Somewhere Under the Rainbow

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain, Oregon Beaches , , , , , , , , ,

After the big storm, I went to the South Jetty for morning adventure.

I walked down the trail to the beach in a pulverizing rain. I had pumpkin doughnuts stuffed in the pocket of my pea coat and carried convenience store coffee in my right hand. Rain fell into the coffee and produced an interesting ripple effect.

Miraculously, the driftwood fort built in the dunes by my students on the last day of my teaching career still stood. It has a decent chance of standing until the end of Fort Stevens State Park.

The storm had blasted driftwood to the highest reaches of the beach and delivered treasures: a piece of wood with spray-painted graffiti, an orange plastic sea horse, an unopened can of Busch Lite. I kept the horse.

Foam was wiggling to and fro. Gulls ripped crabs apart. A gust of wind blew the coffee out of my hand. In the space of 15 minutes, it had sprinkled, rained, squalled, sleeted. Then, the sun drilled holes in the sky and sent spotlights to the sand—while it continued to rain.

I walked south and reunited with an old friend: the ancient chainsawed round with 147 rings, a noble table where I’d eaten breakfast, played with gulls, heard my cousin unburden his heart, held story conferences, and written preposterous lines of poetry. I sat on the table and dug out the doughnuts. I took one bite and then crumbled the rest on top of the table. I got up and walked away. Gulls flew to the table and two birds landed like it was an aircraft carrier at sea. They grabbed shreds of the bounty and lifted off.

The old sound of the ocean called, or should I say compelled. I started walking toward it. I beheld a half rainbow over the waves. A few seconds later, its eastward arc buried in the jetty and completed the arc. I started running toward the rainbow, to enter it. Rainbows at the ocean always make me run and I have no idea why. Perhaps at this point in my life I wanted to run into its metaphor and trip over the pot of gold.

I saw it. There it was, lit up by a spotlight, a lone sand dollar.

Of course you would be here. You were on my mind. I picked it up. I had just found a sand dollar under a rainbow. It was almost dizzying to consider. I needed a bracer and wished I’d hung on to the Busch Lite.

Are you a person who believes in the elastic power of a rainbow and the concrete significance of what one finds somewhere under that rainbow?

Somewhere under the rainbow. I like that phrase. Join me.

(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.)

Rain For Breakfast

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , , , ,

I ate rain for breakfast with a side of pumpkin doughnut, Yuban cold brew and a hard boiled egg. I ate sitting on a large rock at the jetty while it rained on me. It occurred to me that this was my first breakfast with rain.

No one was around. No gulls, either.

I finished breakfast and moved off the rock and headed south down the beach.

The storm had demolished the big fort. On my most recent visit, several days ago, I discovered that someone had tagged the fort with red spray paint. This was unprecedented in my fort building experience. I thought about the kind of person who would bring spray paint to the beach, write something with an urban sensibility that only he or she understood, and something that also misspelled the word “painter” on purpose, I presume.

I looked at the tag for a few minutes. I could have gone either way with it, or five ways at once, depending on how the wind blew.

The tag would have made for a great classroom debate in a high school social studies or creative writing class. I used to lead those kind of debates.

At least the tagger took the can away. The Rolling Rock drinker did not.

Rain picked up and sluiced my mind for nuggets of memory. I was thinking about a recent discussion about origami, recent golden thrift store finds of desert boots hand crafted in India and groovy stationery and flower power post cards, recent reunions with some truly incredible people who believe I still have something to offer in life, and a job I recently applied for: Mortuary Transportation Assistant. (What a band name!)

I want that job. I want to handle the dead and drive them around. I’ll probably adopt one of their dogs.

My thoughts drifted to a conversation I overheard in a junk shop. A couple from Cape Meares transplanted from California were tired of rain. This was their third October and their last. I smiled a crooked smile hearing that. The Rain Mortuary Transportation Director had done fine work on behalf of Oregon.

I pulled out an empty flask from the pocket of my pea coat. I collected a little rain in the flask. I would add it to the soup simmering at home. Rain for lunch and dinner, too,

(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.)

Cedar Fiends

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , ,

First, sprinkles. Then rain fell at the South Jetty.

I made my way along the trail. I was wearing my special rain stocking cap. My mind moved with rain.

The tide was out and I found my favorite gap in the crumbling rocks. I began to enter the gap when the smell of cedar caught me. I love the smell of cedar in the rain. I looked around and noticed the fresh remains of cut cedar driftlogs, chainsawed, red shavings and saw dust everywhere.

The cedar fiends had struck, in the night, perhaps, because I had visited this spot 24 hours ago and the logs were intact.

I kept moving south down the beach and found more cedar shavings and a newly cut cedar round. I sat down on it and ate my meager breakfast suffused with the aroma of cedar.

Who are these fiends? I’ve never seen one in 20 years of Oregon beach rambling. Not one. I have seen evidence of their handiwork, dozens of times. They always take the choicest cuts. They know their wood.

Technically, this cedar harvesting is illegal. So is building a driftwood fort. I wonder if anyone has ever been caught or cited.

I suspect the wood is used for crafting, perhaps kindling every now and then. Maybe some shakes. It might just be a hobby for lovers of a sacred wood. If I ever met one of the fiends, I would ask.

It just occurred to me: why hasn’t anyone distilled a spirit from cedar?

(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.)

Crime/Detective Fiction Writing Workshop Part 2

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , , , , , , , ,

Writers:

Six months ago, I held a detective fiction writing workshop that was well attended and well received. Several the participants have since contacted me and asked if I would hold a follow-up session.

Here’s my idea for something novel. The Part 2 workshop would be held Saturday, Dec. 2 and Sunday Dec. 3 and work like this:

We would meet in an Astoria-area dive bar 3:00 pm on Saturday for a two-hour session of dark beer and some interesting writing prompts and discussion items. These places are exquisite to write this genre and walk into a story.

We would then meet Sunday at a private home in Astoria from 10-1 for a follow up and deeper treatment of the subject. The writer would need to come with a detective character in mind with a somewhat developed back story. This is what we worked through in Part 1 of the workshop. A writer doesn’t have to have participated in the first workshop to attend. He or she only needs to come with a detective character in mind.

In the second half of the workshop, we would run through exercises on writing dialogue, how to introduce clues, advancing plot, and a unique Dashielle Hammett exercise that will further develop the detective’s back story and methodology for solving a case.

The workshop would cost $100. If you are interested, let me know via email through the NSP web site. December is the best black time to write this kind of fiction. I hope some of us can come together and advance our respective ideas. There were some damn good ones presented in the first workshop.

Meth Agates

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , , ,

In the distance, on the beach, I saw two people walking in separate tight circles, somewhat frantically, a few feet apart, heads down, apparently searching for certain rocks or shells or perhaps the ambiguous meaning of the universe in grains of sand. William Blake said it might be found there.

It was a curious way to search, this odd circling, and a few years ago I might have been mystified by it. Not anymore. It was all quite explainable, thanks to inside information I received from someone who searched in a similar manner.

I moved toward the couple and made out a young man wearing shorts and a tank top and a young woman wearing a hoodie and sweat pants.

It was raining.

There wasn’t another vehicle besides mine for miles around. The couple must have walked to this beach. It would have taken a long time to get there.

I sat down on a driftlog for 20 minutes and watched them search. They haphazardly made their way south. Every once and a while, one of them would pick up something and deposit it in a pocket. They never once looked at the ocean. Can you imagine visiting the ocean and not looking at the ocean?

Years ago, I met someone on the Oregon Coast who explained to me what this ostensibly weird searching was all about. She (June) was a lively, lascivious and debased character straight out of a Henry Miller tale had Henry Miller ever populated his stories with characters from the Oregon Coast. She rated as a sort of a siren, but also quasi rapper who wrote quasi lines of poetry. Some of them were pretty damn good. One even used the word “tantric.”

She was also a methamphetamine and heroin addict and her larger story would make a great Henry Miller-type book. I might even write it one day. There would be zero redemption in it.

Here’s what she told me one day: when she was high on meth, she would collect agates on the beach, in precisely the same frantic manner I observed in the couple. I was dumbfounded. People on meth go out and beach comb? Yes, she said. You have to do something. She even gave me some of her meth agates as proof.

I have seen similar searching/walking beach patterns about a half dozen times since I received the inside information. I’ve seen meth people attempt to clam and try to fish from the South Jetty on the Columbia River. They always move in the same way. They are always dressed the same. They are always the same age.

Preposterous? I don’t think so. It was too unbelievable an explanation not to be true and I got straight from the meth source.

(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.)

Squirrel on the Jetty and Thoughts on My Journals

NSP Meditations , , , , , , , , , , ,

I saw a brown and orange squirrel on the South Jetty of the Columbia River. In over 200 visits, it was my first squirrel sighting there.

He stopped on top of a huge rock and looked at me. Our eyes locked. I said “hello” and he darted into a crevasse and disappeared. Had I remained silent, I might still be watching him with the ocean in the backdrop. How many people can say they saw a squirrel at the ocean? I can now.

The sight of this tiny critter and my intense connection to it immediately brought to mind Thoreau’s famous encounter with a woodchuck that he recorded in his journal, never expecting anyone would read it. He watched the woodchuck for 30 minutes and actually played with it.

The more I read Thoreau and about Thoreau’s writing, it becomes clearer that his journals contain his best writing. There are so many recorded moments of joy and awe in nature that didn’t have a larger point or role in a book. They just are. Their informality is their beauty.

Thoreau completed 37 journals (he died at 44) and they comprised 13 manuscripts that have all been published. You can read them for free online or just about any used bookstore has some edition of them. The ones printed in the 1970s are very groovy. I think in that era even Hallmark came out with a line of cards with quotes from his journals!

I wonder if some of the writing in my journals is better than the writing in my books and essays. I recently started my 146 or 147th journal, an estimated three million words written from the ages of 15 to 53. I suppose I’ll never know. I might if I found the right editor. That right editor is out there, somewhere. That editor might even be reading this.

In the end, I may stack the journals on the beach and light up the night with them. Who knows? I have never read all of them, but one time, a few years ago, I picked up a volume from 1993 at read it all the way through. The quality somewhat shocked me. It was some of my best writing, unfiltered, unaffected, rock and rolling, rippling, and I was still ten years away from publishing a book.

We shall see what happens to the journals. For now, I keep writing in them without any thought of publication. Perhaps that is the best kind of writing. It is entirely possible Thoreau knew that.

(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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