Corporate Coffee Musings

NSP Meditations , ,

An army works for the coffee shop after the election. The Republic survived, barely. Now we’ll see if the Constitution truly works, well at least the Articles. The Bill of Rights is dead and I would know.

An utter frenzy in here., but also a rank and file vibe.

A man with a beaten-up face orders a chocolate croissant.

Tanzania coffee is all the rage.

Christmas is here!

Who are these people spending $15 for coffee drinks and a baked good? Someone has money.

People look whipped. Mainstream America feels whipped to me, although I don’t think they realize it.

One wonders how Facebook undermined democracy on election day. To think that progressive organizations are using the service to coordinate and promote progressive causes is mind-boggling to me.

The coffee here sucks.

A special coffee purchase supports a military unit stationed somewhere in the Middle East or Asia participating in the longest wars in American history with no end in sight.

Lines are seven deep.

One of the baristas is singing the orders as customers place them. It will be a viral video soon, with the appearance of human spontaneity, but really, the result of a directive from corporate headquarters.

I think I’ll read the Lawrence Durrell novel I found on the road. I dived in last night and it was barely readable. No one writes with that rococo style anymore. It’s just too grim out there for ornamentation.

So are the Democrats drafting articles of impeachment yet?

Does anyone ever work anymore?

I’ve been sitting for 30 minutes and I still can’t sip the coffee. Too hot.

I see they have a new special holiday drink with the word “bliss” in the title. Well, at least corporate is introducing a new vocabulary word for most of the customers. How about a drink with the word “ephemeral” or “opaque” in it?

Bodies are listing in here. The ship of state, too.

Dear Seal Friend:

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , ,

I thought you were a piece of driftwood, that is, until you moved. Writhed is a better word for it. You sensed me, got up as harbor seals can only get up, and tried to make it back to the ocean. Then you stopped but stayed up. I backed off, spooked, startled. Then you turned toward me and I saw your old, tired face: gray muzzle, gray eyes, wilting white whiskers. Our eyes met and we both knew it was your time, you had come ashore to die on land, even though you really are a creature of the ocean. You have always been a unique friend to me, bringing me delight every time I saw you in the ocean, often paralleling me down the beach, an unexpected delight from a better world, when I was sometimes in dire need of delight.

How does one thank seals?

After you perish, the crows and gulls will feast upon your body and leave a carcass that will wash away with the next incoming tide. Your carcass will decompose, nourish the deep, and eventually fall to earth as rain.

It is precisely the way I hope to die, but perhaps not the carcass part.

I nodded goodbye to you, and kept walking to a fort, carrying two spoiled pies that I would leave for the birds and do my part in this recycling of life. I reached the fort and sat upon a driftlog and watched you. I saw your body go flat against the sand and the surf edge closer and closer. I began to cry and write about you.

Matt

Youngs Bay Barbershop

Astoria, NSP Meditations , , , ,

November sun lit up my friends’ veranda on an unseasonably warm afternoon.

Youngs Bay barely moved in the distance.

Three kinds of clouds segregated themselves in the sky.

I brought out a stool from inside the house and set it up on the concrete. I hung up my corduroy coat on a piece of beaverwood.

I sat on the stool.

My friend wrapped a towel around my neck and chest.

A gull flew overhead.

I called for scotch and it materialized in seconds.

My friend took out some beard grooming tools and proceeded to trim my beard. I was going to shave it off but was talked out of it by my friend, now my ad hoc barber.

As the barber trimmed and clipped, a little dog came over to me. He was obviously curious.

I sipped my scotch and took in the view.

I got up to check the barber’s handiwork in the mirror, Not bad. The barber touched it up here and there and I was soon sporting a tidy, appearance, with just a smidgen of mountain man and angst-ridden writer thrown in for good measure.

The work was completed and I got off the stool, donned my coat, drank some more scotch, and played with the dog. Another customer sat on the stool and a another gull flew overhead.

Quite the barber shop.

Yard Work

NSP Meditations

On a fall morning rain disappeared for a few hours and I went to work on my friends’ yard.

I dug up a pear tree and replanted it.

I dug up a pear tree and replanted it.

I dug up a rhododendron and replanted it.

I transplanted oregano into three pots.

I planted a hydrangea.

I pruned a Harry Lauder tree.

I moved a bird bath.

I winterized the garden plot.

The work concluded and the work felt good.

For services rendered, I bartered for two excellent pieces of beaverwood from my friend’s collection.

My final act of yard work was to throw my muddy tennis shoes into the garbage. They were finally dead. I’d done just about everything in them the last 25 years: beach comb, teach, cook, rocked out. I damn near shed a tear for my beloved green Pumas. They were a special pair of shoes.

A Great Dog Notion

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , ,

I sit in the back yard of the senior dog sanctuary, near the spot where I said my final goodbye to Clyde. He was euthanized a couple hours later, and with his passing, another great dog went out of my life.

The river is running brown and gurgling behind me. My mind meanders to Clyde’s Mick Jaggar-like tongue and his comically fiendishness for treats.

I smell woodsmoke and it becomes almost Proustian in nature to me. I had some incredible woodsmoke moments in my life. I know there will be more, but I’ll have to start the fire, in reality and metaphor.

Bonnie comes over for a treat. What a sweet dog. What nourishment she has provided to me. My cells fed upon the nourishment while I reanimated as a human being last year.

How do you thank dogs?

I have a great notion: next summer I will teach a writing workshop at the sanctuary, invite writers and their dogs to see this magical place, prompt the writers to write about dogs, and perhaps produce a special publication extolling the virtues of having a dog. I would charge the writers my usual fee and then donate all the proceeds to the sanctuary.

Yes, a great dog notion. I feel blessed they still come my way.

The Mushroom Hounds

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , , , ,

October rain came to the Oregon Coast. Release the (mushroom) hounds.

There they are, foraging in the stunted, shore pine forests, at the sneaky fringes of the dunes, heads to the ground, trying to look like chanterelle people when quite obviously they are not. They are the psychedelic folk.

I know almost next to nothing of mushrooms, but I know of the mushroom hounds on the Oregon Coast who favor the trip through clouds over the saute in butter. I can also spot their vehicles, even though I couldn’t delineate them here. I just know one when I see one parked where vehicles never park except except for two weeks after rains arrive in October.

These Halloween psychedelic mushrooms harvested on the Oregon Coast and generally consumed on Halloween are a curious and subtle Oregon cultural tradition that most likely began a little over a half century ago. There might be a little book in that tradition.

The window for foraging doesn’t last long. The hounds travel from all over. It isn’t an exclusive local pack. Over the years, I’ve met a few in the woods as I make my way to the beach, some from as far away as Eastern Oregon. A few are foraging for the first time and seemingly have no idea what they are doing. They even ask me questions! Others are veterans and have their favorite spots and warn of sting operations conducted by State Police.

I have only one great Oregon mushroom story and I’ve told it a few times but never wrote it up before. Until now.

In my former life as a a high school teacher, I had a student who was a mushroom expert. He sampled the psychedelic ones, naturally, but also gathered and sold edible mushrooms to the local restaurants. He made a fair amount of money from his seasonal enterprise. One fall day, he brought to school a paper bag of chanterelles, his camping propane stove, a frying pan, butter and some herbs. He sauteed the mushrooms in the parking lot and then served me the finest lunch I ever ate at school. I’ll never forget it.

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