Category: Uncategorized

Resurrected online mag Defiant Scribe welcomes my wacky wit

July 19, 2023 / chiselch

The barriers to entry in online literary publishing are invitingly low. Build a website. Put out a call for submissions. Accept a few of the better ones and push “publish.”

Maybe a few people other than the writers will show up and read some of the work. Likely not.

An oversimplification, perhaps, but close to the current reality. Some come. Some stay. Some go.

Defiant Scribe had a healthy run in the mid-to-late teens, published 20 editions, then took a hiatus. It’s back, the first resurrection issue out this spring. To show the perspicacity and taste of its editors, it has now accepted a slightly irreverent tale of mine, titled “Pope Wins Easter Egg Hunt.”

This is fiction. It hasn’t happened — yet. It could. Now that my story has been published, maybe I should call the Vatican and see if I could turn it into non-fiction. Or not.

Another story, born to the world

March 20, 2023 / chiselch

Thanks to the editors at The Muleskinner Journal for rolling out the welcome mat for my story, “Party of One.” It speaks for itself about the emptiness occasionally at the heart of life for people who seemingly have everything anyone could want. Hope you enjoy.

Getting away …

January 11, 2023 / chiselch

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 / chiselch

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.

What’s wrong with self-publishing, anyway?

June 15, 2022 / chiselch

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.

A car covered in stickers is a person wanting to be known

May 12, 2022 / chiselch

We were driving north from Portland toward Tacoma today, when we passed a small import. Maybe a Toyota Yaris. Not sure, because the car was blanketed in stickers.

At 75 mph, and hands on the wheel, I didn’t have time to write down an inventory of what this person had put on their car. I made a crack, that if it wasn’t for the stickers, the car might fall apart. It was fairly new. To most people, that’s when you want to avoid the stickers and put your shiny new-car face out to the world. But this person (no idea if male or female) had covered the side rear windows and rear window and some of the trunk and rear bumper with stickers.

I commented about the absurdity of it all, but my wife saw something more.

“Everybody wants to be known,” she said. “They want their friends and even people who aren’t part of their life to know who they are, what they care about, what matters to them.”

To her, stickers are way to put it all out there. To make sure they don’t die without having had a chance to assert their likes and dislikes, their loves and loathings.

To assert one’s individual salad of preferred flavors. To deny anonymity. To pre-empt the disinclination of most people to peel back the layers of those they meet.

My wife and I talk often about the types of people we meet. Some show genuine curiosity. They ask questions about you, sincerely want to learn who you are and what you love.

Others couldn’t give a shit. They are more than happy when you inquire of them and their lives, their loves and loathings, their kith and kithin’ kin. Interrogate them until the cows come home, but once you stop, they go mute. They don’t know what to do next, when the spotlight fades. They never show any interest in others. They are all sticker, no car.

In Tacoma later that week, a good longtime friend of ours would be attending a memorial for her brother. He died at age 67. She wrote his obituary, celebrating his engaging personality and a successful career in business, much of it focused on boats built in and around Tacoma for use in the Puget Sound and the fertile fishing waters of Alaska. He was a genial, engaging guy. And gone.

I never knew him or had the chance to engage before he passed. But I wish now that I could see his car. What sort of stickers did he put on his Tesla? Or Subaru? Or did he forswear such gauchery? And if he did, how did he pass to the next level with any confidence that he was known?

His sister knew him. Her obituary described a person well worth knowing. Nothing about his choice of car.

One’s choice of car says much to the world in which it rolls. Grandfather types of a bygone generation buy Buick aind Oldsmobile. Hipsters or a more recent vintage buy Hummers and sprinter vans, to present a gallery of toys to a discerning public.

Stickers take it to another level. I want to meet a guy with a Freaks for Bernie and an AC/DC and a Doobie Doobie Do sticker. Tarkio Road, dude. Right on. Tight fence. Give my regards to the Big Guy. See you when we meet the Spirit in the Sky.