portland flash fiction

Notes for the Coffee Shop Novel

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

More electronic devices in use than people using them.

A hip priest takes a quasi-confession from gender-conflicted parishioner. They fist bump.

Dissipated writer tries to reanimate.

It’s sunny outside but a few customers carry umbrellas; Oregon is dead.

Shop only plays Patti Page or Patti LaBelle.

Lots of posters for animal rescue events.

Everyone is incredibly tall.

A regular always wears yellow or orange denim skinny jeans.

Two women daily occupy the corner window and write computer code for health care conglomerates.

The shop introduced square coffee cups and the customers revolted.

One man always walks in eating a cucumber.

The shop has a certain beloved transient who serves as a mascot and alleviates everyone’s conscience about doing nothing about homelessness.

One older man’s flatulence is the shop’s inside joke. Luckily, it doesn’t stink; it only toots like a horn you might hear during a logging operation.

There is no plot, only milieu.

Not a single customer knows how to change a flat tire.

The female barista wears vintage tennis skirts all the time and wants to meet a modern-day Bukowski or become one herself.

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City Scenes, Thoughts from the City, A Story

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A man in a gray suit drinks coffee and eats a confection.

Outside, the streets are shrouded in clouds.

A man describes his recent breakup. They’ll split custody of the dogs but he has to move.

I haven’t slept much in 48 hours. I am feeling a lassitude.

The writing is going well, new breakthroughs. Writing for dogs, writing for life.

Madness has descended upon me. But I remain sane. I will never lose my comportment.

The barista looks vaguely Gothic.

Beards and sideburns reign here. I shaved my beard after five months of growth.

Hank Williams plays. His plaintive voice still gets to me. How does one write the way he sings?

Perry Mason with Dad. Perry fights injustice, venality and conventional wisdom. He wins.

Rosemary in bloom catches my eye. Nothing like rosemary branches burned in a burn barrel and that fragrance.

The Bonnie and Clyde book just passed 40k in words. It is off the leash, galloping. It is moving like a dog on an Oregon Coast beach after a long imprisonment in an animal shelter.

All my recent attempts at rapprochement have failed. I think I should probably give up.

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A Big City Story

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I drink a $3 iced tea. I sit at a table near the counter.

“Rubberband Man” by the Spinners plays. I danced to that song at junior high dances and danced to it badly.

I think about the flotilla of dilapidated boats roped together on the Willamette River, near Ross Island. A ramshackle navy of homeless men, women, dogs and cats. There is a quirky dystopia unfolding in the city. Tepees and boats and the dispossessed with smart phones. Beavers and herons looking on.

A photography zine for sale–$10.

An ad for custom-made chain mail catches my eye. People wear chain mail in the city?

Tepid art for sale on the walls.

Everyone clad in black, using an Apple product. One kid is wearing a cravat.

A small dog on a candy cane-striped leash enters and sniffs around me. I feel for the dog. He’s an accessory, nothing else.

I long to live in a rock hut with an ocean view in a climate where Apple products rust and fail.

I like reading the writing of dead unpublished writers and knowing that I will have a hand in publishing them. I wonder if anyone will come along after I’m dead and publish some of my unpublished writing. I better add a codicil to the will to ensure that.

I want to start a business that investigates and assesses the writings of dead writers and makes publishing recommendations to their families. I am going to start that business. I’ll need a logo.

The word defenestration has floated through my mind in recent weeks. It’s one of those words that doesn’t sound like what it means.

I think of all the thousands and thousands of hours I spent in cafes all over the world in my 20s and early 30s, where I tried to write stories and novels, and the writing never transpired. It finally happened when I started writing in dive taverns along the Oregon Coast. Why?

I dread the next two hours.

“A Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone plays. I remember dancing with someone in my house to this song. There was later a visit to the beach at dusk and a gray sky so congealed that I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

I stashed four of my books in the cafe’s bookshelf. Let them loose to the city winds and the city minds.

The barista complimented me on my corduroy jacket, made in Yugoslavia by communists and purchased for 99 cents at an animal shelter thrift store.

I meet later with an old friend. I don’t think this friend is all that enthused about the prospect of meeting me. I sense meeting me has become an obligation for some people. (The friend never showed up, texted or called.)

I learned a new word from a dead writer’s unpublished novel—sibilant. I like it. The “sibilant ocean” is how he used it. The ocean hissing.

Automobile fumes fill the cafe.

I am writing this in longhand in a notebook. I am the only person writing that way.

I forgot to bring my Perry Mason novel with me. I’m on my third straight. They are vastly different than the television show. I like the Perry in the show better. More reserved. Classier. Is it possible to look classy using an Apple product in a cafe?

Let me look around…

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The City, a Story Again

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The cafe again. The counter. The view up the street. Rain wants to fall.

A woman talks loudly on her phone to a client, a catering client. She’s talking wine and cakes.

I bought a hat for a dog today. I bought a biography about Patty Hearst.

Coffee went up in here again. Yuban seems to keep costing less.

A man walks down the sidewalk carrying two empty growlers.

Work is coming my way. Good work. The key to good work seems to be found in face-to-face encounters. I seek them out. Some people are afraid of these possible encounters with me because they might have to consider, reconsider. Reconsidering is very hard for people anymore in an era of instant judgment and determination.

I saw a tepee near the Hawthorne Bridge. It had rough-hewed poles of alder. Someone harvested them near the river. Someone hauled them up from the river. I suppose it makes the city a more interesting place of ecology if there are still alders around for people to harvest for use in making shelter. One suspects, however, that beavers near the river aren’t happy. They have competition.

My mind drifts to the future. Where will I live? What will I see? What are the faces in the new place?

Fatigue creeps in.

A friend told me she is going to apprentice as a cobbler. She’s sick of computers and the sterility of their sterile tactile nature. She wants to use her hands and use an awl.

I’m creating a new job for myself: literary executor for the estate of dead unpublished writers. I read the writing from the dead and make recommendations on its disposition. I love this job. Give me more unpublished writing from the dead. There is unique life in this work. It’s totally unlike reading a published book from a dead writer. They got it out, somehow. Perhaps I will help this dead writer’s dreams of being published come alive.

The coffee tastes especially bitter.

Why is there a potted cactus in the window? In Western Oregon?

I made a crying woman laugh yesterday in a place of utter American misery. I didn’t even know her, but I saw her face and I reacted with my face and asked: “Are you okay? Can I help?”

She said “no” and “no” and then I said something and made her laugh.

I meet another friend later, in another part of the city. I would like to make her laugh.

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Yet again, a Short Story From the City

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Rain falls. Sun shines. Hail collides.

I stocked two free street libraries with my books. It’s pretty much the only way I distribute these days. But when I return, the books are always gone. I can’t say that about bookstores. Free is good. Free books find their way to the most interesting of unforeseen readers. I’ve heard from a few in recent years.

I was in this coffee shop 23 years ago on the day it opened. A few minutes ago, I met the man that opened it and he still owns it—remarkable. We talked about the time he installed the red tile floor and the gentrifying changes in the neighborhood. He told me wanted out, out of Oregon, perhaps to Tennessee to start a commune of sorts on cheap land. I’ve been hearing similar stories of real or potential exodus from many long-tern Oregonians. Something has dramatically shifted and they are highly irritated. The owner then began talking about the late Republican Governor Tom McCall’s bold governing initiatives. I produced a reproduction of McCall’s 1970 campaign bumper sticker from my back pack and presented it to him. He nearly fell out of his chair. He thanked me and got up and affixed the bumper sticker to the front window. He came back over and sat down. “McCall was something else,” he said. “Have you ever heard about that rock festival he put on? Vortex?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said.

We talked of Vortex for a few minutes and then he drifted away. I went back to writing a love letter to someone who loves me but doesn’t want to love.

An elderly woman wearing a red smock dragging on the floor reads a newspaper.

An elderly man reads a novel and mouths the words silently as he reads. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that.

Ryan Adams plays softly. Drunk Ryan Adams, not the boring, later sober Ryan Adams.

I have not seen a phone in use. Places like this still exist in the city but they border on museum exhibit. Maybe I’ve become a walking Oregon museum exhibit. Dig it.

My mind floats to an old girlfriend I used meet near here—The Ship—a classic OTA dive bar. It’s still diving, thank god. I wonder what happened to her. I wish I knew where she was. Great first name—Tina. She kind of looked like Mary Tyler Moore but without the huge smile.

Another older man just entered carrying a huge three-ring binder. They are rare in public these days. Once, the nuclear codes were stored in three-ring binders. I think we might have been safer then.

Two older women take a window seat. They start talking in whispers. Secrets!

I’m wearing a 50-year old plaid Pendleton shirt that was originally given to my father by my grandmother. After I die, I want it to go to the right person. I’ll mention this in my will. I know the person. She might even wear it without irony.

Why do I write these stories from the city? They aren’t even stories. Nothing happens. I suppose that’s a kind of story, a slow-motion story of nothing.

The man opens his binder and I notice notebook paper with notes and diagrams. I think he’s studying for a test.

Time to roll out onto the streets. I wouldn’t mind feeling hail. Hail hurts, but I like the sting on my face.

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Yet Another Short Story from the City

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

Tattooed love boys and girls fiddle on their phones and deign to converse with one another.

Stevie Wonder plays—the double and triple album era. He once recorded a triple album called The Secret Life of Plants. That needs to be playing in here. I’ll alert the management. I know someone who works here who loves plants. In fact, the cafe has plants.

A barista cleans the windows without purposeful intent. DH Lawrence once wrote that if you’re going to make a stool or make pudding, make it well.

I don’t understand why people reappear in my life and then turn around and disappear.

Great high ceilings in here.

“When you can’t get in traction,” wrote Henry Miller, “Reverse and get unstuck.” That seems to be good advice for writing and life.

I interviewed with the Chinese for an English teaching position. I’m not sanguine about my chances. Will anyone hire me? I need a dog as a boss.

Who are these people in the cafe and their work? Do they use their hands besides touching screens? Are they handless jobs?

I see some cultural magazines from The City on a counter. I used to read them. I’d rather read a user agreement these days. More relevance.

Not far from here I once paid $40 a month in rent to live in a house with four other people while attending grad school. That City is long gone.

This cafe needs a micro lending library. Get some literature cross-pollination going in and around here.

I always do a double take when I see someone reading in public anymore. No one is reading in the cafe.

My great collaborator arrives soon. A strategy of rapprochement succeeded. We’ll hash out ideas to reinvent micro publishing. I relish these moments of hashing between us.

What is the meaning of the verb “to hash?” I don’t know. I’m not going to look it up.

I’ve spent more on coffee in the last six hours than a can of Yuban costs.

Strawberries are out of season but a strawberry mind is on my mind.

I wrote a sonnet channeling Rilke and Prince. I write a sonnet about every decade.

Where are dogs taking me in my writing?

I met sincere kindness in this cafe a couple of months ago. It is changing my life.

Does one have to become a dog to write more authentically about humans? There is an extensive literature in this approach that indicates the best dog books are books written by dogs and they are about humans.

I’ve prepared several versions of my “blasting-to-smithereens” statement that I’m considering sending to someone who needs to hear it and start over. But how do you know if you should send such a statement? You don’t. By not sending it, am I taking the high road? It doesn’t feel like it. But sometimes when contemplating an action or inaction, the high road can’t be seen. You can always see the gutter.

My father quoted Emily Dickinson the other day: “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.” Is that soul sick? Many experts on therapy think so. I don’t. I think that soul thrives. The shut door doesn’t mean it’s permanently shut. It can be opened by the shutter at any time, and someone can also knock. It might even be an unsolicited knock. I’ve recently discovered that can still happen.

(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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