Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (4)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

The book features 10 poetic interludes, where I channel Walt Whitman to make sense of the madness and inhumanity I witnessed, scenes I will never forget:

Below is an excerpt:

I lean against the wall

inside the probation office.

Joint is packed.

Reprobates are jacked.

I read Walt Whitman

at random

waiting for a form

to set me free.

It’s come to that:

a form for freedom

in a democracy.

Can you believe

they want it in longhand?

To my right

two couples

make out

before their

meetings and drug tests.

Nothing surprises in here

not the sparkled jeans

nor the man reading Macbeth,

not the dog food coupons

to feed human beings

nor the reek of fish.

Okay, this making out does

these two couples!

It’s like that poem

“Kissing” by Dorianne Laux.

A stanza reads:

They are kissing
to begin the world again. Nothing
can stop them…

they are doing what they have to do
to survive the worst

It’s the one human act

the State can’t take from us.

Even in here:

fluorescent lights

plastic chairs

gray carpet.

It’s an act of secret rebellion

smack dab in the open

face to face

in our faceless times

not a reckoning

but a puckering.

I read another line from Walt.

He writes a lot about kissing

but never uses the word.

I watch the couples,

the two women

angled toward me,

their eyes closed.

One has slipped her feet

out of flip flops.

She is barefoot

and kissing

in the probation office.

Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (3)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

Below is an excerpt:

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the chair back another few feet. My hands burned. I sat down stinking of sweat and smoke. I ate the rest of my breakfast, drank water, and started another letter to the young poet. She would open the second envelope and whiff the burn pile again.

A wavy, blurry heat rose over the pile and I wondered what the word for that was.

Something moving near the fire riveted my eye.

I saw a red hummingbird darting around the edges of the fire, then hover above the coals. I’d never seen a hummingbird near a burn pile. I stood up and moved closer. I didn’t think about taking a photograph. I was really seeing. I walked into the fire and my shoes started smoking.

The hummingbird lifted off from the coals and flew into the flames; he bored through the waves. I saw a hummingbird fly through fire!

I walked out of the fire. This was no time for self-immolation. That time had passed.

The smoke snaked toward me. I brushed it away from my eyes. I looked for the hummingbird again. Nothing. The bird had vanished. I sat back down on the chair.

For so long I had been waiting to identify a survival metaphor and now one had magically appeared! I had sifted through many candidates, such as the clay court tennis specialist who could win from the baseline deep into the fifth set and outlast everyone with his fitness and patience, but I discarded it, along with the stranded seal pup, the boxer clinching for eternity, and the image of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, “I watched a snail cross the edge of a straight razor.”

Finally, here was my metaphor, invigorating with its beauty, poetry, originality and fierceness. It was certainly well beyond anything I could make up. It was real. I had just witnessed it and could barely believe my eyes.

The breeze shifted and twirled up some smoke, embers and ashes in my direction.

No… the hummingbird flying through fire was not my survival metaphor. I hadn’t flown through fire like a hummingbird. More like a blue heron. No, not even like that. I hadn’t flown at all. There was nothing in the hummingbird flying through fire that represented my recent life.

My survival metaphor didn’t exist. This wasn’t about a writer’s conceit and phony construction. I had survived because people had held out their hands to lift me up. I had survived because Bonnie and Clyde had held out their paws.

Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (2)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

Below is an excerpt:

I wore the Chuck Taylors into the river and Bonnie and Clyde followed me into the water. Wet canvas molded around my ankles. The cold felt tight against my skin. I’d forgotten the feeling. It made me want to camp with a canvas tent again. More canvas in my life!

It was hot and getting hotter. The river barely moved. In fact, nothing seemed to move except a middle-aged man and two senior dogs. I stopped in the middle of the channel and my mind sauntered: Movement. Movement. Movement. I craved movement in my time of stasis.

Inertia had paralyzed me. It had also offered unforeseen liberation. By not being able to move forward, I had taken limitless journeys into my heart and mind and the hearts and minds of others. I’d taken journeys I never would have otherwise taken, let alone conceived of taking. Journeys such as to this river with these great dogs. Such as establishing a new indomitable friendship with my sister. Such as spending time with my parents and hearing their stories. Such as the rediscovery of classic novels and an understanding of why they endure as classics. Such as practicing silence and disinterest in the face of noise and outlandish agendas. Such as experiencing the tangible health benefits of purple cabbage and turmeric. Such as learning how to surface from the shallows of my former life. Such as prospecting for a new voice for my writing and a new form of service to my community.

I heard some splashing and looked around. Bonnie had flopped down in the middle of the river and stared straight at me. Clyde had retired to the bank and was snoozing in the tall grass. I woke up.

We didn’t make it across. Perhaps next time we would.

The Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (1)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out.

This is book launch week and in the following days I will share some excerpts from the book and other writing related to it.

I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

Only 300 copies of the book were printed. It is not available in bookstores (yet). Your purchase of this special edition will help keep me in the writing and publishing game. I have a lot more stories to tell.

About the book:

“In 2017, at the age of 53, I experienced an extinction of self. For the first time in my life, I could not get a job, I was nearly broke, and I had no freedom of movement or conscience. I was an American outcast trapped in a labyrinth known as probation, desperately engaged in the ultimate struggle to stave off marginalization. There I was, lying on the couch, talking to my dead husky, words echoing through the house that was empty because I had performed terrible hospice care on myself and given away almost everything.

Then I found two senior dogs named Bonnie and Clyde, residents of a senior dog sanctuary along a river. There, walking two dogs, I resurrected as a human being. I read the river, tracked elk, watched birds, slayed blackberries, skipped rocks, cursed clearcuts, walked in rain and went deep into heretofore unknown areas of my creative mind. With Bonnie and Clyde at my side, I learned important lessons of faith, friendship, family, face-to-face encounters and the timeless remedy of nature, lessons I intuit can enlighten others who experience a cataclysmic personal event.

In The Bonnie and Clyde Files, I merge essay, cultural criticism, memoir, streams of consciousness and poetry to create a hybrid of a genre that is unlike any dog book I have ever read. I wrote on instinct, channeled Walt Whitman, and became a dog to better explore humanity, my country and the treatment of men and women at the hands of the state’s criminal justice system. I wrote to understand all the terrible, bizarre and wonderful things that were happening to me.”

Dead Beavers

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , , ,

While driving a rural road built on fill, a road straight through a wetlands, I passed two dead beavers. The flat tails identified them.

From the looks of it, they were recent kills. I saw blood and crows and vultures hadn’t yet picked them apart.

The first dead beaver shook me. The second one destroyed me. I started crying. There was no room to turn around or pull over and return them to the wetlands for a dignified decomposition.

In recent months, the beaver had become my totem animal. I read books about them. I wrote about beavers. I amassed a collection of at least 500 pieces of beaverwood. I collected beaver stuffed animals and figurines. I had become a beaver in mind, story and spirit. I evangelized on their behalf. I plotted to open a gallery displaying to their sculptures. I converted other to the Way of the Beaver.

As I drove away, I wondered if two dead beavers signified the end of the reign of beavers in my creative consciousness. Perhaps it even portended something dire.

I thought and thought. I drove along a river. I decided the reign wasn’t over; there was nothing portentous in this encounter. It was a call from my bucktoothed friends and artistic collaborators to keep beavering away at the writing, the collecting, the fort building with beaverwood, and take all things beaver to a higher level.

I heard the call.

Thoughts at the Jetty

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , ,

I am playing ball with the dog as we ramble down the beach to the South Jetty.

The clammers have returned and they are clamming away in a thin fog. The more toxic the clams, the less people here. The more toxic the world, the more people should be here.

Great piles of kelp have washed ashore.

I’ve already found three choice cuts of beaverwood and I staked them up for our return. The Beaverwood just keeps coming my way. I find it where it used to never appear. Why is that?

I reunited with my good friend Glen and met his fantastic new friend. We walked and talked down the beach as we played ball with the dog. Glen found a remarkable piece of beaverwood that looked like a sailboat. He said he’s going to make it into a sailboat.

A bit of rain begins to fall.

The dog is running with his usual insane pace.

I can see the fort high up in the dunes. I liken this special fort as an outpost warning against a possible invading army of toxic thoughts.

I am writing a story in my mind as I walk and hurl the ball to the dog. It is a good way to write.

Trucks past us.

I look for the bald eagle that usually appears on this beach. Nothing. No birds at all.

I have so much to do in the coming months. I am hoping I will become more viable as a person and writer if I can accomplish a few things.

The Bonnie and Clyde book is printed. I pick it up in a few days. I would have loved to have read parts of it to Bonnie and Clyde at the river, but that’s not going to happen.

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