Author: chiselch

My long, strange journey to “One Night Only”

June 6, 2023 /

Nearly four years ago, I woke one morning with a vivid scene from a dream hanging inside my head. Most nights, I dream crazy shit, but forget it all before I wake. This was different. And rich.

I ran for a pen and paper. Later, I used the scene as the jumping off point for a story that, recently, found public display at The Lowestoft Chronicle. It’s a web journal dedicated to tales of travel.

The story that emerged from my dream became “One Night Only.” It’s absurd, from start to finish, as dreams always are. I took the remembered part of an actual dream and used it as the diving board for a plunge into a litany of imaginative nonsense.

I love the story, because of its non-traditional narrative arc. There is no plot, just nonsense. The reader, I hope, sticks with it, to see where each inexplicable moment will lead. True to form, these moments lead to other inexplicable moments, inside which, a weird logic prevails. How can things make sense while making no sense at all?

Here’s to the spirit of fun. BTW, I was under no chemical influence at the time I wrote this piece. Proof, if ever it was needed, that we don’t need no stinkin’ drugs to act like we’re on drugs. Herewith, “One Night Only.”

Getting away …

January 11, 2023 /

Kathy and an old growth Douglas fir along the lower Rogue River trail.

Next door is a guy with a saw. Its voice cutting through metal sometimes comes through the wall. Mostly, not. His name is Shane, the guy. “Like the movie,” he said, when we introduced the day after pulling in with our car full of getaway crap.

He and Brandon were in the shop, doing what you do in a shop. The shop shares the back wall of our rental house. We have the wall of windows with a view of the ocean, windows that rattle and wake us in the night when the wind gusts up over 40.

Windows face the sea from the dining room, kitchen, living room, bedroom. Beyond that, on the deck, sits a hot tub. In the hot tub, daily, sits my wife. I join her, often, because why not?

We watch nature TV. Rain clouds coming and dumping. Waves tumbling and frothing. Sun, occasionally winking through it all, to remind us of the source behind our gray skies.

We’re visiting in a stormy cycle, early January, a getaway. From what? To what? Those are the questions I ask when considering departure from my comfortable, familiar home.

Snow has come and gone several times this winter. Freezing rain crusted all the snow, when we returned in the rain from a brief trip to the coast over Christmas. It was 9 degrees the day we left for the coast.

For a break from all that inclemency, we snagged this rental on the southern Oregon coast, timed to coincide with one of the snarliest bouts of winter weather in years. Day after day of heavy rain, flooding coastal and central California, pushing river levels high and higher near us. We expeected power outages but have, for the moment, dodged that side dish at our winter feast.

We brought hiking shoes, rain gear, whiskey. No sunscreen. We sit. We read. We leave with the dog for a hike. No freezing rain, yet, but the rain has undercut a stretch of highway we were hoping to use for our return. Instead, we must take a lengthy detour. If the weather doesn’t close that, too. If it does, we might be forced to stay longer.

That wouldn’t be so bad. Before he dipped into his fix-it stuff yesterday, Shane handed me a bowl of eggs freshly plucked from beneath his chickens. Damn, they taste so good, staring out at the ocean, wondering about the health of all that still lives there, hoping they and we all live long and healthy lives.

A magic moment during an artsy mood encounter

October 12, 2022 /

Most of my creative energy flows into writing. That river branches into a visual stream. For most of my life, I’ve kept a file of ideas for physical art that came to me unbidden. In 2017, I experienced a burst of energy. Like my soul got in my face and said, “What are you waiting for? Get your ass down in the I garage and make this shit.”

So I did. Before I was done, I had created three sculptures and a painting. These all relied heavily on found materials. I love browsing the scrap piles at construction sites. Other stuff just falls from heaven, like when I’m walking through a parking lot and look down and spy a lost baby pacifier. It goes into the art bin, for future work.

I’ve been feeling the urge again lately. I have an idea that involves a vertical piece of natural (as opposed to milled) wood. I went through the transfer station, looking at the yard debris pile for something I might use. Nope. I looked at my own wood pile. Nope. Too short.

Yesterday, on my daily dog walk east of town, I came to the turn point at the Pocket Falls. Last winter, during a storm with strong wind, a large fir snag toppled into the base of the falls. Ka-blooey. Wood everywhere. While the dog sniffed, I scanned the debris pile. Ah-ha! There it was. The perfect piece, correct diameter, and with some judicious trimming, of perfect length (height).

I was clearing branches that held it down, yanking on it, when two bicyclists stopped, a young man and his girlfriend.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Not accusatory. Just curious. Love that. If you wonder, ask. So I told them about my idea and how I hoped to use the log. I dragged it to the side of the road. “I’ll get it next time, when I’m not dragging a dog,” I said.

We parted. “Good luck with your project,” she said.

A hundred feet toward the trailhead, the male cyclist pulled up next to me.

“If you want, I can take the log to the trailhead for you,” he said.

“Seriously? You don’t need to do that.”

“It’s not a problem. It would be easy on my bike.”

“That would be awesome,” I said.

He asked my make and model of car, so he could set the log near it. Then he went back and got it and the last I saw, he was riding up ahead of me with a piece of my future sculpture perched on his shoulder.

His girlfriend rode past. “What are your names?” I called.

She told me. “Thank him again for me,” I said.

“He likes to do this.”

And off she rode.

I am that which I decry

July 28, 2022 /

Right before I typed these words, I paused the podcast episode of 70 Over 70 focused on the writer Russell Banks, 81 at the time of the interview. Before I thought I should jot a few notes here on the challenges today of focus, of giving myself permission to … do … just … one … thing.

At a time. Not serially, which is the way of life. Our current situation offers us so much attraction (or is it distraction?), from streaming video to podcasts to email and social and (imagine this) reading a book, the biggest challenge for many of us becomes deciding. Which will I do, and can I invest myself fully in that stream to finish it, or at least take it to a logical point of pause?

As I write, our region of the world is enduring a heat wave of memorable proportions. The pattern, here in the Columbia River Gorge, is to engage short spells of high heat that serve as punctuation in the stream of consciousness that is cool air flowing from the Pacific Ocean up the river’s channel to Oregon’s eastern deserts.

It’s natural air conditioning. I love it. Until it stops. Then I have to figure out what to do with my days, because no wind means no windsurfing. Do I contradict myself to say that hot spells also are a blessing in disguise, as much as I love my windy sport, because suddenly I have time to just read a book or magazine article. Or … well, you saw the list of options already.

So, after a morning run with my dog, I took the liberty of parking myself beneath the overhang of our deck with a glass of iced coffee and Julie Otsuka’s “When the Emperor Was Divine.” Great book, so delicately observed, so sad and tragic a depiction of one family’s experience with internment during World War II. By all means, read it. And reflect.

Then it was an article in the New Yorker about the environmental tragedy of shipping containers tipping from ships into the ocean. That article segued next to Banks and trying, as I listened, to read George Saunders’ Substack. While editing a short story I’ve been working on. That is NOT focus. The mind was NOT made for that much multi-tasking.

The congestion ultimately pushed me away from all of that to yet another diversion — the writing of this blog post.

It’s hotter than ding-dong outside. Think I’ll corral the dog and chase some cool water.  I need to calm my fidgety appetite for mental input.

What’s wrong with self-publishing, anyway?

June 15, 2022 /

Yesterday, in the middle of the Columbia River, on a windsurf rig being buffeted by gusts of more than 30 mph, I had the oddest thought: Why is it that I persist in not-publshing my work on this blog, or any other that I could brand and build? Why do I persist in pursuing others to publish my work?

I know: Strange thing to think of when you’re trying to survive crazy-ass wind.

Upon further reflection, I realized this morning that the decision by at least one other person — an editor of another site, webzine, digital literary magazine — to share my work on their site, affords me the assurance that at least one other person on the planet thinks there is merit.

So it is today, when another of my efforts has found visibility at the estimable Horror Sleaze Trash website. It gives me such a tickle to say my work is featured there. I’m a somewhat self-deprecating sort. As a kid, I always loved pulp. Tarzan. Hardy Boys. Ian Fleming. Max Shulman. And all those classic old horror movies from the early ’30s, including Bram Stoker in “Dracula.” That character is iconic, and appears in this recent offering, “Drinking and Driving with Dracula.”

Not that I suggest you emulate the model offered here. It’s fiction. Surely you can find better beer than Burgie.

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