…but it was my stupid ways that earned me the flimsy thin piece of Orwellian paper (more like tissue, or something from a detention center, some napkin or bathroom roll).  Then this devil laptop running an update and fucking up everything I had.  Again my fault.  Both were my fault.  And the wind they’re threatening tonight, not yet here.  Reluctant to be satirical or snarky as that’s what made me feel a clownish knob a couple days ago, me making fun of the wind predictions and angering people on social media and just not sitting well in the writer’s composition.

Ordered a pizza.. think guy is here.  He is.  Wait….

Have pizza.  Dinner break.  Paired with a Rose first and then the Zin I opened night before last in El Dorado Hills.  Have to let certain things go, if I’m to materialize a manuscript arrow.

Learning that thought is a snake you have to tame.  Exercise it too much and you’re struck, incapacitated.  Tonight I get Kerouac, I get Hemingway, Hughes, Plath, and Coltrane.  Not concerned with direction coherence or even sense.

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1/5/19

With grades handed in, the semester floats away from me like an abandoned buoy or side-boat, or decaying dinghy.  In office, dark and quiet, safety from outside, from that wind and rain and airborne leaves that somehow find a way to follow you.  Co-workers from other department file in, slowly.  You can tell they’re in a mode of settlement.  I’m in a position and tone of settler, settling into my Sonic role for day.  We’ll be walking in this, this weather, the sharp talk of rain and the more elephantine curl of winter Bay Area wind.  San Francisco.  More than likely will be colder.  7:53…. Need to start on list, soon.  Keep lights off for the time, for this time, making now and the entire day mine.  Normal proclamation from Mike Madigan’s normality.

Coffee.  Will walk across floor to get, from the office area on the east side of this structure.  Lights above me still off, lights behind me in meeting room on.  Another person walks in.  I think of what to do next.  Working and not, thinking about where I am in my story and how this fits in.  I need to run more, not getting out last night has me regretful and on an evaluative sword’s mercy plate.

Quiet, and then the settling noises.  Of any workplace I’ve been at this is by far the more interesting and enveloping in terms of characters and general theme, progression of story.  Other offices, like the insurance office in the early 2000s, and the home warrantee operation of ’04 (which as it happens used to be in this very building and I used to sit not far from where I now this type).  Then, of course the box of 2011 and into January of ’12.  None of them had life, none of them had any promise.  How do some employers expect the people working in their walls to be animated and progress to any profitability?  I have to ask self this.  What do some of these employers think when they design positions then offer people jobs?  This is why I’m taken by Sonic as I am, as it’s nothing like them, nothing.  It’s a loving and perplexing morass of more volume, more sound and music.  You find YOU, here.  A definition and intonation of self you don’t in other folds and office buildings, assuredly.

Submitting the semester past’s grades last night, I think of what Sonic’s taught me, what I’ve gathered and learned and upon reflected.  Who I am and what I’m doing right now, in from rain and wind, safe and collected at a desk.  Desks used to repulse me now I’m renewed, taken to a higher arrangement of character and story adjustment, the Now of it all here in this office.  And, me here, what I do here, what I observe and what assembles into my assembly of perception.

This year’s one of study.  I’m a student.  I’m studying.  I’ll receive a grade in the form of opportunity, opportunity I provide self.  So I’m grading myself.  I’m with the grade book and submitting for sakes of the grade in the book, with a book of my own. Being written here, at Sonic.

 

8:32.  Got a couple cereal cups from market here in office, down this row of desks and then a left, ‘nother left, then a sharp left then sharp right.  Back at desk with coffee and cereal, daily tasks I had set for self done, now I collect and ready for day.  Ready self for readying and rallying team for a day in the field.  Again I don’t know how inclement it is in SF, but I’m sure it could affect mood and morale, if allowed.  How some go to jobs they hate, over and over, year after year, astonishes me.  Fills me with sadness for them and a virulently loud intent to never let that be me.  At none of my other “jobs” was my own pace endorsed, encouraged. Never was I encouraged to this degree to find more of ME.

The jazz of this office reminds me of the thesis to this office and my story here.  Sip coffee after bite of cereal, and what precisely the next paragraph holds.  This right here, the meta of this magic, magic in the plain, in the so often dismissed and ignored.  The singularity of where you work, what you want from it.  This building directly addresses and I would say challenges just that.  IT tells you that this is more than a simple place to work.  IT’s not a job.  That’s profanity here.  IT’s a missions and edifice of explorative hue.  All for you, YOU, whatever you want to do.  You heard what the owner said, “Use it as a platform to get where you want to be.” He said that, in a room full of new hires, those impressionable, those possibly still seeking conviction and assurance that this was the right move.  You know it is. You have no doubt, question, demand for explanation.  You’re hungry.  Finally, you think, finally this happens.  Finally this is what’s before the day, for me, for what I want and what I’ve always expected a place of employment to be.  You know this is more than simple employment, that a simple clocking in and clocking out and getting a check and doing the same thing all over again next pay period.

Even teaching doesn’t do this for you.  Teaching, you thought the only career path for you but you found so many caveats and conditions, so many variable and so much chasing.  You’d grade that career choice, or more choice as it’s certainly no career, an F.  F.  F.  It failed you in so many manners and immediacies that it’s hard to even entertain inventory.  So you move on.  You move past it.  It’s only an it.  One easily replaceable and you have replaced it with life, not a to-do list but LIFE.  More invitation for Self and what you were before you even heard of this place.  Your normality’s abnormally loving and supportive, enriching and enlivening.

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Clocked back in.  Two minutes early. 

On speaking, you should be to-the-point, but not depriving audience of anything.  Tell them what they want to hear.  Have the words be kind and heaping with life.  So… don’t just say ‘I’m here and this is what I’m doing and this is what I have…’ Rather, speak more to the point of YOU, the person in the audience.  Use ‘you’ in your language, loud amounts of it…  This is for YOU… this is YOURS.. I’m here to tell you this, or invite you to this, and this is why it’s incredible…  Sales entails sales techniques, but not sales voice, not repeated repeats of something not interesting.  Entertain your audience…  Don’t sell, ever.  Sales is not selling, it’s speaking, it’s sincerity, earnest echoes sung in impassioned fastidiousness.

Just noting ideas passing through head, for sales team and next semester’s course.

Office a bit quieter.  Think some took a late lunch.

In office, today.  Getting things done and thinking of new ways to approach what I do.  I’m overthinking.  This is consequence of the inspiration I attain from just walking around this office as well as going from idea to idea.  Today I focus on speaking Sonic.  The language of this place.  If this is a conduit or bridge for what I want in my story, then I need throw self into the singularity of this Sonic story.  The office has you going over idea and another idea… speak what we do in as few words as possible, I say to myself.  At my desk not bored in even a microscopic morsel but ever active, animated in the possible ways to adjust and shape this business and how I speak about it.

Encouraged, exhausted from my own passion in this office.  This place that’s more than a place—like a parallel and utter juxtaposition to everything that we’re used to.  I call it an antithetical workplace, but maybe that’s wrong.  Maybe this is what the work place should be.  It is.  It is, that I know wholly and wildly, now.  This is a place for creativity and whim, and lucrative lunacy and revolution, but… more.  Something beyond denotation and connotation.  Talk about deconstruction and examining dichotomies and dualities, this is its own plain.  A text, a subject, a set of vocals that not only persuade but impassion beyond normal human norm.

This isn’t an office.  It’s not a colony.  It’s a language.  Its own speak.

So then halfway through my Friday, in office, not with my sales team, I have time to collect for sakes of being with them tomorrow in San Francisco, to bring what’s here to the Sunset District’s upper-40 avenues tomorrow.  I’m enriched, today, again.  Supplemented, turned around made more a voice of this place and what it speaks.

Looking through to-do list.  Everything done.  I know so.  I do.  Been through list, each item, 3 times.  So I give myself new items.  Prep for tomorrow.  Timeline for tomorrow.  Keep busy.  This new coffee cup has me especially energized and alive, written fire and fire to be written.

3:10.  Feel self getting tired, even with the coffee.  Yawn…. Phone interview/screening to prep for.  At 4, and I’m more or less ready, so time for exploratory thinking, let mind wander to whatever and wherever what—

3:18.  Coffee not working.  All work done.  Now what.  Not panic I feel but something in the same flavor isle.

May need a break.  Air that is fresh.  Break from desk.  Talking around me and my head’s in the car, on Road, in classroom, possibilities compounding in delirium-inducing shapes and plateaus.  I don’t know what to do, now.  I’m going mad, but a forming form of mad.  Nothing hindering, nothing detrimental, not at all.  This is a profuse health contract.  I’m rebuilt in my readiness as a writer.  This time in my story, where everything around me is me, for me, telling me to write something to myself that would benefit readers, somehow.

3:32.  Student life.  I’m a student here, as I am everywhere.  There never a non-learning place.  Every scene instructs.  Not sure I’m providing or depriving audience, writing this.  Work all around me, people working on what they work on, telling something to someone, educating and educating themselves whilst doing so, and me learning about what I do, here at this desk at which I everyday sit.  Back from lunch two minutes early but now I reach a point in the day where time is a self-voiding send.  So… look at clock, then at phone with its black screen, pen between forearms on desk.  ‘Nother sip of coffee, or get more coffee?  Don’t know.  Don’t think, I tell myself.  Just move.  Thinking, becoming a bit of a foe, one formidable and crippling.

This office, Sonic, with all its sounds and quick movements and people writing notes to themselves and others and logging what someone says to reference in the future, notes on transactions and occurrences in their departments…  Mom was right, everything I need is right here.  As I’ve said in class but never myself appreciated adequately—Magic in the Meta.  I won’t lie… this place fascinates me.  On multiplying and befuddling levels.  Transfixed in my fixations on and in everything from the voices I hear, to my own desk.  From the conversations between people in the meeting room behind me when I can hear them, to the laughs that are distant, on the other side of the floor, in some distant department.

I pity my past self, honestly.  Working in a tasting room, or going from campus to campus to campus—a freeway falcon—as an adjunct, or even further back working at the store, or before that in the insurance office.  I’m not even “home” here I’m just me… how I wish be seen, a writer.

4:12.  Called, no answer for phone screening.  Now I close day, prep for tomorrow which I actually already did so now it’s just a countdown to my running life.  Wondering about ten miles.  If that’s even smart to do on a treadmill.  Maybe just do an hour, then an hour tomorrow, then longer one Sunday, then back to a shorter run on Monday.  Again, more thought than needed.  Just write, just run, do both, live madly… bottom from the bottomless, or bottomless from the bottom.  Can’t remember what Jack said.  I’m beatifically introspective at this desk, hearing everything, everyone celebrate their weekend, what they’re going to do, what wine they’re going to drink.

Me, to run.

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9/30/18

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After yesterday’s longer than extended and boa-esque day, I’m home after day of lunch and wine with wife.  More wine here in home, and meditating, thinking about what I’m doing.  Coffee made for morrow.  Dinner done, dishes cleaned.  I’ve been a husband-like character, and then daddy putting kids in bath and readying them for bed and little Kerouac going right to sleep after me sitting next to his bed as he requested I do, as always.  Now I’m here.  Home and on floor.  No TV.  No writer shows.  Not a single distraction as distraction is death.  Something I offered to ‘100’ class last week.  Something Dad told me years ago, that distractions are death to a goal.  The wine I sipped earlier, given to me from Thomas today when wife and I stopped by for visit, she finally getting to meet him… not impressed.  Not that the wine’s bad, I mean it is the wine of this session, but it’s one off those ‘okay it’s here and I’m a wine writer I guess, some wild wine page-churner, I guess I’ll sip it’, wine.  It’s over there, by the toaster, and stove, in corner of that counter.  Thinking about all my writings tonight, how I did write a bit yesterday but only in journals and those are in the company car.  I’ll show early tomorrow to get them. I can’t let that happen.  Why did I.  Doesn’t matter really as it’s MY company car and I brought the key home.  By accident yes but that’s what the story wanted.

I haven’t had that much wine, but enough to have my thoughts in cosmic curves and turns and tells of my now, me sitting here and thinking about my babies upstairs and recent talks with Dad, certain motions he’s intoned but not directly said.  Tomorrow begins a massive creative and character-meant revolt, a campaign of sorts but no I hate that word. Makes me think of the wine office in Napa.  Tonight I’m just not he floor.  Typing.  While others eat dinner inter bed, have some beer, and watch a fucking reality show.  Not me.  I’m a writer.  OR I tell myself I am.  Pretty sure I am. They’re not.  I’m here, writing.  Doesn’t make me better, but makes me more ME.  The wine, still tasted.  Dad and I going earlier to Bottle Barn for beer, so he and I could have our traditional before he and Mom left.  We did, and watched Emma with her sass and little Kerouac with his vocality. 

That bottle over there, the one Thomas gave me today.  Like an unpopular kid on the playground— no wait I was him at one point—  A plan that doesn’t fly so well, so straight, so steady, making passengers nervous.  Either way, it’s odd.  Have no idea the composition and I’m sure I cold figure it out but why bother.  What would that do.  Is that who I want to be?  One of those consumers?  The wikipedia-reliers?  Think I’m still tired from prior day, that Albany event.  Floor reflecting light, toys around me, one of Little Mama’s shoes, toys, headphones?  I’m in Dad Land.  Me.  A wine writer, thinking of one day having vines of my own and the babies helping out their auntie Katie with harvest.  Doing anything.  Pressing, sorting, smelling, washing barrels… what be.  And me, in this vinifed poesy. 

9:15.  Closer to time bed.  And me, on this couch, setting down phone like its some needle, some addiction.  What do I need to check.  And why so often.  There’s something missing.  In work.  In life.  Right here on this couch.  My kids will read this one day—  Are you guys reading?  Cheese?  Mama?  What do you think?  Won’t tell you what to think, but I’ll tell you what to do, to try to—  Write.  If anything, your aims.  What you want from today, the next, the week.  Goals, I hate that word.  But true visions and aims, there’s a voltage and climate, a BEAT to that.  Go for that.  What Dad did with flying…

I’ll be up tomorrow morning.  I’ve sworn to self.  Like presidents to at innaug’…. Not so much with the current one, but anyone can see what the writer’s saying.  I see something, and tomorrow when I’m up at 4 sipping the coffee I made just a matter of ago minutes, I’ll produce.  Production isn’t just about number, but quality, a feel, an atmosphere, a general and pervasive understanding of self.  Yesterday in Albany, a city I’ve visited only a 10% handful of times, I saw people and families, life and community.  After a long shift in scene, in territory but I didn’t care.  I was there, talking to people and seeing what I did, all the restaurants and residents and gear children call for their parent to follow them to the area of dance.  I watched, filmed from my phone, from my seat, thought I should do more film work, capture more of this— moments in street with people doing this, THIS, living and enjoying the evening with each other.

Hungry, suddenly.  I hold.  Not eat.  Nothing done that could endanger tomorrow’s early wake.  What if I actually do it. Make a project out of it like I noted in my notebook, the 4AM idea, the book, written only in that single inky stride.  Tomorrow, tomorrow… there’s is always— but not tonight.  This Coltrane track molds me in an everywhere of everywhere’s.  So people won’t be pleased by me ways and pages and progression.  And do I mind.  No.  In fact I love their lack of settlement.  I feel HST, as when he was in Vegas looking for some dream, American or otherwise.  My insurrection starts with now, this cushion on which I sit, this night, everything in this house and where everyone is— wife watching some reality TV something that does a nothing’s nothing and squeezes life from the one watching it, poor gal.  Babies en haut (upstairs), me with a week ahead.  Another week.  Shouldn’t say it like that.  But I did.  Can’t back take it.  Yesterday in field and after at some event that did what I’m not really sure, and now here after day with wife at lunch at Campo Fina and two glasses of some Chardonnay, and into later hours goes day.  I can tell things are different. That’s what belies, that’s why skies, that’s what why’s.  I see everything.  Tonight’s declarative, with a manifold reasoning.  Couch.  9:39.  Late.  No more wait.  Tell self be more a writer.  How.  Wake earlier.  MUCH earlier.  Singular day.

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Interesting place to write, this morning. 

0c7912a9-f190-4f4f-8b7b-b781b33bc8ab-6321-000003e349dc6a68_fileWhile car’s serviced at place I found on Piner.  Not there, but at Epic Center, or is it Epicenter…. Either way I’m here with a 4-shot mocha and laptop seated at tallboy table, with vent above me but not blowing on me thank goodness.  Need today to be a center of epic quality in my story.  Guy said car wouldn’t take long to be tended to.  So I expect this sitting to be interrupted which is fine.  Going with flow, more or less so today.  Writing daddy finding time to write after taking kids to school now that’s schedule’s changed, having Monday and Sunday off which I prefer anyway as to have time like this.  Seated in unexpected place, writing, gathering and assembling self before day leaves ground.

Below this paragraph, this new thought if it’s even a coherent, autonomous thought, I type notes for the meeting today, class, reviewing essays.  The workshop, but I want today to be antithetical workshop, not what they’re used to.  Past couple days or so I’ve been thinking about me as a teacher or professor, how I view writing and how I read, what I hope for students to take away from every meeting, and how that translates to my new life in tech, in the tech world and working with internet, in business.  Everything begins to intersect before me, musically, and like Kerouac said, “The only truth is music.” If this is musical, it must be truthful.  I know it is.  Before class, I’ll lock myself at some point in my home office, arranging books, looking through old notes, amplifying the professor-Me.

Last time I came here, during its normal operating hours, was with Jesse, one of my best buddies about whom I’ve written a few times.  Guy who was on my roof last October hosing it down do it didn’t catch fire from all the falling embers and little flaming pieces and bits of homes around that weren’t as favored.  We came here and bowled, had beers, walked around and watched people play games, talked, then had some more beer and walked back to my house.  Seems like forever-forever ago, and I just think about time as I always do.  Setting plan for today, trying to get ahed of time.  What can I do?  Nothing.  More and more I’m old, older, but I don’t feel it.  How do I reconcile that?  Maybe I don’t have to. Maybe I am where I am, where I’m supposed to be, like my friend Tasha agree a cosmic intersection. 

Hard to believe I’m writing here.  Epic Center—  No, it IS ‘Epicenter’.  Oh well.  Doesn’t matter the name.  I definitely didn’t see my morning going this way, writing here, a place where I usually only visit when wife and kids are away and with Jesse to bowl and beer, and maybe play some game, something.  After this, thinking a drive somewhere, write somewhere else random.  OR, should I go home and arrange office.  Re-take the office which has recently been overtaken by the little beats, where they leave toys and sweet little drawings for me and their mother.  OR…….  Do I go to that collective crush pad, watch the winemakers and fruit come in, document what I can, be more of a wine writer than I ever had, just play around and fiddle with visuals and writing ideas like I do when here with bowling ball and beer.  Yes.. just go there and play with wine, and now that I’m out of the industry I can very much do that.

Looking for fruit, bins full of berries, winemakers I know, ideas for my little label.  Find stress commotion, people talking about what to do with fruit, how to treat fermentation, temperatures.  That place, Punchdown it’s called, is my epic of epic centers for creativity.  Now with this day off, I can work.  I can collect stories about wine and the wine industry and what people want from wine that work with it everyday on a production level.  Just made a note in today’s lecture and lesson plan, “What are you looking for?” Writing is experience, as is reading, bringing your life to the pages of whatever novel or memoir, book you’ve picked up.  Everything intersects, all elements connect.  In writing in life in work with reading, everything.  Like a game.  A ball down an isle, knocking over pins.

9/24/18

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9/14/18

img_7407Wine when home.  Day in field.  Cognitive throws clearing their way to my vision, my understanding and general concept and estimation of everything around me.  This Sophia’s Cuvée, Lancaster, 2015 I think has my thinking with not a single chain pain.  I’m on the floor of the lowest floor of the Autumn Walk Studio, going over conversations with T in car and at lunch, about wine and business, business… everything now I see as invitation and opportunity, a catalyst for amplification.  And I know I keep repaying that word or some form pro phylum thereof and, or, in.  But this is where the writer is, presently.  In business bliss and thought tryst. Made coffee for morrow, waking at 04:00 with no diffuse.  My life on it much depends and hopefully soon eventually ascends.  I feel and see it, for my babies and family and all those around me.  Sonic’s altered favorably, and with etching speed, my scope on work, on business and workplace forwards.

This Cab-honed set of sense tells me to take the night’s remainder off after this entry.  She understands I’m a writer, that I have something to maybe say, no delay, positive stray and fray in lyric-laden say.  Part of me didn’t want to leave SF, feeling like a Beatnik in my hometown, where I belong, where I only wanted to read poetry on street corners and in cafés, where T and I had lunch, but I studied.  Know, I know more now.  The wine professes to show only what mysteries and enigmas need be shows and set before in present’s block, lot.

Letting wine “open” in stemless plastic bowl on table.  Little Beats and wife upstairs done for day, away to dream plains and me just here being to be, in a state or irrevocable poetic pulse and session, sitting.  Tomorrow in office, learning more, feeding knowledge addiction, prophetic affliction.  Nothing thinking and just writing, must, my own trust and philosophy bus.  See self paling now on floor in typed stream and surf but only from long day.  I don’t aim for any attention as some do, as I sometimes do, right now I’m just a candid compositional bandit, only unhurt for attention and potential ideas bartered, commuted.  Something like such.  The house quiet, wine opened and more expository, telling me to keep writing and stop with any distracting dote, even if it’s to find some synonym.  That’s not genuine, that’s in no way truth.  Polishing your prose is the same as excess oak or using some additive or “add” to make the wine more ‘something’.  Got it, I say back to the red in cup.  And about my night go.

Still feel that fog on face, smell the sidewalk of 30-something and Balboa, Anza, Clement.  SF has not just my heart and mind but functionally and make and a situational duality, dueling with any nay-say and self-doubt, and moment-to-moment hell cloud.  So now, ending day, night, readying for next day.  4am, challenging anyone who thinks they work “harder” or with more cored and ordered force than THIS writer.

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Noting everything I learn in the tech scene,

world, language, behavior pattern and way.  I’m one with a little reluctance, but I’m using what I know how to do well, and from there amplify.  Guess that’s my new tone and talk, ‘amplify’, and amplification.  Think it’s safe to say I won’t learn how to code any time soon, nor design sights, install internet.  I speak, I write, I guess I sometimes entertain, I speak (already said that, sorry), and story-tell.  That’s what I do, what I know how to do.  13 minutes left in break and my eyes are still on that coffee drink.  But I’d have to use my debit card.  Don’t want to do that.  Just make yourself another cup of coffee and let it cool off, I say to self.  People play video games off to right, and again I take the energy here much more with a welcome write than how I felt at the winery in final days at Roth.  And I hate to say that and keep mentioning that in these entries because I love wine, I love even the industry, or at least what I knew the industry to be before I was devoured by it.  I swear, if I would’ve stayed…. I don’t want to think about it.  Wouldn’t have been healthy, or beneficial to me, and certainly not the writing.

I’m eager to speak to this new hire, and see what the girl I’m working very closely with to a blessing’s believability, T, says.  Questions, educating, me being educated while I’m more or less educating from the less than 12 full days of life here.  I’m going to teach from what I know.. sales, speaking, not just relating to customers but listening, seeing what they need and providing a certain narrative and depiction of what Sonic is.  Not sure why I call it “office new”, still.  Habit, or just being a funny, quirky, language tussling and fiddling pen bloke.  I don’t know.

Less than five minutes and I just made my coffee so I’m prep’d for the remaining hours in my day, here in tech’s step.  I shouldn’t say that, I think.  This office is much more than just a tech spot, place of business.  I see Sonic as a consumer advocacy group as I said to T a few days ago and earlier today, I think.  I’m learning how to do not just better business but more coherent business.  More creative, more life, more education… I don’t know where to start sometimes when it comes to this new office.  Sonic.. and me, the Lit and writing prof’, put into a new book and new storytelling  assemble and vocal.  Doing wha tI can in the breaths last, make them last, looking around the break room and feeding from everything from the video game sounds to the conversations right I listen to but don’t at all.  New job, new words and walls, chairs and tables, coffee and doors.  Everything a propellent, ascending action and atmosphere from one character to ‘nother.  The observations and written reactions and reflections, MY business.

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8/23/18

img_6960Noticed a typo in last night’s entry, to the ATLAS Peak Merlot I was sipping, but I’m not going to change it.  On property.  Last day in the industry, at this winery, working with this company, and onward to the new office, the new assignment… Working in “tech”, I guess you could say, but I see it as building community and contributing to an already-astonishingly impressive client relations and customer service culture, at Sonic.

Not sure how long they’ll keep me here today, as my final check’s already been cut and overnighted to the TR.  This is it.  I’m leaving.  Tomorrow at Sonic, and I only want to learn, meet other creatives, and expand my story, learn more about myself and business, people, and what the community wants.

09:19.  Should be packing up, but I’ll give myself a couple extra minutes.  In a cubicle, in cubicle-ville, villa.  How many writing sessions and sittings have I had in here stretched backward into 13 months or so.  I feel… I don’t know.  Amazing, yes.  But a bit in disbelief of my reality.  12 years in the wine industry, over.  It’s time.  I’m not excessively reflective, just in study.  And I, in now way, failed.  In no respect AM I failed, in having so much of my life in story in this industry, behind those counters, in all those tasting rooms.  Truth… that’s what I accumulated, pocketed, appreciated.  Finding that I don’t anymore need be here.  Even Stephanie, the new Tasting Room Manager here at Roth, someone I’ve very much if you must know grown to admire, inferred that I’ve graduated.  Coherence, cosmic.  The Story is speaking directly to me, offering new directives and dimensions, telling me to write, capture everything today, your last day, and purpose it all for tomorrow, the new story.  The new people, the new assignments, new KNOWLEDGE.

Hear someone coming up those loud steel stairs.  Mick, the Cellar Master.  He and I talk about all the barrels that still have to arrive before harvest.  Think he said like 300 more?  How are they going to fit all of them in the warehouse?  How will they survive this harvest, which is schedule to be I don’t know how many more hundred tons than last vintage…. See?  I still care.  I still love wine, and even the industry. But now, I just write it.  My heart and attention, my cognitive epicenter, is at Sonic, with what technology and the internet, what information can do for a home, a business, a person… a community.  COMMUNITY.  Now, I’m always with sight, and never a lowered lid.

09:27.  Ugh… need more time to write.  Left late, a bit, this morning with babies taking them to school, in Bennett Valley across town.  They teach me more than I can ever write or inventory.  They are my knowledge suppliers, those that go to throw me the sagacity fix, feed my beggar’s call for lesson, for new thoughts and gems, philosophy, life, all of it.  There, now I’m ready to walk down the stairs to the tasting room from this villa of cubes.  One final flash.

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