Coffee Shop Ruminations

NSP Meditations

The tattooed barista pours me a cup of drip coffee and I repair to m favorite table near the lending library. The Beatles play through the speakers.

The shop is packed full of city people doing city things. I guess I am doing city things in here but typing this on my trusty Alphasmart word processors from the 1990s makes it seem like an uncity activity.

I look forward to better weather so I can take the typewriter outside and start typing letters

I may start the meth-themed Western on the typewriter. It somehow seems appropriate.

I had a wonderful reunion with an old friend and we sat inside a driftwood fort and caught up and planned for some future creative collaborations. I certainly will need her unique insight and editorial input on some new writing projects.

I turned 55 on March 10 and had one of the best birthday celebrations of my life. Onward into my AARP status!

I enjoyed all the birthdays messages and calls from people. I responded to every one.

Potential new author clients are emerging. I hope to expand this business. I truly love it. It’s a form of teaching yet totally different than a classroom experience.

I scored an almost brand new Jack Kramer Autograph tennis racket during a recent trip to a thrift store. This baby was pressed in a sweet wooden press and has a Jack Kramer head cover. Tennis anyone? I’ll be hitting off a backboard soon and see if I still have anything left from the glory days. It’s been almost 15 years since I hit a tennis ball. I want to reacquaint myself with the game. I know playing will unlock some interesting new creative energies in my mind.

The recent writing workshop in Astoria turned out to be one the best of my career. Five new writers! Such diverse range of ideas for books. Incredible passion displayed! The talent nearly blew up the room. Teaching these workshops inspires such unexpected ideas and insight for me. It often feels as if the light bulbs won’t stop lighting up over my head. I hope I can continue teaching these workshops in the future. They teach me and I hope I never come to a place in my life here I can’t be taught or teach myself something new.

Fort Ukulele

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations , , ,

I walked along a remote beach toward a driftwood fort that I had constructed over a period of weeks some months ago. It was sturdy, built in the dunes above the tidal fray, and it had withstood storms and 70 mile-hour gusts. It would last all spring, summer and fall and delight those who got off the grid and found this secret beach and its geological wonders.

I reached the fort, the sun was going down, and I looked up at my creation.

There was a man sitting outside the fort on one of the support logs! He was strumming a ukulele and it wasn’t a toy store model, but the real deal.

I hailed a hello. He said he was waiting for a friend who was walking on the beach. He was here to rest. A few days ago he had nearly died in a hospital from a heart condition, but miracle drugs resuscitated him, and here he was strumming a ukulele in front of my fort! I asked if he would compose a song about driftwood forts. He said he would. I’d probably never hear it, but that didn’t matter because I knew I had just commissioned the first song in the history of world music about driftwood forts written on ukulele!

I said goodbye and he went to work. I heard a couple chords and then the ocean drowned out that sound as I continued on my way.

Birthday Fort

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , ,

On my birthday, I rebuilt a fort in the dunes, the one I thought might never need rebuilding. But that is the nature of driftwood forts. Let go. Let it fall. Let yourself imagine a new fort from the remains of the old fort. Of course it can’t look the same.

The materials from the original fort are there—they live on. Those who carried the materials up from the ocean that June weekday on a glorious Oregon field trip were my students in what turned out to be the last official experience as a high school teacher. It all ended on a beach for me.

Will those carriers remember that day? They have no responsibility to remember or rebuild. Others come along and rebuild.

As I built, I noticed someone wrote on a piece of wood, “Fort Do It In.”

How lovely! I positioned this piece front and center for all visitors to see.

Others will name it another name. All manner of rejoicing, grieving, marveling, wondering, crying, loving, lusting, reflecting and toking will go on inside the fort.

And perhaps, a few will take up my offer of the tin box, note cards and pen, and leave a message of what transpired—in their hearts and minds or with their bodies, And of course, there will be nugs left behind, sweet sticky nugs.

Corporate Coffee Shop Meth Novel Notes

NSP Meditations , , ,

Heavy rain pounds the corporate coffee shop in the strip mall next to the nail salon and wireless provider.

I walk in an order and the young male barista asks me what I’m doing today. I say I’m writing a novel and he and a couple of other baristas perk up. I say, “I bet you don’t hear that very often in here.”

They all smile and agree with incredible gusto! The barista gets my drip and asks what the novel is about. I tell him it’s a modern Western, and a hard ass social worker is going into a wild meth town and clean it up with fists and guile. And there’s going to be some kink with it, too.

“Wow! I want to read that,” he says. They all do.

So do I!

I was always pretty good at pitching a book idea on the spot.

I sit down at a table with a good rain view.

A break up is underway behind me. A young woman is gaming on her laptop.A young woman comes in and leaves with a box of coffee, presumably for a gathering of some kind.

Two vapers vape outside and move toward the shop.

What do people around here do for a living these days?

A long haired woman wearing jeans and brown cowboy boots busts through the door. She really sashays in. I need that kind of sashaying in the meth novel.

The vapers leave and vape as soon as they hit the parking lot. I follow them as they enter the Dollar Store. I need that image for the Western. Wherever Meth Town is, it will have a Dollar General, or Dollar Store, Dollar Whatever. Lots of shit will go down there. My social worker character will kick some ass in there and send a shelf of Jesus candles flying.

Thoughts While Driving in Rain (again)

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , , , , ,

Rain slides the highway into the sea. Rain buckles the road. Rain brings rocks and mud down from the hills. Rain sends creeks across the shoulders.

I am driving through it, sloshing, sliding, surfing, on my way into the mountains and snow flurries.
Horses, goats, sheep and cattle stand angled into rain or take shelter under scrawny oaks or Doug firs. If there is an image that conjures depression, this is it.

I tune in a radio station playing songs I’ve never heard. One woman (Bonnie Raitt?) sings about writing a love letter listening to a love song on the radio. It’s a great song and she makes me believe she is writing a love letter, a dearly departed literary genre.

Past flooded fields. Past a herd of elk. Past fallen oaks. Past grim towns. Past so many abandoned homes and farms. People used to live there. People still could live there. Why aren’t these properties being repurposed to address the housing and homeless crisis? Why isn’t there a new Homestead Act, that invites people willing to put some sweat and improvements into the property, build equity in it, make something happen. Anything is better than decay. I don’t have the answers; I am just observing and thinking as I drive. I see these places all the time and the bones on them look decent. They are rigged for power and water and septic. There is land to grow food. Imagine a program, a partnership between banks, government, churches, non profits, housing/homeless advocates and absentees property owners to rehab a thousand such derelict properties in rural Oregon over a five-year period. Operation Re-Homestead Oregon. It could work. It’s not working now.

Driving on. Hundreds of boats, cars and RVs abandoned in fields or driveways. Why? Someone made an investment once. What happened?

I switch my mind to writing fiction and where I want to go after the Bonnie and Clyde book comes out. It was excruciating to write and fiction offers a certain liberation that I crave. I want to transport myself away from where I have been in recent years, to a place where I am in control of the narrative and characters. I have two solid idea for novels and a host of Oregon tales to write.

Here comes the snow flurries. I need to concentrate. I turn off country radio and put my mind to it.

Oregon Tavern Age: Silver Dollar Kindness

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , , , , ,

February rain deluged Coos Bay, record rain, rivers on the roadways, lakes in the parking lots.

I needed a break from the hairy drive south down Highway 101 and stopped in front of the Silver Dollar Tavern in Coos Bay. Why not? I’d never visited before.

It was 9:47 on a Sunday morning. I walked inside, and found a stool at the bar, a long wooden bar, inlaid with silver dollars minted before World War I. I noticed a “Cash Only” sign hanging near jars of pickled grotesqueries the size of RV propane tanks.

An elderly woman came up to take my order. She was not OTA. I hesitated for a second, then…ordered a coffee. I looked left down the bar and saw three OTAs drinking coffee and watching golf on television.

The bartender brought the coffee and asked my name. She shook my hand and introduced herself as Jessie. In short order, I learned Jessie had owned the Silver Dollar for 42 years! We discussed the many changes to the Oregon Coast the past couple of decades. She just couldn’t understand the exponential rise of the homeless and the shifting of their habits and manners. A lot of Oregonians don’t. Have we given up trying to understand? I haven’t.

Jessie had to work on the books and crack open the first Hamm’s can of the morning so she excused herself. She told me she’d return. I watched her retrieve a can from the cooler, watched her exquisite technique, heard the crack, and thought about the half million cans of Hamm’s she must have opened inside the Silver Dollar. It had to be some kind of record.

I looked around at the dimly lit rectangular interior. Somnolence reigned so supreme I almost fell asleep. The chairs were still on the tables and an OTA man in coveralls mopped the floor. I saw four blue-felt pool tables and hundreds of pool trophies locked up in cases. I marveled at a deep fryer that must have have fried its first meal 75 years ago.

Jessie returned and asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was a writer. I asked for the most memorable story of owning and tending bar at the Silver Dollar. I wanted murder, mayhem or a man with a leashed cougar who limped in and order a beer. She paused, scratched her chin, and then told me the following:

Decades ago, a big man, a really big man, barged into Silver Dollar and saw a little man, a really little man. He towered over the little man and started insulting him because of his size. It continued for some time and ratcheted up. Jessie observed, patiently from the shadows, thinking the big man might stop. He didn’t. She instructed the big man to meet over by the video lottery machines for a private conversation. The man seemed surprised but complied. Jessie told the man she couldn’t have that kind of cruelty in her bar. He was 86’d forever as a result and perhaps should consider changing his ways and becoming someone kinder. The world needs more of that, not what you have to offer, Jessie said, quietly. The man left the bar. Fifteen or so minutes later, Jessie got a call on the bar’s landline. It was the man. He thanked Jessie for her advice and giving him something important to think about: kindness.

Jessie finished the story and moseyed away to the books and deep fryer. I sipped my coffee. I had never heard a story like that in OTA country before. I extracted a pen and notepad from my pea coat to take a few notes. A few minutes later, Jessie appeared in front of me, holding something in her right hand.

“This is for you,” she said, extending her hand. I reached out and took possession of a tiny black velvet sheath. Inside the sheath was a pen. I pulled out the pen and it was silver, shiny and had a black rubber grip near the point. The pen read, “Silver Dollar Tavern.”

I held the pen aloft and tested its balance. It felt good. I made a few marks on the notepad. The pen wrote well.

Jessie explained that she gave away 4000-5000 pens away annually at the Silver Dollar! I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen such a thing in OTA country. I just knew stories and poems and love letters were being written with these fine pens. Yes! The pen is mightier than the sword (or text message). Kindness is mightier than judgment and wrath.

I told Jessie I would cherish the pen and write well with it. She said to stop in my next time through town. She might have more stories for me. I told her I’d be back in a month and would want another pen. She laughed and then came out from behind the bar, and gave me a mighty hug! A hug in OTA country! She told me to drive safe. I took a last sip of coffee, walked out into Ali-like jabs of stinging rain, and hit the road.

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