A Brief Bumble Bee Story

NSP Meditations

I was writing a Western at a table in a dive bar.

A Western was playing on TV.

In the distance, men were talking about the conspiracy to remove monuments of Confederate heroes.

I did not get up and go over to inform them that these are moments to losers and traitors and America is the only nation in the history of the world that erects moments to losers and traitors. There is no other.

A bumble bee flew in the open door and quickly found itself trapped on the sill 18 inches away from me and banging against the glass.

I found some paper, rigged up a container, and scooted the bee inside.

I walked outside and released the bee into the air, and it bumbled away to pollinate some plant that we need to survive, either food or flower. We damn well need both.

I returned to my table and went back to the Western.

I put the bumble bee in the story.

Recent Sights Along Highway 101

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History

I have seen a great many odd human sights along Highway 101 in my 23 years of living on the Oregon Coast. I can say with complete confidence that the appearance of such oddities has increased substantially in recent months and I think we all know the reason.

In the last two days, I observed a triple shot of human oddity along 101.

  1. A young transient-looking couple with gear was walking in the shoulder with their two dogs and a goose. Yes, a goose. I caught a look at the couple’s respective faces. They were smiling and talking. I almost pulled over to investigate, but just kept driving. I’m acting more as a novelist these days rather than a journalist.
  2. A few hours later, I saw an elderly man sitting on a guardrail. His wagon was next to him. He had dumped all the contents of the wagon, presumably his life’s possessions, in the shoulder. He just sat there, staring at the ocean. I caught a look at his face. He wasn’t really there.
  3. The next day I saw a beater white van idling in a 101 underpass, blocking my car. A terrifically obese young and scroungy-looking man in a t-shirt and shorts was writing something on the wall of the underpass. I caught a look at the man’s face. He looked somewhat insane. He got back in his van and drove away. I stopped to see what he had written. It was written in purple chalk: “Joe Biden is brain dead.” I followed the van. It was going 20 miles an hour. I passed it. On the side spray painted in purple: “Joe Bides is brain dead.” There was a goofy mutt sitting upright in the passenger seat.

I’d rank the goose and the wagon man and the Biden detractor in my top ten of odd human 101 sights. They came very close to making the top 3, but then will anything ever top the transvestite in a red party dress emerging utterly exhausted from the cab of a parked log truck or the man driving a beater truck in a pulverizing rainstorm? He had the windshield wipers wiping on full but didn’t have a windshield. No, nothing will top that. Or has so far.

Oh, I almost forgot the young woman bicycling down the coast who told me she was anorexic and riding herself to death by the time she reached the California border.

Oh wait, I also forgot about the man who was bicycling up the Oregon Coast to Astoria for a Goonies anniversary. Nothing strange about that except he had a pig with him riding in a baby buggy side car. I paid the man $20 so I could hang with the pig on the beach.

CB Radio Man

NSP Meditations

I’m parked at the jetty. Fog is invading. An old man in a big green truck is parked to my right. He’s got white hair, white sideburns and a white goatee. He’s wearing a black ball cap and smoking. His window is rolled down. He’s talking on a CB radio. I know that because I remember listening to someone else on CB radio around 45 years ago, in their Burt Reynolds heyday.

I crack my passenger window to listen better. I want to know what this man is talking about.

Ospreys fly overhead. Fishing boats bob in the river channel.

059 605 he squawks

He’s talking to someone near the Canadian border.

Then he’s talking to another man about their various radio setups.

059 605 he squawks

Now he’s on to the weather.

I want to hear something interesting. This is all so banal.

I spot an osprey with an eel in its talons. Now that’s much more interesting than CB chatter. I decide to brave the wind and go build a fort.

Corona Virus Thoughts #10

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations

More anti-mask meatheads about. To encounter them is to encounter sheer stupidity. They are dull in mind and sick in the soul. What brought them to this choice?

I saw another one the other day, a woman with a small child, in the grocery store. She looked sullen in the face. She was teaching her kid well.

Things are really seizing up in America.

I was in Oregon Tavern Age country the other day and it felt dead. A clearcut has more life.

I’m reading Gore Vidal’s political essays and novels of American history again. He was right about everything in our founding and expansion as a nation. Everyone should read him.

The sports chat dummies think there will be football this fall. It’s incredible to hear their delusional talk.

I wonder if professional golfers playing tournaments right no without any fans think what they are doing is irrelevant and a little embarrassing.

I just fed my chipmunk buddy Jimmers for the third time today! He’s the only routine I have.

I read on the Oregon Public Broadcasting news site that the Oregon Legislature is coming up with $4.7 million dollars for the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. This is on top of over $7 million the Festival has already received from the federal government and private donors to help them survive a canceled season. This seems like a highly dubious use of taxpayer’s money during the pandemic. I mean, look around! Look at the obvious needs!

Why not the Oregon Country Fair, too?

Chipmunk Sex Fever!

NSP Meditations

About a year ago, I struck up an improbable friendship with a magic mushroom nibbling chipmunk I dubbed Jimmers, after the mushroom munching dead rock star, Jim Morrison. We’ve been bosom buddies ever since and I keep him supplied in peanuts, which he shells like corn on the cob on a tree branch over my domicile. He’s become so brazen in his entreaties for peanuts that he summons me at the crack of dawn or knocks on the door wearing a monocle and ascot!

About a week ago, Jimmers was racing around the tree with another chipmunk in mad pursuit. He was shrilling and chirping at the interloper but the other chipmunk stood his limb and gave it right back to Jimmers. It was quite the spectacle and utterly delighted me.

A couple days later I walked out to the shore pine were I feed Jimmers and was shocked to see him mounting the other chipmunk from behind as they clung upright on the trunk. Oh my! Jimmers really was giving it to his new girlfriend but it didn’t last very long and then they scampered down the tree together and each cracked open a peanut and chewed it like so much a cigarette after sex. Fun!

Lines that Arrested Me from Camus’ Notebooks (1942-1951)

NSP Meditations, Writing

I recently read one of Camus’ notebooks and jotted down some lines that arrested me. My comments are in parentheses after the quotes.

Sex leads to nothing. It is not immoral but it is unproductive. One can indulge in it so long as one does not want to produce. But only chastity is linked to personal progress. (Where is the evidence for this assertion? He doesn’t provide any examples.)

There is a time when sex is a victory—when it is separated from moral imperatives. But soon after it becomes a defeat—and the only victory is then won over it: chastity. (Chastity as victory?)

Unbridled sex leads to a philosophy of the non-significance of the world. Chastity on the other hand gives the world a meaning. (It does? Massive and unnatural repression of instinct I would think)

Any life directed toward money is death. (I don’t know a single person who has ever directed their life toward money. But there are legions of them out there and they are killing the planet.)

Heat ripens people like fruit. (Great line.)

A literature of despair will never be universal. (I’m not sure I know what this means, but happy endings don’t seem to endure as well as sad or indifferent ones.)

It requires buckets full of blood and centuries of history to lead to an imperceptible modification of the human condition. (So true.)

Write everything—just as it comes. (This is the way I have been writing lately. Nothing is planned. It’s led to some surprising results.)

The sea: I didn’t lose myself in it; I found myself in it. (This would go on my gravestone if I was ever to be buried anywhere, which I won’t. When I know my time is up, I will walk or plunge into the ocean.)

Those who write obscurely have great luck: they have commentators. The others will have only readers, and this, it seems, is worthy of scorn. (This is certainly true for some writers and musicians.)

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