Wild Pages is an exercise that students in the Beautiful Lies/Beautiful Truths writing class took on each week. Instructions are simple: Fill up 7-10 pages on any topics you choose. Write fast. Don’t go back and edit or correct. Just keep the words flowing. Here are some of the gems Gregory created. Enjoy! (Titles added by me to lure you in! Bets)
February 2025
Bill’s Hill
Went for a walk with Bets today. Up Bill’s Hill and out onto the flats where the black walnut orchard lives. There used to be many more trees there but for some unexplained reason the orchard hs not prospered. There are lots of trees left but I’d argue a good half of them have died or been eaten by pests, debarked by bears, etc. Alders and hazelnuts are filling in the gaps. Soon enough there will be a forest of native trees with a few black walnuts interspersed.
Birding with Miles
Miles claimed he could hear up to 30 bird species in 15 minutes from his garden. I said, you’re on and he began listening and watching. Soon he would call out, Robin, bushtit, golden-crowned sparrow, Dark-eyed junco and on and on. I see and hear birds and don’t often know what they are, but this guy has made it his avocation in retirement to spend as much time as possible birding. He and I are hiking buddies. When we are up in the mountains it is slow going because of his birding habit. But I actually like going with him because I get to learn the birds too. I’ll never be the over-the-top birder he is, but I enjoy the hunt. I’m good at it, too. Better than he is at finding birds in trees once we’ve heard them.
Artichoke Mode Cafe
“Come on,” she complained, “let’s get this show on the road.” Why we had to all go shopping together never made sense to Mo. She was a masterful cook, bringing vegetables and grains to life with a menagerie of homemade sauces, freshly ground spices and herbs from the garden and the fields. Her specialty was a vegetarian eggplant moussaka. To die for!!! If you like eggplant, that is. But then, we all did. The eight of us lived and worked together to make our small farmstead work. We grew most of our food, milked a couple goats and raised chickens for eggs and an occasional chicken dinner, though we were, for the most part, not eating meat. Mo and Jan had been the founding influences, each one coming from a background of cooking in restaurants. Jan had been a sou chef at a candlelight and wine type restaurant in Seattle before getting angry at the system enough to want to quit it all and to paraphrase John Prine, “move to the country, plant a little garden, find a bunch of like-minded people, build you a home.”
Mo had been the actual chef at an upscale place in Portland Oregon catering to wealthy vegetarians. The critics were never satisfied and she eventually hit the same wall as Jan, wanting to get away from it all and do her own thing, maybe with others, but they had better be her kind of people. Jan and Mo met at a book reading at Powell’s Books in Portland. They both had an abiding interest in traditional quilt-making and it turned out one of the leading lights in the field at the time was promoting her new book at Powell’s and they both wanted to be there. Jan sat down next to Mo and before long the two extroverts had begun to find out they had more in common than quilts and soon became fast friends. //
I Count That as a Win
I don’t like traveling in countries where I don’t speak the local language. Even if most people can get by speaking English when they talk with me I am caught on the horns of a dilemma because I want to know what they are saying to each other but don’t want to always be asking what they are talking about. Bets and I traveled to Chiapas in Southern Mexico back in 1999. We stayed with a friend of hers who had married a Mexican musician. In that house I was fine. Bets has a passing ability to speak Spanish and both our hosts were English speakers. So far so good. I signed up for Spanish lessons and that helped me to see the language as understandable. But still, Bets had to do all the talking. One memory sticks out as a moment of awakening, oddly enough because I was drifting in and out of sleep as we traveled to some Mayan ruins in a bus. These two guys were in the seat behind me and it became clear to me that the one guy who was doing most of the talking was telling the other guy some sort of story about what was going on his life. I understood not a word, but I could hear how the story was going. Something would happen and the guy would comment on it, maybe laugh at it, then he would launch into the next event and nudge his friend and say in Spanish, “you know what I mean.” It was that clear to me. Before I left to fly home I could actually hear conversations as conversations and not just babble. I count that a win.
Stupid Things I Survived
There’s an old saying in the experiment-with-drugs world that, “Three quarters of a lethal dose of anything will get you high.” Well that was 50 years ago now and I can’t say I tested it to the limit, but I did some really stupid things that I’m glad I survived.
Strange Tale
Helen walked over to the counter with the bottles of nail polish she intended to purchase. Her hands were soft, white and clean. Well-manicured, every finger with a different color and pattern of polish. Taken as a whole, her nail artistry invoked a sense of chaotic purpose, of pagan ritual, of shamanism. The salesclerk, a young person of indeterminate gender, took the bottles from her and noticed the nail designs. “Is that your work?” they asked. “Or a friend’s? I don’t know of any shops in town that could pull that off. Kinda makes me want to howl at the moon.” Helen considered for a moment, then said airily, “It’s my own work.” The clerk seemed to step back within herself for a moment, then with what clearly was an effort of will, said, “When I was 14 my father and I visited Mexico. For him it was part of a spiritual quest to cleanse his past. For me it was a chance to be with my father. We rented a cabin in the desert and my father went into the hills alone. He never came back. The next day an old native Mexican woman appeared at the door with my father’s hat and boots. She wore colorful hand-woven clothes covered with symbols and images similar to what you have on your hands. Claiming he was taken by spirits because of his weaknesses, she said I could do a ceremony in three days to honor his memory and help to guide him to a better afterlife. I was reeling in shock. Gone! My father was gone? And I was alone here in the desert with this strange woman inviting me to a ceremony to honor my dead father. I didn’t hesitate. Yes, come back for me in three days. What do I need to do to prepare?” Helen was quite taken aback by this person’s strange tale. Her simple errand for more polish had brought her to the very core of why her nails were painted in this fashion. She held out her left hand and pointed to the ring finger nail. “Did any of the symbols on the woman’s clothes look like this?” The clerk eyed the nail pattern closely and nodded, “Yes, that one was woven into the left sleeve at the cuff. I remember because that was the hand she held his hat in and I looked at it closely when I took the hat from her.”
Untitled
Wickedness was in the air in those days. The land swarmed with blight. Families were torn apart by greed and avarice. Communities disintegrated into chaos. None but the pure of heart were immune and none of them had been seen in long enough that no one could say when. One day a single rider appeared from the desert shouting out in joy and singing at the top of his lungs. “What a beautiful day it is and what sadness I see upon my friends. Come gather round and let’s have a sing.” They were suspicious and thought, “What foolishness is this dreamer peddling?”
Keith, I am stopping here because we are preparing to leave and I will not be able to do more before the deadline. Starting with Helen above all came to me this morning and dogged me until I got it down. Thanks for all your effort and faith in our work. DK would be proud of you.
Gregory