Youngs Bay

February Musings Overlooking Youngs’ Bay

Astoria, NSP Meditations , ,

That’s no typo. It’s spelled Youngs’ Bay and I have never learned the reason for the strange possessive. It’s misspelled all the time, usually by a corporate business entity.

Two dogs snooze nearby. I am drinking a glass of single malt scotch to celebrate a very good week in my life. My friend Holt turned me on to good scotch. Bourbon is dead to me forever. Times change. I’ve changed.

Two 70-year old women died while clamming a few days ago. They were clamming at night and got swept away. Their bodies were recovered, unfortunately, I think. I can think of worse ways to die. They probably felt nothing. A wallop, unconscious, and that was it. They never felt the cold, I bet.

Saddle Mountain is calling me. I want to climb it with a new friend.

I just finished reading a manuscript of a novel about high school teaching written by a former high school English teacher. He died from cancer in 2011 and his brother has contracted with me to bring this book to the attention of the reading public, in some form or another. It’s easily the best book about teaching high school I’ve ever read and it’s set in Astoria in 1996. As I read this novel, it was as if this teacher was speaking directly to me from the grave in his attempt to resurrect me as an Oregon man of letters. I am listening Neil.

Walmart rises in Warrenton. It’s another nail in the coffin in Astoria’s future as a gritty place.

I read the NY Times today, oh boy. It was a disembodied reading.

It always intrigues me when the media finds a new old world and every writer starts using it. The latest example is “riven.”

Why do people line up to drink stout beer? Conversation about stout beer is the most boring thing I’ve ever overhead.

A recent obituary said that the man who died was finally released from the “surly bounds of earth.” The earth isn’t surly; the earth is the earth. The people on earth construct imaginary surly bounds and create their own destructive surliness. I’m glad I never met this man before he died. He was probably beyond surly, a real asshole.

I want to cook a vegetarian goulash in the crock pot. I have a recipe.

The Bonnie and Clyde book is about ready to launch. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written, which is about right, because I am a new person.

I’m glad I didn’t live in the era when parents accompanied their offspring to every junior high sporting event and put their lives on hold watching the offspring perform. Kids typically never learn an interesting damn thing about life on overnight outings unless their parents aren’t around.

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January Meditations Overlooking Youngs’ Bay

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“The rivers are our brothers,” said Chief Seattle. “You must give the rivers the kindness you would give your brothers.”

There has been very little kindness offered to the Columbia River.

I am making new friends. I am trying to reconnect with old ones. I am going to take a special new friend to the rivers of my current life and share what they are about to me. I am thinking of teaching a river-themed writing workshop. Would that attract any writers? Do writers prefer writing topics to topics like Kindness, Faces, Rivers?

Rain is forecast all week.

I am putting my house up for sale.

I am approaching 90 failed job applications.

The broken record simile is dead.

The elk are on the move.

I haven’t built a driftwood fort in a month.

I’m reading a book about a talking and singing book who wishes he had hands.

I recently reread some Edward Abbey. He’s not holding up as well as expected.

I met an exciting new poet. Our meeting has re-energized my passion for poetry. I am seeing more poetry around me.

I met a new author and literary entrepreneur who has good ideas for the Oregon Coast.

The beard has gone where no beard of mine has gone before.

I am thinking about my friend Glen and his kelp soup. Yes, I know someone who harvest kelp on the beach and makes a soup from it.

The crabbers broke ranks and some took a lower price from the processors. Marx always said: “Own the means of production.” The crab price dilemma on the Oregon Coast is a delicious story of would-be socialism and worker collectives and capitalism and strike-breaking and all of that. It’s still the frontier in that industry.

Charles Bukowski wrote: “What interests me is non-dullness.”

Rum and rain go well together.

Where is that writer on rain who sent me the cryptic note on graph paper?

I am putting together a writers’ collective. We won’t break ranks.

My great collaborator and I might collaborate again.

A friend from the past contacted me in a supreme act of rapprochement.

I made the most wonderful black eyed pea soup. I am sharing it with friends. I didn’t use to do that.

My dad goes in for major surgery on Monday. It occupies my mind.

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Meditations Overlooking Youngs Bay 2

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I am writing this in longhand.

The air is heavy. I wish it would rain. I wish it would rain on the eclipse.

I am reading two literary biographies at the moment: Dorothy Parker and Ross MacDonald. The former loved dogs and scotch; the latter was a former high school English teacher who loved birds. Prince wrote about a song about Dorothy Parker and it’s called “Dorothy Parker.” Not too many musicians have written songs about writers although writers write about musicians and songs all the time. The 10,000 Maniacs sang a fun song about Jack Kerouac and The Hold Steady wrote a rocking song about the poet John Berryman (his suicide). Why hasn’t anyone written a song about Rachel Carson, Colette or Thoreau? Maybe someone has. Enlighten me please, but don’t Google it. Tap your knowledge base accrued through hard study.

I might also add that Ross MacDonald was instrumental in saving the Californian condor from extinction and taking a fierce conservation stand on the historic Santa Barbara oil spill. There’s a mystery in that for sure. A mystery writer who cares about the watershed.

That’s the mystery novel I will write.

Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice is might be the greatest mesmerizing book I have ever read and it was written by a German filmmaker.

I am also reading Pablo Neruda’s memoir. It reads like a river of passion.

I once met a female poet of confessional love poetry who had never read Neruda, never heard of him. She’s a millionaire these days, giving passionate advice about love.

I hear distant sounds of hammering, trucks, vacuuming, dropped tools and commerce.

I wrote another 1000 words on Oregon tavern age life. I wonder if anyone ever reads them? How will I get that book out?

I just hit 57 unsuccessful job applications.

Mint picked from a yard and crushed into whiskey is bliss.

I wonder if I have lost my right to vote.

There is a deep soul sickness in Astoria. It’s in all the papers but the paper here never reports it.

The rummage sale for the dog sanctuary is today and tomorrow in Warrenton. I hope they exceed their goal.

I just caught a whiff of skunk.

I want to write a dystopian short story where an authoritarian regime has banned corduroy and macrame because it makes the people less likely to conform. There will be a revolution.

I wish I owned one of the macrame tennis racket covers that were popular in the 70s.

Lots and lots of press about the eclipse. The media is missing the most interesting story. That story is who doesn’t care about the eclipse and will be sitting in an OTA joint in the Path of Totality when the eclipse occurs and sipping a Crown and Coke.

There is one special person I know who loves Crown and Coke.

Again, I ask: why can’t people do their jobs? I think it’s because they never wanted to do this particular job. It debases them. Or they debase the job because they aren’t worthy of the job. I saw that a lot in teachers over the years.

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Meditations Overlooking Youngs Bay

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It is good to be around a dog on a daily basis, even if it’s only temporary.

A hummingbird just visited me.

I read an interesting line about constructing and reconstructing one’s personal myth. Had I constructed one for myself? Now that almost everything about me has been annihilated (except my heart) how do I go about reconstructing a new personal myth? Or should I even try? Am I trying right now, subconsciously? Is it such a bad thing to have a personal myth? Myths are powerful forces in human culture. I need to think more about this subject and discuss it with more people.

I recently read Tim O’Brien’s 1994 novel In the Lake of the Woods and found the experience a revelation and almost supernaturally relevant to my current state of mind. Incidentally, I found it in the garbage. Think of that: I basically found supernatural relevance in the garbage. There out to be a word for that.

Here is one passage from the novel that I can’t get out of my head: “One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history…All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only maybe.”

Only maybe is a powerfully ambiguous phrase. I am living that phrase right now. I grow weary of it.

In the novel, the lead character’s wife disappears into a wilderness around a great lake. A short time later, the character disappears into the same wilderness.

Nobody knows what happened to them. Their bodies are never found. The author speculates and offers a lot of maybe this and maybe that, but the reader is left to imagine what happened. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The idea of disappearing is intriguing to me. I would say very intriguing. Pull an Ambrose Bierce, a Rimbaud or Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers.

You just can’t do that sort of thing in the age of the Internet and the rise of the Digital Police State. There is no real way of vanishing and reappearing later as someone new. You can’t be Jason Bourne in the real world.

A crow is cawing madly in a cedar tree above my house.

I am eating pie for breakfast. I believe the crow wants my pie.

I can hear drumming in the distance, the Astoria High School marching band at practice, sounds of my former life.

I just freed a bumblebee from a spider wed. It flew away into the rosemary bush.

I saw the perfect job for me to begin rebuilding my life. It truly is what I’ve always wanted to do for a living. There is no way I can ever get this job.

The creative mind remains strong within me. If that goes out, I’m done.

I am thankful for my friend Caroline for getting me work that allows me to write creatively and protect Oregon’s future.

Humbug Mountain is calling me.

I once wrote an essay about being in the Rock Zone. I’ll never be there again.

Winter ale in summer?

It felt so hard to be an American last weekend in light of the hate and murder in Virginia. But I am buoyed by the fact that so many fine Americans did take to the streets to counter hate and white supremacy. There is hope yet.

A murder of crows is sending up a resounding racket. They are preparing to strike for pie.

I am going to wash my car today.

It feels good to tell someone how you feel about them.

I wish I would hear from you.

(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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