NSP Meditations

A large man sat down next to me at the bar with a view of a river. He ordered eggs Benedict, a steak, chicken strips, mashed potatoes and a salad. He wanted everything slathered in ranch dressing. This was all for himself.

I built a fort today.

I finished writing my Oregon City memoir this morning. It was one of the more enjoyable writing projects of my life and I hope it finds an audience.

I’m pounding this out on my Alphasmart and the bartender just asked me about it.

I near the end of reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It’s been 30+ years since the last reading. I’m into it. I keep wondering if Tolstoy knew that privileged, upper class, delusional life of the Russian aristocracy was going to get buried forever in 40 or so years by Lenin and the Revolution. And they were beyond worse than what came before them.

A young tourist couple on a romantic getaway played on their phones throughout their entire meal. I wondered if they tasted their food.

A woman ate a hamburger while watching something on her laptop.

A reader of the rain book wrote me an astonishing account of how he found the book and what it meant to him in a time of crisis. I wrote that book in a time of crisis. Is that where all the best writing comes from?

My body still hurts after the labor of planting 300 trees.

I reached out to someone I care about. Nothing. I won’t give up.

A former student wrote me that writing in a journal has helped her deal with crisis. I wonder how many of my former students still write in a journal, a practice I introduced and required? That would be interesting to know.

A headlamp was burned out. Everyone dreads that moment. You have to go to the auto parts store and buy bulbs, that’s easy and inexpensive enough. But oh, but the prospect of installation. It can be a real bitch. Don’t touch the bulb without gloves. Don’t break the plastic housing. It’s so great that newer model vehicles no longer have screws because then you used to need a screwdriver and invariably you would drop the screws inside the vehicle or on the ground and they were lost forever.

The bearded and burly man at the counter retrieved the bulbs from a labyrinth of shelved parts. Payment was made. The man looked around. No one else was in the store. He offered to install the bulbs provided the car was out front. It was!

The customer registered utter astonishment. This sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. It just did. The man walked out into the bright sunshine with rubber gloves on and carrying the bulbs. The customer popped the hood and moved in close to inspect the installation. He wanted to learn.

They talked as the procedure began and talked right up until the moment they shook hands at the end.

The man whipped out a knife and popped the headlamp installation on the driver’s side and inserted the bulb. Presto! He did the same on the passenger side. It took all of one minute. The customer slammed down the hood in bliss.

They talked some more.

A supreme and quick and efficient act of kindness moved the customer’s heart and mind into a fabulous restful, positive place. He thanked the man for his kindness. The man said he loved getting outside in the sunshine and helping people. He didn’t want a single person leaving his store feeling angry or dissatisfied because if they did, they would pass that on into their world and leave it a bit more unkind. He was sick of unkindness. He said it wasn’t a main Left or Right or a liberal or conservative thing. He was sick of it all from everywhere, all sides. So he was acting, taking action.

This week, in three days, I planted 300 trees, a hundred cedar, 200 Sitka spruce. Every morning it was bright and cold, about 34 degrees. Frost was on the ground. One time a bald eagle greeted me with some wonderful overhead circling. Quiet reigned on the little hillock I was planting at the edges, to create a windbreak for a new home, and to suppress and insidious invasive species that threatens total dominion of the area unless tall trees throw shade and kill it with the darkness. But that’s 40 years from now.

If you think about it, tree planting is about the only thing Americans attempt at improving the chances of the planet’s survival. Certainly our education system isn’t doing that. High tech is the antithesis of tree planting. So is consumerism.

I did say that quiet reigned over the planting, that is until later in the morning when I heard the toots, whistles and chainsaws from a nearby clearcut. They were murdering. I was giving life. That’s a powerful thing to consider and I let it imbue my work.

It was such good and rewarding effort, although it also kicked my ass. I labored largely alone, with my mind engaged with anything that happened to slip inside, such as past loves, recent traumas, obscure rock songs (“Cadillac Ranch”) and my ten years (98-08) of service as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. (The photo is of Sonny the husky on the refuge.)

During my time there, I planted around 3000 trees myself to restore a wrecked piece of land and also oversaw the planting of another 10,000 trees on the refuge and other parts of the watershed. As a result, I became a master tree planter and taught many others the skill. It was probably the best teaching I ever did: inmates, students, senior citizens, tourists, teachers and many other groups. Perhaps the best times of my adult life were planting on that refuge with my dogs. Some of those trees are pushing 80 feet. I know every one of them

Now, 12 years later I was in a different clobbered watershed and it didn’t take much time for the tree planting technique I’d honed so many years before to return, along with the muscle memory and hearty rushes of spirit of doing something as simple and beautiful and important as planting a tree. If you plant a tree well, it will make it. On the Oregon Coast, it might live to 200-400 years and will surely outlast the United States of America.

I sat at the bar after a good morning on the construction job. I was drinking a local IPA and reading an essay written in 1972 by Kurt Vonnegut about the Republican National Convention in Miami, which he covered. It was written almost half a century ago but it might have just as well been written yesterday for how dead on it was and is about American political life. Just switch out Trump for Nixon and Bernie for McGovern. Vonnegut described the American political party system as the Winners and Losers and the Winners always win. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are in the Winners’ party, but Republicans don’t bother trying to hide their contempt and hatred of the poor and the Losers.

But they need Losers to win. So they someone get the Losers to vote for the Winners because it is, according to Vonnegut, and axiom of American voting that the Losers never vote for Losers. It all makes perfect sense in our current political climate.

The only thing different this time is that the clowns are not Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman mocking the Winners but the late night talk show hosts mocking the Winners. Vonnegut called that kind of mocking “social lubricant” for the machinery of the Winners to kick the shit out the Losers. They actually need it to win.

Great Vonnegut stuff there at the bar in rural Oregon.

It was silent as I read. TVs played but the sound was off. A little background music from the 80s drifted in the ceiling. A few couples behind me ate greasy fried food. Talk was muted. They were playing Keno.

An elderly man walked in and sat two stools away. He set down a pack of Marlboros and a fancy new i-Phone. He ordered water and clam chowder. He was wearing a militaristic blue ball cap and a hoodie with lettering about fishing the Bering Sea.

He punched up his phone and began listening to a speech by Trump at an ear-splitting level. It just kept going and going, talking about Winners and Losers. It burrowed into my brain.

The bartender was nowhere around, but what was she going to do anyway?

I thought: Should I ask the man politely to turn the sound down? These guys live for this kind of confrontation, and martyrdom. It makes Losers feel like Winners.

How could anyone be so dense as to play something so loud at the bar? I don’t care if was Trump or Bernie or a Star Wars movie.

He was glued to it. It was inches from his face. Maybe he was going deaf, I don’t know. He was deaf to something else, that I know.

I didn’t feel like saying anything so I got up and moved across the bar to a table by the window. I could still hear the speech. I drank up my beer and left.