How I’m still awake, moving and alive,
cognitively cogent and coherent is miraculous. Lively radiant, glowing day in Marin. Opened Krug Chenin Blanc, poured self a glass which could very well be the capping of night, and then soon to bed. Meeting with Lead group in morning, 7am. Not sure what will be folded into the meeting, the deliverables as much I hate that word, but my story so far on the B2B side had proven more than enriching, elevating, a prognostication and game of its own. Keep momentum a momentum.
For the day, I felt no signs of exhaustion till I had my meeting with Mark at 2. I told him what I’d done, wake before 3 and couldn’t go back into any horizontal field as I started thinking about the day ahead of me. And now I’m here, glass of white, 8:12, and unsure of how much longer this writing runner and daddy, wine light can be lit, literary, in the day. Feel like HST in his dash for the dream, American or whatever, and me for my wine Room, or tasting quarter. Everything I write is work as wine is the fruition of work, the butterfly after all her stages.
First sip of the Chenin and far past the crisp or fresh, pristine beam I think of from the tasting room. Was thinking about opening the Rose I bought for Alice but then no I couldn’t how could I she’ll come home from her trip ‘cross country and want just that, a cold glass of Rose. Relax. So I left it alone. Mom told me to not bring anything to the Pinot tasting tomorrow night which looks like will only entail parents and self. Bought a ’16 Davis Bynum. Not a bad point of pricing, and I’m curious to see what’s sung from the bottle. Have I had one of these before?
…want wine to speak to me, and not like she has before. I’m going to watch her, speak with her, listen to her visual and moment-to-moment recital. Each winery, each driveway and surrounding vineyard, for the story. A book could be and should be written ‘bout each. Each seeks to me teach, I know. She reminds us to not complicate, to not think much less excessively. Live and create from present.
Made another cup of coffee to sip slow, as Chris and I will be heading to Starbucks on Hopper for planning meeting. Not a formal meeting or even really a meeting at all, just talk and lightly plan our day’s aims. Tomorrow I’m at the winery, pouring and speaking. Need to make it lucrative, I have to say. Same with this writing, small little wild wine writing releases that place everything to thought plate…
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.
Brentwood, CA.
Lunch for a bit even though I ate on drive down. Just more time to self, sparkling water and music in this building. Not bad… café rock with bit of elevated tempo, female vocals, has me thinking of Road travel. Driving somewhere distant. Utah, Colorado, Texas, North Carolina, New York. Saw this documentary about a band, this kind of rock from what I remember, touring all over the country. Can’t remember much about it other than when they landed in New York for a gig they came alive in a way they didn’t at any other venue. Tried looking for it just now but could find it.
Need more music in my life, much more. And there’s already quite a bit, as you might know from reading. More, though. Why not more. Why not universes more? I’m falling into a loving place, more loving, with my character, with who I am as a writer in wine. Not going for any word count, here. Just listening to the scene, stage, me, this track. Work… what I do versus who I am. Everything now intersects with loving steps.
I’ve only written here like this once, months ago. Sitting at a tallboy table in a side room, different feel to it all. My break, my time in the day to take time from the day for MY day. Postmodern recipe for realization. Challenging self to write a song while canvassing with team. One short, but not so I’m at a loss, or someone listening would be saying something like “That’s it?” Like with some wines when you taste and you’re left wondering, “So what am I supposed to think about that?” Wine finding a foothold in my literary and musical life layers.
Vineyard, me in a wooden chair, old, sipping a bright white and remembering the envelope.
6/20/19
Wine has me composed.
With new composition and understanding of my manuscript, the present. So I sip and don’t think so much.
Visit, 4/15/19
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….