Breaking Bread with Birds

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , , , , , ,

(A poem dusted off from the archives. Polished with The Snow Leopard in mind.)

A lone surfer paddles for a Sunday wave.

A sea lion parallels through the morning teal.

Seafaring mammals nod to one another.

They speak the language older than words.

Land sucks.

Never get in the boat.

Find a lake that has never seen a boat.

They do exist in Oregon.

A gull eats two hunks of my Tillamook cheese.

Another gull tears a clam apart at the wrack line.

I hurl a slice of fruitcake to the gull.

He nods, too.

A driftwood fort decays behind me.

The other fort I built is gone.

Driftwood is waiting.

I build alone, waiting.

Sandpipers and sanderlings dart in the wet sand.

They make sustainable laws by silent acclimation.

Wind blows.

The south jetty disintegrates.

A freighter brings and old ocean over the bar.

A sand dollar cashes out.

I sit on a white driftlog.

I eat my breakfast and break bread with birds.

I write on a 20-year old plastic toy.

The log will outlast us both.

A crow emerges.

She’s scouting fruitcake.

The gull blocks him out like a quality power forward.

Tangerine peels will suffice.

Cirrus clouds begin to give way.

The sun bides its burnout time.

Somewhere a Prometheus is still chained to a rock.

But not here.

Ocean Writing Workshop in Astoria July 15

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

Dear Creative Types:

Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar. Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more!

Led Zeppelin

Oceans are the most dynamic natural force on the planet. They feed us, determine our weather, and provide an endless source of mystery and mysticism. Oceans also offer many people, including writers, inspiration for their creative lives.

Join me in Astoria Saturday, July 15 for a unique half-day ocean-themed writing workshop in Astoria. In this creative thinking, visualization and writing workshop, I will assist participants to engage with the ocean with the intent of unlocking ways of enhancing the personal creative process. The workshop may also include a visit to the beach at Fort Stevens State Park, weather permitting. Forts will rise!

Whether you are a writer, musician, visual artist, photographer, woodworker, teacher, or some other kind of creative person, embracing the ocean as a source of inspiration could enliven your mind and take your creativity in new, unforeseen directions. It also might make you feel a whole lot better in a nation beset by political horror. Please join me and help create positive community.

The workshop runs from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Astoria in a private home. The class costs $65 and will cap at 12 participants. Participants will pay at the beginning of the workshop and price includes a free gift of ocean magic. Scholarships are also available. To register, contact me through my web site or email address.

 

Rapprochement

NSP Meditations , , , , ,

Rapprochement is a French word that means, “an establishing or restoring of a close, harmonious or sympathetic relationship.”

The word is typically used in connection with foreign diplomacy, as in two countries seek a rapprochement after rift, war or prolonged suspension of relations.

It’s a smooth-sounding word, a noun rife with connotations of potentially positive outcomes, such as healing, understanding, a viable new friendship, a steady peace, or a walk on the beach together to figure it out.

Rapprochement is very much on my mind these days as I assay possible methods of initiating it with lost friends or possible methods that lost friends might employ initiating it with me. Will these initiatives come in the following weeks, months, years or decades…or never come at all? I have no idea.

What should be the goal of a rapprochement? Should there even be a stated one or should it all just unfold without an agenda, demands or expectations? Does the issue that instigated the war, rift or suspension of relations need to be addressed in the process? Perhaps. Maybe it all begins by asking “How are you?”

I don’t know. According to the poets, there are no diplomatic protocols for matters of the heart. Many of us go on guts and hearts and intuitions and perhaps not what a paid therapist, talk show host, or conventional wisdom advises or dictates. Anger and blame don’t seem to be productive emotions when attempting to initiate rapprochement. A failed rapprochement, I think, is better than not trying at all.

Rapprochement can initiate from one side, the other side, both sides at once, or with the diplomatic skill of a neutral or vested third part. But someone has to make the first move and that is the hardest part.

A month ago, a crucial friend in my past life initiated what I think she thought was rapprochement. I didn’t know what it was because of its detached clinical tone so I didn’t respond. I will one day because she is special to me, she did reach out, and I must honor that effort.

How does one initiate rapprochement with someone who was formerly dear to them but whose relationship was destroyed by known, unknown, imposed, self inflicted, misunderstood, conniving, maligning, state-sponsored, or independent zealous forces?

I don’t know. This is all new territory for me and I have made mistakes in navigating it.

In my recent experience, I would say the best way to initiate rapprochement is with face-to-face communication. All wars ultimately must end that way, with peace accords signed with a real pen on real parchment. Yes, face-to-face is undoubtedly the best. There is nothing I can add to that except real face-to-face means you have to move your body, walk across the street, drive across town, travel a hundred miles, traverse an ocean.

An email of decent length works pretty well, but it’s still a bit formless and lacks something, at least to me, that is corporeal.

A phone call is a superb method. Voices are important to hear. There is feeling and nuance in them. There is listening. There is asking and answering in complete sentences. There is the sound of humans forgiving one another and accepting responsibility. There is the sound of swallowing pride and moving forward into new terrain of more formidable friendship and leaving behind the previous flimsy ground.

A handwritten letter is an incredible method of rapprochement. I received one not too long ago and it instantly changed my life and provided hope. This friend keeps writing me letters and I cherish each one more than the last. More handwritten letters! They’re the ultimate in encryption.

Cards induce smiles and tears. More cards. Cards, cards, cards. Old cheesy Hallmark cards with fat fonts and groovy line illustrations!

A text message seems inadequate to initiate rapprochement, although one could argue it’s better than nothing. A drunken text message late at night is a disaster. A post on social media means ?

I am sure others have employed methods of ingenious rapprochement in their lives that succeeded and I failed to mention here. Whatever it takes to annihilate the whatever. Employ any method at your disposal. Then follow through. I know that works both ways, 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.)

Aimee Mann, Ray and a Faux Writer on the Alaska Highway

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , , ,

I was perusing the LA Times online in my writing studio when I came across mention of a new record by Aimee Mann. Of course I’ll never hear it because I don’t download music and record stores have gone extinct in rural areas across the land. Perhaps I could hear a cut or two from the new release on a website or Pandora. Who knows? I hadn’t thought about Aimee Mann’s music in many years, but reading the review returned me to a golden time when her music, actually one album, accompanied me on one of the more perilous and pretentious journeys of my life—driving the Alaska Highway.

In the summer of 2001, right before America took a terrible turn, I drove a pickup camper north from the Oregon Coast with the intention of seeing the Arctic Sea, forging an identity as a Jack London-esque writer, and exploding into the region’s literary scene with stories and essays that would blow away the pampered, effete MFA crowd.

Of course my vehicular inspiration was Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and thus I brought along my trusty canine sidekick Ray, while my wife at the time, Cindy, took care of sonny the husky, at home.

The idea was to drive, camp out, write, repeat. See the Last Frontier. Meet its crazies, see moose and wolves. Pan the story gold. Become a writer.

As it turned out, Ray and I drove roughly 6000 miles in little over a month, averaging 30-40 mph on the worst potholed and dangerous roads I’ve ever driven. As it turned out, I never wrote a single word on the trip. I was too exhausted after 12-14 hours days of driving. I never saw the Arctic Sea. I quit 200 miles short. I did see a moose. I did see a man walking the highway in loafers and carrying a briefcase. It was snowing at the time, at 6000 feet, in August.

Later, I wrote a 5000-word short story, “In Dubious Camper” about the adventure but could never get it published. I think writing this story was more of an exercise of teaching myself how not to become a writer. It later paid off.

During that 6000-mile journey, I listened to Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2, released in 2000, at least five times a day and I really can’t remember why I inaugurated that routine. I had never done that before with a record and haven’t done it since.

I memorized all the lyrics, all Aimee’s vocal inflections, and would often sing along in the middle of nowhere where a breakdown would have been certain disaster. Ray used to watch me when I sang. He looked at me like I was losing my mind. I think I was. But I had him and Aimee with me and we made it home alive.

I sold the camper a month or two later. I never played Bachelor No. 2 again…until a couple of days ago after reading the article. Frankly, I am surprised I still had it considering I got rid of most of my CDs during my recent terrible hospice care of my former self. Somehow it survived the purge. (Exile on Main Street did not and I miss that record these days.)

Listening to the album some 16 years later was a curious sensation. It took me right back on the highway, right there with my great old dog, the first of my coastal pack, the yearning to become a writer and the folly of that particular approach in becoming one. What was it about her songs that so mesmerized me in the midst of such desolate and overwhelming nature. I still can’t pin it down. It might have simply been her indelible soft voice in concert with the cadence of the bumpy road. I will never know. Music is like that to me. I don’t try to hard to figure it out.

If you’ve never heard this record, you might want to check it out. There is something still haunting and enlightening in there, at least for me, and I suspect for others. My favorite songs are:

Red Vines

Susan

How Am I Different

Calling it Quits

You Do

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer hard at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

 

What I Did This Sunday on the Oregon Coast Before 1:30 P.M.

NSP Meditations , , , , , , ,

Drank cheap coffee

Built fort

Threw cheese and fruitcake

Broke bread with birds

Wrote poem about breaking bread with birds

Listened to Aimee Mann

Wrote about Aimee Mann

Wrote about rapprochement

Read two chapters of Greek mythology

Watched last half hour of 1963 production of Jason and the Argonauts

Read two Christmas-themed Maigret detective stories by George Simenon

Planted garden

Made omelet

Talked to a friend

Composed a letter in my head

Weeded flowerbeds

Listened to Monk and Byrd albums

Talked to rat in basement

Talked to myself

Found a bumblebee’s lair

Sat on back deck daydreaming

Drank mint iced tea

Thought about the best strangest sentence overheard in the last three months, said by a woman in the probation office lobby: “The roast beef looked like mermaid…and it wasn’t the lighting.”

Rock Bottom

NSP Meditations , ,

They came in; they continue to come in.

Ha! I hope you enjoy rock bottom.

Call it what is, rock bottom.

This is your rock bottom.

How do like rock bottom?

Jesus will be there with you at rock bottom.

Your rock bottom is disgusting.

There were a few more, all subtle variations on the “rock bottom” phrase. The senders all assumed I had hit rock bottom; they all knew exactly where my final resting floor was. There was nothing said about me getting up. They most likely didn’t want me to.

Some communications came from people I know or used to know. Several came from people I have never met. Most came late at night.

Let me now indulge the senders’ assumption that I did indeed hit rock bottom somewhere during my ordeal, which is now closing in on one year. Let me mull over my alleged rock bottomness and explore its depths.

Here we go:

I hit rock bottom when:

  • I served time in jail; no, because the inmates showed me incredible compassion and I helped save a man’s life by asking him to write on the prompt: “From the heart.” He wrote 2000 words and read it to me in his cell while crying. Then he told me to use the piece in anything I wanted to write. I will.
  • The judge sentenced me in front of my family; no, because that felt more like a novel instead of reality and some of literature’s classics were unwittingly quoted there.
  • I sat at a table in a small room in the probation office surrounded by other registered sex offenders and read on the whiteboard a statement by J.K. Rowling: “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” No, because rock bottom can’t really occur in a carpeted room with inspirational quotes and potted plants.
  • I sat at a table in the Troller Lounge in Garibaldi on a stormy Tuesday morning in September on the exact same day and time that I should have been opening the 2016-17 school year at Astoria High School teaching creative writing, journalism, and Oregon Studies. I drank coffee while other men drank Crown and cokes. Oprah came on the television and introduced her new favorite author, Glennon Doyle Melton, author of the recently released and Oprah Book Club choice, The Love Warrior. Melton said, “Rock bottom is the beginning of the best place on earth…everything beautiful begins on the bathroom floor…” Her rock bottom was discovering her husband’s affair. No, ordering a Crown and coke at that moment wouldn’t cut it for me and the restroom floor in The Troller was no place to inaugurate beauty.
  • I caught wind that I was being publicly flamed and shamed on social media and comment boards; no, because I knew this was coming from people who spend time doing this.
  • I considered that I would never have a girlfriend or marry again; no; there are many women out there with boundless capacity for curiosity, forgiveness, understanding and reading between the lines of life, which of course makes for reading on your own.
  • I held the official end of my official teaching career in my hands; no, I knew I still wanted to teach and it was only a matter of finding new ways and forums to do so. And I wouldn’t have to grade or attend faculty meetings ever again!
  • I registered as a sex offender on my 53rd birthday; no, because the state police officer who registered me said he was a big fan of my writing.
  • I discovered that I had been a terrible friend to some very good people; no, because I now knew I could learn how to become a real friend.
  • I started collecting beaverwood, decorating my empty house with it and thinking I had quite possibly lost my mind; no, my collection provided a useful metaphor and helped resurrect the room where I watched my husky die.
  • I spent 30 minutes online investigating the employment and living prospects for members of The Registry and knew that I was ruined for life; no, like General Grant, I would not retreat. I would devise ways to attack on multiple fronts even if there were heavy losses and it took ten times as long as the Siege of Vicksburg, which it probably would.
  • I realized that no one was going to save me; no, because Aimee Mann had already covered that existential ground in her song, “Save Me” and taught me well.
  • I contemplated dragging some of my detractors into the gutter, where I was not; no, take the high road always. That’s what I always taught my students and I was never a hypocrite in my teaching or personal life.
  • Not a single Oregon writer of note came to my aid, even though I knew countless of them; no, writers are hardly special when it comes to demonstrating empathy, except perhaps in their writing.
  • I briefly considered making an early exit out of life at Hart’s Cove; no, I could never do that to my parents and I didn’t want to go out with a cliche. But there was consideration.
  • I imagined my future ending like Richard Brautigan’s maggot-infested ending, a suicide by shotgun with no one discovering the body on his kitchen floor for two weeks; no, I had read his biography and knew of his errors of alienation and estrangement from friends and family.
  • I admitted I just can’t beat this; no, those bromides from my junior high sports coaches actually turned out useful.
  • I realized I had placed certain close friends under extreme duress and they had come apart as a result; no, because we could have all helped one other had we simply communicated without agenda.
  • I wrote 10,000 words of an erotic novel set on the Oregon Coast and thought it might hit a home run on Amazon, but then stopped; no, but I really liked writing erotica and thought I was pretty good at it. Maybe later.
  • I wrote 40,000 words in jail (The Chill Tank Journal) and felt I was documenting my own permanent demise; no, writing that 40,000 gestated a mission in my life. Time will give it birth.
  • I cleaned the public restrooms at Astoria’s most famous tourist attraction during my one night stand as a custodian; no, hardly. That night was the beginning of my rebirth.
  • My great collaborator told me to never contact her again; no, I hold out hope of reconciliation one distant year or decade from now.
  • I thought I might lose my ex-wife as a trusted friend; no, she remains as faithful as ever.
  • I doubted that writing was going to help me transcend my marginalization; close, very close, but no, because I was living through an unprecedented story of American Kafka and had a unique background to tell it and become a voice for others who had their larynxes removed by the state.
  • I was (am) going broke; no, I wanted (want) to believe there was someone or some business who would give me the opportunity to work and serve.
  • I suffered a mass extinction of myself; no, I was l already thinking about a new life originating from new primordial sources.
  • I scoffed at the great notion that building driftwood forts on the beach would save my life; no, then it did.
  • I forgot how to laugh; no, then came Renee Zelwegger and Pamela Anderson into my life in jail.
  • My country elected a serial sexual assaulter as President and I had never assaulted anyone in any capacity my entire life; no, because I knew my country had once elected Richard Nixon twice.
  • I discovered that a few people bizarrely inserted themselves into my narrative with the direct intention to destroy me; no, why bother understanding the motives of obviously unfulfilled human beings.
  • I was eating cold chili from a can and camping out in a RV park populated by men who had removed themselves from society with pills, booze, pot and television; no, I hate television!
  • I lost faith in the annihilating power of the ocean; no, it returned the next morning. I’m just glad I gave the ocean a second chance.

No, I haven’t hit rock bottom and never will. There is no rock bottom in The Registry. There is only a labyrinth with trapdoors and tunnels that leads into an eternal meandering abyss, otherwise known as a bottomless pit.

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