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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2/14/19

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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2/10/19

Morning following morning of marathon that was only a half for my, my thoughts are on and in literature, writing, teaching self and being taught from experience.  I don’t see yesterday as a victory or a defeat, but a prime lesson.  Instruction on everything.

Morning with family.  Kids on couch with their mama, my over here at kitchen island, writing, in Kerouac’s novel, wanting more of what Sal did, what Dean did and thought he did.  In travel, in wine, in music.  The wine I had last night, bought with son at store.  Jack telling me we need to buy some wine so can “do some business” as he put it.  Everything I need for my Road, for my travels, here.

 

Mike thinks about his day off, what he wants from it, how to approach it.  Thoughts, everything in thought, what’s in his thinking and the ideas that pass that he won’t remember, that he won’t write down.  Mike Madigan, analyzing himself and what he does.  Wanting to feel what Sal and Dean did in the car, at the jazz clubs, at all the unexpected locations with new people they’ve only known for so long.  The reason and reasoning, thought and philosophy to everything from people at a house to beer and tacos, to the sound of cars being parked in a lot, crazily.

Mike forgot about Sausalito, about the marathon, about running altogether.  He thought about wine, again about self-publishing and wine, what to do from there.  New ways of approaching wine and teaching, books… Sedaris’ essays, Plath’s poems, Kerouac’s novel, Hughes and all his pieces.  Mike would re-read Road, note every sentence, including the first where the narrator lets readers know this is about him, Dean, how he felt right when he met Dean then onward into his life.  Mike has a son, daughter, since knowing them he sees the world with more reverence and hesitation—How does he live every moment as deeply as he can?  Why does he spend so much time thinking and overthinking rather than writing, living?  He didn’t have an answer.  Not this morning.  He wouldn’t.  He didn’t need one.  All he needs is them.  Those two.  Their mother.  The house.  Writing father seeking more reason and reasoning in everything, all that he does and what’s around him in his current scene and current.

Thought—everything in the appreciation of Now.

Living is literature, he finds.  He’s always know this and Mike has always seen wine as more a literary presence than some chemical or agro result.  Mike returns to wine, for this thought.  Sitting at the kitchen counter and looking over at the bottle of Grgich Merlot, ’14, that last night he explored and let speak to him.  He refused to let wine leave him, or him leave wine.  He’d write each sip, even if twelve essays or pieces or sketches came from the same bottle.  Wasn’t that the point?  Each sip, different.  Each second there is more in the jazz of what you poured.  Maybe this is the business little Kerouac was talking about, yesterday in the Oliver’s wine isle.

Wine speaks to Mike in a way it hasn’t, ever.  She tells him to move, move quicker.  Edit nothing.  Just express.  Self and the Now, thought and reasoning in what you sip, the appreciation of the Now… no going back, now.  The story is set.  Now he writes.. Several books.  With wine.  A marathon of book output, then another, then a marathon of written treks in the vineyard rows.  He sees it.  All.  All sips and steps.

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Woke with morning

with definite and defined mood. Like I’m bored or something– no, like he scene needs changing. That I should write a novel, write something to get me on the road. Guess I shouldn’t be writing when in a mood or funk or what.

In line at Starbucks, long line which only antagonizes it. I breathe, order my latter… some loud blender noise, lady asking me if I’m waiting to order or for order, something she could have figured out on her own. I need to sit. I need music. Need the caffeine and quiet, my own seat. No more crowd.

Will more than likely be a long wait. Adding to it. I don’t allow the addition. Writing through and past it… people around me corralling themselves to their orders, mobile and in-house.

 

In my writing nook in the office.  So much more me with this room, contrasted to the loud and crowded, shove den of Starbucks up the street.  Feel like I can’t write this morning.  Nothing.  Not a note, not a paragraph or even my daily you-sentence.  What now, what now… book due at Month’s end.  Quiet in here, jazz in ears.  Just what I need, but I need travel, more than the coffee, more than any wine.  Travel.  Seeing.  Living.  I’m panicking, panicked.  How do I write. I literally just asked myself that.  Just write.  Do what you tell the students to.  The students, more writers than I am this morning but I can change that and this mood and the plainness and repetition of days.  Plan.  Won’t write it.  At least not immediately.  Soon.  Don’t stall.  Not at all.  Not a squandered second.  Write everything.  I’m coming out of it.  Don’t overthink and don’t think, as Mom advised use what’s around you.  What you’re doing.  Driving to Berkeley again today.  Yesterday with the Richmond-San Rafael bridge out having to go through Vallejo then down 80 and my navigation taking me on some not-so-scenic way.

Need to call about Fall class, if they have one for me.  Rather hoping they don’t, if you must note and record what you can.  The classes at the JC now begin to run together, blend like dumped paint down a parking lot drain.  Nothing hits me, anymore.  And when students offer attitude, I get bored with it whereas before I was I guess you could say a bit amused, but ended it with one sentence with not only put me in confident posture, but assured me I was deserving somewhat of what I’m doing.  Now, I’m passionate, and that’s it.  No interest in grading, no interest in classroom management, only in the lectures I offer.  The ideas.  The thoughts on writing and what we’re reading, now Sedaris, and journal keeping and contribution.

8:28.  No class available, Fall.  Can’t say I’m sad or even lowered by the reality.  In fact, this mood, IT, is damaged.  It shifts in its advance, away from me. It sees me getting more vocal, more entrenched and trenchant in my day, what I’m doing in this office, with this blog and the book I’ll have finished by 2/28.  Short month.  Short life.  The marathon, already here.  How do I feel, honestly.  A little nervous but FOUR HOURS to myself, to run, be by myself, write in head, see the ocean, be in the immediacy of other runners, only glazes me in affirmation and a creative functionality I’ve not known, ever.  So tomorrow, waking at 5, sleeping in running gear hoping such will put this writer in more character to finish with a time I’m not ashamed of.  In fact, that I’m eager to write about.  26.2 miles…. Start slow, feel and get sense of morning, surface, air, people around me, me in the day itself.  I’m assembling, re-writing morning and me in it.  No more of that mood in the coffee line.  I have to stop with that coffee stop on Stony Point.  Even if I were to have had cup in hand sooner, the mood would be there as there was no place to write and that same clown with the long white cord stretching across the floor to his unattended laptop while he talks to the oddball in the fedora by the window… not my routine.  Not anymore.  Not attempting to have that be in my morning.

8:34.  Lesson for this morrow…. Write through it, out of it.  If something’s taken away, add something, yourself.  I will.  My courses, my books, everything.  I will hit 3000 words today.  I need it.  More than need it.  My body and character, here in page placement demands it.  Not so much philosophy or psychology, but the Now-ness of what’s here, now.  How did I get here, how am I in a position to ask for classes to teach, hoping there’s one FOR me to teach.  You can chance whatever you want, I’m seeing and I know I’ve written before.

 

Mike sees the morning differently, with stark and encouraging contrast, than he did just an hour maybe less, earlier.  He works on his essays and articles, notes, some projects formal and others not.  He re-writes himself as a writer.  Not concerned with any rules or overuse of “I”.  Nothing.  Today, that day he’d hoped for, where a formula would be disclosed, where a key would be handed to him and if not a key a book, blank, all pages for him to fill.  A new table, new lot, new connection to self and what’s meant.

8:41.  He’s more than eager for the day to land, approach and antagonize him.  He gives himself to the page, solely the pages in front of him.  Sip latte, need new topic, a novel, an essay, something.  He just keeps writing, he can figure all that out later, he reasons.

Mike relishes and celebrates in and from the singularity.  Of where he is, in the office, in that nook in the breakroom which always has seen his own.  His office, if he couldn’t yet have his own office.  He moves money from one account to another, for his office.  How much is rent, in Healdsburg.  Probably astronomical.  He’d put money away, anyway.  Mike could see the table where he’d write, the door, the books on shelf, then the travel, speaking at campuses about writing and if you want to teach don’t be dependent on the institutions.  They depend on adjuncts, as long as they know they can depend on them.  The need is mirroring, but not.  If you don’t have a class, it’s no pain to them.  If they don’t have an adjunct to fill a class, they have to move.  They have to maneuver.  They have to pain.  Mike’s temperament again leaps with more luminosity.

 

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Going to

finish a book.

Soon.

Not worried about what genre, what form. Just write and collect and it will for something, some voice, some scripture.

In a bar up the street from home, just after work. One guy playing pool, others talking about something that happened either at this bar one night, one wild night, or at some party. Lady tending at trying to push this one beer, her heart to be blessed, that has all proceeds and monies made supporting the Camp Fire.

Me at a tall table, by self, stressing over writing, my writing, what I wrote this morning at Stony Point Starbucks and in Field, and now, Now.

The morning, more than these later hours.

So much more.

These hours, this time of day, night, could never parallel the A.M. value, gift to me and the page– me on the page.

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