small town, 1

When I first moved here, the first person I met was a guy I think was named Richard and he was both dying of cancer (maybe) and trying to find, not a publisher, but a promising young (preferably male) person to type up his manuscript, an experimental poetic song-cycle-style fictional novelistic/biographical trilogy documenting the spirit quest and coming of age of a young man in (probably) the '70s. I'd see Richard most mornings, briefcase and ratty ponytail, hunched in front of a coffee shop scribbling. An unspecific Mob was searching for him, he told me. He figured the last place they'd look was the coast because who goes to the coast? No one important, he concluded. And he, knowing nod, was important, albeit only to a small scummy underworld in one of L.A.'s less interesting poor neighborhoods. It all tied back, he said, to a girl though the details had become foggy.

Now it's five years later. I caught sight of Richard in mid-October while I was eating sushi. He looked the same, but his surroundings have undergone a curse-removal transformation. The fact I was eating sushi in what used to be such a 'Merican town is one sign. I watched "Beauty and the Beast" the other day so I'm up on the curse-removal transformations.

Talk to anyone who lived here before the early 2000s and you'll understand some holy, good-fairy rain has fallen on this place turning all the Gothic revival architecture sparkly white -- cherubs sprouting everywhere, though in this case cherubs look a lot more like trendy Portland (think: piles of old books no one reads arranged on shelves too high to reach and a general wash of decor culled from "antique" stores... lots of hardware and rust and chipped paint, which might actually have been painted on and then purposefully sanded back to make it authentic by which we mean truthful? by which we achieve salvation in our times? Quinoa.)

This summer someone in New York (I think) wrote an article about the town, mentioned the pub where I work and said something like, "Wow. You saw all these people drinking beer and wearing flannel shirts and they weren't hipsters! Their flannel stood for something...like lumber or whatever..."

Bad news. None of that flannel stood for anything. It was false flannel. Those were tourists. Craft beer tourists, but tourists none the less. They were wearing flannel because that's what people do these days and they were here doing that because this place is no longer scary. Its buildings no longer look like remnants of an air raid blackout. There are things to do here besides overdose or dwindle into poverty, although both activities are still options. Richard has became an anomaly where he used to be the cocaine-heroin addled norm.

Secret weather

This picture was yesterday morning. Fog was heavy over the rivers, but when it hit land, it thinned, sending out tendrils among the trees. 

In history (by which I mean the movie version of "Sense and Sensibility"), people talked about the weather when they weren't clever enough to come up with something else to say and were ridiculed later. But out here, weather's kind of a big deal. Weather here can mean flooding and sinking ships and the only roads in or out closed down, trapped in town with so much water in the air it feels like you could drown just by breathing deeply. And then when the sun is back, unlooked for, this place is so beautiful and you hope the tourists never find out and continue confining their invasion to the summer months. Please God let them never find out about October.

things people say to people who serve them beer

"You're a Baptist pastor's daughter."

Oddly enough, I'm not.

how to start a campfire

We couldn't find the lake and it was getting dark. The girl with bug bites on her arms about to hike down to the waterfalls we planned to visit the next morning said we could join her for a beer at the falls but she had no idea what lake we were talking about and she'd grown up in the area. If we never found it, she said, we could go to her mom's house in the valley tomorrow morning and eat pancakes with the family. We said thanks but we wanted to find the lake.

But then, driving and driving, we were down to one more hour of daylight so we gave up for the night and pulled into an old quarry where Alder trees and blackberry bushes were taking over. Someone had put together targets in the belly of the quarry, and there were empty shells all over the ground. We kept to the far edge, almost under the tree branches and pitched tents. I wandered into the trees with a hatchet to gather wood. There was a sound of water all around me, but no stream in sight in the thick forest that fell steeply away in to cliff sides and canyons. My feet sank ankle-deep into moss.

We built our fire inside a circle of stones already established by previous sharpshooters and campers, and we listened for passing cars. It was a forest shot through with old logging roads, barely maintained, and anyone might be passing by, hikers decked out in gear wanting only to experience some fresh air and quiet, or meth monsters reeling like zombies and seeking out human flesh and wallets. That's the problem with the outdoors, people are looking for quiet and an escape for all kinds of reasons.

The sun was gone and our fire made us feel safe. We watched it in silence and the night noises became familiar. That's when the live rounds started to go off. There was a firework bang and wood exploded. Sparks flew out sideways. I jumped about fifteen feet backwards. Then the forest silence closed in again while the campfire flickered and flamed innocently. We watched it. A fluke, maybe. Then it happened again. And thirty seconds later, again.

It took us about a minute to stamp out the fire and smother it with dirt and water.

The next morning showed us what the twilight and the approaching dark had hidden. The sun, already hot enough to make me sweat when I stepped from the shadows, picked out hundreds of unspent tiny bullets, glinting silver in the dust.

how to board a plane

It's almost a universal, golden and such, rule: When you are waiting for a plane, look around the boarding area and identify the person you'd least like to sit next to on the upcoming flight. Be as judgmental as you want: they are too large, too small, possibly smelly, possibly emotionally disturbed, loud, creepy, asthmatic, carrying a small child. Implore the God of your fathers, "Let me not be seated next to one such as this." End with an "Amen" as you were taught. For your Father in Heaven will listen, and then, as you stumble down the cramped airplane aisle to seat 18F, that person will invariably follow, hoist their carry-on into the overhead compartment, smile benignly at you, and say, "That's me, right there next to you."

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The pilot on my early-morning flight out of Omaha last week was a tall, thin man who looked exactly like his co-pilot, another tall, thin man, except the pilot wore glasses. He also looked like a man who used to be allowed to smoke in the cockpit and couldn't understand why the practice had died out. At the same time, he also looked like a man who had never smoked in his life and ate his weight in spinach every morning. He was, then, a pilot to trust, capable of being all things to all people, an everyman. The flight attendants introduced him as Captain Brian.

Some pilots board their airplanes like boozers, massaging the space between their eyes and stubbing their toes against invisible barriers. They pat at their stomachs and small smiles appear and disappear on cue when flight attendants make jokes. They drag their rolling suitcases like a ball and chain. They do not make you confident you will arrive at your destination alive. Instead you (I) have visions of terrible crashes when these pilots pass out at the controls over a mid-flight scotch on the rocks, of being stranded in the Rockies forced to rely on my fellow passengers for survival. Fellow passengers are the last people you want to ever have to rely on. Half of the time they look mutinous and needy and the other half of the time, they're asleep. Survivor-types do not sleep. One eye open all the time.

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I sat next to a guy cradling a bonsai covered in a plastic bag, a wedding favor, he said, as if apologizing. When we were coming into land, my ears wouldn't pop and my fever broke. He took one look at my sweat-covered, slightly panicked face (I kept yawning, trying to make my ears pop) and, shifting the bonsai, pulled his Kindle closer to him as though it could negate my existence.


At the airport before, TSA agents made an important announcement, "Will the person leaving their belt at the security check please retrieve it?" The TSA agents in Omaha are generally pretty nice (I swear one even called me "honey"), but it was clear from the agent's tone that if this man (or woman), this serial belt deserter, did not go claim the belt, the TSA would hunt him down and the rest of us would witness an execution by firing squad.

good intentions, a three part essay

(I'm back at the coast. And here are the cats, obsessing over a mouse toy. Come visit me. I will make you breakfast. Also perhaps cookies.)

3-Part Essay, as it were: Good Intentions

I.

On the shelf, next to me, is a book called "The Texan" by Burt Arthur with the tag line: "When they took away his badge, he enforced the law...with blazing six-guns." Which is probably why they took away his badge in the first place. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and, at times, otherwise corrupt cattle barons need to step in and defrock gun-happy, mentally unbalanced sheriffs no matter how blue said sheriff's eyes, how stubbly his chin or how chiseled his gaze across those wide dusty plains may be. 

II.

Growing up, we prayed for victory against opposing teams and politicos, in the manner of Israelites about to face off against the Philistine army, calling out to the God of their fathers. But deep in my heart I always got a thrill when I read somewhere (Samuel? I or II?) when the Philistines realized that some prophet or leader had dredged a confession out of the adulterous hearts of the Hebrew people and, as a result, God had decided to shine upon the Hebrew army and hand out a victory, and the Philistines saw this, understood it but faced it anyway. I was supposed to learn that this was ultimate brashness and arrogance, but I was kind of impressed instead.

III.

The local youth soccer league board met this morning in a hotel lobby attached to a coffee shop. At first I didn't realize who they were and eavesdropping didn't enlighten me. They could have been discussing anything from a business merger to the formation of a monkey wrench team trying to put a stop to dredging in the Columbia River. It was hard to say.

I know these people (in theory) like kids and want them to succeed and be healthy and learn skills, but going off their meetings alone, you'd think it was about firing coaches for political reasons because the fate of the world hangs in the balance, especially if the candy drive fails.