inward jot

Mike Madigan
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

care very self

Again in a galactic spiral out there, from Sauvignon Blanc block to watching the crew steam the barrels — the nexus of what I write about, on all sides of me, human and no — the entirety in attempts to profess some phylum of balance and open self to new cosmic dialogues. I did today walking from the vineyard to the back part of the building, right there where I delighted and allowed my wholeness to be wooed by those airy steam sounds where the barrels would hiss back and me and let ghosts elevate from staves and small circle. I knew I had word to do but I was pulled to those clusters, and to that mist, the crew and what they on that crushpad do. I was traveling while staying in one place, in one presence and locale, found. Found what. That, that which I write about daily and what I just catch myself staring at when I walk, or am on lunch break sitting at that picnic table behind the building in the shade, my soles on the bench and self atop table.

Today I was a gawker, at everything around me, like I’d never been there before and like I’d never been to a Sonoma winery, ever. It felt prodigious, but I’m no prodigy, just the walker, the stroller.. thinking of my eventual winery and vineyard but still just keeping myself in that state, the visitor. I’d ask myself those innocent questions even though I knew loudly well all answers… “What are they doing to those barrels?” And, “So where the grapes right now, in their development?” I just wandered and wondered around the property. More than a spiral or tangent, or one of my radial oeno-rants but a straying mission, loving elopement into my scenic constituents. Today played specifically acute games with the writer, having the short but staccato’d gusts move canopies one way, putting grapes in camera’s grasp then hiding them — And that mist, or steam, the apparitions that would upward-slither and levitate above coopered fruition had me held till I had to leave.

I held class tonight but I don’t think all that well. My conceptions and mental activity Was elsewhere, there, where I just stood and crept and stared. I could see the students felt I was disconnected partially. Now, home, looking over rushed jots and my wined lyrical forwards, reading them to myself and that one cluster like it’s right on front of me, listening, bobbing its head while I speak, say what I see so I can say it was said. I was in class this morning, a student. More comfortable in that code than the instructional one. The rows lectured, I stood. Didn’t take any notes, just observed and listened, absorbed as it more thought poured. Those imprecise visitants dominate my vision, again, how they hovered and haunted along the barrels and just above them, then evanesce. I stood there, I sit here, now home, hours later, awaiting another. But I’ll have to wait for tomorrow. Too distant. Stare at the pictures, put myself back in the rows, on crushpad — “So when do you pick the grapes? Soon?”

(7/27/17)

Mike Madigan

Written by

author/creator of bottledaux.com … #tirelesswriter, #papablogga

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