Mix Tape Memory

NSP Meditations , ,

In recent months, I have been resurrecting some of my 500 or so mix tapes and revisiting them and the interesting little histories that only mix tapes can provide. It’s about the music, of course, but also about the art and the naming, and where you were in life when you made the tape.

One in particular arrested me, and I am listening to it as I write this now, on a tiny little player, in mono! Neil Young is soloing on “Like a Hurricane.”

The tape is titled Urge, Urge and Urge after a line from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It was compiled during October, 2003. I was 39 years old. There is no track list only my scrawl of the sentence: “Ready to pack it in.”

That is a reference to my writing career at that point in my life. I was unpublished in book format. I had endured so many rejections for my memoir of being caretaker of a wildlife refuge, that I was ready to quit. There was so much crap out there but I couldn’t cut through the crap.

Ryan Adams is now playing.

But I wasn’t ready to “pack it in” yet. I no longer recall what prompted me to create Nestucca Spit Press and publish my books and run an end run around the regional publishing industry and get my Oregon stories out. I was probably cruising Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park with the dogs and it was raining plywood walls.

Star Star by the Stones rocking now….and that priceless Steve McQueen line.

But I did create NSP and it was more than an act of defiance. Defiance doesn’t last as creative inspiration for 17 years. That’s only one limited tone. For all of you out there who have supported NSP’s unique editorial mission, thank you. More to come. A collection of Christmas tales this holiday season, presuming there is one.

The Breeders are now playing.

Corona Virus Thoughts #4

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations

The headline read:

All of these celebrity Earth Day posts are helping us get through quarantine

Sure they are. Lizzo and J-Lo. Something called a Bieber and a Britney.

Who are these beautiful people? Why are they scantily clad in nature living the high life and showing us this? Why are some of them getting 2.5 million likes on their posts? Who are the people liking this?

I just heard that certain celebrities are going to post videos or go Zoom or whatever to honor the class of 2020. What did they do before Corona for graduating seniors? Nothing. I am so sick of this country trying to enact social change via celebrities. Yes, Harry Belafonte and Ali and others were prominent in the Civil Rights era, the marches and such, really putting their asses on the line. But they weren’t the leaders, they didn’t show themselves in skimpy outfits or in their garish mansions or drinking champagne on their yachts, and we didn’t look to them as oracles. They largely remained silent, well not Ali, but he was special. I really don’t know what has happened to us.

A new headline on Yahoo News, right after the one about we just passed 65,000 Corona Virus deaths, read:

Welp, Here’s Kylie Jenner Twerking on Camera for the First Time

The comments were blistering. There is hope in that, I guess. But there were also a half million views and as many likes.

Another headline read.

Lisa Rinna Just Shared A Butt Selfie On Instagram, And It’s All For A Good Cause

I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know what this headline means. I don’t go looking for these headlines. They just appears on my screen as I try to find news and commentary. I will say whoever this person is had been disfigured by plastic surgery, her face that is. I didn’t see the butt selfie.

Am I starting to lose my mind? I don’t think so. Others are, for sure.

Roasting Cans and Bottles

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

One of the great vexing mysteries of Oregon Coast beach life is: why do some people who have beach fires roast up their empty cans and bottles of beer, liquor or energy drinks in the fire?

I encountered such a sight the other day on one of my meanderings. I saw a magnificent fort, went to investigate, ducked inside a real spacious beauty with a roof, windows, and a sleeping/make out/pass out/sex alcove, and found a fire pit with five or six roasted cans of beer. Why? Why? Why? It makes no sense. I love that these people, most certainly locals, are outlaw partying in unique Oregon style on their socialist beaches in the midst of a quarantine. But why burn up the cans and bottles? There is certainly no aesthetic effect. It can’t smell good and actually ruins the soothing smell of wood smoke. Do they get some kind of weird kick from it? Is it fun? Is this primarily a dumb dude thing? What the hell is going on?

Osprey Versus Clearcut

NSP Meditations

A wispy fog settled across the land on an early weekday morning. That’s meteorological fog, not the thick delusional stuff that’s settled across much of the nation. The former will eventually burn off; the latter may stay forever.

A writing man prepared to take his morning walk for fitness, inspiration and clarity. Where would he walk today? He narrowed his many choices down to two: a fresh clearcut he recently found by accident or an osprey recently returned from Mexico to his towering nest he also found by accident.

They were both the same distance. One walk into death, the other into life. One walk into obscene greed and waste. The other into the world of a magical bird that often flew with eels in its talons. What intrigued him more these days? What was on his mind? What did he prefer to write about? What did he write best about?

He began his walk. The walk to life or death took the same route for about a mile until that fork came in the road and he would have to make his choice.

Walking in fog always excited the man. It made him feel like he was in a noir movie, which he sort of was at the moment. The whole country was, but it wasn’t filmed in black and white. It was filmed in the garish colors of ignorance and stupidity.

He passed empty bottles of Bombay gin, dented cans of energy drinks, cracked vaping pens, and topless tins of Viennese sausage. What they meant in combination for the state of the union was impossible for the writer to ascertain, so he didn’t even try.

While he walked, he worked on the lyrics of a new country song called “Going to Winston.” It was a dumb little ditty about a construction worker who took his bonus, bought some booze, and drove to a town called Winston to get laid.

It didn’t work out for him. If it had, there wouldn’t be a country song.

The writer reached the fork. He stopped. He drank some water. The fog was lifting. There was a chance to osprey wouldn’t be at the nest. She might be fishing in the river. There was no chance the clearcut wouldn’t be there.

Life dammit! The writer proclaimed. He knew seeing the osprey was where he was in life these days. He was done with the metaphors offered up by the rapine of clearcuts. He wanted the reality of birds and the marvels they induced in him. They took him higher. Clearcuts only made him look into the abyss.

He took the fork to the left and headed for the osprey. He didn’t even care if the raptor wasn’t there. The site of her massive nest atop a lighting-struck Sitka spruce was more than enough.

Corona Virus Thoughts #3

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations ,

A breeze blows through the area where I live. It mixes with wood smoke.

I just woke up from a nap in a chair.

An American flag ripples in the distance. It should be turned upside down.

I hear birds and power tools.

I wrapped up the tree planting gig: around 1200 total in some of the most physically demanding work of my life. I wish it could go on. The landowner tipped me a hundred smackers for my effort. I’d never received a tip for labor in my life and I taught my ass off for 25 years in schools. It felt wonderful. Shouldn’t good teachers be tipped?

Strange people pass by.

A large man is dying not far from me.

I sense many people are ready to create monumental change in their lives. The quarantine exposed something. But will they act?

Many Americans have learned the hard way that the lives they had at home were utterly meaninglessness, and in fact, awful. They could stand it because they could leave. They could survive it because they had distractions. The facade has now been pulverized.

One can only hope after this that unnecessary air travel will finally end (like flying to Africa and Antarctica to run marathons). And it appears the virus may have killed the cruise ship industry for all time. Thank the Oceans!

An elderly woman pulls up in a 90s Lincoln Continental to meet a neighbor. She is wearing a side arm and carrying a box of wine.

I see a lonely tether ball pole with molding rope and a molding ball. I want to pound the ball like the old school yard days.

Lots of conspiracy theories floating around. They attach to the weak of mind.

I saw a video of a Southern woman defying at stay at home order yelling at a health care worker wearing a mask who stood in front of her. She told the worker to go back to China, you commie.

How did Americans get this dumb?

Of course Ronald Reagan was elected twice in landslides, so really, is nothing new in modern America?

Never forget this: the doctor who invented the lobotomy was given the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Prize for Peace. Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than Donald Trump.

An oil executive said on TV that “we have to get back to way things were.” No we don’t. That way was exploitation, destruction and drivel.

I keep building driftwood forts to preserve my sanity. It’s working.

A Weird Chainsaw Story

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

Sometimes a writer sees something strange unfold in front of him. He then tries to assay what is happening. He then might turn the experience into an essay that provides some shreds of explanation to the strangeness.

But sometimes, the strangeness will be so vast and overwhelming that the writer’s attempt at assaying will not amount to anything.

Such is the case to a writer who walked along a beach on a crisp and bright morning, 7:15 a.m. to be precise, in month two of the virus, and the writer came upon two young women, one a red head, the other sporting rainbow-colored hair, both in their late teens or early 20s, smoking cigarettes and wearing blankets. They stumbled down a path to the beach and saw a cave carved into a sandy cliff some 20 feet high above ground. The red-haired woman pointed to the cave and exclaimed to her companion, “What the FUCK!?” and started running toward the cave with giddy abandon. Her companion followed. They skipped across a rivulet, scrambled over some driftwood and began climbing up the cliff to presumably reach the cave and then do something inside it. A chainsaw roared somewhere near the cave, perhaps on the road, at the entrance to the path. The writer took the path up from the beach and the roar of the chainsaw grew louder. This confused the writer because there was no earthly reason for the sound of a chainsaw to emanate from this place. On the road, the writer observed a sagging white Japanese sedan from the early 90s, battered, duct taped, parked in such a place and at a particular moment in the morning that suggested its occupants had spent the night in the vehicle, and were now just rousting.

But the chainsaw?

The writer watched the vehicle and then saw a young bearded man in pajama-like clothing, emerge from behind it wielding a chainsaw. He had apparently been using it to cut branches from various stunted shore pines that lined one side of the road.

But why? It made no sense. Was he cutting firewood for a morning beach fire? What was he even doing with a chainsaw? What about the women? Had the reached the cave yet? Would they smoke cigarettes there, dangle their feet over the edge, giggle and stare at ocean?

The writer pondered the scene and the odd behavior. It had all the trappings of a meth binge and this was a beach that occasionally attracted meth miscreants. As he walked away, he looked back at the sedan and heard the revved up and sustained grind of the chainsaw. It sounded like the man was felling a tree.

Had the women reached the cave yet? What was going on with them? The writer tried to imagine their conversation. It was impossible. His final thought was: what were the going to cook up for breakfast in the fire?

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