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.
Wine.
Now.
Wine is
my partner narrator.
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.
Wine.
Where I be.
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
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.
Today… bit by wine bug, working an event at Idlewild
pouring Italian wines, all quite rare, friend from company I worked at expressing how happy she is for me now, now that I get to enjoy wine as I should as a writer and blogger. “Are you still writing about wine?” I told her yes even though I haven’t been, much, in days recent, but after today all I want to do is hop around Italian wines, and Italy, explore the entire fucking planet as much s I can and taste as much wine as I can, in any tasting room or villa, or terrace, wherever I can. Was in the ‘IW’ TR from about 12-8:15, listening to my friend Thomas speak on Italian varietals in the Mount Etna area. I’ll admit—well I don’t actually have to admit, but…-I don’t know Italian wines that much. Really not at all, till I started helping out at IW. Now I get to have fun, as I should with wine, as anyone loving wine should.
Now that I’m home, I can actually have a full glass. Was quite cautious sipping in the tasting room, Labor Day and all, and the CHP was out like the Panzer Divisions in Warsaw. I was sipping a bit, spitting, but more so listening, thinking of where I am in my wined story and how now I finally get a wined story. Me, now in tech, and I have not even a microscopic regret, will some day I swear have my own little label. I’ve written about this so many times that I’m now actually annoyed I wrote it again, another vow, another promise, but today told me… give everything to the office new, to tech, so I can play in wine. And not just for that, but my wine life is a gift from other work. How can I blend wine and tech, and beyond some silly rating app? That’s obviously too much the obvious approach. My thinking goes to discussion, to conversation, sharing of information yes but more informing other consumers.
Wine is calling me back, but not in any professional capacity. Like Bekah said, enjoy it as you want to. I will, starting with this Rosé. Blend of Nebb’, Dolcetto, Barbera, and I see some cove, the Mediterranean, me not having anything to do but write. The wine bug has bitten me several times today, warned me to stay away from the industry and if I go back it’s for my own tasting room which will be invitation-only. Friends, family, or friends or family, and family, of either. I see after today what wine should be. Not a competition, not a status-anything. Nothing the industry promotes, certainly not some corporate blob-glob pretending to be family-formed. I’m sipping wine, seeing myself somewhere, knowing that what I’ve seen in wine and wha tI now appreciate and feel is what I’m to do in the tech world. Much now answered, much now seen, a gem trove told and gleamed.