Leica Man

NSP Meditations

It was a bright and crisp October morning. Frost was about. Perfect football weather. Halloween decorations abounded. The leaves were falling. The squirrels darted to and fro. A few homeless men wandered around with their possessions.

I saw a middle-aged man on the sidewalk ahead of me with a camera strapped around his neck. I recognized it as a high end model. The man was shooting photographs of apples in a tree. This delighted me. Someone was out in the world making art in the morning and I walked into his process.

The man saw me and disengaged with the camera. He looked happy. He asked me if I’d seen the gray owl in the tree a few dozen feet behind me. I had not. How had I missed that! Well, he hadn’t and gotten the shot.

I asked him if the camera was a Leica. It was. He was shooting film, real film. I couldn’t believe it!

We then dived into the joys of film, developing and darkrooms and how it was all nearly vanished from our creative culture. I made a comparison to illuminated manuscripts and how they eventually went away as an art form. He then told me an incredible story: he had a relative who was some kind of monk in some kind of monastery in Los Angeles and working on an illuminated manuscript! With no computers! Now what was actually being illuminated in a manuscript in Los Angeles monastery in 2021 was something astonishing to consider. It might not even be religious in nature!

It was a great conversation, utterly invigorating, and it took place in the unlikeliest of places and at the unlikeliest of times.

Joy in the city!

But how did I miss the owl?

Blue Heron Musings

NSP Meditations

I saw a blue heron standing in a springs this morning. The bird was so close to me I could see the coloring of its eyeballs. It occurred to me that in all my hundreds of blue heron encounters, this was the most intimate.

There he was, down to my right, as I crossed a little wooden footbridge over the springs. I was walking the neighbor’s mutt on a cold morning and thinking about decidedly non blue heron things. And there it was. I stopped on the bridge and the dog heeled. Ducks flitted around the heron. It didn’t move. It didn’t look at me. It looked up to the sky.

And I watched in silence for three or four minutes, I recounted the memorable blue herons in my life and what they represent to me in reality and metaphor.

I once explored the idea of blue herons in my life in great detail via a writing workshop called Birds as Metaphors that I taught 15 years ago.

There’s nothing like teaching yourself something important in your own workshop and that used to happen all the time when I taught them. It might again if I ever teach one again.

I remember writing on blue herons and how they were such a solitary creature in the wild. Always alone hunting in the mud flats or fields. Sometimes perched in the branches of conifers. That was me, I wrote, their perpetual solitude was mine. I embraced it. It was my nature. Perhaps even my writing life was like their ungainly flight. Certainly it wasn’t like a bald eagle’s or a gull’s. It didn’t soar. It undulated.

Standing on the bridge watching the heron brought this personal metaphor back to me. But it doesn’t work for me anymore. Personal metaphors change over the years, I would think. I would consider that necessary for personal growth, assuming one wants to grow.

It was clear that the heron wasn’t going to lift off. It was time for me to leave and let some other walker encounter the marvelous sight. That is, if they bothered to look down to the springs.

A Football and a Novel

NSP Meditations

It was a crisp weekday morning. I walked through the park and counted a couple more additions to the local homeless encampment.

The geese and ducks were about. I saw something that looked like a football on a grassy field. I strolled over to examine. Indeed, it was a football, a youth one, in excellent condition. I picked it up and it acted like the madeleine in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Football flooded my mind and it would have been nice to have someone with me at that moment to wing the pigskin around.

I flung it in the air like I was throwing a long bomb. The football spiraled nicely. I caught it, cradled it under my arm like a running back, and continued along my way.

A City employee was taking photographs of an abandoned and stripped sedan. I walked up and we struck up a conversation about the vehicle and its likelihood of it being towed. He said it would happen pretty soon. He also told me his job was to investigate abandoned vehicles around the city and facilitate their removal. It struck me as an interesting job and one I wouldn’t mind doing myself.

Our conversation ended and I continued my walk.

A few minutes later I came upon a street library. I never fail to inspect the contents of these libraries on my walks, so I opened it up and beheld a novel I had longed to read: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I’d seen and loved the movie but never got around to obtaining the book. Well, here it was and just in time for the rainy season and long hours of reading.

I cradled the novel under my right arm and the football under my left and walked home in a very good mood.

Oregon Tavern Age: Story Development

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age ,

Two military vets discussed military matters inside a tiny OTA joint. I wanted a dark beer to match my somber mood generated by falling rain, gray skies and indifferent human beings.

No dice on the dark beer said the elderly female bartender, so I settled for something lighter.

I perused the joint’s liquor offerings: desultory. Something caught my eye: a pink lemonade-flavored Smirnoff. I cringed and tried imagining who would order such a repulsive concoction. I failed.

A ridiculous talk show played on a monitor. The hostess of the show had a face disfigured by plastic surgery and injections of chemical compounds. An obnoxious celebrity chef was her guest. They began bantering. I couldn’t take it. I asked the bartender for a change of programming and she switched to a repeat of college football game broadcast a week ago.

I sat an ancient Formica bar and penned notes for an upcoming Oregon Coast Christmas tale I’m writing for the holiday season. I knew where I wanted to set the story: Coos Bay, the Millicoma River, Allegheny and two waterfalls in the area that I’d never seen. It felt important to visit the falls either prior to or during the writing of the tale to enhance the accuracy of the setting. Is it necessary to see the falls to write about it? Is that necessary for fiction? No. I could imagine how it looked and see photographs on the Internet. I could save myself a long drive.

But I won’t use the Internet. I want to make that long drive to a remote place on the Oregon Coast. I want to see the only river valley on the Oregon Coast I haven’t explored. I know there will be magic up the Millicoma River. For some reason, I am drawn to this place. I know when I see it something is going to happen that will prove pivotal later on in my life. In fact, writing this story about a homeless vet who gets a job at a Christmas tree lot is all part of my own personal story and also connecting to the homeless issue I am writing about.

Random October Thoughts

NSP Meditations ,

I miss my construction job and the learning that accrued with the labor.

Dad and I discussed the term “jack shit” and wondered where it originated. I like the phrase a lot and need to restore it to my regular use.

Dad told me a story about a snowstorm in Iowa he experienced as a kid where the drifts were so high he could touch the tops of telephone poles. He said school was out for six weeks and he and his brother did nothing but play Monopoly. They repeatedly argued over the game to such an annoying degree that their stepmother threw the board into the fire. Dad and his brother fashioned a new one from memory and kept on playing in the barn.

I rescued two books from the recycling bin of the local bookstore, a Lillian Hellman memoir of her experiences during the McCarthy era, and a collection of short stories by Carson McCullers. There is nothing like rescuing old books from annihilation. They still might have interesting work to do. I hope one day someone rescues my books from annihilation.

I continue to publish books that virtually no one will read.

The more I read about local government in the city the more it seems like it is riddled with a unique incompetence. Unlike Republicans who don’t believe in governing or know how to govern, Portland officials believe in good governing but seem unable to govern.

I tried buying an Oregon atlas from a local retailer the other day. No luck. Even the hunting/fishing store didn’t carry one. Somehow this made me depressed.

I reread Cannery Row. It’s probably been 35 years since I last read it. What a classic! It so moved me that I started working on an essay of its obvious relevance to my current writing about the homeless. Which you can check out here: https://mattlove.substack.com/

I firmly believe that the ability to follow up with someone is the most important quality in a relationship and often the hardest thing for someone to do.

No one seems to surprise me anymore. Maybe surprising people becomes harder as people get older. It takes effort and perhaps the tank is empty.

Oregon Tavern Age: Friday Afternoon

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

A Friday afternoon. A new joint. It’s old, with a roadhouse feel, situated near a defense contractor, and soon, one of the city’s new official homeless villages. What a strange mix of customers that should facilitate.

I walked in and the bartender was sitting at circular bar of tile and glass brick and drinking what appeared to be a cocktail. A friend sat next to her playing on her phone. Old football games played on the monitors.

A dark beer sounded good so I ordered a porter and then sat at a high table and began writing a story about a homeless veteran. My creative mind has attached itself to this homeless issue. I don’t really know where I am going with it yet. I may never know.

A young Latina woman entered, ordered a long island ice tea, and then hit the slot machines. She left in five minutes. I guess it was some kind of break from work.

Silence reigned.

A few minutes later, a street-looking man entered and ordered a screwdriver and then hit the slot machines. From time to time, I heard him talking to a machine.

Someone emerged from the back and began setting up speakers around the stage. Apparently there was a rock event scheduled for later that night, probably a cover band of some kind. It still somewhat astonishes me that live rock and roll used to be my primary source of entertainment when I lived in Portland a quarter century ago. Rock is utterly irrelevant to me now. I doubt I’ll ever see a live act again, unless, perhaps I chance upon one in OTA country gigging drunk in the afternoon. That has happened before, a couple of times. I’d like that. Maybe a Doobies Brothers outfit. Or better yet, an OTA Go Go’s group. Oh yes, I would like that a lot.

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