Back Deck 100 Degree Ruminations
It’s a hundred degrees on the back deck as I write this while sipping a vodka tonic.
George Benson plays on the socialist jazz station. I saw him live in the mid 80s.
Elmer the husky is wilting on the back yard. We just passed six months together and have found a sweet groove. My creative mind and bodily fitness continue to improve because of him and our outings.
Speaking of one of our outings, we passed a young homeless man at 5 in the morning. He was leaning against a church and eating what appeared to be pudding. His kid’s bicycle rested a few feet away, as did his possessions. I didn’t say anything. Later, on my way to the golf course to hit a bucket of balls on the range, he was still in the same spot. I am preparing an emergency bag of supplies for him and carrying it with me tomorrow morning. If he’s there, he’ll get it. I’ll just set it down and walk away. If he’s not there, there’s certainly someone else in need we’ll encounter. There always is.
As for the assassination attempt on the former President, I just can’t bring myself to write about it. I do know from my long study of American history, we’ve been in as worse or much worse places and also with Supreme Courts as reactionary as the current one. Dred Scott? Plessy vs Ferguson? All FDR’s New Deal programs tossed? It helps me cope to know this. It is also worth remembering that MLK was killed and George Wallace was an elected Governor, ran for President, won electoral votes, and that Eisenhower had to call in the US Army so black students could attend Little Rock High School.
I finished rereading Jim Harrison’s 2004 memoir, Off to the Side, earlier today. I read it when it first came out and he died in 2016, I think. What a life! He is easily my favorite American novelist and his books have influenced me as a person and writer more than any other author (Gore Vidal is a close second). I never tried to write like Harrison. He just inspired me to leave Portland in 1997 and head to the Oregon Coast and try to become a writer. Harrison had a lot of help early on from literary and cinematic celebrities in getting his books published. But he made his own breaks. You have to put something out there to get a break as far as writing goes. I have often wondered what would have happened to me if one of my books would have found its way to someone who then gave me that big break. I’ll never know. I did meet Harrison in a Portland bookstore in 1997. He was doing a signing for his collection of Zen-inspired poems. He was drinking red wine from a goblet. I was nervous and thanked him for his writing. He signed the book and I still have it, of course. It was the only time I ever met a personal hero. Wait, I also got to meet Maurice Lucas!
I loaned someone $500 knowing full well she’ll never repay it despite her saying she will.
I teach another writing workshop this coming weekend. The subject: homelessness. I’ve said this before, but this one feels like the last one.
The 20th anniversary of my book, The Far Out Story of Vortex I, is this summer. A week ago I received an extraordinary email from a 77-year-old woman from California who found the book and was overwhelmed with emotion reading it because it transported her back to an important (better) time in her life. That email made my month and she went on to purchase several other of my books.
My highly eccentric Steve Prefontaine book is completed and should be out this fall if everything goes according to plan. The decision I now have to make: how far do I go to promote the book. The 50th anniversary of his death is in May of 2025 and there will be fanfare. Do I try to capitalize on that or is that unseemly?
I recently made my first piece of visual art, a mixed media of watercolor and collage of sewing patter cover illustrations from the 1970s. I have never considered myself a visual artist because I can’t draw. But I am maker of driftwood forts and consider what I leave behind on the beaches to be art and shelter and entertainment. I may never make another piece of visual art, but painting a piece of wood with watercolors was an exhilarating experience quite unlike writing.
Next book to read: Rickshaw, a Chinese proletariat novel from the late 1930s.