Oregon Tavern Age: Novels

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Bullshit reigns at the bar. Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” plays. I think of that forgotten Burt Lancaster classic from 1980, Atlantic City, with a young Susan Sarandon. Was I the only one who saw it?

A pickup pool tournament unfolds with staccato bursts of profanity.

An OTA man drinks a long neck Miller and holds it funny.

Cinderblock construction. A true dive. Someone died in here, I can feel it.

Four thin strips of glass block throw dirty light onto the carpet.

A vacuum cleaner stands upright in the middle of the joint. Vacuum for five minutes and earn a free shot of Crown.

Two overhead fans fan.

Video Lottery mesmerizes an OTA man who weighs less than a hundred pounds.

Two OTA women watch vintage cartoons on their phones.

Someone wrote a novel in here, I can feel it. Nobody read it. I wrote a novel that nobody read. Nobody ever will.

There is a struggle to survive among the patrons. It suffuses the air. We are on the precipice as a country.

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Lines from the Beach

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I eat pea pods and carrots and hard boiled eggs for breakfast while a milky blue ocean rolls and roars in the distance.

I sit cross legged on the beach. Odd, I haven’t sat that way in years.

A few minutes ago, I laughed at some of the randy messages left in the forts. Forts do that to some people. Someone even drew a picture of his prodigious genitalia and claimed it was to scale.

A woman walks the wrack line alone. She’s beachcombing in black platform shoes and wearing sunglasses.

Walmart opened in Warrenton yesterday. The giddyness is palpable. Strange that giddyness is a precursor to a death rattle.

Three gulls fly overhead.

Barn swallows dive bomb the fort.

Waves wallop the jetty.

Here comes a Coast Guard helicopter on its routine patrol.

Here come geese!

A lone fishing boat undulates out to sea.

I’m learning to play “Vacation” by the Go Go’s on the guitar that my attorney bought me on a snowy afternoon when I still believed in justice. I love this song. There’s a lot more in it than vacation.

I keep thinking of that hummingbird I saw fly through fire. I can’t get the image out of mind. Why try? This moment feels like a five-page children’s book. One copy.

Piles of dead kelp rot on the sand. I love watching adults jump rope with dead kelp. I love when kids lash each other with kelp. I once played in a rock band called Servants of the Kelp. We played one song and then broke up.

Black and white clouds collide in a bright blue sky. The collision creates a heretofore unseen shade of gray. I am the only one to see it.

Is this a poem?

Death on the Road

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I drove east on a two-lane rural road and listened to sports talk radio.

Rain fell.

Ahead of me, in the oncoming lane, I saw a duck leading her chicks across the road. The mother had waddled into the shoulder. I counted seven chicks and marveled. They were incredibly small, mere cake decorations.

A second later, a colossal black truck drove through the chicks. Five were smashed, two left writhing. I swerved a bit when I saw it.

I slowed down and passed the carnage. I thought about stopping—but why? I couldn’t stop. A vehicle tailgated me and there was nowhere to pull over. I thought about William Stafford’s Oregon poem of a dead deer on a rural highway, “Traveling Through the Dark.” I began crying, and then verged on sobbing. Then I sobbed. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve sobbed in my life. Until now, never while driving a car.

Metaphors attacked my mind like a contagion. I couldn’t fight them. I turned off the radio.

What had been left back there? Was I the writhing ones?

There was no Barry Lopez to come along and carry the roadkill off the road to dignity and offer an apology for humanity. I doubt he ever did that. Writers always lie for the literary effect.

I’ve lived 54 years and this was the worst thing I’d ever witnessed. Perhaps that makes me lucky when it comes to this world.

Rain Falls…

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , ,

Rain falls. I so rarely write about rain with the regularity or the intensity I used to. I guess you move on from subjects once there is nowhere else to go with them or the subjects merely dries up. I never thought rain would dry up on me.

Where are the new subjects? What are they? Even the Oregon Tavern Ages stories have begun to fade since I’ve completed the new, expanded manuscript. And since Clyde passed away and I wrapped up most of that book, I’ve felt listless writing about Bonnie and my continuing adventures at the dog sanctuary, even though I continue to volunteer at that remarkable place.

I suppose a subject can simply die for a writer.

Oregon City in my youth excites me as a subject. So does a social history of American recreational tennis. My idea for a detective novel called The Watershed truly energizes me and I keep gathering material for it and plan on a long road trip for research once I have some existential freedom. I also want to expand my collection of Oregon Christmas tales.

What also interests me a a writer is becoming a reporter for a rural paper and documenting the challenges of the people living there. That is my dream job. I don’t think it will ever happen unless I start a paper myself. I think about that all the time.

Breakfast at the Burn Pile, A Hummingbird Flies Through Fire

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While tending a burn pile at the dog sanctuary, I ate a modest breakfast of apple, cheese and hard boiled eggs. Our starving and freezing boys at Valley Forge would have relished its succulence. Much better than tree bark and owls’ heads cooked by candle.

What really happened at Valley Forge during that icy winter?

The fire raged, flames licked 10 feet into the air. I tossed slayed blackberries upon the pyre and blackberry smoke went up, whipped around, and enveloped me. I love the smell of blackberries burning in the morning. It smells like…?

I tended the fire in gray corduroys, a blue dress shirt, and black Nike running shoes. I brought along fire tending tools and notebook paper and pens. I stank of smoke and sweat.

My mind drifted toward unforgettable moments with people and dogs around burn barrels and burn piles. I remember once playing Lucinda Williams’ “Essence” on guitar for someone, as the fire sparked and blazed , and I wondered how anything could improve on that. I’m not sure it has.

I would take this fire and this field and this view of the river and clearcuts over an ocean view.

Dogs barked behind me. I heard birds chirp and tweet deep in the willows and alders. A bicyclist laden with gear pedaled by. I waved to him and he waved back.

I forgot the damn Rainier for breakfast! What a burn pile amateur!

Burn piles clarify the mind.

Watching fire turns truth into inevitability.

I am counterattacking against insanity and cannibalism with my creative mind.

Join me.

I felt compelled to write a letter to a friend languishing in a far flung city, where the homeless light fires near the river, for warmth, to roast lizards, and create totemic power against everything we’ve created. They are gentrifying the beavers right out of there. The beavers need a Lorax.

Fire makes me write like this. Just imagine if had Rainier?

How many letters have I written around a burn pile or burn barrel the last 21 years of living on the Oregon Coast? Hundreds. But not enough. Who wants one?

Something caught my eye: a red hummingbird darted around the edges of the fire. I’d never seen a hummingbird near a burn pile.

I stood up from my chair and moved closer to inspect. I didn’t think about taking a photograph. I was really seeing. I was walking into the fire. My shoes started smoking.

The hummingbird flew into the flames; he bored into the wavy heat. I saw a hummingbird fly through fire. I saw a hummingbird fly through fire.

Where do you go with this as a writer?

(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 an NSP book.)

Lines from 6-4 Probation—a Non Poem

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They’re putting a new roof on the probation office. Must be leaking somewhere, but I know it’s not rain.

Classic rock blares. Wind whips through the willows. Birds avoid this place. They know.

My hands shake from too much coffee and creamers of uncertainty.

My mind and body feel weak. I write but to no avail. Writing will not save me, let alone help me transcend. I have known this all along, but only admit it occasionally.

Sitting in the lobby, waiting. Roofing sounds above and terrible light rap coming from a man’s phone three chairs away from me.

But the rapper did use the good word “peruse” so perhaps there’s something in there. Rick Springfield once used the good word “moot” in a song, “Jesse’s Girl.” I want to tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot. I’ve been there on that mootness thing. Am I moot?

An elderly woman walks in wearing knee high leather boots with platform soles. She is rocking it hard. I almost stand up and applaud.

I have seen strange and beautiful fashion in this room. I’ve also seen people being cannibalized. That’s a staggering juxtaposition to observe. I am beginning to believe this cannot be conveyed through writing, at least not my writing. I don’t have the talent.

I hear they are looking for English teachers in Venezuela because all the teachers are leaving because they can’t afford to live there. That’s going to happen in certain urban areas in America. It already has. Who will teach then?

I see Netflix is going into education. Everything will be teacherless soon.

My spirit craves regular mindless work. Maybe I’ll get a job at Dollar General and meet Americans I’ve never met and write their mindful poems.

I took no notes today in the meeting. Nothing happened, except more of the same.

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