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.
And I have that again. That ‘I don’t know what to write again’ feeling.
Something. Is it a feeling. What is it. Look at me. I can barely write. Am I writing now, here in home, lone, listening to Coltrane as I do so often and thinking and thinking to despicable overthought trot. Receipts next to me I told myself I’d log to inventory somehow, but no…. Dream last night about helping someone write a birthday poem for a friend. I said something off the top of head and the person liked it. She told me to write it down, a co-worker at Sonic, handed me her notepad. More book than pad. Saw how much she’d written in days recent. Everything. Literally everything that happened that day and everyday before that was documented. Everything from putting money in her wallet for the day, logging that she bought a bottle of water from the snack shop in the building, everything. Not sure if I got around to writing down what I recited for her, so taken by what she wrote.
Now, I write. Or try. What’s with me, lately. And my writing. What’s holding me, stopping, stalling me. Have to figure this out, crack whatever code this is or cut through this fog before 40. Goddamn that number. Forget about it, I tell myself. Don’t think, just write, I tell myself. Just like one of the students in my class. The would-be scholars that come into my class, classes, hoping to be better writers. How’s their instructor, though? I’m writing, now. Early in morning, day of daylight savings. Would be 09:20, but I have 08…. Feel like a warrior, now, taking back my territory, ground, land. Still having trouble writing, typing. The jazz helps. Nothing more I want than this, this right here, establishing whatever legend or story for self I can. On writing. On life. On happiness and singularity. All of it. Just writing freely and not looking for any kind of synonym stream or beaming, shiny words to make my prose sound like anything else but me.
What do I write— My surroundings. So now, here in kitchen with no kids, wife, just these typing fingertips desperate for a story and some direction of something, something that…. Thought of taking pictures, of any nearby vineyard. But no. I’m not a photog. I’m a writer— A writer who does like to take pictures, yes, but a writer who has plenty of pictures he hasn’t used, of vineyards and other realities and scenes, things and people, so many somethings not yet put to blog or page or given a set of words, or even an acronym.
Kids clothes, pull-ups for daughter, coupon, a bag for something, headphones and a pen, more receipts, a mocha with 4 mighty espresso knocks in it. I’m here, present in the kitchen presenting my now-self to a later self, hoping that that punctuates a solid sense of self. Mood, in a one of those shapes of determined and eased confirmation. Who I am and what I’m doing. This started this morning, soon as I woke. I knew, I knew that narrative and personal essay were calling, and I thought of my story…. All the jobs I’ve had. How sometimes I’m embarrassed by such while others entirely proud and joyous as that’s what’s made me, me. From the grocery store, to the music story, while in college working in that office for can’t remember what it was, a medical something company that came to your house I think and took blood…. To the wine world. The wine world. The story always comes back to that, to them. Told a friend the other day that the only tasting room I’ll ever again set foot in will be my own. True, last night I thought sipping the St. Francis Syrah here in home before dinner out. Wine… wine…. Could write about that in only so many ways, then I think that’s the only thing I should be writing about. That’s the singularity, that’s the happiness. That’s where I write, that’s where I find self. I don’t know… this is a different morning for me as a writer.
Tell self to wash hands of anything stalling me, stopping me, putting up some kind of wall. All the praise and good write-ups I get for being a professor, or instructor, louden that. Be active from that. I know I’m using a lot of ‘I’ in this entry, but I’m just getting started. Let me warm up a bit. It’s morning 1. Of how many? Don’t know yet. I don’t quite know where this is going. I’m not meant to. I just don’t want to be one of those wishing writers after age 40, or even at that age.
Was near distracted by those receipts, off to left. To crumble them up and toss them in trash. No, I told myself. Stay where you are. Write. Write more. Never be not-writing. Keep with your composition keep and streak. Only 08:32, thank whatever. I need time. I need this time, time to just be with self, to write, to see where this project, or idea, yet another project or idea is going. Just see where it’s going, where it’ll take you. You only have to move, see what happens next. Knowing answers isn’t the objective. Explorations is. Just seeing, wandering, meandering, soaring and not moving wings too much. Let yourself be careless, free, free in the new freeness you’ve discovered.
Thinking of more Newness to embrace. That’s an aim that should be pursued. If you don’t know what to write, or what to create, what to do, just make sure you’re moving. You’ll find something, something. And if it takes a while then it takes a while. Enjoy the journey, enjoy the exploration, enjoy the enjoyment of you decided to move in a decided direction. Receipts crumbled and tossed into trash. Now more typed movement to this track. More New, Newness I can’t let slide or skip away from me. Teaching self to write and read, completely and wholly over again. Thinking of jobs again, then forgetting them as soon as they surfaced. While swim around in past tides where there’s a new one right in front of me. I see where I’m going…. Have always seen, but always been distracted.
(11/4/18)
Throwing myself into this project. What project? What is it meant to accomplish I’m not sure but I have something new here, a book, maybe. Again this morning I see a day ahead of me, one to do something and record everything. But enough promising, enough cyclical prose, this cold coffee I made last night orders and loudly notes. This house, like a parallel plain with no kids. The quiet is unnerving, really. I stay working, productive, typing. No wine to speak of last night and I’m quite glad if you should know. Was too tired, too drained from day and wasn’t in any kind of oeno-analytic act or mood, desire. Not at all. Building my collection again. Becoming a “professional consumer” as I told my friend yesterday at lunch. What the hell is that. I don’t know. But it sounds cool. Sounds like a job I’d want, could designate to self. Couldn’t I? Of course. Where do I start. One bottle. When and where do I get it. How ‘bout Oliver’s on way home. Done. Agreed. Get two. One for immediate consumption or at least near, proximal drinking and the other for never. Drink it when you’re fucking 70 or something. Forget about it. The project becomes wine-burdened as I knew it would. It had to. People call me all kinds of wine names and distinguish as some wine-whatever. I’m none of that. I don’t want any of that. I’m a recorder, recording everything, about wine and all else. The day in front of me will feed me ideas for this professional consumer curiosity and who knows what else. Wine leads, I write alongside not following but blindly in tow. What am I after tonight… Pinot? Cab? Have too much of that with regular shelf-pull. How about a Zin, or a Rhône blend, or a….
Tonight. I pull a Pinot.
No real pragmatism to it, it’s just what I pulled. The only bottle on the top shelf in my cellar, really closet. Long day as always on a Tuesday with the class I “teach” from 7-9, I get home have a little dinner and tonight the wine comes after. Again, no real planning to it, that’s just what happened. First sip, not that blown away, or into it. In fact, if you should know, I had to convince myself, talk myself into this note, writing at all. The wine helps. Wine seems to always help. Actually, not seems to but immediately does. Wine is my topic. What I come back to. Soon as home, after the day collecting data in Petaluma then 90-plus minutes of Plath lecture, I’m here. With an Argyle Pinot. Think a ’16. Too tired to get up and look at label. And who cares. I’m here with wine, just sipping with all ease and no analysis. No even much intricate consideration as I always do. Just me, the wine, this time. And all times.
Bins and Grapes
Leftovers and red…
Wine never needs to frame complicated. Wine should never direct prolix. She’s inviting, approachable, narrative and affectionate. What’s surrounded by curved glass reads a presence, a prophetic face and storm of versifying lines.
After a day, working, wine waits, debates her approach to me, my life and day and immediate room. The room, now, connotative in resonance, assurance, a perceptive seat. I’m at a table with her, being instructed, listening,eating leftovers and coaching me on Now, this doesn’t have to be layered or codified, and sort of sophisticated set.
Haven’t touched this glass. But the visual and nearness has me. Inward recite, and known night, thrown toward a lone vinified light.
9/19/18
The vineyard.
Calling me.
Tonight.
Telling me to tell myself something.
Meta in all turns and sips.
Back in a wined way.
With this.
9/5/18—
Opened one of my favorite bottles from Roth, guess I had one more, had no idea. The ’15 single-vineyard Cabernet, Alexander Valley. So then of course I think of the wine industry and all the years I spent in it, all the people I met and the wines fro Roth. Where I am now in my relationship with wine, now in tech, sipping wine just to sip it and occasionally write about it. The bottle tonight speaking to me in a way it never has. Tell me to find my freedom, shed any anxiety or suppression, oppression, any muffle or mute. I’ll have another glass in a minute, but first I’m set on starting this sitting… getting my thoughts in some revolution, some momentum. Technology, the internet, where I am. With this bottle and the last glass celebrating my first couple days of this second week. A wine guy in tech, teaching his last semest— Different approach. I need quiet, after today. First day teaching after a long weekend. I need stillness, peace, no sound. Need me, these keys, an early rise if I can but more than likely won’t. Today though, waking at 06:00 on the dot, after hearing son upstairs walking around, to and from our room, saying how he’s going to get dressed so the writer accepted the challenge and shot from under the sheets, got in the shower and made the day start itself. I thought of what I’m to do right when I walk through the doors after scanning my badge. What I’ll say, what I want accomplished, what I want from coworkers, what I want to say to them. This office new has me riled and antagonized in a way the wine industry was definitely unable to do. So I don’t know if it’s irony or paradox that I’m celebrating with the Roth bottle, but I am. I’m sipping to sip. Not overanalyzing, seeing more in how I interact and intersect with wine, what she wants to say to me in this occasion and what I’m to do with the next glass poured when wife goes upstairs, finally.
Sorry. Just need time to self. No one around me. The day took a toll. Not one terminal, or damaging by any means, but I certainly seek solitude this nuit. No one around me. May put on some Coltrane. Or not. Maybe just write to the sound of the dryer upstairs. Breathing, thinking about tomorrow in the office, already ideas quake and bubble like eager thought lava. I calm it. Mediate and meditate in everything in my reality, 39, now. What will I think in a few years. What should I care. I’m here now. And I need to put more into this project, this blog, this story, the wine/literary/techie. I’m a techie? OR, a literary wine guy in the tech world. Why do I need a title? Why do I need anything but a page? I don’t…. Wie upstairs, finally, time for another glass of the Meola. She waits, that red, for my reaction and my reasoning in response to her tide and vibe.
Coltrane on. Couldn’t resist. As I wrote earlier the bottle shows more aggression than the last time I saw her. Less restraint, a principle-driven grace to her setting and postmodern dialogue. I let her sit a while, next to me in the stemless bowl. I look at the color, more than depth-void, like an opaque rhythm and beat which I only associate with the unknowns in human consistencies. When you don’t know something, you should feel encouragement and intrigues. Push to explore and wander. That’s what she does, tonight. She has in past, but the Now contrasts. With intensity and new rhythm. Her voice is familiar but with a new bewitching beat. I’m the one in the corner listening to her sing, wanting to write down some reaction, some emotion from what I see and taste, experience, but she’s away orbited. And I collapse in my speak-lapse. I can’t write a thing, but only experience and not react or live or to page anything give. What I am is a sheet with only lines unoccupied, ashes, but then in next sip I’m new tint, new chromatic habit, sporadic, a her-fanatic.
Before getting too fustian in my sentences, of her, this wine, I think of the Roth tasting room. Sitting there at that table, the long polished wood surface either intentionally or by-chance in California’s shape. Never got an answer on that. But how I’d show early, on weekends, to write, in the quiet of that room, the tasting room, doing more for me and my writing than the others did, for sure. I wait for my next sip, think of literature, tech, wine, me, Sonoma County. Not sure why, but here I am. There I am. I’m everywhere in this ride of thinking, this paragraph to paragraph jab and meditative lab, here on the floor of my living room with wife and babies upstairs. I’m closer to 40, when I’m to write a thorough, loud and ostensible self-assessment of where I am in this story, my story. Where do I want to be? Well, There. My, THERE. I know what that is, but anymore I’m fearful of paginating it. I wont. I see it. You’ll see it, my There. Readers all, will. The wine, she massages the worry and any self-doubt from my cloud, my Now.
One shoe on the wood part of this floor, feet from where I situate. My daughter’s, the left. I think about the last step she took in that shoe, what she thought while taking it, where I was when she stepped that step. Don’t think she wore that pari today, so it must have been yesterday. The Cabernet reminds, time, it doesn’t care. I have to keep writing, wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, like when in the field the other day and sneaking a couple minutes to write some short poetic impressions. One foot, literarily, in front of the other. Situate, meditate, on the words and my Now fixate. Wth wine’s loving shove.