Book Talk

You're leaving in the morning and pack the night before, throwing in your phone charger, toothbrush, the novel you’ve been meaning to get to, an extra shirt you won’t need. Before bed you count backward from the boarding time, padding five minutes here, ten minutes there, allowing extra time to get through security. In a state of disbelief you set the alarm for an hour you haven’t seen in years, one that makes you wonder if you should go to bed at all.
When the alarm goes off, you groan, cursing fate and the executives of airlines. Not to disturb your wife, you dress in the living room while the coffee brews, putting on the clothes you set out just hours ago. Dressed, patting down your pockets you run through a mental checklist, afraid you’re forgetting something. Meanwhile, the cats watch you sleepy-eyed and disgusted from the sofa, wondering what you’re doing up at such an hour. You take a slug of coffee and tell them you wish you knew. When you kiss your wife goodbye she tells you to be safe. “I’ll call when I land,” you say, and close the bedroom door behind you.

On a recent Sunday evening, 3,000 miles from home and feeling every inch of it, I opened a bottle of wine. It was a gift from friends, an Argentinean red I knew to be excellent, but contrary to plans I had for it, it was not a joyous occasion. Across from me, my wife sat slumped on the couch, the two of us hungover from a crying jag. Circumstances forcing us into a decision we would have preferred not to make, we'd just finished a number of physically and emotionally grueling days, and the reality of our new situation was settling in. I seldom like to drink when feeling blue, alcohol for me a celebratory drug, one used to augment happy occasions, not mask the bad ones.
That said, it functions well to bevel the hard edges of the world, and I will admit to feeling the need. The bottle, it turned out, was the only alcohol we had on the premises. Scarcity, as much as necessity it seemed, would press it into service. When it was given to us, I promised to open it only when the time (and more importantly) the people, were right. Having come from dear friends, I didn't want to share this bottle with just anyone, my idea being to toast the best of the old as I rang in the new.

I've always lived in the mountains, or at least near them. And when times got tough and I needed to get away that's where I go. Up. Up high where there were long views, clear air and perspective, where the eye and the mind could roam unimpeded, where the birds spent their days. I can't say why this is – still is to this day – except that's how I grew up, half feral in the shade of something bigger than myself that took up a good portion of the sky during the day and at night a deep bite out of the stars. Ever since I can remember, I've identified myself with steep inclines, deep shades, the protectiveness of ravines and the odor of pine. I'd go to the mountains to rejuvenate a depleted spirit, or get over a disastrous love affair. It just seemed the natural thing to do.
Then, not long ago, I drove over the mountains and dropped down 5,000 feet and pulled up alongside the ocean. Damn, it was big. And that was just the top of it. This was the Oregon Coast, something I'd heard about, read about, seen pictures of and yet didn't have the first damn clue what it was. So I sat there with the windows down and the roar of the surf in my ears and just stared.

It is 8:30 on a Friday evening and I've had just enough cheap wine and looked at just enough bad art to feel happy and sad. From this vantage point the evening is vast, stretching out in all directions, and the streets full, cheerful couples and small packs of friends roaming in the gloaming. It is warm, summer has finally arrived, and the good stink of day-hot asphalt perfumes the air. There is a carefree nature to the milling crowds; an animation Monday morning knows nothing about. It doesn't hurt that free wine is being poured and seldom-seen friends are meeting. Standing on the corner of Bond Street and Minnesota Avenue, I listen to the Doppler of laughter as people pass. It tells me tomorrow is a long way away.
Maybe it's the wine or maybe the warm night air, but worry leaves the people on evenings like this. It's like a coat they take off. The future can take care of itself, is what they are saying, just give it its own sweet time. I've come downtown for the simple reason to be downtown. Hoping for nothing, expecting less, I predict to be cudgeled by small talk and lifted by chance. The excuse is to look at art, but really it is something far less worthy, something far more important than that.

Walking across a parking lot the other day, I stopped to pick up a penny – almost. It was right there beside my truck, a bright copper profile of our 16th president looking up at me and catching the sun. If I’m to believe the old songs and sayings, these things come from heaven, but if I’m to believe everything I’ve heard on the subject, we can’t take them with us. Since I’m not much of a candidate in the first place, and it was one of those rare occasions when I was feeling flush, I didn’t even break stride and went cruising right on by, a regular Rockerfeller and friend of the devil. What did give me pause was the idea that there was no reason not to pick it up, pocket it and be on my way that much the richer. And so the question became: Would I have stopped for a nickel? A dime? Surely a quarter, but why not a penny? Cold hard cash.
Like a lot of people, I have a jar at home where I keep pennies. Every so often I haul them to the bank and with great anticipation await the total. Half the fun is trying to guess what the tonnage will come to, and yet no matter how little it is, it feels like free money. Last time it was $4.20 which may not sound like a lot, but it's a pint of beer at happy hour, and I'm seldom one to turn down a free drink.
In high school I used to pitch pennies against the curb with friends while waiting for the bus. Then on the ride in we’d play penny-ante blackjack. I realize now it wasn’t about the money, but the way it made me feel: grown up and a little daring. I liked, too, the way it stimulated my brain, made me think about the vagaries of fate and beating the odds. Pitching pennies was a whole different thing; it required skill and I used to pride myself on studying the way the soft coins would bounce depending on the spin I put on them. I see now it was the competition I was after, the squinted-eyed concentration, also the way the antipodal sides of the penny flashed in the morning sun, sluicing everything down to that one fine focal point we refer to as the now.

I have never understood the unbridled fervor and devotion some people feel for haiku. Those tiny, strange little poems that haunted me through school, the three-line, 5-7-5 syllabic count, the attempt to express an intangible idea about nature.

Often when my wife and I are out, we'll see an elderly couple crossing the street or sitting next to us in a restaurant. We'll stop what we're doing and watch. With whispered acknowledgment or a silent nod, we'll point out the quiet forms of tenderness we see, a hand held out to steady a spouse or the patience of the first as the second struggles to lever him or herself out of a chair. It's not a form of voyeurism, and we try to be as respectful as we can, but it's hard not to look directly at the future when it presents itself.
It is generally considered bad form, of course, to get old. In today's youth-crazed society, making it to 85 or 90 isn't a cause for celebration, it's a person's own damn fault. Even at this late date in history, the act of aging is seen as unsightly – just count the anti-wrinkle creams and hair dyes out there. The young certainly despise it and the old warn against it. “Don't ever get old,” a woman I used to work for would tell me, “It's no damn fun.” She'd be paused midway up a flight of stairs, gripping the rail with a boney arm, the thought of even one more step was enough to produce a small sigh from her aged lungs like a train pulling out of a station.

Good friends we don’t see often are arriving this evening for the weekend. There has been the usual flurry of activity: cooking and cleaning and the making of beds. A better quality of wine has been purchased than our budget normally allows, and a small grocery store of crackers and cheeses wait in the wings, ready to go under the knife in name of hors’ d'oeuvres. Meanwhile, sheets have been changed in the spare room and the pillows fluffed. Towels put out. Our friends are driving in from out of state and I expect they will be tired and hungry. In readiness, soup simmers on the stove and there is homemade bread rising in the oven. What last minute preparations we can make, we make. Everything else will have to do.

Editor's note: This is the first column from local writer and High Desert Journal editor Charles Finn. His work has appeared in Missoula Magazine and Writers on the Range and in other publications. Finn's column, a mix of muse, observations and commentary will appear twice monthly.

At exactly 3:15 on a Wednesday afternoon, I set down my book, kick off my shoes and lie down on the couch. I am taking a nap, or more correctly, about to take a nap. With a sigh of contentment, I wiggle myself into the sofa, folding my hands across my chest and crossing my legs at the ankles. The room is quiet, just the ticking of the clock on the wall. Outside, a slight breeze plays with the leaves of a maple while inside, a sunbeam falls horizontally across me; my pale yellow blanket.

I began wRite almost two years ago. I envisioned it as a Rite – a community Rite. I invited Bend writers, poets, writing teachers, writing organizations, local bookstores and those of us who have to transcribe what's in our minds on cocktail napkins, bus tickets, and any other paper that is in range, to be part of the ritual. I asked you to send me press releases, announcements of poetry slams, readings and your own words. Almost no one responded.
A one-person ritual can become nothing but obsession. I've run out of things to write about writing, except for this: If you want to write, pick up a pen and paper and begin. Write enough that your mind and muscles remember how to move. When you can't imagine a day without writing, switch to the computer. Forget about whether or not you'll find an agent. A publisher. Just fuckin' write.