The City, a Story Again

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , ,

The cafe again. The counter. The view up the street. Rain wants to fall.

A woman talks loudly on her phone to a client, a catering client. She’s talking wine and cakes.

I bought a hat for a dog today. I bought a biography about Patty Hearst.

Coffee went up in here again. Yuban seems to keep costing less.

A man walks down the sidewalk carrying two empty growlers.

Work is coming my way. Good work. The key to good work seems to be found in face-to-face encounters. I seek them out. Some people are afraid of these possible encounters with me because they might have to consider, reconsider. Reconsidering is very hard for people anymore in an era of instant judgment and determination.

I saw a tepee near the Hawthorne Bridge. It had rough-hewed poles of alder. Someone harvested them near the river. Someone hauled them up from the river. I suppose it makes the city a more interesting place of ecology if there are still alders around for people to harvest for use in making shelter. One suspects, however, that beavers near the river aren’t happy. They have competition.

My mind drifts to the future. Where will I live? What will I see? What are the faces in the new place?

Fatigue creeps in.

A friend told me she is going to apprentice as a cobbler. She’s sick of computers and the sterility of their sterile tactile nature. She wants to use her hands and use an awl.

I’m creating a new job for myself: literary executor for the estate of dead unpublished writers. I read the writing from the dead and make recommendations on its disposition. I love this job. Give me more unpublished writing from the dead. There is unique life in this work. It’s totally unlike reading a published book from a dead writer. They got it out, somehow. Perhaps I will help this dead writer’s dreams of being published come alive.

The coffee tastes especially bitter.

Why is there a potted cactus in the window? In Western Oregon?

I made a crying woman laugh yesterday in a place of utter American misery. I didn’t even know her, but I saw her face and I reacted with my face and asked: “Are you okay? Can I help?”

She said “no” and “no” and then I said something and made her laugh.

I meet another friend later, in another part of the city. I would like to make her laugh.

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On Oregon Guns in My Life

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , , , , , , , ,

Back in 2012, in the aftermath of the Newton school shooting, I wrote a post for my Powell’s On Oregon blog called “On Guns in My Oregon Life.” I had been writing the blog (unpaid of course) for almost two years and it had become popular and allowed me access to tens of thousands of readers that I would have otherwise never reached. In the blog, I ranged far and wide on all things Oregon. When the Newtown shooting occurred I felt compelled to write about guns in my Oregon life. A new Powell’s blog editor thought it wasn’t appropriate and refused to run it. I parted ways with the Powell’s blog platform as a result. Think about that: one of the most liberal bastions in the PNW, the Powell’s book empire, wouldn’t run an anti-gun satire because they were afraid of the sales and/or rhetorical repercussions from the gun fanatic community. Would they run this piece now after hundreds of fatal school shootings since then, including three in Oregon? Guns are a menacing presence of every Oregon’s teacher’s life, whether they own one or not. It was always in the back of my mind that a school shooting would erupt where I taught. I was ready and of course not ready. I like the direction of the new protests, student led. Adults had their turn. Today’s students have the ability to apply a unique public pressure to the NRA types and the politicians from both parties who take their bribes. I say they go for it and change American history.

Below is the “On Guns in My Oregon Life” post from 2012. I changed very little of it, just a few edits to the NRA fan fiction blast.

On Guns in My Oregon Life

As an educator, last December’s Newtown Massacre particularly shattered me. Could something like this occur at Newport High School on the Oregon Coast, where I teach English and journalism? I would say “yes” if sane people and their elected lawmakers continue their present course, which, as you clearly saw in the months after the shooting, means doing absolutely nothing except caving into the fanaticism and insanity of a minority of fellow Americans.

If the same cowardly ethos had prevailed 50 years ago, segregation would still be the law in the old Confederacy.

Let me be clear: When I say “minority,” I don’t mean the millions of Americans who own firearms for a variety of valid reasons. I mean the Americans who have no cultural or political or sexual identity without firearms. This is a very small group of paranoids but they have proved intimidating, especially to the people who don’t feel the need to integrate firearms into their daily lives or fetishize them nothing short of sex toys. This small group also has a lobby called the NRA, which the media portrays as invincible. They used to say the same thing about the tobacco industry and the Klan.

In the months after the Newtown Massacre, I’ve had some random thoughts on guns that I’d like to share: Did you know that the federal government regulates the manufacture and sale of toy guns more closely than real ones?

As a child, I played with guns all the time. In fact, I owned an arsenal: M-1, M-16, Winchester, Thompson machine gun, Enfield rifle, musket, Luger pistol, Colt revolver and Colt .45 automatic. They were all toys but certainly didn’t turn me into someone who later fetishized guns. My father, a decorated combat Marine from the Korean War, never owned a gun after his service in the military, where he killed the enemy at point blank range. He always told me that, “the men who play macho with guns during peace have never had to kill anyone face to face.” The idea that school officials trained how to use a firearm could avert a Newtown-type attack at Newport High School is a dangerous delusion, but gun manufactures know it turns large profits, and that’s really what it’s all about. What does it say about a country where a person has to register to vote, marry or drive a vehicle but not to own an assault weapon?I have fired a gun once in my life, a shotgun at a glass target in a Central Oregon desert. I missed. It was a memorably boring and empty experience. According to an article in the Jan. 28 issue of Time Magazine, Americans own an estimated 310 million firearms and over 30,000 people died from firearm-related causes with suicides nearly doubling the amount of homicides. In 2010, nearly nine million new firearms went on sale in the United States. Firearms are a $11.7 billion industry.

Sometimes when I try to unravel confusing and contentious issues in my country, I turn to writing fiction. The other day, on a lark, I wrote the following story, “The Campaign.” When I finished, I think I created a new literary sub-genre, NRA Fan Fiction, and a possible slogan recommending it to aspiring novelists: “People Don’t Write Fiction, Computers Write Fiction.”

The Campaign

Three members of the NRA’s Executive Board emptied one high-capacity magazine after another with their assault weapons. It was a beautiful afternoon in a city park somewhere in Middle America and little red explosions of creatures formerly known as birds and squirrels pleased the men. Validating the Second Amendment was a crucial part of safeguarding a quasi-democracy, and what better way to spend your leisure time when the country was going to hell? Certainly, it was a more enjoyable pastime than actually doing something to improve communities afflicted with a million social woes, although a surfeit of guns was not among them.

Christmas approached and the NRA stewed. A new President in league with Satan had recently decreed a national fitness program to combat the scourge of teenage obesity. The campaign’s slogan was “Bike For Fun, Fitness and Life” and the liberal media had enthusiastically taken up the promotional cause when they weren’t reporting on the hundreds of firearms-related deaths occurring daily across the nation. Sales of bicycles were booming everywhere in both the Blue and Red states, and young boys in particular were excited about bicycling and throwing away their video games by the millions. A bicycling revolution clearly Democratic Party in nature was undoubtedly underway and it would culminate in lucrative holiday sales for bicycling retailers. This meant fewer consumers buying firearms for Christmas, which was something firearms manufacturers simply could not brook. They ordered the NRA to do something about it and fast. That’s what they paid for.

The NRA’s Madmen, the ad geniuses who invented the phrase “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” and sold this sizzle to the moronic mass that was the electorate, knew they had a fight on their hands. Nothing less than record profits, unlimited trips to find “girlfriends” in Thailand, and more mass shootings and their concomitant increase in firearms sales were at stake.

The Madmen were Scotch-seasoned, nicotine-flavored professionals who in half a day whipped up a multi-pronged campaign featuring the innovative use of social media, bazooka giveaways, testimony from assailants, puppet shows of the Founding Fathers, old-fashioned vigilantism, assassinations of gun control advocates, kindergarten pistol clubs, aggressive marketing pitches involving supermodels juxtaposed with Jihadists, and slogans galore. Slogans like “Bikes are for Fairies, Guns are for Titans,” “Santa Carries a Glock; He Don’t Need No Bike,” “Single Mothers for More Guns in Schools,” “Guns are Sexier than Spokes,” “If Jesus Owned an AR-15, He Would Have Never Been Crucified,” “Shoot More, Bike Less” and “Make Guns, Not War.”

The NRA rolled out their juggernaut on Black Friday and hired a deranged bike messenger to shoot 39 people at a Des Moines mall to garner even more publicity. It worked. The Madmen drank and laughed and booked an immediate charter flight to Thailand. Two months later, a couple of Senators introduced a bill to ban the use of bicycles for any recreational purpose. The sole exception was hunting, although the proposed law stipulated that only wolves could be shot. The press noticed that unicycles weren’t covered by the legislation and the NRA moved quickly to amend the bill.

(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.)

Bonnie and Clyde Files 40

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

Snow graced the path along the river. Clyde took point, Bonnie followed, and I brought up the rear. My phone registered a temperature of 37 degrees. The sun shined, the sky blued bright, and the current ran swift and clear. I wore black knit gloves vaguely reminiscent of something Bob Cratchit might wear. I blew visible puffs of breath and imagined them smoke from a fine cigar, a victory cigar I long to smoke, any victory, even Don Quixote ones.

I looked up to the clearcuts. The stark contrast of white upon black braced me. Nothing reveals the ugliness of clearcuts like the blanched beauty of snow. What else horrible is revealed to the world when beauty falls upon on massacre? I thought hard searching for another example, perhaps even one related to my personal life. Perhaps Bonnie and Clyde were involved.

We mushed through the ice and I noticed a hummingbird nest made of moss tucked inside a leaveless vine maple. The tiny nest held traces of snow and was quite possibly the most beautifully tiny thing I’d ever seen. A few yards later, I stopped for a treat break and to admire the leaning alder that leans another inch or two with every new visit. One day it will lean no more and vanish down the watershed. No one will hear it vanish. I’d sort of like to do the same thing when my time comes to journey down watershed. Only a superstitious fool thinks you’re going to travel upward to begin the next life and not down, not to hell, but down the watershed to the ocean, to be reborn in the birth of all things living.

I tossed a stick into the water and spooked some ducks. A blue heron lifted off from the pasture across the river. Something caught my eye in the middle of the channel, something yellow and rectangular, resting on the bottom. I moved toward the river’s edge for a closer inspection, a trait rapidly disappearing from American cultural life in the digital age. Bonnie and Clyde tailed me. Dogs are always up for closer inspection. They find truth that way. They can smell it. Smell my truth world.

That something in the river was an Oregon license plate. I couldn’t read the numbers but I knew it came from an Oregon vehicle and the design hailed long before the era when Oregon drivers got to choose a design (and cause) and pay for the privilege of doing so.

How did that license plate come to rest at the bottom of the Lewis and Clark River? I wanted that plate. I wanted to run it through DMV records and investigate an unreported murder or reported missing person. Perhaps I might discover the truth or a truth.

The bank was too steep. The water too cold. I’d have to wait for summer, but where I would be this summer? By that time, who or what will have given me closer inspection?

We resumed our walk down the path. Bonnie and Clyde seemed almost giddy in the snow. They had the fresh spunk that always seems to arrive with snow in places where snow rarely falls. I had it, too. I stopped, barked out,“Treats!” You treat snow hounds.”

Bonnie and Clyde quickly reversed course and started galloping toward me, churning up snow. It was like a cavalry charge from a Russian short story or 800-page novel. I bent over, grabbed a fistful of snow, formed a snowball, and winged it at Clyde. He caught it in his mouth and kept charging. They bowled me over and I dished out treats in surrender.

I rolled another snowball and was about ready to stuff a treat inside when Clyde came up and wolfed the snowball down right out of my hand! I laughed aloud, Bonnie showed up, and we three jinxed it up in the snow.

(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.)

Sartre On Writing

NSP Meditations, Writing ,

I recently reread some Sartre on writing and thought I would share a few of my favorite lines. I think responding to or answering these statements is a worthy exercise for any writer.

Words are loaded pistols.

New problems demand new writing styles.

Writing is certain way of wanting freedom.

What do you want to disclose about the world through your writing?

What change do you want to bring the world with your writing?

What would happen if everyone in the world read your writing?

What will you commit to in your writing?

What will you do to be read?

Why write?

(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.)

Oregon Tavern Age: Snow Day

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , ,

South Jetty Bar. Snow fell hard outside. Call it a flurry. There was snow on the ground and a snow day for the kids and their parents if the parents worked in the various outdoor trades or didn’t work at all.

The parents were drinking harder than the snow fell outside. Call it a flurry. Shots. Beers. Cocktails.

It was early afternoon in late February. Several OTA regulars sat at the bar in silence. They didn’t even know it was snowing.

I sat at my usual table and drank a decidedly non-snow day drink of a local IPA the color of fresh urine in fresh snow. I was still on a perpetual snow day in my life, waiting for the thaw. The Winter Olympics played on television. It was impossible to measure my indifference toward them. A more interesting Winter Olympics was going on inside the South Jetty OTA snow globe and there was real snow falling outside, not fake stuff made by machines. The only good thing about increased global warming is that it will soon put an end to the Winter Olympics.

The parents played pool, video slots and cussed, men and women cussing and laughing. They told stories of catching snowflakes on their tongues and chasing them with Fireball and of scantily-clad grandmothers sneaking outside for some snow hi jinks. There was, however, an urgency to the parents that baffled me. Why not relax? Snow usually helps people with that, at least where I hail from.

Then I got it. Their kids were right outside in the parking lot, throwing snow balls, making snowmen, making snow satans, while their parents stopped in for a quick belt, game of pool and game of chance. What the hell? Hell yes!

Don’t ever tell me American parents are losing their touch raising responsible, independent children.

I thought about getting up and witnessing good parenting in action (because it is so rare these days), but that would have required getting up, and it was a snow day after all.

(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.)

Dogs Raining (reigning) in My Mind 10

NSP Meditations , , , , , , ,

And now, I turn my attention to the greatest dog book in the history of world literature, Sirius: A Fantasy of Love. A British philosopher, atheist and science fiction writer named Olap Stapledon wrote this short novel and Dover published it in 1944. The book remains in print.

My good friend Glen introduced me to it. He doesn’t even own a dog but his doggedness for caring about humanity has made me ratchet up my doggedness to become a better human. And to think Glen and I met cleaning toilets!

I frankly am unsure how to approach writing about Sirius because I felt vertiginous after reading it and even more vertiginous after reading it a second time, which commenced 30 minutes after concluding the first.

Sirius is the name of a super English sheepdog implanted with human hormones by his scientist owner in a secret experiment to breed the ultimate sheep dog and develop a dog that evolves into a more human-like creature. The experiment succeeds. Sirius can talk and sing. He drinks tea and fetches firewood. He reads the newspapers and H.G. Wells. He attends Cambridge University and becomes friends with a Methodist minister. He writes a monograph titled, The Lamp-post: A Study of the Social Life of the Domestic Dog. He’s in platonic love with his owner’s daughter, the one truly special person in his life. He ruminates on his handlessness, the bane of his existence, and wonders why humans don’t better appreciate the use of their hands.

During the course of his life, Sirius embarks on an existential investigation into humanity and a search for God. Sometimes his discoveries are beautiful. Sometimes they are tragic. In the novel, Stapledon employed an old literary technique, exploring humankind through the eyes of a dog, but his is easily the most creatively ambitious example I’ve ever encountered.

I bow before it.

At one point in his investigation, Sirius throws up his paws in frustration at humans and thinks: “Oh God! What a species to rule a planet! And so obtuse about everything that wasn’t human! So incapable of realizing imaginatively any other kind of spirit than human!”

In the end, right before humans shoot down Sirius because, then and now, most humans (Western that is) live in abject fear and hate, the super sheep dog sings (howls) Bach inside a church to a startled congregation. The congregation is unable to comprehend the singing or the subsequent sermon from an understanding minister (and confidante of Sirius) that suggests everything wonderful in our lives and worth acting on behalf of comes down to this: Love is God.

That’s it. Love is God, not God is Love. God is Love is a bumper sticker belief which to me connotes something bestowed and hierarchical.

It took a work of science fiction about a talking and singing and writing dog written published 75 years ago for me to understand, at long last, after traveling all over the world to the holy places, reading hundreds of texts on theology and comparative religion, talking with hundreds of men and women of different faiths, being raised as preacher’s kid, meeting a Jesuit priest who had attained Nirvana, thinking about God and gods during thousands of hours of walking with dogs, in rain, near the ocean, in the woods, and coming face to face with a regal coyote on the beach in a profoundly trickster way that was clearly a visit from another dimension, yes, at long lost, I finally understand what spirituality is to me. Perhaps my understanding will enlighten others.

Read the book. Become Love. Smile at the ultimate palindrome (god-dog) in the English language. Give consideration that it wasn’t a linguistic fluke.

(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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