A Trade for Fish

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I have a good friend who is a world-class recycle artist and repurposer of discarded things. It seems like whenever I need something, such as a tool, solvent or curtain fabric, all I have to do is ask her and she finds it in a garbage can or dumpster in her neighborhood. Or she already had found it months or years ago and squirreled the item away in her basement.

From time to time, she shares a story with me of an extraordinary find. I think she has the makings of a great short nonfiction book about the thrill and usefulness of finding discarded things and putting them back in circulation consistent with the thing’s original purpose or something different (perhaps, better) altogether.

In recent months, she’s found unopened fortune cookies, an abandoned journal containing incredible personal writing, and a bag of semi-rare American coins (in a compost pile!). All three of these discoveries fascinated me and I integrated them into my writing workshops as writing and discussion prompts.

The other day, my friend’s discovery and her recycling/bartering of another highly unusual object, easily ranked as her best story.

She found a stainless steel sanitary napkin/tampon dispenser in the dumpster of a junior high school, took it home, took it to the metal recycling center in town, got paid $5.40 for her effort, and then used the money to buy a pound of fresh sea bass for $5.50 (with a senior discount) from the seafood market in Warrenton. In effect, it was a wash, a trade.

Trading a junior high tampon dispenser for fresh fish off Oregon’s coast.

Just typing that sentence gives me a fantastic thrill as a storyteller. I’m not sure where else to go with it. Perhaps the sentence is enough to excite readers and inspire interesting thoughts and actions.

Yes, the sentence is more than enough.

(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.)

Sonny’s Face, My Face

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The writing faces at the faces-themed writing workshop faced the music—internal and external—and faced off with the real and imagined faces in their lives and imaginations. The writers delivered the writing goods. Face offs have value. I have one coming Wednesday night. There won’t be any music.

I doubt I’ll ever forget what one writer did in the workshop with the face of Sacajawea on a one-dollar coin and how another writer used the adjective tawny in connection to satisfaction.

Teaching these classes teaches me about writing and the human condition. I’ve got to keep these workshops going. I’ve got to keep meeting new people, new faces.

During the workshop, I asked the question I’ve wanted to ask for several years.

The saying goes: over time, a long time, the dog and the dog owner’s faces begin to resemble one another. Who was the first writer who wrote that? It might have been, incredibly, Rilke.

My question was, and I asked it to the class: did my face resemble Sonny’s, my beloved 17-year old husky who left my world last year but reoccurs weekly in my dreams? I asked the question because virtually everyone in the class had either met Sonny or seen her face as a photograph accompanying hundreds of my columns and posts about our madcap and metaphysical adventures down Oregon Coast beaches.

A brief silence ensued after the question. I got nervous. I couldn’t predict my reaction. I asked a question of an an audience that I didn’t know the answer. You’re not supposed to do that in legal matters or in literary venues. The answer must be known.

Who wants to ask questions when the answers are already known?

Most people. I found that out the last year.

Does anyone want to look like their dog? Is it a sly compliment or a veiled insult?

Then Susan spoke:

“Yes, your face did…it was the eyebrows.”

The eyebrows! Of course!

I felt like crying for joy. In Sonny’s face is a kind of soft salvation for me. I must only keep looking at it, for it, and remember, and take her memory forward to new territory.

(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 22

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The morning sun looked smudged. It looked like it couldn’t cook. Smoke clung to the clearcut hills and drifted over the pastures and milk cows. The landscape was the filtered color of gray-orange. Even the slack summer river rippled with tinges of orange. Firewater.

We began to drift with the smoke…

Blame the orange on the smoke from forest fires set by the enemy. There was a war on, the Mini Civil War the media were calling it, somewhat derisively.

Clyde took point and Bonnie brought up the rear. We were an aging crack recon team put out to pasture patrolling a valued sector. We were moving through the high grass along the river. We skirted elk scat and beaver sticks. Our orders were to spot drones delivering pizzas to infiltrators, engage the infiltrators at close quarters, exterminate them with extreme prejudice, and eat their pizza.

I carried a war club, a thick green branch of alder wrapped in blackberry stalks, secured with duct tape. It was a formidable hand-to-hand weapon and struck fear in the enemy, or so social media reported.

The mini war had broken out when the President refused to leave the White House after being impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Federal Marshals had to remove him and he raged, shat himself and tweeted at the same time during his removal. He misspelled the word “democracy.” He misspelled his own last name.

It was a grand spectacle and the President’s die hard supporters refused to abide by the Constitution. Scattered militias in some of the Mountain and Western states took up arms and Instagram and decided to burn up California, Oregon and Washington as retribution. They sent thousands of men, women, children, washed-up Midwestern rock stars and drones into the despised Left Coast to implement their fiery sabotage.

Wineries and pot shops bore the brunt of their anger. Yoga studios, too.

It only got worse when two thirds of the states called for a Constitutional convention, it was hastily convened, and the delegates rewrote the process for electing a President during a crisis. Three fourths of the states ratified the changes and a month later, Michelle Obama was elected President. Dave Grohl was VP. Rock and Roll. Or better yet, Brown Sugar, and they played that song at the Inaugural Ball. Keith shredded on rhythm guitar. Mick wore a KKK hood, Confederate flag boxers, knee high tube socks and that was all. Bill Clinton played the sax solo. No cocaine. Michelle killed it in a macrame gown. Barack chain smoked Winstons the whole show.

Clyde halted and raised his snout to catch a scent. Bonnie turned around to check our exposed flanks.

We heard cracking in the elderberry and Bonnie and Clyde took off. I followed with the war club gripped tight. We were going into battle or pizza or both. I sure hope it wasn’t pepperoni.

A youngish man dressed in camo and a red baseball cap emerged from a makeshift shelter. His pants were down. I heard the squealing of nutria in the distance. He clutched a Bowie knife in his right hand. Clyde lunged for the man’s neck and Bonnie ripped into his groin. I heard the knife splash down in the river. His shit stank.

I delivered a few blows as he struggled on the ground. There were gurgling sounds coming from his chest; then there were none. I rolled his body over. Blackberry thorns leave the most interesting gruesome facial lacerations. The lacerations looked especially interesting lit up by the orange light.

Clyde nosed around the body for foodstuffs and then came over for treats. I fed him a couple, Bonnie, too. We rested a while, looking at the river. Swallows dipped and dived over the channel.

I rolled the body into the river. It kerplunked nicely. It would decompose in short order and start nourishing the watershed. At least the man did that for his planet.

We mounted back up and continued our patrol. I picked and ate blackberries as I walked. The orange was getting more orange. Bonnie raced ahead, scouting for more infiltrators. She’d got an early taste of Red State blood and wanted more.

Me too.

Clyde wanted pizza and not a goddamned vegetarian one.

(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.)

100,000 Reads and Support for the Blog

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The Meditations Blog recently passed a milestone of sorts—100,000 page reads—according to Google Analytics. People have read it in New York, Florida, Germany, Australia, Portland, Newport, Astoria, Seattle, Olympia, St. Helens, Lincoln City, Gold Beach and beyond. It’s still a mystery to me how people come to find the blog because I’ve done almost no promotion for it.

Thank you readers. Thank you for spending time with my writing. Thank you for sharing it with your friends and family. When I launched the blog in late March, I had no idea where it would go and what I would write. I just felt an overwhelming desire to write and share some of what was going through my mind as I try to navigate this strange, trying and complicated period of my life. Whether the writing will actually aid in a successful navigation remains to be seen. I have no expectations.

Many readers have responded positively to my writing and contacted me directly. Some have not. The detractors are out there still doing their detracting.

I also want to thank those readers who subscribed and made financial contributions to the blog. I’d like to make another appeal to readers to support the blog via a payment via Paypal or other arrangement. I do work hard on these pieces and intuit that some my words are connecting to people and providing some grains of universal value beyond my struggle with my current tenuous situation. Please also consider buying some of the books, particularly The Gigging Life, if you know someone who takes their passion and creativity out to people like I used to do. I think that book has some good lessons in it for creative entrepreneurs.

The blog feels like it will head in a new direction in October. I sense I won’t be writing much about my situation. I’ve said enough on that subject and have another 10,000 words about it that I’ve left off the blog. One day, this material may find a place to be published.

What exactly this new direction will be is unclear to me as of this writing. It will emerge, though. Probably on the beach.

I will continue to write about Oregon Tavern Age, Bonnie and Clyde, driftwood forts, beaches and unexpected surprises.

I have about 8,000 words on growing up in Oregon City that I might share. I think some fiction starts and stuff about tennis are coming, too, the latter just in time for two big tennis movies! (Riggs and King! McEnroe and Borg! And where is the bio-pic about Arthur Ashe, the greatest American sportsman of all time?)

Again, thanks for reading. Thanks to those who reached out. Thanks for any contribution you might make. It does help. I will continue to work hard with my writing and service to others (dogs, too) to honor your faith in me. That not-giving-up-on-me has made the crucial difference in my 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.)

Twenty Years Ago: Reflections on Bookshelf

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Twenty years ago this week, I began teaching at Neskowin Valley School in South Tillamook County on the North Oregon Coast. I left the Portland loft in the Pearl District and my teaching job at Hillsboro High School, and with my then wife, Cindy, moved west, to the sea.

It was supposed to be a one-year cultural experiment.

At NVS, I began to revolutionize my entire life and found a path to becoming a writer. There, I really learned how to teach. There, I met the man who installed me as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. There, I got Ray, the wandering Shepherd mutt on Highway 101. There, I found the ocean. There ,I found Nestucca Spit and Bob Straub’s incredible story of saving it from desecration. There, I met someone who would later become my greatest friend and fighter in my corner and my greatest roadie and confidante, but now sadly vanished from my life.

I taught seventh and eighth grade language arts and social studies and science and PE and health and everything under the sun except math. I acted in a play, formed rock bands, mopped, led poetry slams, led weekly bike rides to the beach, planted trees, and went on class trips to SF and Montana—on the train. It was by far the most exhausting and rewarding job of my teaching career.

I could write a book about my two years at NVS. Wait, I did! It’s called Gimme Refuge: Education of a Caretaker. For some inexplicable reason, I left out a story from that book that I now want to share on the occasion of my 20-year NVS anniversary. The story just recently surfaced out of nowhere, like so many good stories do.

It’s about a bookshelf.

The first activity we did as a class (13 the first year, 21 the second) was to paint the various bookshelves that came with the classroom and ones I brought with me. The shelf, pictured here, was one of them.

I divided the class into three groups and let each group paint one of the shelves. Then I stepped back and observed. I wanted to see how they worked together, who was a leader, who was a slacker, all of that teaching stuff.

The painting was slipshod, this shelf in particular. The students were not together on any level—no cooperation. There was tension between boys and girls. There were also flashes of unique personalities that presaged good things for the future.

When I left the job, I took the shelf with me to the refuge, then Newport, then Astoria, where I stashed it sideways in the garage and it gathered dust and spiders.

For some reason, I hauled it out the other day to the back deck, hosed it off, and painted it again, 20 years later. Start over with a new coat of paint, like I’m starting over. Let the shelf start over, too. It’s not going with me to my next stop, wherever that is. But someone will have a fine wooden bookshelf with a decent paint job. Books will look grand in it.

I painted listening to Charlie Parker. I chose a creamy white color. While I painted, I went back to my NVS days and it was a nice two-hour journey into the past. I did good work there, for my students, the school, but also for myself.

(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.)

All Loose Things and Thoughts on Perforated Paper

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Five days after leaving some words of literary invitation at Fort Chivalry, I returned. In the interim, rain had fallen and wind had blown.

The fort had new accents: an empty beer bottle, roof lattice, log chairs, more crab shells and sand dollars.

The notebook paper was still there, as was the Keno pencil I left behind for visitors to write with.

Someone did. Actually, two people. Someone had responded to my request for an oath to the fort and written: “I come to the sea to breathe and pledge to always appreciate her gifts.”

Someone else left behind an illustrated poem (pictured here) that was written on a mini notepad (brought by the writer), perforated on the left side. (I love perforations on paper! I love the word perforate! Note to self: write the true story of the woman who broke up with me because I didn’t tear perforations off the handwritten love letters I wrote her. Write the first draft of this on perforated paper. Send draft to woman.)

There are stark clues in this perforated note. I am thinking like a detective now. What can we deduce from this note? Reading a hundred mystery/crime/detective novels the past year has sharpened my powers of observation.

What do these lines, the penmanship, the punctuation, the illustration, tell you?

For one thing, the writer got “loose” right, not “lose.” Spellcheckers never catch 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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