Oregon Tavern Age: Relishing

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , ,

“Do you make fancy drinks?”

“What do you mean by fancy?”

“Like a pina colada?”

“No, not a pina colada.”

It was early December in Oregon Tavern Age country, Pitch’s East in Port Orford to be precise. A tourist couple had ordered a pina colada and been rebuffed. The man who made the request was wearing an Untucked brand shirt and that explained everything. Every man in hell is wearing Untucked shirts.

Behind the couple, an OTA man wearing a red ball cap sat in a motorized wheelchair and was alternately drinking a beer and nodding off. Behind the wheelchair man, resting on table, was a fleece blanket he had presumably brought along to fight off the winter chill.

There was almost no ambient noise inside the joint. No TV, music, video poker. Only the bug zapper occasionally disintegrating a fly.

Time passed. The couple settled on martinis in a whispered request and added that they were in no hurry. It was his birthday and they had all day to celebrate.

They were doubtless unprepared for what that martini order meant: quite possibly the best worst birthday martini ever mixed and served with utter indifference at 59 feet above sea level.

The couple went outside to vape in the sun.

I sat in the back of Pitch’s drinking a local porter while observing the couple. I relished the coming moment of seeing their contorted faces after taking the first sip. God did I! It would bring me such tremendous joy and enlarge my heart like the Grinch’s after he caught the Whoville Christmas spirit around the ripped-off Christmas tree. The more terrible the martini the better person I would become.

But I would have to wait for the relishing. The bartender first had to whip up some mashed potatoes and gravy for the wheelchair man, who was now fast asleep.

My porter was thick, thick like a good gravy, and I felt groggy. I thought about borrowing the wheelchair man’s blanket and cuddling up for a nap near the bar’s library, which consisted of 16 books, three of them mine.

A man in a greasy brown hoodie with the hood on stood up near the bar. I hadn’t seen him before! He hadn’t said a word and looked like a beam. He ordered a Hamm’s tall from the bartender in the kitchen and waited.

The bug zapper zapped and the wheelchair man woke up. The bartender emerged with the mashed potatoes and gravy and the Hamm’s for the man. No martinis yet. And in fact, the couple would never receive their martinis but they didn’t know it yet. Their drinks were stillborn. They weren’t even fertilized eggs in the womb. And by God did I relish the non-existent martinis even more than the contortions! I took another sip of my porter and waited for the show and the good heart attack.

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Possible Christmas Tales

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History, Writing , , , ,

Over the years, I have written various coastal Christmas tales and shared them with readers. I plan on writing and sharing another one this holiday season. Below are the titles and notes for possible tales. I still haven’t decided which one to pursue.

Sweet Home Stoned Oregon Christmas

A lesbian couple live in Astoria. One woman hailed from rural Alabama where her embittered, racist, homophobic and Trump-supporting father still resides. The couple invites the father to spend Christmas with them in Astoria, thinking he won’t accept because he has never traveled out of state. But he does accept and flies out to Oregon where he meets trees, beaches, driftwood forts, rain, dark beer, friendly, non-embittered people, and (unbeknownst to him) cannabis-laced Christmas treats. Slowly, something novel begins to stir within him, and he is sore afraid. The Oregon Coast spirit begins to take over and just in time for Christmas.

Christmas Crafting

A depressed millennial woman working social media for a cannabis corporation in San Francisco decides to commit suicide a couple weeks before Christmas. Her plan is to drive north up Highway 101 to the Southern Oregon Coast and somehow end her life (probably pills and booze). When she reaches the area, she sees a handmade sign advertising a Christmas craft fair at a county fairgrounds and decides to investigate. Inside the craft fair, she finds the true meaning of Christmas through old school crafters, lacquer, glue guns, crochet and baked goodies (non cannabis).

A Clearcut White Christmas

A young forester for the world’s most evil timber investment corporation with a secret headquarters in a clearcut above Seaside, undergoes a spiritual George Bailey-like transformation when he finds himself drunk and stoned in a snowy clearcut on Christmas Eve and surrounded by woodland creatures and birds when Santa lands his sleigh, confronts the forester, and helps drink his liquor and sample a cannabis candy cane.

The Hold Out’s Anti-Christmas Crusade

The lone hold out against a national big box retailer that built a massive superstore on a filled wetland is an elderly man whose Clackamas County Christmas tree farm maze delighted children for 20 years and became a local legend. The superstore’s construction surrounded the man’s property and ended public access to the maze. The man declares war on the retailer during the holiday season by erecting a nightly series of obscene outdoor Christmas displays (e.g. The Grinch having sex with an angel and a Wise Man; Santa Claus spanking Baby Jesus in the manger, etc) that become a First Amendment cause cé·lè·bre and draw the ire of the President of the United States.

An Oregon Tavern Age Christmas

A dissipating writer on the existential lam receives an invitation from some regulars in Oregon Tavern Age country to join them for a Christmas Day barbecue at a Rogue River campground. The holiday repast will feature hot dogs, venison and red and green-colored Jello shots. On the river, he finds the true meaning of Christmas in Oregon Tavern Age country.

Holy Dog Night

A dissipating writer on the existential lam volunteers at an animal shelter on Christmas Day and finds the true meaning of Christmas from shelter dogs when he smuggles in special meat treats and walks 23 mile with 46 dogs in one day.

RV Park Christmas

A dissipating writer on the existential lam finds the true meaning of Christmas by bringing a little ramshackle Christmas cheer to the dissipated residents of a ramshackle RV park on the Oregon Coast.

Bonnie and Clyde Christmas

A dissipating writer on the existential lam finds the true meaning of Christmas by staging a Christmas party near a river for two senior dogs named Bonnie and Clyde.

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A Cryptic Note of Rain

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , ,

I received an envelope in the mail. No return address. Portland post mark. I opened the envelope and found a note—if note is the word—handwritten on green science/graph paper.

It read:

For Rain, and you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivFYVAntpw0

Okay, a mystery. I’ve been reading mysteries, taking notes on writing one myself, teaching mystery writing, and becoming a mystery to myself these days, so why not engage with this one?

I looked up the URL. It was Skid Row’s 1989 smash hair metal power ballad, “I Remember You.” It has over 86 million views. I had never heard the song before. I played it. Some of the lyrics are:

Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
Washed away a dream of you
But nothing else could ever take you away
‘Cause you’ll always be my dream come true
Oh my darling, I love you

Remember yesterday, walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand, I remember you
Through the sleepless nights through every endless day
I’d want to hear you say, I remember you

What follows are my comments/questions/observations on the note and the song. I am summoning the detective within.

Why anonymous? The sender expected me to follow the URL. Did they know I would? Why old graph paper? Why that neat script? I did not recognize the handwriting. Was it disguised? Why capitalize Rain? Who does that? Why not declare what you need to declare? I can take it. Is the rain reference in the note and the song a clue to our previous relationship? I have a lot of special ones connected to rain and I wrote a book about rain that references the fake rain in the hair metal power ballad music videos from the 80s. Did the sender read the rain book? Is there an agenda at work in this note and expectation? Or merely a cryptic way of someone caring about me? Skid Row! Hair metal! A power ballad! Anyone who knows me knows I never listen to this genre of music—then or now. Is there irony at work here? Am I wasting my time writing this when I should be writing something to save my life? Why aren’t people direct in their caring, if indeed this is caring? Is someone really remembering me? I like that the song is in the present tense. I actually like the song. Should I thank the sender of the note? Yes. Thank you. I did feel better after listening to the song and I can’t exactly explain why. Eighty-six million people get it. Send me more notes like this, whoever you are, assuming you are reading this. This could end up in a detective novel.

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Rolling into Port Orford

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , ,

It was centuries ago or yesterday. Time is meaningless. I know something about meaningless. It’s all around me. Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Why so long to figure out Port Orford?

Below is a dream I had about Port Orford:

I rolled into Port Orford after suffering a psychic dehydration in the big city. It was raining. Rain was moving across the highway like a phalanx. I caught the Port Orford radio station. Barry White was crooning about ecstasy. Never before in the history of Oregon had a small coastal town, rain and Barry White converged quite like this. I was ecstatic. I found a coffee shop and went inside. No one was there except the owner. I was cashless. He said I could pay later. I read the Port Orford newspaper. Top story: the liquor store had new winter hours and a new liquor store dog. I finished my coffee and went out to meet the dog. I did. I bought a pint of Wild Turkey from him and petted his head. Good whiskey dog! Pitch’s East next: I was the only one there except the bartender. I ordered a shot of rain with a dark beer chaser. I read the newspaper again. There was a column by an old man about driving his wife from Elk River to the Rogue River and back. He drove the long way, over rock and roll logging roads, deep into the watersheds. It took four hours. It was a date of some kind. I also read about a book of poems and short stories being published about Port Orford. Submissions were welcome. I started writing mine up on a Keno card with a golf pencil. The pot shop was next. It was closed. The sign read they’d be right back. Sure they would. I knew where they were, at Battle Rock, relaxing, perhaps building a driftwood fort on the beach. I walked around town. I saw abandoned houses I wanted to occupy, rehabilitate. I saw a beautiful woman riding a bicycle. I wanted to move to Port Orford. I could walk to the beach, a liquor store, a pot shop, a coffee shop, a fish shop, a library, a greasy spoon, a thrift store, an organic food store, art galleries, a bar, a conservation outfit, a hardware store, past a building where Jack London once wrote a novel, and it would take 15 minutes.

That’s what I want in my life. I’m moving to Port Orford.

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Letter to a Driftwood Fort Apprentice

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations , , , ,

Dear____

Thank you for your warm and generous correspondence regrading my passion for building driftwood forts. It was most unexpected considering our mutual love of Rilke brought us together. Rilke clearly never built a driftwood fort. He seemed much more of a hang-out-in-the-garden type of man (although he did favor corduroy jackets).

You ask: why do you build? I respond; why not? Why not eradicate thoughts vandalizing your mind and make art and shelter at the ocean’s edge. It’s free. It’s a great workout as well.

No, the fort will not last forever. Forever is overrated. Starting over is underrated. Every time you build a fort you start over. Life is like that for those people who swim against the current and dodge jet boats ridden by lemmings. I suspect you are one of those swimmers. In fact, I am counting on it.

You ask if I consider myself an artist when I build forts. Yes I am! I never considered myself a visual artist of any kind until my fort-building passion took off several years ago for reasons I still can’t quite comprehend and thus have given up trying.

Now, 700 forts later, I am a master but this is of little consequence because no one who visits my gallery and encounters my creations knows the name of the artist. All creations are entirely anonymous and no two are ever the same. They can’t be. They never last and I find their evanescence beautiful.

I urge you to travel away from your buzzing megalopolis, to the Pacific Ocean, to the beaches on the Oregon Coast, the undisputed unofficial capital of driftwood fort building. We have our own flag and fort scout dogs. No government. We generally wear the attire of recycled clothes from dead people.

On these beaches, you will find the materials to inaugurate your fort-building life. It is quite possible that once you build a fort, you will become obsessed with the practice and unlock all sorts of metaphors that will convey you to new territories of creativity, spirituality and sensuality.

Again, thanks for writing.

Your faithful friend

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 33

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

I drove past Christian churches with packed parking lots. Sunday rain creamed the streets, shook holy umbrellas and dampened church clothes. I was heading to my church, the sanctuary, the river, the rain, to commune with Bonnie and Clyde.

My mind meandered toward my arid youth as a preacher’s kid where I learned nothing of love and compassion sitting in pews or coloring in Jesus workbooks.

I knew what went on inside the other churches. Did they know what happened inside mine? There is no inside my church. Why don’t more people worship the outside church. The only sermon spoken there is the silent one in a language older than words. The river metaphors of the other church are fake because they don’t unfold at the river. There is no flow at all. Their water ends up being treated by chemicals. Their roofs always leak.

We splashed our way through the partially-flooded pasture to the river. Bonnie was leashed and to my right. Clyde was unleashed and to my left. I was loaded with treats.

There is nothing like splashing with dogs.

We found the path to the river and it was covered a foot deep in unmarked mud, a perfect brown sheen.

There is nothing like going through mud with dogs.

The river was running with extraordinary pace. Leaves, branches and root wads floated by. So did a chaise lounge.

I looked across the channel and saw a red bra hung up in the willows. It couldn’t possibly be there, but there it was. The bra and the color of the bra suggested a clue to a murder mystery somewhere in the upper reaches of the watershed. I started writing the scene right there, in my mind, in rain. I imagined a man wearing that bra, a dairy farmer, unhooking it in a dimly-lit barn or cabin and then someone entering the barn…and then….

A blue heron lifted off downriver, squawking its antediluvian squawk. Bonnie and Clyde and I traced its undulating flight over the bra, into the trees and up into the clearcut. I decided I’d use the heron for the crime story. A blue heron, a red bra and a clearcut. There was something very noir Oregon in that.

I struck up a conversation with Bonnie and Clyde about the story. I riffed on a plot. I fed my critics treats when they guffawed to a hot line.

There is nothing like telling a murder story to dogs.

I remembered it was November 12, my ex-wife’s birthday. I whipped out my phone and texted her well wishes, a poor substitute for the homemade card she so richly deserved. She had stood by me through everything. She would design the cover of the Bonnie and Clyde book. She had taught me so much about loyalty, dogs, herons and silences. I had forgotten many of those lessons but they are returning to me at the river.

Bonnie and Clyde left my side and went into the tall grass to investigate something. Maybe it was the matching red panties for the bra. Oh yes! Let the dogs find the panties! Put that in the story! They would bring the panties to the detective. They would get a special treat for finding a clue.

I remembered an obscure technical word about rivers that I read decades ago in an ancient text about rivers. Thalweg—the deepest part of the river. Until now, I had never written it before. It is an odd sounding word, not riverine at all, not mellifluous as all river words should sound.

Nevertheless, if a river word from my past flows into my mind while I’m standing near a river, I must embrace that word, put it to use in such a way that is inconceivable in the inside churches because they read from a script.

There is never a script on the river with Bonnie and Clyde. I’ve never had my mind move so swiftly or so deeply as when we walk and talk together. I used to wonder why, but gave up. Of course, it might be nice to bottle and distribute it to others in need of such thinking. Is that what this writing is all about?

If you dive into a river, do you naturally find the thalweg?

What is the thalweg of my life? Shouldn’t I know the answer to that? Yes, I should. I will think hard on that question.

Do thalwegs change in a river?

Is anyone with me in my current thalweg? What about the future? Will I swim alone?

I sense dogs are supposed to be dog paddling with me in my thalweg. Bonnie and Clyde already are.

(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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