Fort Messages 4

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , ,

Three more messages in the tin box at the fort. One from a woman celebrating her 52nd birthday with her partner and two dogs; another a longish quote from Gilda Radner’s (!) memoir; another a burst of joy about her fort building friend.

The Gilda Radner quote suggested people should enjoy the “delicious ambiguity of life.”

Amen to that. Hear that sound? That’s me licking my lips tasting it now.

Oh yes, someone also left behind a little bud of cannabis. I smelled it, laughed, and left the dankness behind.

I sat on the driftlog and opened the sack lunch my mother made me. My mother is still making me sack lunches and that’s probably a good reason, in reality, in metaphor, why and how I’ve survived the past two years.

The scene around me: a woman collecting rocks in a pail, a lone surfer, wind blowing out the waves, a green ocean, a woman running wild with her dogs, a man wandering around with his dog, multiple hues of blue in the sky, two fishing boats on the horizon, a couple vaping and making out in a sedan.

I tried to release my rage against a factotum who is trying to kill my spirit. I sensed adding to this fort would help. I was right. No factotum can kill the spirit of a man who had built 200 driftwood forts, in reality, in metaphor, to survive the past two years.

My mind drifted to someone from well over a decade ago, and the black and white photograph I took of her with an ancient film camera, a perfect shot of her doing a jig on the beach, silhouetted, that said everything perfect about her and us, at the exact moment in time.

We never built a fort together. We never will.

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City Scenes, Thoughts from the City, A Story

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

A man in a gray suit drinks coffee and eats a confection.

Outside, the streets are shrouded in clouds.

A man describes his recent breakup. They’ll split custody of the dogs but he has to move.

I haven’t slept much in 48 hours. I am feeling a lassitude.

The writing is going well, new breakthroughs. Writing for dogs, writing for life.

Madness has descended upon me. But I remain sane. I will never lose my comportment.

The barista looks vaguely Gothic.

Beards and sideburns reign here. I shaved my beard after five months of growth.

Hank Williams plays. His plaintive voice still gets to me. How does one write the way he sings?

Perry Mason with Dad. Perry fights injustice, venality and conventional wisdom. He wins.

Rosemary in bloom catches my eye. Nothing like rosemary branches burned in a burn barrel and that fragrance.

The Bonnie and Clyde book just passed 40k in words. It is off the leash, galloping. It is moving like a dog on an Oregon Coast beach after a long imprisonment in an animal shelter.

All my recent attempts at rapprochement have failed. I think I should probably give up.

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 43

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

I sat at the table with Jacque, sanctuary founder and Marilyn, a sanctuary board member. Eleven dogs circled around us, including Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde whimpered for treats so I produced one from my pocket and fed him discreetly under the table. He wasn’t so discreet about gobbling it up.

“It all looks good to me,” I said.

I signed the contract to write grants for the sanctuary. It was treats all around! A chorus of barks, yips and yaps went up from the dogs.

It was my first official job in almost two years. I had applied for almost 90 others, most of them in the ever-expanding racket of online education delivered by corporations that seeks nothing less than the end to face-to-face instruction, the end of humanity in teaching.

In recent months, I have come to believe that face-to-face interaction is the only way to save Oregon, America, or the world that matter. Face to face with humans, dogs, elk, birds and flowers and trees if flowers and trees can be said to have faces.

My contract was only for 30 days and a thousand bucks, but it was the best work imaginable and would enable me to unleash everything in my editorial arsenal to raise funds for the sanctuary. One good fresh quote about dogs inserted into a grant might do the trick. I have many to choose from.

I stood up from the table and shook Jacque’s and Marilyn’s hands. I thanked them for giving me a shot. I walked out into the yard and Bonnie and Clyde followed me. We took our walk along the river under metal skies and I began writing the first dog grant in my mind, right there. And it only got better when it started to rain, which it did. I was walking with dogs and writing dog grants in rain.

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 42

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , ,

I wielded the bush ax along the river, slicing through blackberries in lollygagging fashion. The nameless color of a congealed blue, green and white colored the landscape and sky. Bonnie and Clyde fanned out to my left and sniffed fresh elk scat. I whistled while I worked, tossing the dogs treats here and there as blackberries fell before my blade. A fortune cookie filled my pocket. I was going to feed it to Bonnie and Clyde and read aloud our collective fortune. I suspected reading the fortune by the river might result in some future good fortune. The river would help me divine it.

Delusional? Hardly. I placed infinitely more stock on predicting my future this way than other more expensive indoor ones presented by charlatans with credentials. It wasn’t even close.

Fifteen minutes later, I called the crew over and extricated the cookie. I bit off the wrapper and dangled the cookie above Clyde’s snout. He was on the verge of losing his mind, barking, whimpering, howling, while Bonnie sat their silently like the dignified lady she is.

“Are you ready for our fortune?” I said.

Clyde answered me. He lunged for the cookie and gulped it down! Our fortune was swallowed! I laughed and scratched his head. My fingers were just slightly nicked.

I turned to Bonnie and fed her a treat while Clyde licked up the cookie crumbles from the grass.

“What was our fortune Bonnie?” I said.

I stared into her wise old face and read it there.

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Oregon Tavern Age: Apples and Muscle Cars

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

I sat at my favorite table in the South Jetty with a beer and a notebook. I had no idea what day it was but it was light outside, barely.

A group of OTA men gathered near me, drinking beer and Canadian whiskey, and discussed their various (drunken) travails of removing water pumps for classic cars. Apparently a vintage Mustang was a real bitch with 10 different bolts.

The video slot zombies were killing the machines and actually winning. I heard the feint sounds of high fives.

A mustachioed man dressed in denim and work boots, wearing an Andy Capp cap, a real dapper OTA ensemble, brushed past me on the way to the bar. He ordered a Seven and Seven, a double. He told the bartender he was celebrating.

“I just got new dentures and I’m going to eat apples for the first time in 15 years,” he announced.

He continued. “I went to the store and bought all different kinds. I’ll still have to slice them up, but I can’t wait!” He smiled and the new dentures gleamed and astonished me. They were practically saber-tooth tiger like!

The forbidden fruit was forbidden no more! I wondered what booze the apple man would chase the apple wedges down with. I thought about mentioning the apple-flavored Jello-shot special advertised behind him to get the apple party really started, but I didn’t. Something about saber-tooth dentures and Jello-shots and OTA didn’t cohere.

The men moved their conversation to the building of pole barns. One man said his rake had broken earlier that morning so he came to the Jetty and drink instead. Two other men planned meeting at 5:30 a.m. the next morning to drive into the snowy Coast Range and harvest some secret hardwoods used by the makers of fine musical instruments.

A zombie came over to cash in a $500 ticket. She didn’t order a drink.

The apple man went over near the table where the other men gathered. The conversation moved to the differences between super chargers versus turbo chargers in muscle cars. It was the most beautiful American foreign language I’d ever heard and somehow I understood enough to follow along.

It occurred to me that I didn’t have a muscle car story and never would. I did have a great Pinto and pickup story but those weren’t the same. They didn’t make any roaring engine noises, just other roaring sounds ( a dent on a hood, too).

Every man had a drunken muscle car story that nearly resulted in dismemberment. The apple man hit 110 miles an hour in a Dodge Charger on the road from Banks to Buxton. “We rode the mist,” he said, which was easily one of the best muscle car sentences I’d ever heard drag racing through OTA country. I knew right then I’d rip it off one day for a novel and turn it loose on a dark and smeary night, a novel that might contain the last muscle car scene in American literature.

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Fort Messages 3

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , ,

After working on the jetty fort for an hour, I took the path through the dunes and reached the other fort, the one with the tin box containing writing materials and an invitation to leave a message.

Sanderlings darted to and fro around the fort and nothing brings me greater joy than watching sanderlings on the beach. So I sat down on a driftlog, drank water, ate chocolate, and watched them.

There wasn’t another person around. A few droplets of rain fell. I got up, added a couple spars to the fort, and then opened the box to see if there were any new messages. There was. It read: “Enjoying a gorgeous day on the beach with our pup Lakoda…cherishing that it may be her last. Her memory will always be here, one of our all time favorite spots. Enjoy your family, including those fur babies!!!”

The message ended with three emoticons: a heart, peace sign and smiley face. It was signed M & T.

(Suddenly I liked emoticons, the handwritten ones, that is.)

I knew something about cherishing final moments on the beach with a beloved dog. Mine with Sonny occurred not far from here, almost two years ago. Has it really been almost two years?

I returned the message to the box, closed it, and secured the box inside the fort. I considered writing a message, but didn’t. I prefer reading them at this time. I prefer creating this opportunity for people and plan on creating more opportunities. I love that people are taking me up on it. We are collaborating in such a way that probably suggests a new branch in my publishing life.

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