Streams of Driftwood Fort Consciousness

Lines written from a driftlog after building a driftwood fort.

The French writer Stendahl had 171 pseudonyms! I need one. I never thought I would would have to disavow my last name to see my writing about Oregon published by some other media entity besides Nestucca Spit Press, but there seems to be no other way. I turned Love into Hate. Imagine that trick of life. Maybe I’ll hit rock bottom when I deny my own name and see a fake one in print. At long last, is that really the end of the deep fall, to the awful splat! of the concrete floor?

I wish knew how to sew. I have uses for the skill. I wish I knew how to caulk. I will soon have uses for the skill.

Someone constructed a cairn that reminded me of Stonehenge.

I found a love poem written with the ink of an octopus. The poet discovered a dead one washed ashore and salvaged the ink. Interesting things end up on Port Orford beaches, including human beings.

I met a man who lost everything in a divorce, spent six months in jail for violating a restraining order, and as is now living in a tiny fifth-wheel trailer. He told me he likes it. “Simple.” He also promised to show me how to fish for surf perch. Oh, the people you meet in the margins! I much prefer writing about them than myself, although I am certainly in the margins these days.

I reached out to a long lost friend. She was happy to hear from me.

An old friend reached out to me and gave me a gig that allows me to put my writing talents to good use for Oregon. I thanked my friend for giving me the opportunity. I need more of them.

I’ve let go of all notions of control. For me, it’s a novel way of living life.

Tennis, tennis, tennis. I want to renew my love affair with the game that used to be an important part of my life. I can hit off the backboards, but at some point I’ll want someone to play with. We don’t even have to keep score. Why bother?

My unique book distribution system continues to bear fruit, connecting me to a fascinating new readership.

My dad quoted an interesting stanza of poetry to me the other day, from Elinor Wylie’s, “The Eagle and the Mole.”

Avoid the reeking herd/ shun the polluted flock / live like the stoic bird

Live like the stoic bird. I like the sound of that for myself and a rock band name.

Stoic birds don’t loathe. They live forever.

I was reading Oliver Twist and something occurred to me: my previous friendships were as thin as a Dickens’ gruel. I made the gruel and served it. I tasted it, too, and my body thought it was nourishing.

My letter writer wrote me two letters worthy of literature. One of them was about rivers. I read it by the river.

I’m going gray. That’s not the only thing about me that’s changed. The interior ones are way more pronounced. The book is in those interior changes. If I can write it. Sometimes I think I should write a book about Bonnie and Clyde instead. Isn’t writing from joy a better place for me now, better than the precarious place I am in now?

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