Fort Messages 2

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , ,

Two leashed dogs, The Mickster and Kali, mushed down the trail through the dunes to the beach. I had to halt them every 20 yards or so because a sideburned and mustachioed man wearing skinny jeans with two leashed cattle dogs ahead of us, kept stopping to fiddle on his phone. At one point, he blocked the steep ascent to the beach, texting away, and I yelled (kindly) out to him to move aside. He turned to me, gave a shrug, seemed surprised by my request, got out of the way, and let us pass. He kept texting, too.

Twenty minutes later the team and I arrived at the fort. I was anxious to see if anyone had left some new messages in the tin can. I hitched up the dogs to a driftlog and opened the can. New writing!

The first message was from a grandmother, April, who wrote her two grand kids and two dogs enjoyed the fort. She marked the message as having written it on a certain date and at “0830.” Military time.

The second message was from someone named Brandy, who wrote “Chin up! Life’s a beach!”

The third message was from someone with the initials A-K-T (from Oregon City). The date and time on the note revealed I had missed this visitor by 15 minutes! He wrote: “You are a little slut and a pice (sic) of shit / life is a bitch but your (sic) a whore.”

I laughed. I laughed inside a driftwood fort! Thank you writer. Thank you A-K-T! I got your message, all of it, the known and unknown of it all.

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Fort Messages 1

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations , ,

I opened the tin can I’d stowed inside the driftwood fort. It contained paper and pencil and an invitation to write a “Message to the Fort.” The can had been there for a week and no one had yet taken up the invitation.

The paper had writing on it! Joy! Over the years, I had places similar invitations inside driftwood forts and had received some truly incredible messages, such as the one from a woman who wrote that she took refuge in the fort because she was on the, “worst date in my life.”

It appeared as if three different people had left messages. I read them. They were all about the weather and there wasn’t a trace of any poetry or metaphor or confession in them. Still, one was from a tourist from Hawaii, and that proved interesting to me. I wasn’t disappointed at all. In a remote part of a beach, three people had wandered inside the fort and evinced enough curiosity to open a tin box and look inside. Furthermore, they took out the paper and pencil and took the time to write something, perhaps even sitting on the cedar round writer’s seat I had positioned for a superb view of the ocean.

I will return soon to see if visitors to the fort left behind additional fort messages. It occurs to me that I need to write a more creative invitation to participate. The better the invitation, the more the curiosity is stirred, the more incentive to participate. Think about that in terms of writing…and life and love.

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A Big City Story

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , ,

I drink a $3 iced tea. I sit at a table near the counter.

“Rubberband Man” by the Spinners plays. I danced to that song at junior high dances and danced to it badly.

I think about the flotilla of dilapidated boats roped together on the Willamette River, near Ross Island. A ramshackle navy of homeless men, women, dogs and cats. There is a quirky dystopia unfolding in the city. Tepees and boats and the dispossessed with smart phones. Beavers and herons looking on.

A photography zine for sale–$10.

An ad for custom-made chain mail catches my eye. People wear chain mail in the city?

Tepid art for sale on the walls.

Everyone clad in black, using an Apple product. One kid is wearing a cravat.

A small dog on a candy cane-striped leash enters and sniffs around me. I feel for the dog. He’s an accessory, nothing else.

I long to live in a rock hut with an ocean view in a climate where Apple products rust and fail.

I like reading the writing of dead unpublished writers and knowing that I will have a hand in publishing them. I wonder if anyone will come along after I’m dead and publish some of my unpublished writing. I better add a codicil to the will to ensure that.

I want to start a business that investigates and assesses the writings of dead writers and makes publishing recommendations to their families. I am going to start that business. I’ll need a logo.

The word defenestration has floated through my mind in recent weeks. It’s one of those words that doesn’t sound like what it means.

I think of all the thousands and thousands of hours I spent in cafes all over the world in my 20s and early 30s, where I tried to write stories and novels, and the writing never transpired. It finally happened when I started writing in dive taverns along the Oregon Coast. Why?

I dread the next two hours.

“A Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone plays. I remember dancing with someone in my house to this song. There was later a visit to the beach at dusk and a gray sky so congealed that I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

I stashed four of my books in the cafe’s bookshelf. Let them loose to the city winds and the city minds.

The barista complimented me on my corduroy jacket, made in Yugoslavia by communists and purchased for 99 cents at an animal shelter thrift store.

I meet later with an old friend. I don’t think this friend is all that enthused about the prospect of meeting me. I sense meeting me has become an obligation for some people. (The friend never showed up, texted or called.)

I learned a new word from a dead writer’s unpublished novel—sibilant. I like it. The “sibilant ocean” is how he used it. The ocean hissing.

Automobile fumes fill the cafe.

I am writing this in longhand in a notebook. I am the only person writing that way.

I forgot to bring my Perry Mason novel with me. I’m on my third straight. They are vastly different than the television show. I like the Perry in the show better. More reserved. Classier. Is it possible to look classy using an Apple product in a cafe?

Let me look around…

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Birthday Meditations

NSP Meditations ,

Today marks my 54th birthday and I am writing this from a special place connected to my youth. Earlier, I saw a rainbow mist splintering above a mighty falls and considered it the perfect birthday gift from nature.

I’ve never gone in much for birthday celebrations. I might splurge for a $15 bottle of wine as opposed to $12. I might buy a new book as opposed to finding one in a street library.

Remembering birthdays has never been my strong suit. I’m getting better.

One of my greatest surprise birthday gifts was the cake presented to me by one of my senior econ classes at Beaverton High School in 1992. They lit candles and sang the birthday song. The smoke triggered the alarm and brought the Beaverton Fire Department. We didn’t report it. We didn’t get caught.

My high school girlfriend knitted me a sweater for my 18th birthday. I wish I still had it.

For several years, my rock band Gravy played a gig on my birthday at Kelly’s Olympia in downtown Portland. Things often got strange.

I used to enjoy cooking myself and the dogs a grand meal on my birthday (fish for me, steaks for them). Recently, someone in authority told me it would have been better for my mental and emotional health if I had invited people I really didn’t want around on my birthday to join the party. Apparently, dogs weren’t enough. I wish I was cooking for us tonight.

Next year I can join AARP and move into one of the over-55 mobile home parks.

Last year on my birthday I was nearly bereft of hope and joy. I don’t feel that way this year.

My creative mind is stronger on my 54th birthday than my 24th, 34th or 44th birthday. When I’m 64…well, we’ll see.

I received some birthday calls and texts today. I appreciated that.

I took two groups of students to Powell’s Books on two of my birthdays. As I look back on that now, the bus ride, the presentations, the pizza and donuts, the supervision, the naifs in the big city, I must have been out of my mind.

Blades of Grass (not a probation poem)

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , , , , ,

I sit in the car, reading Perry Mason,

thinking about something he said,

“Every man, every offense

needs to be judged on its own merit.”

 

I’m 45 minutes early,

parked near the drainage ditch.

The willows await spring leaves

and more cigarette butts.

 

This parking lot is the ugliest place

I’ve ever seen in Oregon.

I’m part of its landscape,

a landscape without people.

 

A big black pickup

pulls up next to me.

It’s blotting out the sun.

The driver gets out,

walks to the office.

Two women get out,

and walk toward

the ditch to smoke.

It’s legal there.

 

They appear Native American,

one in her 60s, one in her 30s.

The latter is beautiful,

loose black hair,

black lips,

black jeans,

black hoodie

advertising a Portland pot shop.

 

She begins crawling into the ditch.

What?

I get out. The meeting starts soon.

I bring along Perry.

Walt is history.

 

“What’s going on down there,” I ask.

I move to inspect.

I smell cigarette smoke.

I look down.

She’s kneeling near the water,

taking closeups with her phone,

but not of herself.

 

She looks up at me.

“It’s so beautiful, the green,

the moss, the grass, the blades of grass.”

I mention the willows without leaves,

thin cylinders of various greens.

“Yes, I saw them,” she said.

She emerges from the ditch, smoking.

“Thank you,” I say,

“for finding beauty.”

She smiles and smokes.

“I like to look for it,” she says.

 

I walk into the office,

pull out Perry,

begin to read.

No probation office poem today.

Mr. Beaver

NSP Meditations , , , , ,

There I sat, in a room that was not my room, and I looked up to bookshelf and saw a title: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, by CS Lewis. I got up and pulled out the book. I began to read a book I had never read before. I finished it an hour or so later.

My favorite character was Mr. Beaver with his “hoarse throaty whisper.” He was kind, wise, industrious and a clandestine rebel against tyranny. He was also a sort of prophet for the coming of a savior, a great lion as it turns out. A beaver as rebel! A beaver as prophet! I love finding books at random and having my world turned upside down by them. Random books found in the garbage might be the best finds. I hope somewhere along the line has found my books at random, perhaps even in the garbage or a mortuary, and they had their world turned upside down, or at least I made them smile or think.

Mr. Beaver risked his and Mrs. Beaver’s life by harboring humans in their dam. They served the hungry humans trout and potatoes and Mr. Beaver washed his meal down with beer!

I have always wanted to meet a beaver like Mr. Beaver. I like meeting humans that exhibit the fine qualities of Mr. Beaver. I have several humans in my life that resemble Mr. Beaver, although they drink scotch and Calvados instead of beer. How does go about finding humans like Mr. Beaver? How does one cultivate being more like Mr. Beaver in one’s own 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 an NSP book.)

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