RV Honey

NSP Meditations

A man, writer, sat outside a 41-year old RV, a union-made Winnebago with an 8-track player. The RV doesn’t drive anymore, but he always seemed to drive somewhere interesting in his mind when writing inside it.

It was a sunny morning and the man sipped coffee, wondering about lost friends and lost loves. A morning can do that to him sometimes.

A bee buzzed by. Then another. More bees. He recognized them as honey bees.

He followed their flight and saw them hover above the hood of the rig and then find their way around two Oregon license plates he’d placed on the windshield for decoration. He stood up for closer inspection and roused the bees from what he surmised was a hive somewhere behind the license plates and where the windshield met the body of the rig. They were making honey inside the RV!

His first thought: oh shit, I’ve got to hose or smoke them out. I can’t have a beehive in there.

The man’s neighbor joined him and suggested some death spray. The neighbor quickly retrieved a can and the man held it with his hand for a second and then handed it back to him.

No way. He’d given up that kind of thing two decades ago. He’d talked ants out of the kitchen. He’d asked mice to leave the closet. He’d told deer to lay off the garden. He’d encouraged moles to make molehills.

It always works. Try it.

The man returned to his coffee and watched the bees work.

Some months from now, he will attempt to harvest honey from the RV. He has no idea how to do it, but he’ll find an old book that will teach him. He plans on making some cornbread for the occasion, buttering it up, and then slathering it with the RV honey, Oregon RV honey.

Psychedelic Chipmunk 4

Fiction, NSP Meditations

A month passed. Tom was stocking the empty cupboards of America’s soul kitchen like a madman. And get this, it was fun! Sometimes it barely required any effort. It usually never cost a cent. Tom couldn’t believe how much stocking his country needed. Every morning he wrote about his experiences. There was no goal when writing them up. He just wrote the way the Columbia River used to flow before humans murdered its watershed.

Jimmy monitored Tom’s progress and they maintained their correspondence. He went nuts with the ink pad and made art everywhere with his hands, feet and tail. He opened new doors of perception with his art. When people noticed these doors, and many did not because they were fiddling with gadgets, they walked through and saw strange faces in the rain contorted with pain and they wanted to help.

If you ever encounter art made by chipmunks blazing on magic mushrooms, you best pay attention. If you do, your world will never be the same and it finally might start making sense.

One evening, Jimmy typed a message to Tom and a conversation ensued:

Ever read The Grapes of Wrath?

Yes, decades ago.

Read it again on mushrooms.

Okay.

Jimmy left behind some of his stash. Tom procured a copy of Steinbeck’s great novel chronicling a terrible American diaspora. Tom ate the mushrooms, stayed up all night, and read the entire book. At dawn he stood outside his rig and laughed. At long last, he had a title for his novel: The Grapes of Meth. He would write a great novel about the new terrible American diaspora, of the new Joads who no longer wanted to work, who had quit, checked out, tunneled into the margins, and didn’t give a shit.

Tom typed a note to Jimmy about his breakthrough. Jimmy wrote back, congratulated Tom, and asked for a double serving of Hamm’s, double cracklin’ cold, to celebrate. His work with Tom was complete.

But there were others in the RV park who needed Jimmy’s help. There were also plenty of magic mushrooms around.

On Meeting David Shetzline and Discussing Heckletooth 3

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , ,

On Sunday, my friend Kevin and I sat down with David Shetzline, author of Heckletooth 3, one the greatest overlooked American novels of the last 50 years, and talked of Heckletooth 3, and other matters, for over three hours. It was easily one of the top moments of my many years reading, studying and writing about Oregon history and literature. It’s right up there with interviewing Dr. Cameron Bangs of Vortex I fame and Maurice Lucas, the bad ass Portland Trail Blazer.

Thank you David, for sharing the remarkable story of this incredible novel, your writing career, and other stories that probably deserve novels or films.

(And thank you to his daughters Andrea and Erika for arranging the meeting.)

Published by Random House in 1969, set in and around the mythical coastal town of Sixes and the Oregon woods, which happened to be engulfed in fire in the plot, Heckletooth 3 is a classic, a forgotten classic, that never saw a paperback edition, was never reprinted, and is almost impossible to find except for a few rare copies. It’s pretty much been purged from Oregon libraries except University of Oregon’s.

I am overjoyed to announce here that David has agreed to allow the publication of an e-book version of H3 scanned from the original version. (More on that project later and how you might be able to assist the resurrection of this novel.) He is also going to write an introduction to the e-version!

We are also on the hunt for the missing manuscript of David’s novel called October All Over, about his experience as a salmon troller out of Newport in the 1970s. Our hope is to locate it and somehow have it published. Where there is a will, there is a way. That’s been my whole publishing career and want to see if we can make it happen for this novel. It must exist.

Again, thank you David. It was something else to read that final magisterial paragraph of H3 to you, and we both were tearing up. It was also fantastic to break huckleberry pie with you, pie made by Kevin’s wife Wendy, from coastal huckleberries! Don’t get no more Oregon than that.

Welcome back to the Oregon world of letters David Shetzline. Oregon is very much a different place than it was in 1969, but H3 is more relevant today than it was upon its release. That’s why it’s a masterpiece.

Death of a Homeless Man

NSP Meditations

A friend called me in state of extreme distress. She had received word that a friend of hers, an elderly artist who was often homeless in a big city, had passed away. She now lived far from where he died and was crying because she felt no one would care about his death. There would be no service, no memorial, nothing but nothing.

Does anyone give a shit about people anymore?

Yes, You do.

She owned several pieces of his art, including one he made for her.

I told her to take some of his art and mount it in public, and let someone take it home. Get his art out to the world. He would live on that way. Maybe tack a little note about him on the back of the paintings.

She said she liked the idea. It gave her purpose in grieving and combated society’s increasing hostility toward the homeless. If she followed though, and she would, her effort would provide him a lasting moment of humanity after his death.

Secret Coast Radio 6

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 haikus over homilies.

We prefer pop up books over self-help books, erotica over manifestos, sauntering over stridency.

We prefer waiting rooms with magazines and books and children’s toys over ones with flatscreeens broadcasting fear, drivel and advertisements.

We prefer anything tactile over everything opaque.

We prefer courtesies over conspiracies and making up a word to when a need arises, over shoehorning one that doesn’t really fit.

We prefer Ice Cube, Ice cubes in martinis, ice cubes melting on stomachs, over ICE concentration camps and disappearing ice at the polar regions.

We prefer proper grammar but double negatives in the service of a good rock and roll song are fine, because “I can’t get any satisfaction” simply doesn’t work.

We prefer holding out our hand to help someone up over stomping someone to the ground and communities that still barn raise over ones that don’t have barns to raise.

We prefer asking ants to leave our domiciles over exterminating them. Guess what? It works. You scoff! Try it.

We prefer lawns with molehills over perfect lawns, because there is no ecological point to a perfect lawn but there is an ecological point, an important one, to molehills.

We prefer talking rock and roll with chipmunks blazing on magic mushrooms over talking politics with drunk true believers, and not drunk on booze.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number six begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Secret Coast Radio 5

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 herons over heroin.

We prefer walking over treadmilling.

We prefer a construction job over a digital one.

We prefer daydreaming over capitalism.

We prefer tennis with wooden rackets made from maple or ash over high tech ones made from oil.

We prefer reaching out to those in distress over abandonment.

We prefer librarians over PR assistants.

We lament the loss of bowling as a pastime but not attending circuses.

We prefer primal contact in nature over zoos.

We prefer guffawing loudly over quiet seething.

We prefer the pocket knife over the assault weapon.

We prefer principals who know how to teach over those who don’t have a clue.

We prefer the verb affect over infect.

We really wish the Indians had slaughtered the pilgrims instead of saving them.

We prefer the moon over mars. (better poetry and illumination for invasions)

We prefer Rachel Carson over every other American.

We prefer kindness over judgment.

*****

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number five begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

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