After the run, my bones beg for stillness, scribbles and sips.  Too hot for wine tonight.  The chilled IPA sends my paragraphs away, in speedy strays.  Looking through my mini-Mead, all the cube Notes collecting.  Where do I put them, I pose Self.  Winemakers, as they muse over where to embed fruit from different blocks, vineyards, AVA’s, how do they come to a final ruling?  How does any artist?  I sit here looking at my work, scattered within lines of two enervated journals.  What happened to my Literary blending, my mission to consolidate?  Tomorrow’s run, hopefully, provides some sense.  Today’s, only random rhyme fallings during intervals, one of which I just scribbled into the 9.75x7.5 Comp Book.  Odd dimensions, possessed by my judging dominant journal.

8:51p.  Mike was quite surprised that he was able to clock-in nine minutes early for his night’s sitting.  He looked through his day’s notes.  Plath, his possible pursuit of a doctorate, about her; being back in the classRoom, pupil and director.  He sipped away his bottle’s remaining bubbles.  He picked apart the miniature log’s meek pages.  The more academically proportioned ones, of the larger.  Two journals, suppressing him, splendidly.  He typed.  Found another interesting entry, put to page.  Another, momentarily electric.  Typed.  He leapt from the scribbles into a multi-shaded, prism-like freewrite.  He didn’t know if he’d ever “use” it, inject it into a manuscript.  That wasn’t this shift’s objective.

Why did he log his punch-in’s, out’s?  He didn’t know.  If anything, he never wanted his sessions to feel like “work.” Like The Machine.  He did it in mockery of, he was convinced.  He knew he could get up, at anytime, and have another beer.  Or take a nap.  Switch to Diet Coke.  Have an ice cream sandwich, watch TV.  Clock-out altogether, for days.  He felt empowered, relieved it was only his spree.  As Mike spiked in his light but flighted types, he stopped for a sip, asked self, “Maybe this shouldn’t go to the blog, be freely readable.” He stopped, indefinitely, listened to his Wine Lounge playlist, not knowing what to do.  Fingers, escaping his restraint, slapping keys they needed.  Mike observed, delighted in new paragraphs, their nomadic spurts.  Maybe the calloused vertexes were teaching him an actual style, voice, he thought.  Again, for the first in months, if not nearly a year, he was a reader, learner.  -8/23/2011, Tuesday