Dangerous Writing

NSP Meditations, Writing

I sat in the rear of a loud bar waiting for a friend. I wrote in my journal.

Ten or fifteen minutes elapsed.

A masked and rotund bar back wearing a black hoodie and shorts came up to me and said, “Who do you work for? People said you’re taking notes.”

“I’m a writer.” I turned the notebook for him to see my handwriting, which of course he couldn’t read because I have perhaps the worst handwriting in the world. I can’t even read it after a week or so!

The man turned abruptly and walked away briskly without saying a word. I went back to writing in my journal (notes for a story about the last remaining mom and pop drug store in America) and watching others watch me write. Who had ratted me out? Why? If I had been on my phone or tablet ruining the bar’s reputation with a review or reporting their shaky social distancing set-up, not one have given me a second glance. Or first.

But that act of writing with pen on paper!!!!!!!!!! Spy! Rebel! Freak! Luddite!

This episode confirms a theory I postulated a while back: writing in longhand in public places has become an unnerving and possibly dangerous act in the eyes of some people. It is so extremely rare an occurrence, that some people react with instant fear and paranoia. It is a reaction I have seen ratcheting up in the last year. The last time something like this happened to me was when another bartender accused me of being an OLCC narc. I was writing a letter to my father at the time. She didn’t know how to respond to that and just melted away without saying a word.

Not that anyone really wants to spend too much time in indoor places where people are gathered, but as an interesting cultural experiment, try taking a notebook and pen, sitting down in a place or even a park bench outdoors where people are milling about, and start writing. Watch what happens. Perhaps nothing. But perhaps something worth writing about.

I am writing this from a picnic table 30 feet from a mountain lake and in the last five minutes a family with two kids and a female couple moseyed by and gave me THE LOOK as I scribbled.

A Tribute To Alfie the Dog

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

I walked down a remote stretch of beach on a misty weekday morning and meandered among the driftlogs at the base of a crumbling cliff. I saw something red nestled in the roots of an ancient stump and went over to investigate. What I found was a tribute to a dearly departed dog named Alfie that someone had recently created. Over the years I have encountered several of these kind of tributes (and left behind two of my own, for Ray and Sonny), but something about this one truly moved me to tears. The tennis ball. The candle. The painted rock with lyrics from a great song. I can’t say for sure. Perhaps it reminded me of my great love for my dogs and all our thousands of rambles down Oregon Coast beaches and how I walk alone these days.

Of course, the tide and storms have erased all traces of Alfie’s tribute, at least on the beach. But not in my heart. Thank you to the person who created it.

Secret Coast Radio #21

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 helping people over judging them. The former takes so much more work, but it is the best work.

We prefer people who are alive and ambulatory today because of vaccinations to acknowledge that fact and don’t become opposed to vaccinations for no intelligent scientific reason.

We prefer reasonable thinking over rabid thinking, debunking over delusion.

We prefer eating plants over eating animals. When you eat factory-raised animals you are complicit in the cruel death of animals and the cruel working conditions of the workers who process death and die as a result.

We prefer sweet nothings over sweet nihilism.

We prefer those classic rock and roll songs with double negatives over terrible modern country songs with cornpone slang phrases.

We prefer the voice of Barry White to sermonize to us about love over the voices of preachers and politicians.

We prefer currency that includes the line: in magic mushrooms we trust over currency with the line In God We Trust.

We really lament that America didn’t get it right after the Civil War and execute all the rebellious ruling class including the ultimate traitor, Robert E. Lee, and confiscate their property and distribute it to African Americans. If we had, you wouldn’t recognize this country today. We might even be just.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number 21 begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Oregon Tavern Age: Trick or Pimp?

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

I presently believe I do not possess the literary powers to describe accurately the madness unfolding in front of me inside Oregon Tavern Age (OTA) country. But I will try.

A gaunt, elderly meth woman wearing jean shorts and a halter top is playing a Wonder Woman slot machine with savage ferocity while drinking a vodka and cranberry juice. At the same time, she is screaming at no one in particular about the liberal hoax that is the Corona Virus and other assorted conspiracy theories.

A sampling:

“If Trump isn’t wearing a mask, there is a cure.”

“My husband died of the flu and they didn’t call out the National Guard for me.”

I think she might be a prostitute of some kind. I also think her trick or pimp is in here. He’s sitting far away, at a table. He’s older, wearing pleated shorts and a dress shirt. He sports greased short gray hair and glasses. He’s on his fifth or sixth greyhound and playing terrible 80s music through his phone and a speaker shaped like a spike heeled shoe that is resting on the table. I can hear the music over the slots, television and fan. I am desperately wishing someone would smash the speaker to smithereens and I could get back to writing my erotica story about a suspension bridge.

Wait! An OTA regular just told the trick or pimp to turn off the speaker. He did!

The hooker left Wonder Woman, pounded her drink, and went up to the trick or pimp and they left!

Back to LITERATURE!

Some Dog Thoughts

NSP Meditations

More Dog Thoughts

In The Teachings of Don Juan, author Carlos Castaneda digests six peyote buttons, gargles with tequila, and shortly thereafter receives a visit from an “iridescent” dog that had “water flowing through him, kindling him like a bonfire.” Castaneda then went to the ground and drank water from the dog’s pan and “saw the fluid running through my veins setting up hues of red and yellow and green.” The dog and Castaneda began to play with one another. “We played and wrestled until I knew his wishes and he knew mine. We took turns manipulating each other in the fashion of a puppet show…his most impish act was to make me scratch my head with my foot while I sat. The action was to me utterly, unbearably funny…I laughed until it was impossible to breathe.” Years ago, I experienced something remarkably similar with my dogs, and I wasn’t under the influence of peyote. I was wrestling with my three big dogs in the yard, becoming one of them, and laughing so hard that it bordered on convulsing. Not too long ago, I digested magic mushrooms for the first time, on a hike through a forest to the ocean, and the waves became iridescent, a sea lion appeared in a tiny cove and sort of barked in my direction. All the depression in my life vanished into thin salty air and I was possessed with an instant clarity of consciousness of the kind that heretofore was unknown to me. It occurred to me in that moment that I really wanted to go on a beach run with dogs after digesting magic mushrooms. It occurs to me now that I probably should have done so before writing the dog book. Oh well.

Bozo the Dog

NSP Meditations

I pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store. It was late morning and threatening to rain. I saw a young and thin man with long black hair hanging out with his tan dog who looked like a little lion. They were kitted out for the road, the road of the New American Diaspora that is all around us.

I parked near the man and popped the trunk. I dug out two cans of dog food from the emergency stash I always carry to help out the transients’ dogs when the opportunity arises, which is almost daily. I asked the man if he could use some food for the dog. His face exploded into smile and he said, “Sure, thanks brother!”

He jogged over to me to get the cans. He thanked me again and said he loved this town. I started walking to the store when I heard him playing with the dog and asking it what can he wanted to eat! (There were two brands.) He set the cans on the asphalt and let the dog choose, talking up one brand, then another, really egging on the dog. The dog made a show of the choosing and was barking and running around the cans.

It made me deliriously happy to observe this in the midst of the increasing delirium engulfing much of the United States.

When I returned from shopping, the dog was grubbing out and the man was sitting on the asphalt and playing on his phone. I asked the dog’s name.

Bozo. Of course!

He called me brother again and we told each other to take care.

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