Blazing through tasks like there’s nothing in front of me.

11:18.  Just finished delivering pieces of candy throughout the office. Felt good to spread love and poz vibez.  Today has been a loving one, one educating and freeing.  Going to class tonight eager and ready to make it everything I want.  Something for me.  Something to know more about my Now and to be FREED.

 

11:55.  Feel like I get it.  All of it.  Never felt this before, ever.  More than simple empowerment, or some freedom sentiment or sense.  But… like… I understand.  I see Self, in the Now, I am Freed and freeing more of my character and story.

12:07.  Brought lunch, the pieces of quesadilla but somehow tempted to eat out. No, I tell myself.  Go to the café and write, then heat quesa’ when back.  Eat at desk while working.  Budget still not done, but did pay off credit card a bit more.  No word from any of the wineries I contacted.  I’m done.  I’m officially retiring from wine.  Don’t even think I want the wine shop, anymore.  Maybe have my own label like Calluna, maybe, but even that I don’t know.

So full of thought, in this breath.  Again, like I get it all.  I understand where I am and why I’m doing what I’m doing.  Madness… Freedom… Individualism.  I should get out of the office.  Will.  No caffeine, no soft drinks.  Water.  Hopefully they have bubbly water.  Pretty sure they do, Pellegrino or some similar type.

12:54.  Resolving to stay here, go to breakroom, nook if I can, and write.  For tonight’s class, loving shoves for self to run tomorrow morning, early.

No more thinking.  About money or spending a couple bucks to get a sparkling water with the ques’.  Who cares.  Next week will be tight, but only from making progress.  Last night, last dinner out in some time, do note.  Next thought… to work, how to spend day’s remainder.  How….  See?  There I am, thinking again.

 

1:42.  At desk.  19 minutes left on lunch.  Snacking on trailmix.  Bought cherry sparkling.  Almost finished.  May get another.  Everything today for tomorrow’s early run.  Running on treadmill, hoping for 7-9 miles.  I’d be happy with that.  Pretending like I’m getting back into running all over again.  Revisiting and reassessing my reality as a runner.

Phone screening at 2:30.  May want to get in a walk.  Should I do that now?  Overthinking, goddamn you.  Water, notes, snacks, voices, voicemails, phones, discussions on what to do next.  The office is exceptionally alive today.  I mimic, I study, I love it all.  Each ingredient and inclination, ebb and view.  This place is beyond study-worthy, past useful.  This is IT.  The IT of it all.  My IT.  IT provides insight and understanding that nothing else could, or would ever hope that I had from being there.  The other places simply didn’t invest in me or those around me.

14 minutes left.  Water.  Gum.  On the menu.  Not that I’m trying to diet or necessarily eat less, but just control what’s contacted.

Two people walk into the zen den.  I feel defensive, like it’s my space and room and terrain being invaded.  Silly, but just what I feel alive as I am today.

 

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2/20/19

Two minutes past when I wanted to be writing.  Yesterday in Brentwood, having to walk about two miles to my car, thinking and taking pictures, enjoying the sun and how it hit those hills.  The drive back, music and thoughts of vocational banality, and now, finally, I experience no such thing.  I do credit Sonic but as well I credit the way I approach what I do here, my perspective as soon as I sit down at the desk and tackle tasks.  Obsequious this morning and much lately especially in Brentwood yesterday, walking with the Reps and one Lead down streets and hearing what people had to say about their current internet and how long they’ve lived there, their homes….  I took note of architecture and the front doors, how many of them were in what was a mock-bell tower.  All that was missing was the bell.  Reminded me of sister’s winery and how at the hour the bell sounds, often starting or plainly scaring anyone in the tower right at that sound-time.

8:23. The nook, mine.  All mine.  At least for the next 30 minutes.  Class tonight.  Still no sections for Fall.  That could change, but in no way do I hold my breath.  In.  NO.  Way.

Thinking at lunch I’ll go to that café, whatever it’s called just down Sebastopol.  Get some word done for tonight’s class.  Just checked email, nothing from students, or nothing important anyway and no notice of classes for Fall.  Letting it go.  Completely.  Hear someone walk into the breakroom.  Tempted to see who but I resist.  Putting self in classroom, taking notes, student and instructor.  Have ideas pummeling me from all angles and my voltage increases and refuses to cease in any regard.  Learning that I’ll always be learning, about how to approach time for lunch to what I do first thing in the morning, to notes I notes to self and for more strengthened self, to questions.  More questions, capturing observations and studying them for the day and how it presents itself to me.

Wipe nose.  Better not be getting a cold, what little Emma has.  Coffee still hot.  Have to use restroom but won’t.  Write, write more… start writing talk for 3/9.  More or less know what I’m going to talk about.  Freedom, how individuality muffles the vocational banality, and how we decide to be free.  We decide to live more jazz-like, musically and poetically.  We allow walls and ceilings to dictate sight.  Or, we don’t.  Or, we just don’t believe in them.  We express and live, and speak, wildly.  Create from such practice and habit, maintain in that manuscript.

8:37.  Rise time will be at 8:50.  Now what, I think to self.  Bottledaux, the name of the blog.  My blog, yes, but just a blog.  This morning and just now I said to self, “Pouring it all out.” We all should.  We should all be our own “platform”, or gate, or door, or bridge.  We decide the composition of the bridge convoying us from one scene to another.  But, how do we want to see ourselves?  All that matters, all mattering, ever.  This is the thesis to bottledaux, I’m understanding.  How do you want to see yourself… All mattering, ever.  YES.  Now, typing, sipping coffee when I can before diving into a list of tasks for day and enjoying my Literary lunch.

 

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In car. Lunch.

Ate what I bought at Sonic’s in-house market. Sandwich, Cliff Bar, sparkling water, with the peanuts I had in desk drawer as a little side something. About 30 minutes left. In car, hear wind and people talking on 26th Street or behind me somewhere on Shotwell. Not sure what part of the city this is but it’s interesting. Rained as soon as I exited vehicle right when I arrived and now skies, blue with thin and depleted clouds.

Will leave Field around 4:30. May get out in a bit and walk. More steps. 14 hour fast turned into a 16 hour one— Actually 16 hours, 9 minutes, 23 seconds. Stopped timer on phone after first bunch of peanuts were bit. Only inconsistencies are this morning’s latte which I excuse and an almond I accidentally ate shortly after while grabbing the small pack of almonds from desk. Ate one to see if it was stale or odd. While chewing, I realized what I was doing, kept going in jaw interval, and continued with fast. These fasts are teaching me not only about discipline and self, vision and singularity, but thought itself. Having a thought be actual and not just conceptual, hypothetical, imagined.

Man behind me a bit and to the side, speaking loudly in Spanish to someone over phone. Part of me wants to get out and see him while the writer-Me orders holding position. And I do. Driver’s seat of this company car. Dried skins from peanuts, sandwich container on floor. Will clean when I get back.

Different musics on the drive down. Thinking of everything from the previous day, and how much of it I can write, or could write from memory. Learning I can do so much more aptly and genuinely better than I thought. Learning I don’t always need be writing. That walking on these SF streets and living is writing. Have always known that and been aware of such approach to writing life, but now I feel and self-active I’m thought in ways I never have.

How much time left now. Don’t care. See the man on his phone, after he walked to the corner of 26th and Shot’. Can see his face. Back to me, and wearing hood.

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2/15/19

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Thoughts.  The composition of thoughts, then deconstructing and exploring the composition, each contributing stand in what assembles to comprise that thought.  What I thought about on the way here, to the office.  Coffee finally at my right, after the cup I made earlier was watered down and not at all at hoped-for/needed temp.  Thinking of a publishing house, one small and independent, memoir and poetry.  Never having to seek a publisher.  Did some arm workouts this morning, and now at the end of a 14-hour fast.  Feeling quite together, character-driven. Feel the hunger and am a bit tempted to break fast, but won’t.  Refuse.

8:51.  Here tomorrow.  Running tomorrow, first run since race last Saturday.  Legs are nearly completely back together, run-ready.  Want to diversify workouts, not be so cardio-heavy.  Today, I wrote in the Germany Journal, is Day 1.  Day 1 of what, don’t know yet.  Of how many days, don’t know that either.  Starting to see the grand consolidation of everything Sonic and all matters Mike Madigan.

Sip coffee, hearing co-workers talk.  I’m in character, right where I should be. Last night’s Grenache, making me realize the importance of travel and adventure, music, speaking, ideas, the composition of thought, thoughts.

9:04.  Hunger speaks to me but I thoroughly ignore.  Breaking in a bit, around 9:15.  Going to the new Zen Cove that was finished the other day, seemingly for me—what I have in my head, that is for me, for writing poetry, for building my publishing house.  Was paid today, but not as much as I thought. Nice paycheck, but my math was wrong no surprise.

Nearly done with a poem.  Part of book.  Part of something.  Sip coffee hoping it not just suppresses appetite but immediately puts it to immediate death.  What to have for lunch in field.  Don’t think about it.  Words, if anything.

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2/14/19

Work early.  8am now, clocking in at 8:50 or so.  Forgot headphones adaptor in car.  Tempted to run out and get but why I then think, just take in the breakroom voices you hear from the nook.  Work with what you have, with what you have, Mikey…. If I’m to know the Now and be freed from it, this is what I’m utilizing and implementing into the morning’s prose.

Out in the Field, today.  In office all day yesterday and in knowing where I am and what I’m doing, I ignore time.  The ten post-it notes to self I brought to class last night and shared, hours after lecturing on Kerouac and Madness here at Sonic, I’m in a different place.  And in this different place wondering how I place the beaming benefit of the contrast, and finish my two essays.  Didn’t make the deadlines I put before self.  I know.  Month over in two weeks, the time I have to finish my book. Different movements will manifest different Me’s.  So, one different act—didn’t get the headphone piece.  Usually I would have, as you might know, especially with music become more and more a demand and decided direction in my story.

Rain, light.  Room now completely quiet.  I’m not at work but in an office of my own, for more pulses in this page set than I can tally.  The breakroom, now, has intermittent landers.  People coming in for coffee, or some breakfast they pull from the fridge and pay for with that self-checkout box standing to the left of the refrigerating storage.  What do I want from the day—or more immediately and tangibly what do I demand from now.  The, Now.  We all need to have this discussion.  So I’m having it.  Again.  In Santa Rosa, Ca.  Just 15 or so minutes from my house.  Narrating to self, SELF, for sakes of more Self, more understanding and questioning where I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it.  No qualms or quibbles, none at all, but I maintain the conversation.

Yesterday I spoke on Madness and how madness is love and creative, how it’s its own form of freedom, accentuation, its own manuscript.  Vowing to live more madly, right now in this nook.  What I want is what I have, and what’s before me will supply and sequence more proliferation of ideas, get me to my travels.  Why travel.  Why not.  Why not see the world and have sittings like this in cities like Prague, or Lisbon, Cairo, New York…. Montreal, and of course my love-city, Paris.  I need it. I need more.  To understand self, narrator of and to self, share my findings with other so they can see what I see, in themselves and what’s around them.

Someone walks in, laughing, obviously content where he is, “Good morning, guys.” Followed by a few more warm ha-ha’s.  Today a day of the Valentines, where you’re to love everything, everyone.  My babies this morning, excited to be allowed to eat a little candy their mother bought them, and have some party in class.  I step back, did this morning earlier and do know, to see what’s evolving in this day of love, or cards, candy, smiles, balloons and parties.  The Now, estimating it, appraising it, deconstructing it and the Now you want to have.  The reality that you have that reality is a reality to love and celebrate.  I start laughing to myself.

I look out the window to parking lot see a delivery truck.  Think they deliver linens or supplies, or something health-oriented for businesses.  Abraham, my good buddy, my workout buddy whom I astronomically admire for his early wakes and workout routine walks in.  I ask him if he went this morning and he offers “Hell yeah, e’ryday!”I again smile and see a new possibility in waking early.  If not to workout then to write, finally finish my essays, and if not that then make a dent, one substantial and meaningful in the book.  Writing I did in field day before yesterday on tablet emailed to self, one page, possibly the first page in book, tonight edited.  Or, tomorrow.  We need difference, we need contrast if we’re to pass the envisioned and land at the actual.

Just saw someone peek their head in.  They were gone before I could see any face or eyes or right ear.  Could only see a collar and shoulder.  My breakfast sandwich, gone.  Will fast for day’s remainder.  Write for book in lunch’s hour, wherever in the city I’ll be.  Possibly the Castro, or Noe Valley.  Not sure yet.  And, observe.  Yesterday talking to Tasha for our mid-month check-in we talked about the power of observation and how not always one needs to be directly involved, interacting, present and talking, but watching.  Cataloguing observations and reacting from there, an idea I echoed and argued last night in class with the 100 group.

People see me writing, say hello, walk out class door after scanning their badge, her badge,  nice young girl from Inside Sales.  I observe them, they me possibly, then time persists in its insistence.  Amplifying from where I am, observing the little contained mess I made on this table with the sandwich bag, napkins from Starbucks, my phone and keys.  I arrange, re-arrange, make my writing space more spacious.  Done.  Now with the time I have left, set aims and visions for day—Writing at lunch, at desk more post-it notes to self like yester’, and notes for field today.  Set an observation template, if you would.  For the Sales Leads that I observe daily but as well for the day itself.  Everything from words I hear, people seen in streets, street lights and stores, cars and crosswalks, what bags people carry, what sounds steps make, everything.

I’m at work early writing because that’s what I do.  That’s what I have to do.  That’s my story.  That’s what keeps me healthy, you could say.  Alive and mentally alive and living and exploring my character and the story the character’s given.  Passing the visions, and about to land in rooms actual.  The travel, the hotels, lobbies, airplanes, tickets, engine sounds, taxis….  The story sows a new narrative.  And in that, I better know the current Now, and soon step pervasively and definitively free, freed.

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For class, reading.  Writing.  The journal.  Open mic, but for something else.  I want tonight to be reflective of my mood toward the academic institution, but with kindness.  A dose of defiance.  I have no class for Fall and I don’t know if I would take one were I offered one.  After today’s talk on Kerouac, I feel more self-sufficient, -reliant.  I don’t want to need them.  Then don’t, I tell self.  My thoughts on it all are non-thoughts.  But one.  It’s time to move on.  It’s time to test self, teach independently, be free of the composition confines of a campus classroom.

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2/13/19

Getting started.  Ready for my talk on Madness.  Form, Accentuation, Manuscript.  The order of disorder, but who’s to say it’s disorder…

8:23.  Taking a little breather.  The aim for day is to get so far ahead of schedule, for monthly efforts with the book.  No more thinking.  Thinking is done, I say to myself sitting here drinking my coffee, writing notes for one of the Leads.

Poetry, entries, essays, madness in everything.  Wrote the sentence in one journal, now to write one in another.  Rain outside, more than I thought would fall. Overheard someone in neighboring department say that it’s likely we’ll see an average of .5 inches every hour today, and that there will be flooding, and that she saw a firetruck pulling a boat behind it.

Little less than 2 hours left in 12 hour fast.  Sip more coffee, I tell self.

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Santa Rosa, Ca.

Forgot to stamp my geog’ to the entry.  Need to do so as a reminder and motivator to get me to the Road.

10:13.  Just under 7 minutes left in 12 hour fast.  Contemplating getting lunch for self today.  In fact I’m considering making such one of my daily aims.  Treating self, important.  We forget to do that, too many times, I feel.

Now what do I do.  Keep giving self projects, till speech at 12:30, or shortly thereafter.  Madness—Freedom, Accentuation, Manuscript.  We’re all writers.  OH I can’t wait to present.  This place, Sonic, allows me to build the story of me.

11:05.  Good position for and in day.  May go to in-house market, get some little treats for self rather than go to Texanita or the other Mexican place I love, up the street.  Would mean I’d be in-house all day.  So what.  Fine with that.  Need use the zen cove, the new room just a few steps from where now I sit.  Write notes to self, notes for tonight—antithetical, what I’m thinking, just as Sonic is antithetical workplace.

Texted Reps and Leads, cancelling work, or notifying them work for day is cancelled.  Now, I work further… Madness.  Being mad, embodying madness in all steps and turns of head, blinks and breaths.

11:21.  Back from Market.  $2.51.  Sparkling water, gum.  And now back at desk wondering what I should next do.  Reading through others’ observations and progresses.  Coffee still on desk but I’m done with coffee for a bit.  Time to just madly jot, write whatever comes to me, head…. Beach, travel, Monterey and Pacific Grove, more poetry, more music.. me, music.

11:26.  Notes to self, on post-it’s.  Still raining outside, saw while walking to market through glass doors.  Do I want to leave office, for lunch?  Why am I thinking about this, so much.

 

2:19.  Taking remainder of lunch at desk.  Didn’t go out as the speakers meeting went longer than forecast.  And, to my benefit.  Bought another sparkling water for meeting with Tasha.  Writing down more ideas for class tonight and for me principally, for the story, my story—Madness consumers and endorses me for more pages, more of my book that I will finish by month’s end.

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2/7/19

At desk.  Cruising through to-do’s.  Bulldozing them, really.  They have no chance against me.  None.  Making notes, now, for the day.

9:54, friend Abraham comes over to ask me about pronouns and gender, telling me he thought “Professor Mikey’s in the building, why don’t I just go ask him…” Made me laugh, but reminded me of my vision, where I’m going and the smaller destinations in the larger collective Road.  Appreciate how he and others see me.

Break approaching.  Thinking of my book, what book, THE book.

Wrote in each journal.  Sonic, Germany, and Happiness Project.  The day and I have a dance.  We dance and love and more do as the hours us pass.

10:09, tempted to take break but I’m rolling in my role, my roll, here at my desk.  Writing everything—people walking past me for meeting in room behind my desk.  Can see my office, my nearing bridge, the composition of and…. Everything.  Visions.  Singularity.

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2/3/19

Deciding not to replace laptop, but use as I am now with external keyboard.  Will get own keyboard, own mouse, maybe a mousepad.  Little Kerouac not sure what he wants to do, stressed about the options, not wanting to go roller skating or go to kids’ museum, nor hang out with a friend… he’s restless, anxious, for reason in an ebb of indecision and defeatism.  Not much I can do but listen, don’t indulge nor provoke.  My own errands, soon.  Right now, the laptop works, with these external bits.  Strange.  I move on.  Don’t obsess, don’t fixate or stress over the actuality that is, here with this odd, outdated clunky keyboard.

Need my own office.  Will have by year’s end.  Well as zero debt.  Getting close with the latter.  Have to build project list for day, year, right now.

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2/3/19

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Haven’t been writing as much.  Blaming it on this laptop, the one wife brought home from her school.  Not used to its feel, the keys’ sounds.  Easy excuse, easy scape’.  Coffee and kids, Super Bowl Sunday, hoping to run as I did yesterday on treadmill putting up over 7.5 miles.  Marathon this Saturday.  Still don’t have motel booked.  Jury duty possibly tomorrow, this week.  Notice to left, going online to see if I have to “serve” or “perform” my “civic duty”.  Never understood that, still don’t.

Eased day, today.  Should have woken earlier, but that’s my consistent joke, isn’t it?

Don’t have to call in and check till tomorrow, I guess, around 4 or 5 or something.  After 5 it said.  Coffee, need more.  Jack lets out obnoxious stretch with roaring sound either to get my attention or provoke me.  I keep typing, learning poise and composition.  Happiness in what I do, where I am.  Not wishing for anything.  Class tomorrow, grade papers somehow—Had dream last night/this morning, and I include this morning as the end of it ran up to me waking ot sounds of kids playing upstairs.  Dream had me in classroom, first day, people filing in late when just before I thought I’d have a thin section and the department would cancel it.  Told students that were coming in announcing how great it’d be to work with me again to sit down and we can talk after class.  I even ordered the class to be quite so students could read what they just wrote during and in-class assignment, or prompt, something about Philosophy, or which thinkers, 2, did they find important and instrumental in their life.  I myself wrote Plato and MLK.  Explained a bit why, then woke.

When I teach Philosophy at Stanford or wherever, coming from teaching English at the CC level, of all levels of English, I plan to focus on Now, the magic of the meta, immediacy’s gravity and importance, first.  Before addressing selected texts and other exercises.  Definition, going back to my conversation with Bob Coleman in ’99, “Definitional Clarity” as he put it.  Defining Self, where you are and what you’re doing.  Does that presence make you happy… happy and health and the tie therein and of.

Today I feel like propelling joy and Equanimity into the world, in a multiplying and self-supporting stream.  I often voice and repeat “poz vibez” to people in my life near and everywhere I can.  This morning I embody it as I never have.  There’s no reason for stress or angst, or frustration…. Jackie just said something I’d rather him not say and I tell him that’s not nice, and he responds, “Hey, you be quiet, Michael…” Usually I enter into contest with my little Beat.  But not this morning.  I laughed quietly, smile, am still smiling typing this sentence.. told them both I’d go to Starbucks and get what we all deem “Daddy Breakfast”.  Some morning pound cake for little Kerouac and a chocolate milk for little Ms. Austen.  Speaking of Jane Austen, I wonder if I can order all her books online.  Want to lecture on her, or at least write essays on her work and read them.  But I’ll start with Ms. Plath… “…If I’ve killed on man, I’ve killed two….” Sad I’m not lecturing on her this term, but soon again.  Or maybe I can, print some copies of a poem, either “Daddy” or “Lazurus”.  Ideas in tow and I try to inventory and get what I Can to page but they swarm with more frazzle and roam than I can wrangle.  I go on with the morning, into it, and wait for the game.  Today’s, and mine own.

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