July 20, 2017

Lost and Found 15 / Purpose

A year ago, I lost all sense of purpose. Since then, I have attempted to find a new one. I asked for one. I applied for some. I mixed potions in a cauldron to invent one. I’ve read 300 books to stumble across one. I walked a thousand miles on the beach to inspire one. I’ve tried finding a new purpose so many times I’ve lost count.

No concrete purpose has emerged. I can’t even glimpse a vague path in undiscovered country and I reconnoiter frequently.

Maybe I should stop the reconnoitering and go on forays instead. Maybe I should ride out with a standard, perhaps even with a sidekick or existential six shooter. Maybe I should hit the real ground and bushwhack trails, blaze away, get the Natty Bumppo thing going. Maybe I should finally learn how to play a guitar and busk in the poorest town on the Oregon Coast. Maybe the ocean no longer can help me.

It is a strange and unprecedented feeling for me to live without tangible purpose and to feel at times almost powerless to change that.

Perhaps I need to redefine the meaning of the word “power” and other words I thought I understood. I’ve already done so with words such as “family” and “friendship.” Those were good redefinitions. There are many more to come. I may even take up the word “ocean” and toss it around for something fresh.

How do I summon a heretofore unknown power to find a new purpose? What must I still lose to attain clarity in how to proceed?

Is there purpose in purposelessness? Maybe I’ll never find a large noble (paid) purpose but enact tiny (free) healing ones around me. That’s not so bad, is it? The need is everywhere.

(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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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

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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.