A Notebook – Since 2007
I pitch my brother a tricky slow
curve that floats warbling past the pink
hibiscus and slides away under
the Chinese elm, but he goes with the pitch.
The yellow plastic bat darts
like a startled fish, and he sends
me back, back, to the wall –
and the white, holey ball
whiffles over the roof,
landing in the olive tree.
Happy Birthday, John!
A seeking breeze softly slips
under the sleeping cherry tree
a cursory note, “I am too busy.
Too, too, toodle-loo,”
smiles, hushes, and sounds off.
A branch snaps, and a cat recalls the night
when the owl, the nightingale,
and the toad went out walking.
The moon follows the trio into the tea garden, pulling
behind the sounds of the rollicking ocean waves.
In the garden, two women sit talking:
“I wrench or hammer or pull or push
To disassemble and repair
To build in empty air
The sound truth that is not
Sound enough.”
“I don’t believe the truth
That there is no truth
There are two truths
The one you reject
And the one you embrace.”
Drowned out by the singing waves slopped with frothing beer,
An old, lost surfer takes a hearty long piss on the briny rocks
At the water’s rough edge and mutters a half assed poem
To pass the night in song outside walking the dark beach
While the women sit talking with the cat in the cove of the garden
Under the cherry tree awakening and petals falling all
In one great breath the ocean waves belly laughing full.
Last week, I saw a guy wheeling a couch down a sidewalk over near SE Woodstock. He had the full size living room couch balanced on an office chair on wheels, and was pushing the makeshift vehicle along the sidewalk, away from a garage sale, a clear sign summer is in the offing in Portland. I mentioned the couch on wheels to Susan, and she said let’s set sail for the new garage sale season come Saturday morning, foraging afield, stopping whim-whamfully, burying our treasure in the back of our little wagon. Yes, I added, and thence to the basement to add to our pile of previously purchased garage sale items that we will no doubt put out in our own garage sale later this summer. There you go again with the negative vibes, Moriarty, she replied, but come Saturday morning, off we jibed, cutting a course from Mt Tabor zigzagging northwest through uncharted garage sale waters.
Never mind, for the moment, why we keep stuff; why do we acquire the stuff to begin with? But what did we acquire on our Saturday garage sailing adventure?
Our first disembarkment came just a few blocks out of harbor. We looked at an ironing board (does anyone iron anymore? I asked Susan). We looked at a large, thick piece of glass and considered it for a table top. There was a DVD player for sale, a few books, and a treasure trove of old, vinyl albums, out of which I picked, for 50 cents, a Peggy Lee with George Shearing recording. I would have brought home a few more old, folk albums I saw, but most of them looked like they had served as scratching pads for a family of catastrophic cats. While I was thumbing through the albums, Susan picked out a shoe tree for her closet, and I wondered if this was a portent of an organized summer. Our garage sale hosts were themselves disembarking for adventures elsewhere, pulling up anchor, moving.
We stopped at a church rummage sale over on Burnside. Susan picked out a tiny, wire jeweled Christmas tree, though Christmas seems an ocean away to me. Things were half off at the church sale, and I showed Susan a lemonade sign leaning against a rail outside the vestibule. We could hang it somewhere, I said, assuring her I had no immediate plans to sell lemonade. The sign was marked $2.50, so we got it for $1.25, and Susan said churches often have the best garage sales.
But even half price was no match for Susan’s find at our next stop, an old, maple director’s chair at a garage sale off of Stark – in the free box pile. It had no seat nor back, and was missing the dowels that hold the seat fabric under the arms. If you can find any logic to buying a lemonade sign at half price, you can understand having to lug home the priceless, broken director’s chair. But on the way home we stopped by a specialty store where we got a director’s chair seat and back fabric replacement kit, on sale for three bucks. We were in favorable trade winds.
We stopped here and there, browsing more than buying, listening to a seller’s story here, a buyer’s tale there. Then we landed at the most enjoyable sale of the day, where three ladies joyfully called our attention toward multiple kitchenware items, a mirror, homemade stuffed toy animals, blankets and quilts, dishes, knickknacks, tools – these and more sundries arranged neatly on tables and blankets and leaning against a tree in the front yard. And I made my third purchase of the day. For 50 cents, I bought a little Singer box of sewing machine parts, but I got it for the tiny, specialized screwdrivers it contained.
I’m the kind of garage sailor who vows every voyage is his last, though it’s not the long run on the open sea I want, either, instead of tacking through neighborhoods, but I’ll probably sail through the summer stopping at garage sales if I see books, albums, tools, or guitars. The sailor on land wants to walk. And if I find myself some distance from the mother ship wanting to haul a garage sale item home, I can always ask if they happen to have any office chairs on wheels for sale. The garage sale offers a unique barometer of local economic conditions, windows of interest into local communities, and the stories one hears surely fill part of the void left by the disappearance of newspapers. In any case, there’s always the chance of the odd lemonade sign showing up.
Click any photo for gallery view:
Lettuce make someone happy souperfied. Greens and reds raised and cooked in summer sun. Old gourd melon face turn round and around. Squash straighten out cute little zucchinis. Carrot tops fuzzy green pointing poking. Turnip cold heart don’t be rutabaga. Radish reaction thistle never do. Wilt silly salty pinch potato eyes. Watching. Asparagus more of this stuff. Spears dollups thin slices of pink water. Peas take your jackets off and stay awhile. Ouch cucumber splinter onion oils mix. Tear drops sea salt keeping with tradition. Corn fits in hand like a hammer handle. Colorful beans leggy for you and me. Chives purple heads and slippery mushrooms. Tomato baseball radio garlic. Bread olive oil hot green jalapeno. Pepper corn and squeeze curve of lemony raspberry wild balsamic vinegar. Tossen flip thistle make summerone happy.
The cryptic cat her cautious criticism
of the green salsa garden plot proffers:
“Are you a nested poet, then?”
the hoity-toity cat simply asks.
“I have my cri cri critics,”
the Pine Jay stutters,
pouring herself another glass
of mock orange soda syrah.
“Are you going to mix
silver with orange, then?” asks the cat.
“I would rather arrange the orange
against this blue windswept evening.”
“That would encourage a paraorange
gown,” cynically suggests the cat.
“Scr scr scree!” the Pine Jay screes,
her voice trailing off like a jet’s vapor.
“Mock, mock!” the cat converses,
though alone now. “I never did like orange peel.”
On the road again,
and on the car radio,
another Country Music song:
I’m 44 now, soon 45
The way I been livin’
Lucky alive
So much has been given
And taken away
Who knows what will happen
Today
Late summer, almost fall
Red rust brushed peaches
Dark dust green grape leaves
Swelling purples under blue blouse sky:
Woke up this mornin’
Didn’t know where I was
Wrote a letter to Heaven,
Reachin' out for you
But you weren’t there
And Heaven didn’t answer either
Signs along the road,
wood weathered grey,
in the Yakima Valley:
Antiques
Fresh Cherries
Walla Walla Sweets
Later at the Grey Inn Motel
Eating maroon cherries from a bottle
Drinking brown beer
Thinking one thing is clear and sure:
Nighttime falls
Lento, Largo, Larghissimo
Yes, darkness comes
Slow like snows,
Like muted yeses,
Like mouth harp nos,
Like in Country Music songs,
Driving through the Yakima Valley.
Note (in response to one reader's question):
The Country Music song lyrics in the poem
are taken from an original song I wrote in 2004.
So, no, I didn't hear the song on the radio,
though I did often find myself
driving through the Yakima valley,
and I wrote the song on one my Yakima trips.
I've explained the age range used in the song
in a comment below.
He feared drowning. He fell asleep on the bus,
sleeping past his stop, and on down to Redondo Beach,
the waves breaking, hard on hearing.
He slept past the beach break at El Porto,
his head bouncing against the beach-side window,
his tools jiggling in his toolbox at his feet,
past the Manhattan Beach Pier,
the Hermosa Biltmore Hotel,
the Hermosa pier, on down to Redondo.
The bus driver would have to speak up.
The evening water was glassing off,
the Strand bars filling with surfers,
their cream yellow and orange and blue surfboards standing
against cars, walls, wet, dirty sand waxed.
He dreamed of fish, bottled beer, oysters.
He dreamed of broiled eel,
of yellowtail garnished with scallops,
dreams he did not understand.
A giant squid rose from a thick gelled water
and reached up for him, and he quick stroked
in his sleep on the bus to dog paddle away,
back to Shively, the house near the railroad tracks,
where he’d built out the basement room in knotty pine.
He awoke on the bus in Redondo Beach,
at the end of the line, foggy out now,
the sound of the surf muffled
in his ears. Flying fish eggs
surrounded his tired and dozed head,
his hair closely cropped,
his clothes dirty from the day’s work.
He’d returned the car, a ’56 Plymouth,
and salt filled his ears.
Selections from Phonebook for Foulings Neighborhood of SE Portland:
1: Foulings Tavern: 33 Foulings Street, Eastgate-3218.
2: Jack Foulings, 33 Foulings Street, Eastgate-3218.
3: Foulings Car Repair Shop: 20 Third Ave. No phone.
4: Foulings Music: LP Specialists. Fourth and Foulings.
5: Foulings Grocery: Corner of Foulings and Third.
6: Flowers by Joyce: Sidewalk outside Foulings Grocery.
7: Joy Number, 19 Foulings Street, Apt. F. Eastgate-3550.
8: Foulings Cafe. Breakfast Daily, 5-11. 27 Foulings St.
9: Foulings Books. Call for Appointment. Eastgate-1022.
10: Foulings Plumbing, Repair and New: 9 Foulings Street.
If the color from today's flowers
weeped with sound,
this quiet evening on the avenue
would crash like some big bang gig.
The colors condensed the winter over,
distilled and drenched and dumped
into cavernous, smelly whiskey barrels
swarming with bees.
A yellow jacket searches
for a place to pitch her tent,
for the long hot busy summer ahead.
The spring rain fills every bowl,
brews and broods.
The yellow jacket screws her mud
to a camellia branch.
The water slows to vinyl,
the beach wood logs tattooed.
Waves like empty wine bottles fall
breaking into the fitful trash truck.
“Bury My Heart in the Muddy Mississippi”
A Country Music song
Guitar Chords: GAD
(Slow intro with a little lilt)
G A
I took my girl to the Friday night dance,
D G
But she said, “I really don’t like to dance.”
(Lively now)
(G) Then some handsome fella
with the (A) swagger of Godzilla,
(D) asked her do you wanna (G) dance,
(G) and the next thing I knew
(A) away they flew.
(D) He’s got her in a (G) trance.
Chorus
G A
Hey, Baby, don’t drive me crazy,
D G
I thought you said you didn’t like to dance.
G A
Well, bury my heart in the muddy Mississippi,
D G
I thought she said she didn’t like to dance.
So I walked on down and I put my money down
On the counter of the mausoleum,
And I asked the mortician how much it cost to die
But he said I was a buck too short.
Repeat Chorus
Late one night I was stopped at a light,
Revvin’ up my hot rod Ford.
Along comes a Chevy, at the wheel’s my Baby,
Askin’ do I wanna dance.
I took her off the line, pink slips on a dime,
And the rest I’m happy to tell.
The moral of this story,
The letter of this tale (D – G…)
Repeat Chorus
X thinks Y imperfect.
Y thinks X exaggerates.
X tells Y, “Why can’t you be more like me?”
Y replies, “You have no balance. You don’t know how to share. Life is a teeter-totter.”
“I’m walking down to the tavern for a beer and some darts. Want to come?” X asks.
“I think I’ll stay here and practice yodeling and yoga,” Y says.
Y Y = Light _ _ _ _ /\ = Teeter-Totter /\ _ _ _ _ X X = Heavy
The Coming of the Toads 