The Jetty jetties
Sanderlings sander
The gulls gull
Driftwood drifts
Eagles espy
Forts fortify
The ocean owns
Beaverwood beavers
Jellyfish jelly
I walk
I see verbs everywhere.
I make up verbs to suit myself
and survive.
A wave sneaks
Two women scream
and buckle in the surf
They arise, they laugh, they dance.
They got a little verb on this morning.
I looked around for something to sit on while I wrote and tended a flaming burn pile. It was a fine sunny morning at the sanctuary, the dogs were in the back yard, and I was giddy at the prospect of my first burn pile in over a decade. Over the years I’ve spent my good long hours around burn piles, alone, with friends, dates, dogs, but the habit got away from me. That was a mistake.
A bald eagle circled overhead. I heard geese upriver. I heard a logging operation and the distinctive toot of the of the horn that signaled a fallen tree was ready to be hauled up the hill and later loaded on a truck and sent to a mill or China. I’m glad I knew what that toot meant. That knowledge comes in handy when writing about Oregon and clearcut metaphors.
The fire was ripping and the scent delighted me; the manual labor delighted me.
A rusted metal chair near the house caught my eye. I went over to inspect it as a possible chair candidate. It looked as if it had absorbed a million gallons of Oregon rain the last 30 years and its sturdiness seemed dubious.
I examined the chair. It had a bullet hole through its back. Someone had shot the chair! It had survived.
Now that really delighted me!
I picked up the chair and brought it over to the burn pile. I sat on it. Rock solid. I knew I was going to write a letter to a friend from this chair while tending the fire and hanging out with the dogs. I also knew I had just commenced a new chapter in my writing life because I would be taking the rusted bullet-hole chair home with me and write everything while sitting in it.
Where will the writing go from this chair? Or should I say, where will the chair lead the writing?
(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.)
I continue my exploration of the detective fiction genre in preparation for writing my novel: Simenon, early Michael Connelly, etc. I feel many writers in this genre are exploring topics of race and class in a much richer way than writers of literary fiction.
I just finished E.L. Doctrow’s Ragtime for the fifth time. I consider it one of the greatest American novels. Everything is in that novel that still troubles us today: racism, poverty, acceptance of immigration, gender roles, the deleterious effects of living in big cities, police brutality, anti-unionism, terrorism. But everything that is often good about American life is also in there: music, creative imaginations, the willingness to accept other races, the genius and work ethic of immigrants, helping those in need, and the ability to reinvent one’s self. I heartily recommend this novel to everyone.
Chekhov is back. I found a collection of his short stories for a buck and try to read one every night. Some don’t hold up, but most do.
I completed a massive history of the Columbia River Watershed, also in preparation for writing the novel. Interesting new fact learned: virtually none of the native grasses on the High Columbia Plateau exist anymore. Agriculture and grazing obliterated them.
I’m reading manuscripts in process from five different writers, one of whom is dead and left behind almost 600,000 words and just might be the best writer of his Oregon generation that no one has read. That is going to change soon.
I recently finished Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, an absolute tour de force about the rapid decline of American culture in the face of sheer spectacle, the onslaught of debasing and enslaving entertainment, the infiltration of corporations into every part of our lives and the college educations most students receive that prepare them quite well to ruin the planet. This book was published in 2009 and eerily predicts the rise of a fascist like Donald Trump. His election was the culmination of 20 years of the debasement of American literacy via television, politics, radio, social media, movies, etc. Hedges is especially brilliant on the role celebrities have played in this decline. It makes for arresting reading and I urge people to pick up this book. I don’t think it’s too late for the US. I’ll probably never think that until it is.
I’m going through The Scarlet Letter again. No one remembers the ending, no, not when the reverend’s heart explodes, but how Hester returns to the town that pilloried her and becomes a sage. People forget that ending.
I’m also leafing through section of Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen, a hugely influential book when it came out in the mid 1950s. I know a lot about Zen and then….I don’t. It’s always something that requires relearning and rethinking. This book is helping with that and providing some historical context for the movement.
I devoured Columbus and other Cannibals by Jack D Forbes, an undisputed classic that was originally published in 1978. Forbes makes a powerful case that American culture is afflicted with what Native Americans’ call wetiko, a spiritual disease of insanity and lack of heart that leads to the real and metaphorical cannibalism of human beings by other human beings through exploitation, politics, capitalism, religion, imperialism, and violence. The thesis is compelling and one merely has to look around at what our culture does to nature and human beings for confirmation. Forbes suggest we combat the disease through “acts of beauty” and I thought that one of the more beautiful phrases I’ve read in a long time. I will try to perform them daily. Perhaps others should as well.
My friend Glen recommended Columbus as well another one, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. This book is inspiring me to rethink many of my cherished assumptions about American history. It’s also providing excellent background for writing the detective novel. That book is forming in my mind. I think about it all the time.
(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.)
I write this convulsed in grief: Clyde was euthanized Wednesday morning. My great friend, canine and human, one of the primary agents of rescuing me from oblivion, a singular inspiration for my new creative life, is gone.
A little over a week ago I was walking with him and Bonnie along the river, thinking joyfully of our upcoming summer together: barbecues, poetry, fishing. Cancer invaded his spleen with astonishing speed and euthanasia was the merciful decision. It all happened so quickly that I’ve forgotten some of the details.
I got to spend a final half hour with him on the back yard of the sanctuary. The sun was shining. The river moved below us. I could hear birds. I fed Clyde treats for the last time and told him I loved him. I thanked him. I wrapped my arms around him. I called him a “treat hound.” His eyes sagged, his body was sick, and he knew.
I’ll continue visiting the sanctuary to see Bonnie, commune with the river, and work on the grounds. But the Bonnie and Clyde Files as I knew them, are closed and another beloved dog has left this world, but never my heart. I can only hope my forthcoming book about my adventures with Bonnie and Clyde will honor his service to me and do justice to the wonderful woman who introduced me to the dogs and invited me to help care for them. That invitation is something I will never forget and I will try to invite others in a similar capacity for the rest of my life.
(If you have enjoyed my writing about Bonnie and Clyde, please consider making a contribution to support the ongoing work of the Angels for Sara Sanctuary. Visit their FB page and donate, please.)
I picked at a salad and occasionally glanced at the NBA playoff game unfolding silently on television. Two men in their 30s sat a table away to my right, drinking beers. A Bible rested between them. I made it out to be a pastor counseling a parishioner. The parishioner looked distraught, stressed.
Naturally I eavesdropped, being a former preacher’s kid and all that.
What unfolded was not what I expected, because I do have expectations for these kind of Christian conversations and have now learned not to have them anymore. I’m never too old to learn. Let me die quietly when I am.
The man’s story went something like this: The man was a volunteer junior high volleyball coach for an elite club team in a nearby rich suburban city. His daughter was on the team and one of the star players. The team was highly successful and traveled all around Oregon for tournaments. A father of one of the other players who was not a star confronted the coach about his daughter’s lack of court time. It became heated, verbally. The coach had set up a text message system for the players and parents to notify about practices and travel logistics. A message was sent to the entire group from the aggrieved father’s phone number that said something to the effect that,“every girl on the team knows the coach gets a hard on during practice and it’s sick and creepy.” The text got forwarded around the community and then picked up by other social media platforms. The coach’s life blew up but his wife and daughter were rock solid in their support because they knew it was untrue and they knew the back story. What really hurt the man, he told his pastor, was that none of the parents (or players) replied to the text group to rebut the charges. A few adults had come up to him privately and offered him support and that was it. He had since quit coaching, something he truly loved, and was in crisis about his belief in humanity. He wasn’t angry with the parent who made the false (and legally slanderous) claim and never confronted him. That wasn’t his way. He forgave him but was struggling with his faith and people’s perceptions of him in the community. Some of his friends had dropped him without a word. His daughter was semi ostracized at school. He and his wife thought about moving, but would that really change anything in the age of the Internet? The pastor listened and didn’t offer the usual bromides you might hear on Christian television. He did tell him he had been presented with a unique opportunity to bear witness and it was his choice how to react—with love or hate or somewhere in between.
The man’s calm bearing impressed me. He clearly wanted to understand what had happened to him and why so many people he knew well, including players he coached with tremendous heart, had abandoned him. Is this what people are really all about today? I’m not like that as a person. What about the Golden Rule?
As the man told his story, I wrote on a piece of notebook paper the name of a book I thought might help him navigate his crisis: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson. I’d read it after my public shaming (stoning) and found it incredibly helpful in understanding why deeply disturbed people throw digital stones or cheer on the throwing. It’s really nothing new in American culture, but it’s been transformed into the speed of light and is basically eternal because of the algorithms of search engines and all that stuff. I know all about it.
This public shaming wasn’t the whole of his crisis, but it had obviously ripped him and his family up, but not apart. He was grateful for that.
My salad wilted as I listened and nervousness gripped me. Should I give the man the paper? I didn’t know about intervening in their conversation. I would have to admit to eavesdropping and perhaps that wouldn’t sit well. It felt like this moment called for an act of kindness from me, in public, with a perfect stranger in distress. Perhaps the act would be rebuffed or met with indifference. One never knows. You simply must act and see where it goes. Sometimes it goes nowhere.
I would act. That’s who I am these days and it’s not about the story anymore.
It was time to leave. I stood up, gathered my things into my backpack, and walked over to the man. I was shaking a bit.
This is what I recall saying to him: I don’t mean to interrupt but I couldn’t help overhearing your story. I went through something similar, although ten times worse, and a book I read helped me understand what motivates people to jump on the online bandwagon and destroy people. The book’s on this piece of paper and perhaps you’ll check it out. I realize it’s not faith based and you’ve been talking about that and maybe a secular investigation isn’t for you, but I wanted to offer.
It wasn’t quite the monologue as presented above because the man said it was perfectly fine that I interrupted and he would check out the book. His pastor thanked me. The man thanked me and stood up and shook my hand. I touched his shoulder. Then I left, walked out into the street, and felt I might start crying. I think I did.
I sat across the table from a unique friend who perhaps belongs to a different era but is kindling hope for the one we live (or die) today. I had gifts for her tucked away in a bag: Jim Harrison novel, Jack Kerouac CD of his jazzy haiku, and some Kindness and Gratitude zines for her to distribute as she makes her away around the region sowing her good energy and investigating nature to find new (old) ways to heal the earth and those inhabitants who have lost touch with the earth. They are legion.
She had gifts for me: packets of seeds for my garden I have yet to plant and a hand drawn publication (only one edition and not photocopied) of her poetry. It is called Magic of the Crow and it is quite unlike anything I have felt in my hands or read in a long time.
I perused it right there and followed the stanzas as a blue heron might fly over a mud flat because that’s how my friend writes poetry and well, lives. Living like a blue heron isn’t such a bad thing. It might be the best way for these perilous times.
One line caught my eye in particular: send my wishes / riding on the backs / of dandelion fluff.
Yes.
I thanked my friend for her kindness in all matters, toward me, toward the world. We agreed to meet again soon, or much longer than that, and see where our mutual kindness has traveled, and perhaps even embedded.