June 27, 2017

Finding Inspiration

I seek inspiration to transcend. I look for it everywhere When I am not looking, it bumps into me or flies overhead.

In recent months I have found inspiration in:

Fog at low tide

A Russian couple hunting for mussels at the South Jetty

Two old dogs named Bonnie and Clyde

Rivers

Foxgloves

Thin Lizzy’s “The Cowboy Song”

Bob Seger’s “Strut”

Eating radishes from the garden

The writings of Rachel Carson

The cheap crispness of a frosty Rainier on a 85-degree day.

Driftwood forts

Counting tree rings

A battered bald eagle

A 1976 book about the Chinook Indians that is the best book about the Columbia River I have eve read

Flying the Oregon state flag with a stick of beaverwood as a pole

Scenes from the ancient basketball movie, One on One

A stranded sea lion pup who fought for life

Friends who help me with my yard

A friend who found me a toy boat

A friend who gave me magic healing potions

A friend who gave me a boss zip-up hoodie emblazoned with the logo of a local butcher shop

Flywheel mowers

A former student who sought help in writing a eulogy for his best friend

A friend who keeps writing me letters worthy of being called literature and will be visiting very soon

People and artists who live utterly different and are not derivative in their art or personalities

An elderly man who will give me a chance

A $52.46 royalty payment from Amazon

Godfather’s Books

Readers who still seek out my books

People who still want to take writing classes from me

People already gearing up to go to work in 2018 to reclaim the country

(If you found this post inspirational, 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.)

Support Meditations Blog

The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.