On Shims

NSP Meditations, Writing , ,

A shim, Shims, Let me discourse on shims. I have one in the pocket of my corduroy coat as I write this. It has a beautiful knot. It’s rough. Pine? Fir? Spruce?

I found the shim on the part-time construction job I started a couple of weeks ago. Shims are everywhere on the work site. I hear the word shim in the air all the time.

What a great word! It’s one of those rare words that sounds like what it is. Like whisper. Or glue. Donnybrook.

I’ve had shims in my life for years, but exclusively for leveling a table or chair to write in a coffee shop or dive bar. I used shims in my classrooms, too, to level speaker stands, books shelves, desks, amps, computer monitors, students.

The shim on a construction site does a lot more than level. It neatly and discreetly fills in gaps caused by human mis-measurement or machine errors. Humans and machines making mistakes! And slender, sloped slices of wood fill the gap. Shims solidify, tighten. They wedge.

This recent shim fired up my imagination. I now realize I could have taught a one-period writing workshop around shims, just hand them out to students, slivers be damned! and have them respond to the following prompts:

Where do you need a shim in you life?

Take this shim with you….where will you use it to help something?

What is your shim made of?

Describe a time you acted as a shim for something or someone.

Where do we need a shim in American life? What would it be made of?

Write the first sentence of a mystery where a shim was the murder weapon.

Complete this sentence, A shim a day keeps the _______

Fort Destroyer Response 2

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

I had pondered how I might next respond to the Fort Destroyer. I was on the verge of letting go, when a friend suggested I build about a dozen forts in the general area of the destruction, and leave it at that. No notes. No words. A silent, massive, peaceful counterattack of forts and sculptures and other forms of beach art that involved kelp, shells, rocks, feathers, and whatever other treasures the ocean offered. My friend suggested a creative all-nighter but I am more of a dawn’s early-light-kind of person.

A couple of days ago, I drove by the beach where the destruction occurred and to my great surprise and delight, a fort stood! Fort fairies abound!

They are always built. People can’t help themselves. Neither can the fairies. The forts always wash away.

Two days later, the lone fort still stood, and at 6:30 in the morning, with the beach shrouded in fog, I pulled over while driving to work and added some wood and decorative flourishes to that fort, and built another one a hundred years away.

It was the beginning or it was the end or it was nothing linear at all in my narrative with the Fort Destroyer.. Let us see where it goes. I know I enjoyed every second of building in the fog and cultivated good thoughts to use the rest of the day.

101 Coffee Shop

NSP Meditations

Early morning, before my construction job. Drip coffee. Mugs. Creamer.

A man is singing a Jerry Jeff Walker song with a line about waves. Another man is heading out, his tan lab waiting for him outside. He greets his dog and they walk out into the drizzle. They are on the move, living out of cars, rigs or in the willows or woods.

The Grapes of Wrath, which I am reading again for the first time in 30 years (or is 35?) was written for them. We are there again, albeit in a different way, and with a much lower employment rate. I am diving deep into Wrath and I see the striking similarities from the Depression era to the New American diaspora underway today. No one drives jalopies today…wait they do…they’re called old RVS…and the members of the contemporary diaspora jalopy around in them, (or on foot or bicycle) and they aren’t looking for work like the Joads and tens of thousands of other were back then; they are looking to check out in protest or indifference or delusion or depression or depravity or defeat.

I see members of this diaspora every day. I often talk to them. I pet their dogs.

American politicians are oblivious to these people.

They are on the move but going nowhere except down the opposite path of what they are expected to do as Americans.

I want to know more about these people. I want to hear their stories.

Some Thoughts

NSP Meditations

My mind meanders with rain falling outside.

Speaking of rain, I was watching Doctor Strangelove the other night for the first time in 30 years and was delighted to learn that the crazy general, Jack Ripper, drank only grain alcohol cut with rainwater. I wish I’d had that line in the rain book.

Sometimes I think I’m living a country Western song or a blues number, or a curious combination of both. I also think I am writing that song, playing and singing it, too, to an unknown audience, or no one at all, or perhaps only the ocean.

Is this a way to live? I don’t know. It’s all I have right now.

I am writing this from a dive bar that is playing classic country and blues songs. I am sitting next to a laminated front page article from the Oregonian circa 2005, headlined “Faces of Meth.”

Rain is picking up. An army of gray has invaded and occupied the landscape.

Near me, an OTA man talks rather loudly about he hated the new Star Trek movie reboot. Agreed. Spock is not an action hero.

“Heartbreaker” by Zeppelin come on. It was Sonny the Husky’s favorite song. When it came on and she was in the back of the truck, under the canopy, slider window open, she would dance and howl. I’d crank it up to 11 and she would go nuts!

I miss that dog more than ever.

Oregon Tavern Age: A Secret Joint

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

I was in Oregon Tavern country but I wasn’t in Oregon.

Word had reached me about a legendary dive bar located along a lonely road that ran through a forlorn locale that had seen much better days, days where one log rode on a log truck and salmon ruled the watersheds, real salmon, not the fake hatchery ones.

I had hazy directions but I found the joint. It looked like it belonged in a Hitchcock movie. I walked in. I beheld. Slate flooring. Life-size sculpture of Elvis. Pool table. Shuffleboard. Saw blade art. Ancient flintlocks and farm implements. Wooden spear guns and fish clubs. A Pam Anderson Barb Wire pinball machine! It turned me on. I ordered a beer and sat next to Pam.

Three people sat at the bar and sipped beers and vodkas. The television played a show where an asshole boat captain debases his dumbshit crew. Five sets of car keys rested near the pickled grotesqueries. It was a wild night last night. A couple phone calls came in asking if certain keys were there. They were.

The bartender placed a call to a diner across the street: biscuits and gravy with four pieces of bacon. Then he gave the woman at the bar $2 to go pick it up.

Conversation moved away from wicked weather to how to catch and cook surf perch. For several years I have dreamed of becoming a surf perch fisherman. While listening to the conversation, I vowed to become one.

The afternoon drifted away. Every once and a while I heard Pam groan and giggle behind me. I watched the bartender eat his biscuits and gravy and bacon. I got the history of the joint. The slate floors made sense. So did the kooky mural of the joint’s history that was painted on the wall behind the bar. The bartender said a previous owner was going to paint over it and the regulars revolted and he backed down, probably at the point of a flintlock.

I sipped my ale and took a few notes. I’d be back, and maybe with surf perch story of my own.

The joint’s name? It’s a secret, for now. Mystery over journalism is ruling my editorial mind these days.

Beaver Cards!

NSP Meditations , ,

I received one of the more extraordinary gifts of my life the other day. A friend gifted me with five beaver-themed cards decorated exclusively with vintage ink stamps. Ink stamps! They are so exquisitely beautiful and quintessentially Oregon and entirely align with my current writing, publishing, driftwood fort building and beaverwood sculpturing, that I may not be able to part with them.

But I will. They need to go out in the world and delight others. Well, at least five people.

I need to write something special on these cards to special people in my life.

Just look at these works of art!

Before seeing these cards, I had absolutely no idea of the artistic potential of ink stamping. Why hadn’t I collected these over the years and used them when signing books or with my creative writing students? Ken Kesey used them all the time when he had signed books. Color ones!!!!!!! Multiple colors for one signing! Psychedelic! The idea was there for me to rip off the whole time!!!!!!!!!!!

My friend, who has amassed hundreds, if not thousands of ink stamps in her studio, assured me she could make more cards. I asked if I could commission one with Jesus and a beaver. She said yes! She had a Jesus stamp and pulled it from the rack. The classic long haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian look!

I asked for a hierarchy in the design. Beaver above Jesus. Jesus below beaver. Monotheism at the feet of nature, as it damn well should be, and once was. She agreed.

Coming soon.

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