6/30/11, Thursday [excerpt]

...I don’t want this first wine novel, or any of my page bundles to take me laughable time stretches to complete.  Chant of authors similar to I: Write & Release.  Sipping the remaining Cab from last night.  It tastes more fluid, coherent, radiant.  Sexy, subtle.  I remember seeing someone post on a wine blog somewhere, “What does it mean when someone says a wine is ‘sexy’?” My response, “What do you think it means?” And why does anyone have to rationalize or justify their reaction to someone they don’t know?  That’s anti-wine, to me.  4th of July weekend, tomorrow ignites.  This weekend, all about artistic/Literary independence...

More aimed than ever, in these vinoLit pursuits.  Was a different penman 24 hours ago.  Even twelve, eight.  Now, no more free writing, only freewriting, scene lighting.  Sipping the same blend as last night.  Trying to rush-finish this book.  Some would say that’s insane.  But at least I’m not offering any free services.  In such enlightenment, I’m realizing the other blog, not this one, may have to within days die.  There’s nothing Literary about it.  No artistry in its posts.  Just advertisement.  And I’m not getting paid.  OR, I could keep alive in case I DO start my own wine venture; I could link the biz to the blog.  I don’t know.  Not caring right now.  Want to make a living from these words.  These pages.  Never been this focused.  Me, the wine writing, different.  4ever.

Don’t need Kelly in the Room.  Just the pours, beats, pages.  From a professor’s view, I 2Self pose, “Why would anyone want to read your book?” One response from me, author, “I don’t know.” But, the other, “To appreciate a different lens over the wine world, a different take tumbling on blanketed pages.” This is more than Creative Writing, Wine journalism; It’s Human reaction to wine’s dimensions, a written quagmire that stands higher.  Details in my journal, from today’s cubed sitting: 1) paper stack by monitor; have no idea what it is, think it’s been there since I was hired, or days after, 2) full drawers in desk, from person there before the writer, 3) taunting view of world’s actual, the street, passers, from my swivels; vindictive.

My point in this aimless projection: to let you know I’ll continue in such wild wine writing.  It’s fun, that’s all.  And I think readers appreciate such assumed authorial risks.  OR, I hope they do.  As the book comes to close, I’m alone with a glass.  But not.  One more.  Another.  Not talking about rounds, you mind.  The blogging has to be halted.  All Mike, for the books.  For the readers.  For the wine, its immeasurable terroir, the consumer.  No “industry” in me.  Only pages.  On one of my blog posts, on a Kenwood winery, the tasting Room manager commented, “Words can not say enough! Thank you so much!” I know that’s a compliment.  Why am I by it bothered?  Don’t mind me, I’m irritable.  Don’t have enough time to write.  Time’s winning the war, all battles.  Tomorrow, I wage new campaigns.  Raising the new pour, ’07 Cab.  Sipping to my new Now.  Reading through Book1 like a consumer.  Sipping words, wine.  My own reflected web.  Sip, sip ... 

[6/29/11, Wednesday]

New Bottles

Book 2, sure to entail more than a few of these.  Tonight, a Bordeaux blend, even though I look at a pic of a Rhône Blend bottle from last night.  Didn’t get to taste, sadly.  But Mom and Dad the night before, applauding its edification, savory palate bounces, tumbles.  Almost a playful wine comet, it sounded.  As I detach a bit from wine’s world, getting closer to the Literary, I find more opportunity to TRULY appreciate wine, with no salivating capitalistic industry constricting, guarding, it.  “Can’t taste, less you pay.” What?  Not in these new truths; paginated, collated.  Another sip of this blend, paired with Wine Lounge sounds, again, has me appreciating time out of the cube.

Wine photography, pulling me away, or closer?  Hard to tell right now, as I’ve only just started to appreciate all that’s out there, all the potential stills for me, this worded delivery.  The Composition book, filling with such reflection.  Just how the wine world, not industry, promises so much discovery, enchantment, really.  Just the way a bottle, or set of bottles can look on a counter, to the vineyards, to a structure’s stance in a given terroir.  Fascinating.  Truly Literary.  This is what makes me want to travel.  Just roam, whether it’s responsible or not.  I don’t care.  I have curiosities that seek remedy.  Life, short.  Especially for many of us in ink igloos.  

Still in the chair writing.  Sipping slow.  Was going to remedially innumerate the notes greeting me.  But what would that do, but disrupt the moment, these songs spilling through the small speakers.  This Room, this office, MY office, the perfect setting.  For me.  That’s Wine’s Literary pose.  Lovely.  Today, while cubed, scribbled quite a bit.  What keeps me calm, the day in steady progression.  Feel as though if I didn’t pen between tasks, the day would stand still, and I’d be in that swivel chair eternally, till still.  Rain outside.  Light, but quite known.  Like some winemakers, writers.  No defamation in that line, all herald.  Another pour, for this scribe’s soul’s sores.  Sip, sip ... 

[6/28/11, Tuesday]

Descriptor’d Downward

Who knows what the balance is in articulating nose, palate, finish, pervading palate presence.  Don’t look at me, I have no idea.  What I do know, or at least I think I do: wine can be euthanized by analysis surplus, tidal critiques.  Discussion should always be welcomed, solicited.  But to file at elemental significance is all but devilish, inhumane.  Why would one want to do that to wine?  Share reactions, and move on.  Or don’t, just engage in civilly enriching interchange.  I love discussions of that flavor.  That reminds me of my days as an English Instructor.  And yes, wine can have a depths like Literature.  No quite as interwoven, loaded, lively as a mastered manuscript, but still somewhat circuitous.  Think I may have finally calmed from the day.  Tomorrow morning, back on 12, East.  If I could stay here all day, waking normally, at 6:15a, and writing till I normally return to bunker, 6:40p, my book would be done.  I projected my book so, as to not entail years of editing.  Winemakers don’t have that luxury.  Nor do writers like I.  We write, and release.  What do I get on this ’07 Cab now?  No idea.  I don’t want to analyze it, deconstruct the purple puddle.  Not tonight. 

And I changed my mind.  Now, one nose: spicy floral dampness, smokey London bricks, French chocolate cherries.  Palate: chocolate cherry river syrup snow [something chilly about it, I think], taco spiciness, bell pepper spread (subdued).  Or, I just don’t what it is I LOVE in what I’m tasting.  Sonoma County Cabernets can every degree of dexterity as Rutherford or Oakville.  If you’ve tasted as many Cab Sauvs as I have, with mind exposed, you see similarly.  How could you not?  What’s in this glass is a persistent flavor ghost; encircling, haunting, mischievous, marvelous.

[6/27/11, Monday]

Taste Shapes

If all I want to do is write, does that make the grape scribbler sick?  Or just impassioned, fervent?  Why label?  Why categorize?  Some of the best wines I’ve ever sipped have been non-specific blends.  Sure, if you look at the bottle’s back you might privy Self to varietal specificities, or if you look up a tech sheet online.  But the focus should be on the taste, the moment surrounding that wine.

Looking at some pictures in my new camera.  I’ll never tire of just staring at vineyards.  The other morning, so glad I early left, took that right turn off 12 into the Carneros territory.  Was so tempted to call in to NWG.  But I didn’t need to.  Those ten minutes were all I needed to trap visually seductive seconds, for the page ...

[6/26/11, Sunday]

Free in Wine Writing: True Oenobellion

Studio’d, me.  Sipping freely.  Poetry with a sip’s sea.  Not giving anymore of Self to this social media kool-aid.  I write, recite.  Scribble and sip, at night.  People invest too much synaptic sequence in who’s their “friend” in these infantile digitized social sheets.  It’s humorous, to me.  At this year’s close, I put the blog down.  Books only, in 4ward.  Same with Facecrook, Twit-slur.  Both, time DeathSentences.  I’m a writer, artist.  Had enough of the wine “industry’s” drama.  My link lies in ink, paper.  These devils won’t push my pen’s tracers to vapors.  Me, colluding conflict.  I love the wine, people loving wine, Humans loving Humans loving wine.  Not the industry.  Ever.

And I’m going to be scolded for speaking with such upright and bright veracity.  Fine.  Dad told me, “If you don’t think for yourSelf, others will think 4U.” I want to be challenged.  I’m doing this for wine, for the Humble Consumers, like Mom, Dad, Sis.  The characters that simply love to sip, sit, savor situations.  Ones enamored with status, or any kind of elevation, should select direction opposite, as my vengeful selection is spawned and lit.  More of the ’08 Cab’s capital into my core.  Love to all that wine and its scenery love.  Obsession with currency, a digression to blurring breeze.  Not me.  4ever in wine’s poetry ... 

[6/25/11, Saturday] 

Favorite Untitled Varietal

Mike arrived home from NewWineGig voiceless.  He needed the stillest of stilled stills.  Looking at the pictures he took yesterday morning before work.  Carneros territory.  In chair, he sipped to vines.  He wasn’t ready to write.  He didn’t want to do anything but sip, see.  Breathe.  He didn’t have to write if he didn’t want to.  And he didn’t.  He felt autonomous in his inaction.  Peaced, advantageously paced.  Post to the blog, he though.  No.  Definitely not.  What would that do, but spoil his situational purity.  The screen canvas deserved no piece of peace.  Or pace.

More than ecstatic to be home, in his zone, writing throne.  He remembered how hungry he was right before lunch, writing like an escapee in the Comp book.  “I need something to fuel this battled being.  Wish I didn’t have to wait.  Save me, pages.”

12:04p.  Wondering what I should work on, tonight.  Didn’t post to the blog yesterday.  Didn’t really have anything to report, express, or even “say.” Might check out a tasting Room I discovered on my lunch walk yesterday, after work today.  Can’t afford to stock up on wine, which is antagonistically frustrating when I hear these people talk about how much wine--no, how many bottles--they have in their basilica-dimensioned cellar.  I’ll write my way to a cellar of mine wine.  House.  New car, need one.  A partial roster of what I scribble towards: 1) Paris revisit, 2) more wine; much, much more wine, BOTTLES for Self, family, 3) Unplanned Travel, much more Travel ... Want to add more, but I’ll wait, let the pages tell me what I deserve.

The Room became cold.  Mike didn’t mind, until a page was blown from his desk’s evenness, by the new summer at the window screen’s opposite side.  Again, his vision saw writing.  But he dismissed.  The immobility was far too gratifying for separation.  Opiate-esque, Mike estimated.  He sipped his ’08 Napa Cabernet, like one back from expedition.  But wasn’t he?  The weeks at NWG peeled his person, like scavenging packs with kills.  He thought Kelly would visit tonight, but wasn’t sure.  He thought of what she might be doing.  But, couldn’t conjure accuracy, even in fantasy.

Comp book, partially exposed.  He helped it, in exhibition.  Mike read.  Page 1, to 39.  He wanted the notepad full by August 3rd.  Six months precisely from when ink was first introduced to its barren sheets.  He wondered what he was thinking in some scribbles.  Others, he was glad he inked when he did.  As the Cab took different shapes, Mike decided to gift himSelf a new collection of lines.

This weekend, life a holiday set.  But it’s just a regular Saturday-Sunday couplet.  Tomorrow, blogging--yes, blogging, but also journalistically covering--an event in Kenwood.  Still agape over these photos I snapped yesterday morning.  Glad I woke well before my alarm.  I remember being tempted to sleep more.  25 minutes, additionally.  But some rhythm ordered me into Creative delivery.  Love continuances, such.  Looking at one: vineyard, vineyards; illuminated, bold, expansive; artful, truly Aesthetic, mysterious.

Sunday, no agenda.  Love that, the lack of plan.  Looking through this Comp’d manuscript, I find some screenwriting.  Forgot I even wrote this.  Wait, no.  I think I wrote this at the Napa Coffee Company, or whatever it’s called.  On a lunch break, when I started NWG.  Speaking of which, the repetition drains my coins of sane, if that makes sense.  Visual stimuli, utter deprivation.  But, I’m learning.  Accumulating material, more importantly.  Novels, over novels, there.  A note from the Comp book, carved 2day: “3:02p: Some guy just told me, ‘Go ahead, finish your spiel.’ Don’t want to be one with a ‘spiel’.  A wine salesbot.  This book better be good.” Love this note.  Why?  My conviction of challenging and demanding results from the Self serving health, here proved true.  But, I could be talking mySelf into certain sensation, elation.  Fabulous, this color of Self-fulfillment.

Flying, in motions pertaining to her.  Kelly wan’t there, with him.  But Mike found symphonic sequence in his currency.  Why?  The thoughts.  He could hear her words.  See her smile.  Appreciate her progression, even in the Room’s stillness.  He sipped again.  The 2008’s carmelized raspberry steps made him further lazed.  Delusions delicious.  Again, her.  His one always-and-ever-preferred varietal.  Kelly.  With her dark tones, innumerable perfections.

He heard the neighborhood cat whining from the parking lot, on the opposite side of his condo, from where the studio was.  Was it telling him something?  He thought.  Craziness, he terminated.  The Room, for another few frames, silent.  Still.  Peace.  Mike thought of twelve hours prior.  Antithesis.  Mike wondered if the office deserved him, his cognitive traveling.  They deserved better, he thought.  He was only a writer.  That’s it, he knew.  No wonder he was fired from the last WineGig, even if it was at the claws of an incompetent bipolar tyrant.  The only thing made for him, he knew, the page.  Fine was Mike, in a like light.  

“What should we watch?” Kelly asked, pulling the rustic red, slightly shagged blanket over her knees.  “Is there something you want to watch?  I’m kind of tired, I’m so sorry.”

He was torrentially relieved she was on the couch with him.  He took one more ’08 Napa Cab sip.  That was it.  He wanted to enjoy her character.  There.  Inches close.  Not away.  Not anymore.  The wine, powerless in any skirmish against her for Mike’s assiduity.

She descended into him, his nearness, his equal instability, centrality.  She enjoyed a certain stillness about that mise-en-scene.  “I’m calling in sick, tomorrow.”

“Really?  Why?”

“I just want a day off, at my wish.  Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I wrote my Master’s Thesis on that, are you serious?  Why do you ask?”

“I feel like the restaurant is like where Alice finds herself.  Nothing makes sense.  But to THEM, it makes compete sense.  It’s sick when you think about it.  Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

Mike sipped.  Smiled.  Smiled, still.  Stillness.  Peace.  “I do.”

Journal, 6/21/11, Tuesday [from Composition Book]

...Too many stars in the constellation.  Serious consolidation for this wine admiring scribbler.  Tonight, hot.  Not as forceful, though, the heat.  Crickets, below the window’s fly-occupied screen.  Can’t tell if they’re encouraging or taunting.  Either way, I’m annoyed.  Vacation, travel, all I’m thinking about.  Overseas cafés, lounges, varietals, characters.  Want Paris again.  I’ll stay there.  With...  Wine doesn’t entail enclosure, to me.  It demands, challenges, exploration, the unconventional.  The unpatterned.  Authors need escape.  

I am an author.

Wondering how vehement the temperature plans for morrow.  Need to charge cameras, as I’m hoping I’ll wake a bit earlier for a vineyard photo session.  It’ll be rushed, but I’ll get some favorable A.M. light for those green patches, rows.  Twelve hours from now, the photo session’ll be over, seconds trapped in the digital barrel rooms inside my cameras.  

Journal, 6/20/11, Monday [from Composition Book]

Another night, hot.  Just me, this 2010 stainless Chard, Sonoma County.  No Kelly.  Wondering how this weather pushes her art, those sketches she always discloses to me.  This blog, soon shut.  What from there?  Only books, hopefully.  I’ll have another blog, probably.  I just won’t allow it to eat as much time--as many words, pages, syllables, rimes, thoughts ... PAGES!--as mikeslognoblog.  This Chardonnay, all I need with this invading summer.  Learned that tomorrow’s frame begins the first day of Summer.  Before my camera knows it, it’ll house stills of tiny green grapes.  Veraison.  Then swollen purple puppies.  Was going to pop one of the ’08 Syrahs I have downstairs, but the crisp Burgundy begged.  Glad it did, that I gave in.

Gathering characters, this past weekend, in the tasting Room.  Especially at the event on Saturday’s eve.  How does wine make the occasion, give it a truly unrivaled set of strands?  Saturday’s events demonstrated, showed me, that my years-old stubbornness with wine’s significance, it, the bottles themselves, making an event a time bundle to cherish, never to release from memory, may be quite founded.  Too many commas in that sentence, but you see what I’m saying.  Wine, what makes me tumble with these words.  The characters sipping.  One guy, a wine club member, one of the nicest guests with whom I’ve interacted in years, coming out from Florida to visit his favorite winery, made me see much with characters, their connection to the counter.  To us behind its oddly green surface, pouring the pours.

Time for another pour of this Chardonnay, speaking of.  Lovely, still.  Crisp, clean, consistent.  Surprisingly flavorful, staunchly savory, for a stainless steel Chardonnay.  Not sure how my sister pulled this off, but nonetheless thankful.  Only missing element, scenery change.  With her.  Kelly.  Need to be on a cruise, or at some Napa resort.  With her.  Her.  OR, in Sunriver, at the lodge, looking out at a night soaked Mt. Bachelor.  This last pour, the night’s cap, telling me to escape, not to care if it’s the responsible or “professional” thing to do.  Sipping, listening to what else it casts.  What would she say?  Would would be Her words?

Sauv Blanc Night, Dreaming ... Vacation

Seeing the unfamiliar.  A hotel Room.  Me, writing, overlooking streets kissed by moon.  Far from here, let’s be clear.  Sipping this Sauvignon Blanc, I see sea, other terrain for me.  Just as people from out of state visit the valley, I long to stride away from my state, on hills, in unfamiliar valleys.  Had a fascination today while in the tasting Room, sipping a bit of this very Sauv Blanc, actually, of running on Spanish beaches.  Shortly after, to my hotel Room, overlooking those same sands, sipping some crisp Spanish white wine type.  Just want to be in the unfamiliar.  This St. Francis Sauvignon Blanc, its tropical notes, these new pictures in the camera, tell, PLEAD, me to flee.  For sakes of wine writing, poetry.  I’ll write my way there.  To escape.  No more constriction.  Wine shuns shackle.  Wine writing endorses whimsicality, such a Me.  See Self, now, with these crisp notes in glass, to Greece, Southern France.  Anywhere but regularity.  I blame it on, THANK, wine.  It wants to align itSelf with written lines.  My books.

Mike enjoyed the raised thermal of his office.  Did it help the writing?  Not really.  But the chilled SB certainly did.  Back to working, come morrow’s unrelenting morrow.  Not for much longer, Mike hoped.  With his book almost done, he leaned, oppositely.

“Are you calling in sick tomorrow?” Kelly asked.

“No.  What made you think that?” Mike said, setting his glass down by the printer, by his desk’s corner, only to pick it back up to trump his pivoting thirst.

“You look like you could use a day off,” Kelly mirrored, settling onto his couch.

“Really?  No, I need a vacation.  Want to go somewhere random.”

“Like where?”

“Far.”

“Me too.  You know what happened at the restaurant tonight?”

“What?  That manager hassling you about tipping out and napkin placement, again?”

“No, he got fired.  He was reported for sexual harassment, or something like that.  And they want me to take his place.”

Mike couldn’t tell if she was excited, humbled, scared, what.  “So?  What do you think?” Mike waited for reaction, response.  He sipped, knowing it could be a while.  He had not that.  He’d flee.  Hopefully with her.  Soon.  Was this some superlative cosmic invite, warranting intrinsically enlightening impulsivity?

[6/19/11, Sunday]

Mike, Before Night’s Wine Time: Hurried, Beautifully Buried

For Mike, this would be work day six, sequenced.  He didn’t have to be at the event until  a couple stokes before four.  But still.  All he could do was watch the clock’s taunts.  He had a fair amount of the book together, but he needed something for his current sitting, before getting ready for tonight’s event.  Then he started thinking how he could make tonight an assignment.  He heard it was to be New Orleans themed, with engaging colors, illustrations, what have.  He put one of his camera’s chargers into the outlet.  His little video camera into the moody laptop monster.  Didn’t want to make it too much of a “blogging” mission, though.  He wanted writing material.

He would focus on the characters.  All of them.  The executives, to the pourers; to wine club members, drunker the better, for the page.  He wanted them all belligerent.  Event staff, the band if there were to be one on stage this year.  The characters were what his writing was missing, he realized.  One character from the haircut hut, from where he only ticks ago returned: a young woman, two little kids; couldn’t have seemed happier; kids were of more energy, curiosity, devilry than Mike could ever hope to handle, but mom couldn’t get enough of her hilarious hellions.  He wasn’t sure what to do with this pocketed role, ‘roles’ if you count the two kits, but he was back in a lucrative Literary habit.

11:45a.  Mike thought of the Sauvignon Blanc he poured for Self last night.  2010, Napa Valley fruit.  Reminded him of her, for some reason.  Crisp, tropical, vibrant, paradingly mysterious.  But then he stopped in his wine association, appreciation, looking at the time numbers again.  He hated the rushed actuality of his moment.  Wasn’t Literary, nor wine.  Oeno, no.  At 32, Mike knew he needed more ease.  All when the book was finished, he told himself.  With the window to his right open, morning servings of sound, scent, streaming, he leaned back into posture more peaceful, purposeful.

Wine, today.  And I’m not blogging this event.  Writing it.  True journalism.  Or fiction.  Whatever I want to do.  Not on anyone’s clock.  Not tonight, “industry”!  But, I think of how much I write about the wine surfaces most immediate to me.  Want to be away.  Far.  Back in Paris.  Want to explore Italy.  Spain and Portugal, like my sister.  Think I need to act more erratically with these entries, the Literary practices.  What could possible happen, hurt me?  I’m 32.  Yes, with an invincibility complex.  Maybe that’s what’ll get me on the shelf.  Think about how many winemakers make almost moronic-level wagers with their careers, and they become a cult bottle line, tasting Room, hunted winemaker.  That’s what this new transformation, “NewMike,” the final transcendence in the transfixing of my wine lined entries laments.  Same is true of many artists, no?  Musicians (Pac, Hendrix, The Doors, even the overplayed and overrated Beattles), painters (Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali), writers (way too many to catalogue).  “Regardless of intent, vision description, he would remold, leap, no longer creep discrete.  He’d be loud, force feed his pages.  Ideas such goaded him, further, to a furthered futherment.” Good lines for the book, those in quotes.  Transferring ...

The first bold act for me, true absence of censorship, Self-fettering.  Something I’ve been meaning to convey in entries recent: Napa’s beginning to anger me, with its self-indulgent hyperbole when talking about wine, food, their belittling of Sonoma County fruit, wineries, oeno-wizards.  Much of that side of the mountain, as much as I’ve lately been saying I love it so, on the blog and what be, has been making me realize why so many industry troops over here adhere to their degradative estimation of what’s over there.  I’m not saying, “I hate Napa, that’s the dark side,” like many in SoCo state.  I’m merely saying that my appreciation for Napa’s wine presence steadily corrodes, erodes.

The mocha, definitely helping this morning.  How is it already 12:22p?  Before too many more minutes buzz by, I’m going to have to start getting ready for the event.  Get into character, the one they require me assume.  And I’m getting too old for that, frankly.  I strive for true scribe sovereignty.  Don’t want to any more be told when to be somewhere, when I can have lunch, how long I can be gone, how to dress, how to talk, what scripts to follow.  I’m done.  When this book is out, I’m out.  Me, what this “industry” probably doesn’t want to see.  Trusting Self, though.  Not caring.  

Mike counted the money in his wallet.  $10.  That also needed revamping, the revenue ado.  He started thinking, how much would he charge for the book?  How many copies would he run the first round?  Had to be Self-published, he also mandated in this anything-but-routine Self conference, chapter, this morning, now afternoon.  Mike thought of himself as thematically correlated with the small producers of wine.  The ones who’ve been offered a buyout, but held to vision.  He saw himself as without time, not enough to wait for an agent’s approval, a publisher’s permission to distribute his writing.  They couldn’t market him like he could anyway.

Wine and food.  Topic in Mike’s scopes.  Would his tasting Room have a food element, if, when, he opened one?  It would have to, right?  That’s what would provide the best material.  The best fiction, so he could keep the books coming, support his brand, his label.  Him.  He WAS the label.  Sovereign, paginated, never evaporated.  Mike liked that idea, opening a tasting Room, a wine-food jaunt if the guest requested.  Just so he could have something to write about.  Always.  If he wanted.  That was Aesthetic autonomy.

Everything would be about writing.  For the page, for the work.  His work.  Everything had page value, he thought.  The mouse laptop’s mouse, the cell phone and his over-dependence on it, the empty mocha cup, grande, by the printer with only a couple sheets in the pipe.  Already time to get ready.  The night’s event awaited a renewed writer.  But he didn’t have a mini-notepad.  Put these $10 to usage instant, he thought.  All fluidly tying, blending, for the page, today.  His.  Sipping the last drops of mocha, mostly the acidic syrup that irritated, he rose, headed for shower.  Suddenly reverting to the Sauv Blanc, Napa, her ...    

And the sitting starts, even with swarming distractions.  So much writing in the box beneath this desk, in the Comp book.  What do I put towards the book?  Not thinking about it tonight.  Not going to think about anything.  At all.  Just write, freely.  Yes, with the Syrah encouragement.  Not as hot tonight.  And with the window permitting the outside’s flavors into this writer’s corner, I’m sanely sedated.  Was ignited again by Lisa’s words tonight when she said, “Real writers are the ones who think about it all the time...everything’s writing to them.” Wanted to brandish my little notepad right there, in that corner of the wine bar.  Could’ve had a short in three minutes, I bet. 

The vineyards, talking to us, writers, at this point in their growth, as if they want us to be proud of their progress, survival.  Walked around a little in one yesterday, but with my vessel’s emergency lights stuttering, and the meaty sun on my already-sore shell, the afterwork saunter was held condensed. 

Tomorrow, Friday.  Not much relief, as I’ll be at the winery both Sat & Sun.  But then I rise in the reality that both, Saturday night’s event especially, are certain to courier material.  Needing characters, more, more.  Characteristic, both in animations and inanimate.  Especially with the book nearing its end.  Already have book2 in scope.  Think I read a few lines in Capote’s ‘Portraits & Observations’ that said something to the effect of always having the next project embracing your brain.  Again, I think.  Been reading more, lately.  Finally.  And I usually do so when tired, after work, the commute back, forth.  So who knows how credible my recollections are.

Bed, not sounding appealing.  Just want to stay up up till I have to speed back to Napa’s downtown.  AND WRITE.  And maybe crack that old Cab, finally.  Scratched, though, by present.  This Now.  My Now, now.  Entirely musical, I realize.  All of it.  Even the turbulence.  And these instrumentals, putting me elsewhere.  Beautiful.  Sipping, scribbling.  Me, no frenzy.  Solely harmony, disarming breeze.  Still.

[6/16/11, Thursday]

Escalating Mercury, Means Seeded Wine Poetry

Can’t stop scribbling in this Comp book.  Must be the Syrah.  Summer upon, with me in a constant dawn.  A bit frustrating, the Literary strides, of late.  Looking through some pictures taken the other day, Sunday.  Russian River expedition.  Not sure I documented it with strokes sufficient.  But I’m understanding the Humanness of not always moving in manuscript mode.  Sometimes the writer, the wine writer/novelist, MikeMadigan, need just live.  I don’t have to write every second, this Syrah on my desk says.

Looking at pictures I took in the tasting Room, Saturday, of my stamped hand.  Believe it was the Petite Sirah’s cork that decorated my claw so. 

NewWineGig, revealing interesting dimension, to be candid, brief.  When I leave, I’m in a reflective cyclone, pulled apart and assembled masterfully.  How does it do that?  Why does the wine world always put me in paragraph pause?  That’s what the paper diary’s for.  My thinking now, after temperature upward, shifts stretched, in roam.  No destination, like the ever-contrasting, conflicting, winemaker.  As a writer, I don’t want to throw measurable sentences, books.  I want to be feared, have people wondering, as Lisa said, “You’re not gonna write about this, are you?” Such lines, like old Bordeaux finds to this emboldened poet.  In days soon, my own sovereign sect; Separatist wine scribe ...

Forgive my eventual, more so present, ramble.  Just the way I think, like Virginia Woolf when she pitied the moth.  The weather, wielding ways.  Syllabically, warrior-like.  Hope the wine “industry” can deal with me.  And if it can’t, I’ll only ascend.  Taking another Syrah sip ... gorgeous Sonoma County character: approachable, dark berry, constricting mouthfeel, augments by summation rhythmic; spiced, electric, jumpy.  Would love to just stay in tomorrow, abandon my exhaustively laughable commute.  WRITE all day.  The last 20 pages of this bottle bravado’d book.  Bringing my rough rough rough draft to work tomorrow, proofreading at lunch, at that Napa Coffee castle, or whatever it’s called.  Excuse the sudden snap, but Napa’s challenging my diplomacy.  Need to Syrah mySelf, for Equilibrium return, to Sonoma Country ... 

[6/15/11, Wednesday]

New Notes

This Cab/Syrah blend throws me into holes with the rabbit.  Logic reversed, odd verse.  Unusual tunes; I’m soon to do swoons.  She, of tempo slow.  Me, from her, aglow.  I, lower lights.  She, slows her sights.  Palate push.  Gentle, rushed.  I’m hushed.  Multitudinous harmonies as we meander in borrowed seas.  Unusual union.  Loosened in fictional fusion.  Our characters, blended.  Haphazardly.  Won’t let it end ended.

Fog forwards.  Off, closed words.  We stay inside, lay in tide.  Her eyes, heavy, with me on the levy.  Almost gone, just as quick as reaction spawned.  Can’t more pour, as she’s adorns tile floor.  Fahrenheit elevated, I stare and sigh, escalated.  Her return, I learn, a beautiful churn.  I turn, but still yearn. 

Sipping ... 

SUNDAY: Hated, Loved, Again

Beautiful day in the wine country today.  Russian River.  J Vineyards and Rodney Strong.  A little unscripted tasting on the day before work return.  Love being outside.  Seeing sun, vibrant vines, other lives, those loving wine.  This is what “the industry” truly embodies.  Writing for my novel, I think, right now.  Hard to tell, as I’m quite tranquil.  yesterday in the Room, festive.  Exuberant, in all of its developments.  I was surprised how many took to the ’08 Cab/Syrah blend.  Well,  I was, and wasn’t.  Its taste structure, insupposable.  The looks on guests‘ masks, engaging.  I found mySelf distracted the entires shift, if need you know.  Not just with wine reactions, ripples, but with the outside.  The Wild Oak Vineyard, the lawn preceding, Mayacamas Mountains, creeping breezes.  Enjoying the moments, OUTSIDE.  That is where true wine appreciation, life, interaction takes place.  The tasting Room, too, as we all see what’s merely on another side of the glass.  Inches away.  And of course, this made me think of my own tasting Room.  I want guests leaving in reflection, truly tormented by their enjoyment.  I’m addicted to guests‘ reactions.  Mostly as a writer, but as well one in love with wine, one loving being around other of minds like.  

Looking at the pictures I took today, I’m again shook to appreciate the fact I need be out.  Not encapsulated.  That’s not wine.  Certainly not Literature.  Be there not characters in isolated spaces.  Yesterday, met an older gentleman from Russia.  He stood so surprised by the ’07 Rockpile Blend’s palate presence.  “This is good taste,” he told me.  “Give me six.” Finding a wine he loved.  The next guests, a group of ladies from Southern California, in just before close, accepted my offer to embark upon an unruly progression through some of the wines, a flight not on the simplistic laminated menu atop the green marble.  They liked my take on wine, I think, colliding with wines they found bedazzling, beautiful.  Loved their energy, and it was the tasting Room that fostered such fermented fervor.  What I’ll remember most about these SoCal femmes, their trust in me, their respect for my relationship to bottled Sonoma County fruit.  Love to those ladies, and all the many guests yesterday of similar dispositions aglisten.

Now, in the studio, listening to Wine Lounge beats, envisioning.  What, the future most suitable, beneficial, to me.  AS A WRITER.  The other day, someone asked me, “Are you a wine writer, or blogger?” First of all, I write.  Often about wine.  I lend some of that wine writing to a blog.  The blog is a forum, or venue.  I don’t blog before I write.  I write, then post to blog.  Why is that so hard for people to get?

Wine of the night?  You guessed correctly, lovely readers: the St. Francis 2008 Cuveé Lago I mentioned above.  Cab and Syrah can orchestra so ornately, picturesque palate pummel.  What am I pairing it with?  A quesadilla from up the street.  What’s wrong with that?  Like my brother Ariel Ceja said the other day, “If it makes you feel good...” Plan to explore and deconstruct this wine, 2nite.  And what I mean: try to understand its intentions.  What is this wine trying to say?  So many speak on wine as if they know the wine better than its creator does.  Than the wine knows its own intricacies.  I plan to, when I return from picking up dinner, just taste, listen.  Not judge, and I don’t have to, as I already know how magically the bottle’s to connect with this penman’s core.  Time to clock out, but only for blinks brief.  Returning soon, to compose, scribe.  With Cabernet and Syrah.  

9:57p.  Typing till 11p.  Aiming for 1000 words, just as winemakers aim for profiles, especially when dealing with blends.  This Cab/Syrah duet, cinematic.  Tastes better than it did yesterday in the Room.  Looking over the notes I took behind the bar, thinking about those points in the shift.  Need to do something with that stage, here on the page.  Was thinking, 30 minute play.  A cluster cast, but each character distinguished, established.  This before the stage that comes before brainstorming, so don’t take me too seriously.  Time disintegrating, too worried to wait.  So I’ll write.

52 minutes remaining, and I’m distracted by weightless Reality TV on BRAVO.  Why am I watching this visual toxicity?  Why does anybody?  Remember lecturing on Pop Culture, Reality TV, a couple semesters ago.  Many of my dear students, becoming impassioned, vitriolic, insistent in their views, written positions.  Was thinking earlier today, while tasting through some Pinots at J Vineyards & Winery, that I should develop some lectures on Wine, Writing, and Literature.  Take it a step forward, a sprint forward.  Force fruition.  Couldn’t believe how beautiful it was today, in Russian River.  Glad I had the camera with, the sense to snap stills, push the trigger.

Closing words: wine, blend, ink, autonomy.  That’s what I embody.  That’s what now epitomizes me.  I don’t need direction, or management, as a wine writer, as one in the wine industry.  I’m a writer, I write about wine from my time.  Like the sparklings in J’s Room, I think of something that’ll stop people.  Readers, consumers.  An idea that’ll imprison attention, agreeably.  That’s what this writer wants.  Not be an authority, just to truly live on pages, with wine-timed lines.  The cork, by the keyboard.  Dry, weakened, sensory.  Significance?  Difficult to definitively distinguish.

And the pulses summarizing, leading to the day next, the beginning of the work week.  Truthfully, my signature, in this session, slanted.  Maybe it’s the blend, its effect on this character...

...Mike thought.  He closed the laptop, walked to the kitchen, tossed the remaining contents into a drain.  He thought about the coming set of five.  But something felt uneven, disrupted.  He couldn’t measure the bent aesthetic with any accuracy, but he still thought.  As he walked back to the couch, he counted steps, breaths, thoughts.  He was exhausted, as if he’d sprinted, or done gymnastics.  He couldn’t figure it out.  He laid down, lowered his feigned eye lids.  His mind slid to a defined grid.  Slowing, sleeping.

[6/12/11, Sunday]