Live Tide, Dead Tide

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , ,

A thousand mussels at the wrack line,

cracked open at dawn.

A repast for the gulls.

Murres eviscerated,

a murre alone,

moored in the sand,

blinking fast,

not long now.

Surfers calling it quits

because the surf is dead.

A lone crab, barely moving.

The merciful crow approaches,

a method in black madness.

New swallows dip and dive.

They fly our dream of being alive.

That smell, that ocean smell.

It smells like—

I don’t know.

We can assume it depends

on how death recycles life

this particular morning.

If I wait here long enough,

on this salty log,

the answer may come,

when the gulls looks at me.

Bonnie and Clyde Files 16

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

A merciful fog enveloped the hills. I say merciful because it curtained off the clearcuts and helped produce a temperature of 59 degrees at precisely the same time it was 99 in Portland.

Bonnie and Clyde and I made our way through the pasture to the river. The grass was wet and my shoes and socks quickly became damp. I’ll take that over 99 degrees any day of the year.

We passed mound after mound of fresh elk scat. A herd had probably moved through here at dawn.

Other dogs might have gone berserk after sniffing up a fresh elk trail, but not Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde is never more than a foot way from my pocket full of treats and Bonnie is always loping in her own private goofy bliss that is unique to any dog I have ever spent time with. She seems more sprite than dog.

We reached the river. I am no Natty Bumppo but I knew the herd had forded at the same spot where I usually set up my portable writing studio of camp stool and TV tray. For one thing, I could smell scat!

There was elk energy all around. I thought I could write some original sentences if surrounded by elk energy, although heretofore I had never written a word under that particular influence. (How many writers have?) Maybe that energy would help me write the Big Book I always dreamed of writing, believed I could write. It wouldn’t be an elk book, but then again, maybe it would. Who knew where the influence would take me? Just follow the elk across the river, across the pasture, up into the hills and into the fog.

Clyde plopped down on the gravel near the tray and snoozed. Bonnie was of course communing with fairies in the high grass. I sat on the stool, sniffed the air and watched a beaver stick float by and one alder leave twirl to the water. I began to write.

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Things I’ve Written Recently

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , ,

A tanka about macrame

A tanka about dogs in a river

A proposal to the cannabis glossy press to include some fiction, memoir and poetry

An erotic novella, where rain is a character

A revised short story about tennis

9000 words on growing up in Oregon City

A manifesto for members of The Registry

Love letters never mailed

A short paean about tomatoes I grew

Press releases about Bonnie and Clyde and the Angels for Sara Sanctuary annual rummage sale

10,000 words on Bonnie and Clyde

19 cover letters (all unsuccessful)

A statement of Oregon inspiration

Editorial content for a progressive company

Moments of hope and despair in my 142nd journal

3000 words on Oregon Tavern Age life

Seven to ten essays about beaches

900 words on gravy

Several thousand words on driftwood forts

Couplets about gulls

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A Discourse on Martin Eden

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , ,

Jack London’s faintly autobiographical novel, Martin Eden, was published in 1909, some time after he had become the most famous and highly paid writer in the world. In short, it tells the story of Martin Eden, a young, destitute, restless man who wants to become a writer, travels the world, educates himself in relentless fashion, and then suffers setback after setback from the literary establishment until one day he doesn’t, and goes onto to be the most famous and highly paid writer in the world.

There’s more to the novel, a love interest, scavenging for meals and shelter, discussions of poetry and essays, heaps of socialism and hearty critiques of the bourgeois.

In my mind, Martin Eden contains the saddest ending in the history of American literature and it involves an open port hole, a ship at sea, and a last reading of Swinburne to send a writer over the edge. The writer had it all and it wasn’t enough. In fact, having it all killed him.

I read the novel in my early 20s, mid 30s and late 40s. The other day I picked up it again and started reading pages at random. The passage reproduced here caught my eye, again, because I’ve read it so many times and use it in writing workshops. Read it though carefully and particularly the statement: “Some day, if you’re lucky, you may come pretty close to knowing all that may be known. Then you will write.”

At this point in my writing life, and I don’t know exactly where that point is, (do I even have one left?) I believe exactly the opposite of London’s statement above.

Perhaps the less you know of something is the beginning of real writing. Perhaps alleged certainty on a subject renders it stiff and useless to the heart of a reader and writer. Perhaps the old dictum, “write what you know,” is to write what is safe and unchallenged. Perhaps Martin Eden needed to find something he didn’t know or claim to know and dive head first or cannonball into its ignorance and dog paddle around, take deep breaths underwater, or sit on an inner tube and float. You might learn something new that way. You will get wet. You might even drown.

Perhaps there are no rules for writing and nobody knows anything.

I am throwing out every rule for writing and publishing I have ever heard or read about (and there millions of them) as I write the book about what has happened to me, is happening to me.

It seems the only way.

I’ve already dived into my ignorance and it was deep and cold. My only hope is not to drown.

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Oregon Tavern Age: A Strawberry Mind

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , , , , , , ,

A Wednesday in Gold Beach and drizzle fell, if drizzle can fall. More like hover. It was either 10:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon. Who cared? It was Oregon Tavern Age time and in between these hours, life slows down, tick, tock, way down, a breakfast Hamm’s and eggs crawl, a brunch screwdriver and Hot Mama sleepwalk.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Sea Star Lounge. I noticed only one other vehicle. One glance and I knew it was an OTA vehicle, a classic.

It was easily the second greatest OTA vehicle I’d ever seen. No vehicle can ever top the station wagon with trees growing from its rusted crevices.

Okay, maybe the old Suburban rigged up to haul pigs around. Oh wait, maybe the truck missing a windshield where the driver turned on the wipers when it rained.

I pegged the Sea Star car as a Toyota Corolla from the late 1970s, formerly the singular color known as white, now the plural color of gray, mold and rust. The latter color has to be factory ordered from the Oregon Coast and takes 30 years to be delivered.

The Corolla begged for a closer inspection. I looked inside and saw an interior stripped of everything except the driver’s seat. Where the back seat should have been rested a half dozen oxygen tanks and dozens of empty cigarette packs.

I walked inside in the lounge and stashed my writing supplies on my favorite table near the window and lending library of magazines, books and CDs. It’s a good table and affords decent natural light for writing a love letter to someone who will never read it.

Sitting at the bar rigged up with an oxygen tank slung from his hip was an OTA man. He was drinking a long neck Bud and had two other empties neatly lined up.

A tennis tournament played on television. The man was watching. He had requested it, I assumed, because no one ever watches tennis in OTA country. I wondered if the man had ever played tennis? Then I conjured the absurd idea of OTA tennis! Maybe a charity tournament for Jerry’s kids, like the chainsaw art event in Reedsport or the hippie toss in Coos Bay. All the players would have to use wooden rackets, of course, and drink Rainier the entire tournament.

I went to the bar and ordered a local beer. While I waited, I listened to couple of female tourists, quite possibly Californians (their tans a clue), talking on their cell phones to friends or boyfriends back home, explaining why they didn’t hook a ling cod from their charter boat earlier that morning because they were too hungover and too drunk. They were both on their second bloody mary and the bartender was mixing a third round.

The OTA man ordered another Bud.

A woman came over from the video slots and and cashed in a win—57 bucks. She announced to the bar that she had recently retired from the city and her first pension check had arrived in the mail earlier that morning. She was celebrating by pumping all of it into the machines and giving back to the taxpayers.

Another woman, OTA, entered the Sea Star on crutches, sat down at the bar, and ordered a double whiskey sour. While she waited, the tennis captured her attention. Now at least two people on the Oregon Coast were watching tennis in a bar.

My beer materialized. I left the Californians swigging their drinks and went back to my table. I looked outside. The drizzle was burning away and insinuating that I had to actually do something to help reinvent myself. Is reinvention a possibility for a man like me in Oregon Tavern Age country? That is the existential question of my life at the moment. Reinvention seems highly unlikely, but I will soon find out for sure, one way or the other. Writing may have everything or nothing to do with it.

I browsed the library’s offerings. Some decent crime fiction, gardening magazines, a few Bibles, the usual bodice rippers, a CD of INXS’ Kick and Shelia E’s In Romance 1600. I pulled Shelia E off the shelf and checked the CD out because there was no conceivable way it could be here.

Produced by Prince and released in 1985 on his Paisley Park label. Track 3, “A Love Bizarre” 12:18, the only song on the album co-written by Prince. I vaguely recalled hearing it back in the Purple Rain era. It was a minor hit, I think.

I wrote my love letter and finished my beer. I took Sheila E with me and popped it into my car’s CD player. I cued up track 3 and listened…listened…and heard the most perfectly obvious or oblique expression of authentic primal desire that I had ever heard in a song and that included “Little Red Corvette.” One line goes: A strawberry mind / a body that’s built for two.

A strawberry mind. I want to meet someone with a strawberry mind because I know that person can help me reinvent myself. I know I can’t do it alone.

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Questions from the South Jetty

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , , , , , ,

What would a driftwood fort built by Elizabeth Bishop look like?

What would a poem by her about the experience read like?

Why not build a cairn?

How do driftwood forts made from redwood differ from the ones I build?

Why did I spend three hours writing a piece about biscuits and gravy?

Why does the flight of pelicans swinging low over the ocean entrance me so?

Why don’t more people start conversations by asking “how are you?” instead of opening with agendas or monologues?

Why do I evangelize on behalf of writing with AlphaSmarts and keep giving them away to aspiring writers?

Will I catch a surf perch the first month of fishing?

Where are you?

How come I feel like I’m the only one in the world who knows or cares that the poet Richard Hugo wrote an incredible mystery novel, Death and the Good Life?

Why do I want spread the word on this lost Pacific Northwest classic?

Why are gulls so underrated?

Why can’t people do their jobs?

Why is Sonny Sixkiller such a great name? (I once owned his football card.)

Why do I derive such incalculable joy from receiving handwritten letters from the Oregon Coast’s best unpublished writer?

Why do I know that I will publish this writer’s stories one day?

Why do I want the next Nestucca Spit Press publication to be a broadsheet printed on a 150-year old letter press?

Will there be another 20 years at the Oregon Coast for me?

Is there really gold in Gold Beach for me?

When will I start really paying attention to my reoccurring dreams about Sonny? The answers are there, I think. The one with her running wild on a glacier cannot be ignored.

What are the ingredients of my perseverance? Should I bottle and market them?

Why is the high road the better road for me?

Can I still play tennis?

Why do I love watching people surf but have no wish to surf?

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