portland short story

City Scenes, Thoughts from the City, A Story

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

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

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , ,

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I like reading the writing of dead unpublished writers and knowing that I will have a hand in publishing them. I wonder if anyone will come along after I’m dead and publish some of my unpublished writing.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

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , ,

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.

(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.)