Dog Sanctuary Ruminations

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

I dropped off some choice goods for the upcoming rummage sale to benefit the senior dog sanctuary. They set a record for proceeds last year and I want to do my part again to help raise funds for this special place and the remarkable woman who runs it.

As I write this in a notebook, I sit in the sanctuary’s back yard, surrounded by little dogs and a new resident named Short Stuff, a sweet old pit bull mix. Bonnie put in appearance for treats and a few rubs, but then retired inside the house.

Clyde on the mind. Clyde always on my mind here, alongside the river. So much happened to me with him and Bonnie on our countless walks. Everything started getting better for me after I met these dogs.

I donated some new power tools to the sanctuary to better attack the blackberries. I supposed I donated them to myself because I’ll be the one using them in the August counterattack.

The river is very low and I notice gravel bars. Here comes the sanctuary cat. He handles the canines with aplomb.

A breeze blows through the yard. Swallows dart around. There is nothing but the sound of the country.

I want to walk to my familiar spot on the river but Bonnie can’t make it that far anymore. After I write this, I will take that walk, alone, and see if anything new has sprung to life. Maybe I will write a bit the way I used to with Bonnie and Clyde by my side. I almost believe I learned to write a different way near the river, with them.

My mind returns to my river walks with the dogs. I wrote a 50,000-word book about them and wrote it on pure instinct, without any thought to form or marketability. Does anyone really care about this story? Am I deluded to think there is an interest in what happened to me and how I reanimated after an extinction? Who knows? All you can do is put the story out there and see where it drifts and perhaps lands.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing a NSP book.)

Forts and the Beauty of Beaverwood

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , ,

A muggy afternoon at the fort. The ocean is the color of an olive—green or black—take your pick. I sit on a driftwood stump and compose this.

I added decorative flourishes to the fort and read new messages—almost a dozen. All of them expressed gratitude to the builder. One said her boyfriend had brought her here to see the fort and leave a message. They were on a date and the date was to visit a fort and leave a message. Must be love!

I love knowing that I built something with my hands that didn’t cost a cent that compelled someone to bring a date to experience it.

Pelicans dive into the ocean. Gulls do their gull thing. Sandpipers snooze at the wrack line. There might be a few humans in the surf but I am oblivious to their presence.

On my way to the fort, I found a stick of beaverwood and plan to add it to my collection. I have conceived of of an art show where I display my beaverwood collection in a pop-up gallery and offer the sculptures for sale. I’ll split the profits with my collaborators. I see the bleached wood mounted on white walls with an artist statement from me and the beavers. The emphasis of the show is the aesthetic qualities of the gnawed wood—not so much the wondrous ecology of beaverwood and beavers in general. This is art, not science! This is mystery, not gravity, although the gravity inherent in watersheds is the reason I find beaverwood on the beach.

I want to call the show: The Beauty of Beaverwood: An Artistic Collaboration Between an Oregonian and Oregon Coast Beavers.

Have I lost my mind with this idea? Or have I entered a new stage of my creative life?

Question? What do I charge for the sculptures?

Notes for the Non-corporate Coffee Novel

NSP Meditations , , ,

The hippie mailman delivers the mail.

Toys, books and local magazines and newspapers litter the joint. Community notices everywhere, fighting this, fighting that.

Plants, live ones, hang in the corners.

Old theater seats and an old restaurant booth.

A discussion about Pokemon between the male barista and two customers unfolds. Then it segues to Trump.

Otis Redding plays, then Sly. Not the hits. It’s a personal playlist, not a robot-generated one.

Again, there is no plot here, but it is a non-corporate plotless going on.

Three nurses clad in black scrubs walk by the window. They both have tree tattoos on their arms.

A man in a suit carries a case of Proseco.

Idea for a short story: a hip coffee shop serves only drip Yuban, Maxwell House and Folgers. Nothing else. It catches on. It becomes a big hit. The owner opens a second store, then another, then a chain. An IPO is issued. The stock goes through the roof. The coffee never changes. The owner retains his integrity. She pays a living family wage to employees and provides health care benefits. The employees unionize and the shops become popular with revolutionaries. Revolution foments in the shops and it eventually succeeds. The new government issues new currency and Rachel Carson and Arthur Ashe are two of the new faces. “What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye becomes the new national anthem.

See where a mind can drift in a non-corporate coffee shop?

Additional Notes for the Coffee Shop Novel

NSP Meditations , , , ,

Frenzy grips a corporate coffee stronghold in a suburban mall. The baristas wear a device about their chests that acts as a timer. I’ve never seen such a device before. Is it measuring employee performance or various brewing temperatures? Maybe both at the same time for top notch efficiency,

Corporate coffee is hiring.

An elderly man watches videos on his Facebook feed.

Gleaming vehicles roll through the drive-thru.

An elderly man walks in wearing a military grade utility belt. I dig it. His cap proclaims him a Vietnam vet.

I think about my coffee novel and see that it is essentially plotless, which exactly mirrors my life at the moment. It is a strange thing for a person not to have a plot in one’s life after having one forever. Maybe the plotlessness is the plot. The French existential writers milked that technique for decades and it worked out pretty well for them. Perhaps there is more power in observation than plot. Perhaps plot begins to emerge in the mind of readers when they read observations. They invent the plot as the observations accrue.

There is a spill behind the counter and a barista mops it up with excellent technique, most likely derived from a stint in the Navy.

A weathered man on a bicycle pulling a cart filled with returnable cans and bottles pedals through drive-thru.

A cop walks inside, fiddling on her phone. It occurs to me that cops don’t carry nightsticks anymore. Is that because of tasers? The nightstick was once such a symbol of wanton police brutality. I think they were also called truncheons.

Short story idea: the last truncheon-carrying cop in America…a real throwback who has never fired his weapon in the line of duty. He’s a laughingstock on the force and…I must ponder this idea some more.

A line is forming at the register. It’s going to be a profitable day.

The Fort Essay

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations ,

Three fort message containers removed. One remained. I opened the tin and pulled out the messages. They were rolled like a drug dealer’s roll of grimy cash. I peeled them away and read them all. It took half an hour, and the continuous reading revealed a fascinating narrative of sorts. No, strike that. It was more of an essay that emerged from the responses to the same prompt: leave a fort message.

The earliest message was dated by in March. I sensed people were somehow coming alive with this brief act of leaving a message in a driftwood fort. That coming alive meant joy, wonder, giving thanks or reflecting on something painful. The simple act of anonymously written expression seemed to invigorate the writers.

But the containers always go missing at some point. I think the litter zealots bear responsibility, although I can’t confirm this suspicion.

So I put three more out, in a couple of new forts I built or repurposed. I await the expression that I know will invariably come. I changed the prompts up. New ones for the new containers. I always like fresh reading material.

A Dream of a Secret Beach

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , ,

I saw a hole in a thicket of salmonberries and shore pines. The thicket stood atop a cliff that overlooked the ocean. There was a cove below it. No houses littered the landscape.

I peered inside the hole and saw a trail that disappeared into the dark woods. I was alone. The sun was out. I drank cheap coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

I took the trail and followed a sharply-angled path down, down, down. The ocean became louder with every step of my descent. I could not see, but sensed the trail would end at the water’s edge, and reveal a secret beach. As I walked, I considered that I might be the only person in the world destined to discover this beach.

The trail ended at a precipice. I could see the ocean and the beach but they were a hundred feet below me, down an almost sheer vertical face of cliff.

I noticed a yellow rope tide to a tree. The rope stretched from the tree and into the precipice.

Holding my coffee in my left hand, I rigged up a belay of sorts and lowered myself down. I had never belayed before in my life, and certainly not while drinking cheap coffee.

I landed safely and beheld a beach that doubtless looked like it did thousands upon thousands of years ago. I had seen many a secret beach on the Oregon Coast, but nothing like this.

The tide was out, eerily far. It exposed hundreds of rocks and tidepools. The amount of driftwood astonished me. None bore the marks of chainsaws. The logs were so large that I could never build a fort with them.

I kept moving north across wet sand. I saw strange tracks that didn’t register. I knelt over to investigate. Nothing….then….bear. A bear had walked on this beach earlier that morning.

I traversed the tidepools and examined their bounty encrusted on the rocks: mussels, sea stars, kelp and keyhole limpets. It was the first time I had ever seen a live keyhole limpet. I’d collected the shells of thousands of dead ones and now, at long last, I had discovered live ones!

I did a little limpet jig. That meant something in my Oregon life, finding a live one. It felt like an epiphany, a direction, a literal and metaphysical one. I realized I would be a fool to ignore it. I would not, I told myself right there.

The dream ended. I woke up and I knew it wasn’t a dream. I had walked down a secret beach with bear tracks and live limpets.

Come with me. I’ll show you my secret beach and its treasures. You will have to belay with me. It will change your life.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing a NSP book.)

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