NSP Meditations

Corona Virus Thoughts

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations

A tattooed, bearded, shirtless man did push-ups in the parking lot of the grocery store while his dog curled up snoozing next to his backpack.

President Trump enlisted Creed in the fight against the virus. He requested they write and perform a Fight the Corona Virus RAWK Anthem. In an empty stadium, of course. Creed knows how that goes.

I’ve spent much of the last four weeks planting trees to restore a wrecked, poisoned watershed. It’s fine work and I am totally alone except for birds and plants and bees. I am lucky to have this.

My best friend of late has been a chipmunk.

I’ve read 17 books in three weeks. Four were Westerns. My favorite so far is a biography of the Danish writer Isak Dinesen by Judith Thurman. It might be the best literary biography I have ever read. It teaches you about her incredible life and how to write and how not to live as a writer.

I’ve built 14 snowdrift forts in three weeks.

I’ve written absolutely nothing.

I started my 150th or so journal last week.

I’m going to make a vegetarian meatloaf.

My peas are coming up.

Is there a market for environmentally-conscious erotica?

I have helped my elderly neighbors.

I have wondered what percentage of Americans have never planted a tree.

You can feel people slipping away.

I miss my great collaborator.

The virus presents an opportunity for many self-reflecting people to revolutionize their lives. I have feeling they don’t have the courage to do it once the dust settles. Back to business as miserable usual.

I watched another Fred Astaire movie. What is it about him and those ascots or scarves or whatever they are called around his neck? He looks the same age in every film and some of them are 30 to 40 years apart. The word that comes to mind when I watch him is: debonair.

Dog fever has struck.

I keep seeing empty cans of Viennese sausages along the road. Is that the food of the apocalypse?

Oregon Grape Revelation

NSP Meditations

One morning, a man planted Sitka Spruce somewhere on the Secret Coast. Scattered showers fell. The terrain was steep and littered with all manner of slash left behind from an ill-advised clearcut that murdered this slope five years ago. It goes without saying that all clearcuts are ill-advised. They should have been banned decades ago. They are an obscenity against nature. They look exactly like what they are. Stand in one after this uniquely American form of industrialized massacre and you will cry if you have any heart or soul whatsoever. Many Americans don’t. These are the people that see watersheds as something only to destroy for profit.

But here the man was, laboring with the seedlings in his tree bag, in corduroys and a dress shirt underneath a fraying Pendleton sweater, black rubber boots, Fort George Brewery stocking cap, a canteen of water. Several years ago, the man would have never imagined doing this kind of grueling work, in a place like the Secret Coast, but an opportunity to work arose, and he needed the work, and a lot more. He needed to get back to the ground. Once he was rooted there, but then one day, he wasn’t.

As he planted, he was mindful of the many people in his country who could not work and were at risk of losing homes, apartments, spaces in RV parks, and their sanity. They were sheltered in place. He was lucky to be working and having the slope kick his ass. It is always a good ass kicking when it comes trying to heal a watershed.

The man’s boss told him he had to carry his phone with him while planting. If the man tripped and rolled down the slope and injured himself, possibly breaking a leg, they had to find him.

A phone! While planting! Absurd! Our boys at Valley Forge didn’t have phones, or toilet paper for that matter.

Nevertheless the man complied and took his phone along, encased it in an soiled cotton glove for protection and shoved it in a pocket. Pretty hick. Pretty anti-chic.

After a time, rain subsided. Some hummingbirds darted here and there. All around the man were the ancient burned stumps of cedar giants. A fire had raged through this land centuries ago and left behind these beautiful black sculptures of ecology and history. They deserved admiration and the man gave them exactly that.

Two hours into the planting, the man was winded, and rested on the ground. He looked around, swigged some water, and noticed a clump of Oregon grape, the state flower. He moved in closer to inspect and beheld the most astonishing Oregon grape he had ever seen, and he had seen thousands upon thousands of them. This one was all purple, a deep purple. Not a streak of red or green. It was taller than the others in the clump. It had rain drops glistening on its jagged leaves. Its buds were poised to unfurl and flower into yellow.

The man considered digging out his phone and taking a photograph of the purple Oregon grape. No one would believe him unless he provided documentation. And perhaps he had a duty to capture this rare beauty and send it out via the various digital conveyances because seeing this beauty might help, if only for a second, someone suffering isolation and depression.

No, the man had his tree bag wrapped around his waist and couldn’t retrieve the phone. His hands were also wet and muddy. He had to forego the photograph and keep planting. More and more trees. As the man planted, the image of the purple Oregon grape expanded in his mind. It grew an idea—a literary journal called Oregon Grape that would contain writing and art of all things Oregon. He would recruit writers and artists to collaborate on this new editorial venture. Now was the perfect time to launch!

The man smiled. What a fringe benefit from he had received. He finished planting and trudged up the slope and out into a meadow. Rain began to fall again. What other ideas would spring forth from more planting.

Secret Coast Radio #18

NSP Meditations, secret coast radio

Welcome to the Secret Coast Radio podcast broadcasting somewhere on the Secret Coast

Let us begin by saying:

We prefer the first person plural over the singular.

We prefer mystery over journalism.

We prefer star gazing over gazing at stars in quarantine.

We prefer talking to animals over experimenting on them.

We prefer spending our money with friends over enriching our enemies.

We prefer leadership over blaming others.

We prefer people who don’t instantly discharge opinions about something they are clueless over those blowhards who never shut up.

We prefer a big fat novel while sheltering in place over bloated streaming shows.

We prefer thinking for ourselves over accepting conventional wisdom.

We prefer going after the one lost stray sheep over taking it easy with the other 99.

We prefer talking on the phone over letting everything going to voice mail and never responding.

We prefer the democracy of rain over the reign of monarchs and plutocrats.

We prefer countries that require paying grocery clerks a living wage over ours.

We prefer those weird words like elk and deer that are singular and plural at the same time over banal words like facilitate and optics.

We prefer reality over delusion and feel certain a reboot of our nation is…no, forget the word reboot. We prefer revolution, as in the nation needs one to address the canyons between the classes, that keep expanding and expanding.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number 18 begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Saving Private Salamander

NSP Meditations

Light rain falls. Power lines crackle overhead. Birds flit through tree tops and shrubs. A man walks along a gravel road somewhere on the Secret Coast. He’s damp and exhausted after planting trees on steep slopes. He’s heading home for wine and a nap. The world is in crisis but that seems far away at the moment. Planting trees helps with that. It is a deeply soothing and distancing activity, especially when a planter finds a groove.

The man found the groove this morning.

A brown and yellow salamander on the gravel catches the attention of the man. It’s moving at the speed of democratic reform in America. It’s writhing like the American state, as well.

The man stops and inspects the salamander. There is something in the creature that connects to the man. Perhaps it is something antediluvian, the primal connection between two species that evolved from a common ancestor eons ago. Perhaps if something else hadn’t happened, hominids wouldn’t have made it, same with salamanders. Who knows. But we are all connected, a fact that most Western religions can’t seem to grasp.

The Buddha instructed: save all sentient beings. This salamander is decidedly more sentient than many of the suited snakes in our august corridors of greed and power. He writhes with a lot more purpose and class, too.

A car would drive along the gravel road soon and pulverize the salamander. The man picks up the salamander and carries it to the safety of grass, shade, dirt and moisture. It is the first time the man has ever picked up a salamander. His hands don’t shake.

Pioneer Pride: Part 25-The End

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride

From my senior year journal:

6-5-82

I won the $300 Ron Hite Memorial Scholarship today and it was a complete shock to me. I know the award had existed but I never applied for it so there was never any anticipation in me when it was announced. The shock and disbelief in me were acute. Then, as I was walking up, it occurred to me that I was damn lucky to get it considering some of the shit I’ve pulled in this school. I gained a new respect for teachers because some of them were willing to forget personalities and stress academics.

Ms. Lechner did not seem particularly overwhelmed at my selection and had kind of a cold staring look but I can forget that now.

Thank you for your support Mr. Winn, without it, I was dead and thank you for two good years. You were the only teacher who really encouraged me to excel. I appreciate it.

Reflections

This is my last journal entry of my high school career and maybe for my life. There is a certain sadness that comes with writing this page because I know that high school is over and I can never relive these days again. High school wasn’t really all that bad; I just tried to convince myself of that. There were times when I could of blown it up but all in all, it was a good atmosphere and excellent place to really start my life.

I’ve made so many dumb mistakes but there have been some good times also. I expect to read this every once and awhile and what I write next is something that I will read and try to follow for the rest of my life:

Be kind, speak no evil of others, think of others and most of all, be thankful for what you have.

The end of part 1 of my life.

Not yet, I’m looking around and I see people I will never see again and that is strange to me.

I feel it is important for me to remain in contact with people. Especially you Mr. Winn. I want to wish you a happy life and a rewarding career always try to be there for high school students who just don’t fit in all the time.

Goodbye Oregon City High School, it has been… interesting. Remember, I will be back, rather it be a movie or a book, I will finish one of the two. I have stories to tell, injustices to expose.

I will return.

Pioneer Pride: Chapter 24—A Sophomore Date

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride

As I search my mind for an interesting memory to wind down this memoir and perhaps give it (or at least me) an everlasting point for our unkind, digitized, distracted times, I return to one girl, let’s call her M, who transfixed me briefly during my sophomore year. It was truly remarkable how she danced into my consciousness as I was working on Pioneer Pride. A writer can never explain why a certain person mysteriously emerges when writing about the past, but that’s often what happens. It’s one of the great delights of writing.

That M did emerge is something I take seriously and continue to consider. I am considering it now and offer my thoughts about her for your consideration.

I no longer recall how we met or what precipitated our first date. I must have asked her out, face to face, at school. I do remember it was my first car date, which of course was a big deal, a landmark. I had absolutely no idea what to do on a car date outside of seeing scenes on television or the movies. Everyone knows what those were about. AC-DC wrote a song about it, back seat rhythm and all that.

It was in the late spring, not long after I earned my driver’s license. I picked M up in the Dasher. She lived out in the country. I don’t remember what she was wearing but I remember when she opened the door and I beheld a sprite, with gorgeous, heavily-lidded eyes so round and deep they seemed like tiny Crater Lakes. I dove in.

We got in my car and I drove us to a movie at the Southgate Theater. What we intended to see has escaped me. I was incredibly nervous with M. I had never been in a car alone with a girl. What was protocol?

Here is what I do remember: she turned her head to me as I drove and asked slow, deliberate questions. We were from two different camps at Oregon City High School. Let me amend that. Two different countries.

No girl I had ever liked had asked questions of me. And they weren’t banal ones. She looked me in the eyes and Crater Lake wanted to know the answers. They mattered to her. I think she was a lot smarter than she let on. A lot of girls had to disguise it with boys back then. Maybe that’s still true. I hope not.

As this memoir has shown, I was a quasi-angry, infrequently arrogant kid in high school who swam against the current, but I wasn’t that way with M in the Dasher. She didn’t seem to know or care anything about that.

At some point in the drive to the theater, I stopped at an intersection for a red light and stared at M as we talked. She looked at the light, hesitated a bit, and then said, “Matt, the light’s green.”

And so it was! I have no recollection how I responded to M. We probably laughed. I took my foot off the brake, stepped on the gas, and away the Dasher sputtered.

We may have made out at the movie. My journal from sophomore year records no mention of M. I think I didn’t know how about to write honestly about my feelings for her so why not omit what you can’t explain. The Who sang a great song about that very sentiment.

Or maybe the date didn’t go well and we didn’t kiss.

All I do know is that we agreed to another date, a tennis lesson taught by me—my first date on the tennis court!

M showed up in a crop top that she must have scissored herself and terry cloth shorts. She wore Keds without socks.

As she took to the court, I watched her glide around before the lesson began. I struck me she was barely clothed. I had never seen anything like this before. M moved liked a ballet dancer, light on the feet, lithe, graceful, twirling. Not jerky tennis movements at all.

We stood near each other and I showed her how to hit a forehand, turn the body, straight arm, follow through. She practiced the stroke a few times and all looked good. She was smiling and asking questions.

I positioned M at the back line of the court and walked over to the other side of the net where I had a bucket of balls. I hit a soft arcing shot to her forehand. She swung and missed by a mile. I hit another one and she missed that one, too. She fanned it again and again and kept apologizing. I came around the net and went through the forehand again, this time holding her arm from behind and demonstrating the stroke deliberately. I could feel her heat against me and could barely concentrate on instruction.

A minute later I was on the other side of the net and hit her another soft ball to her forehand.

Nothing. Another whiff. More whiffs. It seemed impossible for someone who moved so gracefully to miss the ball. I mean she didn’t even nick it with the frame! The hand and eye coordination simply wasn’t there and you can’t teach that. It should have been funny to me but I think I got upset. I could teach anyone tennis!

But not her.

I no longer recall how the lesson ended, but we never went out again. That was my fault.

So why end this memoir with M? I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s because 40 years after that nervous car date and ludicrous tennis lesson, her style of conversation with me now feels almost totally unique and the type I want more of in my life. Indeed, it might serve as a model for how people should converse with each other, particularly in the days of text messaging and social media posts and whatever hasty communication platform comes next, and we all know another one is coming.

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