do I want me to do, that’s the better more useful question.  4AM is going to get its ass kicked around the bottom floor of this house, watch.  In fact, don’t watch, ‘cause it’s going to be disturbing.  3,000 crazy fucking words before class, and I’ll walk into that class room with more material than the students are expecting.  It won’t be like any of the other sessions we’ve had these past 15 or 16 or however many goddamn weeks we’ve been meeting.  Maybe I have been reborn, in my own ideas.  A new thesis, for me.  For more than just getting to the Road, seeing the world, traveling, or even acquiring Total Wellness.  Maybe it’s for something else, something I’m not aware of yet, some otherworldly rune.  Maybe I’m just getting to know my most candid of Selves.  Honestly, if someone like Donald Trump can get himself this close to the most powerful leadership position in the world, I can certainly get what I want.  But, again, I’m not sure I know what that is.  Not yet.  I’m studious, though.

Categories
autre

5/2/16, conclusion

Already posted too much to blog.  I think 7 times.. sorry, readers.  Sipping decaf, and WAS eating a chocolate-chip granola bar, while editing, typing.  Tired, but I need to get to a certain word count, and I need more coffee.  Another granola bar.  Have a bedtime set for Self at 11:30, as I want to strike a major blemish to the 4AM hour.  This has become a war with time, a new front in the larger war against aging.  And after learning about that old friend with his company and all his followers, I need to be that fighter I mentioned earlier.  Yes, more coffee, some more reading and research.  Not much to narrate as I’m just sitting here in the home office, typing, looking at some Jackie clothes Alice placed on the desk.  Where’s my brainstorming sheet from earlier?  UGH…  I’m so fucking disorganized.

My political writing.  More.  Saw a clip today where Ted Cruz was confronted by a Trump supporter.  The supporter kept on repeating “Lyin’ Ted, Lyin’ Ted…” Just the kind of person I’d expect to see at a Trump rally.. uneducated, belligerent, immature.  I have to give it to Mr. Cruz.. he remained composed, and at one point asked the “gentleman” if he could say something, meaning actually participate in the conversation, and the nitwit just said “No.” Trump mirrors his supporters, and they him.  I don’t find it sad, sick, or even scary.  Just strange, that something like this, this spiral of political activity and support of any candidate with such crippled understandings of everything, could occur in this country.  Watching the clip again, I almost feel sorry for Mr. Cruz, which I never thought I’d say.  Need to write more.  Need to read more.  CNN sends me their “Nightcap” political pieces.. need read them all.  Have an HST affair with politics.  I don’t support Clinton, but I will vote for her.  Feel like I have to.  It’s my only option, so…

10:42.  Too late for another coffee, bar.  Need sleep if I’m to pocket a victory ‘gainst 4AM.

Sleep sounds amazing right now.  So I will.

In a few.

Next morning, day, collect self up the street from the winery.  List objectives for day:

-post something every hour

-take notes in little pages

-pictures

Have to keep moving.  And selling.. what do I want to sell?  Services.. copywriting/editing, writing lessons, personalized instruction.. and I’ll start there.. journal my journey to total Wellness.  Have to get rid of the wine world, I’m thinking.  But not just yet.. I love Dutcher, all the people and the property.  But the wine itself I no longer touch.  I can already feel myself changing after two days of no wine, beer.  A more honed and urged sense, universally.  More fearlessness.  I know where I’m going, what I want (as I’ve written so many hundreds of before times).  But now, I take an elevated step.  Not keeping that same evenness, flying at the same altitude.  I’m gaining elevation by not sipping wine or beer.  But 4AM, my foe, again this morning striking a victory on its tally board.  I have tomorrow, and I have the motivation of the 730 English 5 class.. get a head’s start on them.

Still can’t believe my past friend, CZ, COO of a company that appears to be doing well.  I have to change, and drastically, immediately.  Distance myself further from any contaminants—  In fact, eradicate them, as they ally with 4AM.  So I pick up the mocha here in my car parked off the road’s side, by the dam, and think about the day, what I’m about to do and where for the next eight bloody hours.  WHAT I WANT…  Just words, notes, evidence that I’m thinking, proof to myself that I’m gaining elevation.

Didn’t pack a lunch today.  Shit.  But that’s a possible boon, with the motivation and discipline associated with hunger (Hemingway).  No, it IS a benefit to me, my day, my separation from the sameness, the pattern.

5 more minutes on this Road’s side.  Maybe I should just leave now.. get on the clock, start taking notes, noting, posting, everything from the regular images to the unexpected.. whatever delivers happiness, revised Personhood, ZEN.  Learning as I go…..

Categories
autre

Funny to think we

put ourselves in many of the positions about which we grieve.

Again, just something to think about.

Categories
autre

The Day’s telling me to

do everything different.

Break patterns.

Defy demanded direction.

Create, don’t wait.

Then, opened gate.

Invite new sight.

Categories
autre

note:  Let’s talk!  Don’t just “Like”…

What are you writing?img_2852

What is your exercise/fitness routine?

When do you wake up?

How do you reach your goals?

What are/were your goals?

Tips for discipline?

What was the last book you read?

I want to get to know my “Followers”.  All of you.  Talk to me.  Talk to each other.  Let’s share stories and tips and all ideas.  Conversation leads to fruit, and the fruit provides fullness, Wellness, LIFE.

Namaste,

Mike

Categories
autre

Trying to shake

off the wine I had last night with Mom and Dad, all the discussions on family, and life— Mama gifting me a little bag which I will use for all the pens I have meandering around the inside of my backpack like frightened ants, with a Kerouac quote on the outside of it, the ‘Enjoy your life, every minute of it.” one.  So thankful for my family, my babies, wife, where we live.  My co-worker, losing his mother so unexpectedly.  Why him?  Why am I so prosperous, and even I’ll say ‘blessed’?  Don’t know.  But I am.  Writing through this img_2787hangover and sipping the coffee like it’s the only elixir on earth, thinking of class tomorrow, the coming week, 16 I think.  Lecturing from where I started, beginning with an HST quote, the Kerouac utterances— forgot my friend Anne-Marie’s visiting, to watch my Kerouac lecture as she’s been saying she’d love to do for a while.  Happy she’ll finally be in the classroom with me, one of the few full-timers I respect, that I visible feel respects me.

LIFE.  What life is and what we do with it…  How I evaluate essays, work submitted by students, also addressed in how I address Kerouac in ‘Bums’..  wait, maybe the characters are performing some sort of self-assessment in the hikes and saunters, journeys and jaunts.  I’ll ask the “students”…

The wine’s ripples fade, finally, with cup 2.  Going to blend everything into tomorrow’s lecture— life, death and those around you experiencing death and how it forces us to appreciate life, my coffee, wine, the winery, commuting.. everything.

In Dharma’s definition, is locked the word ‘duty’.  We all need know what ours is.

Mine is to write.

Teach—  NO, to generate ideas, discuss them, help students with their writing and encourage them in the cementing of their own visions and ideas.  Everything starts with the idea, I’m finding at my old age— that’s what brings us to Truth, our own Truths, confidences, Wellnesses—  You know what, going to test myself.  No more of the cosmically enrapturing and convincing wine I represent, at Dutcher or anywhere.  How will my character be affected?  Want to have the same energy and joy as Jackie and Emma in the morning, wine prevents that.  Think I sipped a bit last night as I haven’t seen Mom and Dad in a while, and one of our exchanges became a bit fiery, which is my fault.  Opened a bottle of the ’12 Lancaster Nicole’s to bury any simmering and quaking hatchets.  Which was a great idea and a horrible one.

This second cup tells me to relax, enjoy your morning with little Kerouac, don’t be so hard on yourself, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy…..  I breathe, forcefully and with self-instructing intent, smell the waffles I just heated for my little writer, and now me here back at the keys hoping for 500 words or so but then tell myself to not focus on word count.  Forget everything, be Bum of your own Dharma.

Jackie with allergies, me too, one of my co-workers, everyone, the earth reminding us of Spring’s landing and that everything around us is about rebirth right now, a purposeful and affluent re-start of the story.  That too need be inoculated into the morrow’s talk.

Nearing 37.  28 days.  Today starts May.  Why is time moving with such reckless vigor, and dismissive shapeliness?  Reminded of how curt life is…  Think of my co-worker, my mother…  Don’t stop moving my fingers on these keys, jotting in my little notebooks… in love with my life, every blink and breath contained.  3000 words will be a daily requisite—  sipping my second cup and meditating deeper into the morrow’s ebb and order, or disorder, me a bum in my Dharma.. look to my book, books—