Youngs Bay Coffee Shop—Late Summer

I am drinking excellent coffee in the Youngs Bay Coffee Shop. Yuban is dead.

Fog and smoke float through the shop. I keep thinking about the end of Oregon campfires. I want to write an essay about it. Or a tale.

It is early morning and summer wanes. I have nothing to do but wait for others. I grow weary of waiting.

Morning doves coo. I can see no birds.

The dandelions are curled up. A little more heat and they will release their yellow flowers. Then come the bees! I keep thinking about a short story where a man in a swank neighborhood mows around the dandelions in his lawn because he loves watching bees dance from flower to flower. And he wants to assist with the pollination of his world. His strange lawn draws the ire of the neighborhood lawn men and their rules for proper lawns. Tension ensues. Someone comes and mows his lawn when he goes out for groceries. The man is irate. More tension ensues.

The beach beckons. The latest installment of the fort message project has inspired some thoughtful, profane and hilarious writing.

I may have forgotten how to relax.

The big city burns up in heat and smoke and development.

I continue to downsize. There is little left that I own.

A distant reader wrote an extraordinary letter of appreciation thanking me for my books. He wants to read more. There will be more.

I wrote a letter to someone I haven’t seen or talked to in almost 25 years. I doubt the address is any good, but I felt compelled to try.