Category: Writing

“The Ending Gate”: Chapter 12 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

February 2, 2015

In what I can only describe as an attempt to kick my own butt with a leap of faith, I started publically reading chapters from The Starting Gate at The St. Andrews Bar and Grill in Green Lake long before I had finished the book. Now it’s a year later, a strong first draft is finished, and there are only two chapters left to present. Will you consider joining me as I read “The Ending Gate”, the twelfth chapter? This chapter tells the story of what happened to me and my brother when our home away from home burned out of existence, and threw us forward, for better or worse, into the rest of our lives.
Here’s a little taste:

Back in 1985, neither my brother nor I had any strong theories on how the fire happened, but one fact quickly dawned on both of us, and I have to assume nearly everyone in town. The Starting Gate stood there, condemned and vacant, but also packed with thousands of dollars’ worth of liquor, some, if not most, of it salvageable. This fact must have dawned on John too, because within days of the fire, photocopies of this posting went up all around the property:

ANYONE FOUND HERE AT NIGHT
WILL BE FOUND HERE IN THE MORNING.

Here are the details:
When: Monday, February 9, at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
“Confession at St. Andrews”: Chapter 11 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

January 6, 2015

We’re getting close now. I finished my book, The Starting Gate, a month or so ago. And now we’re even coming up on the end of my public chapter readings at the St. Andrews Bar and Grill. There are only three left now.
So I hope you’ll consider joining me as I read “Confession at St. Andrews”, the eleventh chapter of my book, about my favorite bar in Seattle.

I’m at the St. Andrew’s.

It doesn’t matter when. Unlike the Starting Gate the St. Andrew’s still exists in what I’m currently calling the present, and so there’s a changelessness to the time I spend here.

The bartender Mark, who also happens to be one of the owners, is again holding court, again stringing along some beer and food salesmen, who sit a few stools down from me. Mark has told me that he has the vendors come in only on Thursdays, which is his day to open the bar. He’ll listen to their sales spiels, but they in turn have to listen to his shtick: his filthy stories, his dumb dirty jokes, and his cutting critiques of the products they’re hawking.

I sit on the corner so I can watch both the stage (i.e behind the bar) and audience, (i.e the bar stools.) It’s an old trick from my playwright days. Always watch the audience. Mark knows I’m watching and he knows that I plan someday to write about this place, so his performance takes on an extra enthusiasm. I’m waiting for him to say something utterly filthy and outrageous. Something designed to shock the salesmen and even me. It’ll be tough. Together we make a pretty jaded crowd.

“These young guys, come in here, trying to score some hot chick their age. I say, ‘Let me give you some advice.’”

Okay, here we go. This should be good.

Here are the details:
When: Monday, January 12, at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
Jesus Hat

November 29, 2014

On the downtown 358.
In the city I’ll catch the light rail to Beacon Hill where I’ll sit zazen at the temple plus listen to a dharma talk. Should be out by around 8:15, latest. From there, I’ll take the light rail back in to King Street Station and walk to Central Tavern in Pioneer Square, where I’ll chat with Bama, who bounces there, and maybe mooch a beer, or pay for it if I have to.
Just witnessed the strangest interaction right in front of me. Burnout-looking white dude with one of those hipster hats of knitted wool with ear flaps, comes back and says “Excuse me, sir” to the Hispanic dude with a long goatee and a baseball cap that says “Jesus” in silver Gothic letters. The dude’s halfway into a heroin nod or maybe just really drunk.
Hipster Hat says it again, real polite, “Excuse me, sir.”
Guy with Jesus hat opens his eyes.
“I’m just wondering if you’d like this soda.” And he holds out a paper cup of fountain soda, some sort of dark cola, Coke or Dr. Pepper, near full, complete with plastic lid and straw. Hipster Hat explains that Jesus Hat looks pretty out of it and so he thought he could use a pick me up.
Jesus Hat says, “I’m fine…. Just tired, man.”
“Okay. Well, here have this soda.”
Jesus Hat takes it. “Thanks, man.”
They fist bump. Then Hipster Hat dude shakes Jesus Hat’s hand.
“Hey, you want this cigarette?” And Hipster pulls a droopy cigarette from his ear. Jesus Hat takes it between two tentative fingers.
“You just looked really sleepy to me, man.”
“Bless you,” says Jesus, and closes his eyes as he tucks the cigarette behind his own ear.
And the glassy-eyed white dude in the hipster hat sort of lurches with the turns of the bus, back to his seat right behind the driver.
So what was with all that?
I mean, here’s the thing: Jesus Hat was shitfaced. A minute or so later I watched him lift himself with considerable effort and stumble to the door to get off in Belltown.
I got up to get off when we reached downtown a couple stops later. And as I walked to the front of the bus, I saw that the hipster had a bunch of grungy plastic bags stuffed under his seat. He was homeless, and likely a bit crazy.
After I stepped off the bus, I went down into the light rail tunnel to catch my train to temple.
Mystery solved. Had to be the hat.

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
“I was the One at Home”: Chapter 10 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

November 24, 2014

I finished a solid first draft of The Starting Gate about a month ago. Then I spent another two weeks putting a polish on it, rewrote the ending on some excellent advice from a good friend, and sent it under his cover to a literary agent in New York. The reply was surprisingly prompt, but, not surprisingly, discouraging. Apparently the book’s “candor and soul, art and wit” are “admirable”, but alas, the work is too “quiet and thoughtful… insufficiently sensational” to attract a publisher. If I were famous enough, maybe; but since I am not, no dice.
Since I honestly don’t know what to do next, I am going to do what I’ve already promised myself to do: read the next chapter, as scheduled, at The St. Andrew’s Bar And Grill next Monday night. So would you please consider joining me as I read “I was the One at Home”, the tenth chapter of my book The Starting Gate? It’s about the night in the house on Sweet Air Road when it was just me, my step-dad, and his massive left hemisphere stroke.
Here’s a quickie excerpt:

…. He reaches out his hand, grasping for things on the table that aren’t there. “Do you want me to get you something write with?” I ask. He nods vigorously. I get him a ballpoint and a small pad with some advertisement on the banner. He begins scrawling, but it looks funny. I turn the pad around to read it.

“Call your mother.”

“Dad, mom’s in Towson.” Towson is 10 miles away. “I should call 911. Let me call 911.”

He shakes his head more furiously than before. He taps fiercely on that pad with his fat forefinger. (The same meaty hand that slaps our faces, heavy and fast.) So I call my mom at the real estate office, where she’s manning the phones in the hopes of picking up a loose lead. Mom needs loose leads. She’s not exactly a born sales woman. But there’s another reason she volunteers to work essentially unpaid for three or four hours nearly every evening. It gets her out of the house at the time when my Dad’s most likely to be drunk.

Mom answers the phone at the real estate office. I tell her the situation and ask her to let me call 911. “I’m pretty sure he’s having a stroke, Mom.”

“Oh Paul, how can you know that?”

“He’s not talking, Mom.”

“Well let me talk to him.”

“Mom, I can’t let you talk to him. HE CAN’T TALK.”

And here are the details:
When: Monday, December 1, at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
Only Took Me 22 Years to Get My Poetry on Buses

November 6, 2014
Poetry on Buses is a program currently hosted by King County Metro and curated by 4Culture. It began in 1992 as a presentation of poetry from the Seattle community on the placards found above the bus seats. Says the website, “The poems are written by that person across the aisle, that kid in the back, or the professional poet.”
I remember being a young man and new to Seattle and seeing these poems on the buses I rode, my sole mode of transportation at the time. Back then, in the early 1990s, I was so impressed and enamored of the verse I read just above the heads of my fellow riders sitting across from me that I rushed to send in some of my own work. This I did again and again; and again and again I received polite rejection letters from the program. Here is a couple of the poems I sent in through the years:

Word Problem:

How many

drops

of rain

are falling

at this moment
on this city
in this storm

How many

on this patch of asphalt

from now to now

Count them

And…

Seattle

Gull-angels sculpt the sound winds
that tunnel through the buildings. Crying wild,
in wide circles searching, they carve
a city’s formless redemption; omens of torture and belief.

What’s to ignore?
What’s to deny?
If a transparent pain falls shattering

on you, what beautiful views?
What?
What grays, what greener than greens?

Looking back through 20/20 critical hindsight lenses: no, I no longer think these pieces are my strongest work. But I still recognize the impulses behind them. And I still stand by those impulses. In other words, I like where my younger self is going. The impulse to create poetry in the context of a city is almost always worthwhile.
I’m still primarily a bus rider. It’s my only way of commuting to work, since my family only has the one mini-van, which I drive maybe once or twice a week, on errands.
The Poetry on Buses program went on hiatus for a few years, but I was excited to see on a friend’s Facebook page a few months back that it had returned and new poems were being solicited on the theme of “writing home.” I immediately sent in my piece, “Instant Messenger” and was utterly charmed and delighted when I got the news that it had been selected as one of the poems that would be shared on selected buses. All 365 poems will be showcased on the Poetry on Buses site, a new poem for each day of the year. My day next year will be August 24, 2015. Additionally, each week, a new portrait of a featured poet and an audio poem will offer you an extra look and a listen. (And, happily I do believe “Instant Messenger” is one of these poems as well.) 125 of the 365 poems will also appear on select RapidRide buses or stations. Some onboard our four RapidRide Poetry Buses and others as discrete poems throughout the RapidRide fleet. The bus and station poems will offer an on-the-spot poetic experience, and also invite visits to the online collection.
More fun is coming up very soon! The Poetry on Buses launch party will be held November 10, 2014 at the Moore Theater. It’s free and all ages: a vast and necessary celebration of poetry and music, including:
- Readings by 36 local poets in English, Russian, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese. (I’ll be one of the poets reading!)
- Live music by Love City Love.
- Special appearances by Seattle Fandango Project, Marianna and Youth Speaks Seattle.
- The premiere of the Writing Home Collection – all 365 poems!
I hope I see you there!
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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
“Bars: A User’s Guide”: Chapter 9 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

October 28, 2014

Next Monday I’ll be reading the ninth chapter of my book The Starting Gate at St. Andrews Bar And Grill in Green Lake. This chapter is titled “Bars: A User’s Guide”, and offers a brief review of the rules everyone should know when availing themselves of that venerated technology, the public house. As reward for close attention paid, I will offer a bonus virtual visit to the Zig Zag in the time of the incomparable Murray Stenson, the most perfect cocktail experience anyone could hope for.
Here’s a quickie excerpt:
Just as there are certain poems that can only be best understood once you have learned more basic poems, Murray will strike the uninitiated as a rather average bartender, friendly, unimposing, as eager to pull you a draft as he is to stir you a handcrafted cocktail. In fact, Murray has a joke he loves to tell:

A few years back a bunch of guys, maybe five, came into the Zig Zag after a Seahawks game. The first four all ordered different fancy cocktails. The fifth guy asks for a Jack and Coke. His friends erupt in outrage. “You can’t do that here. Don’t you know what this place is? This is that place for fancy cocktails. The Zig Zag. And that’s Murray.

“Oh, okay, okay,” the guy says, throwing up his hands in surrender. “In that case, I’ll take a Crown and Coke.”

Murray tells that story, I’m sure, to deflate a little of the pomposity that has blown up around the cocktail scene over the last decade or so, but also to let you know unequivocally that, if you order a Jack and Coke, he’ll happily make you the best goddamned Jack and Coke you’ve ever had.
And here are the details:
When: Monday, November 3, at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
“Johnny Got his Gun”: Chapter 8 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

September 25, 2014

Next Monday I’ll be reading the eighth chapter of my book The Starting Gate at St. Andrews Bar And Grill in Green Lake. This chapter is titled “Johnny Got his Gun”, and tells the story of what happened when some hillbilly hold-up artists tried to rob the pharmacy across the street from the bar I worked in as a teenager.
Over the years, my views of the role of the gun in civilized society have evolved to a position practically diametric in opposition to the one inculcated in me as kid; but nothing in life is truly clear and simple, and if you think the myth of “The Good Guy with A Gun” is nothing but that, a harmful myth, then you might want come consider this story.
Here’s a quickie excerpt:

“See what happened was there was a guy at the door that was holding the girl and this other fellah with the screwdriver on the little girl’s throat.”

“Who does that?” my brother interjected at the table.

“Right?” said John. “One guy’s got this cannon of a .357. The other’s got nothing but a screw driver.” All three of us shook our heads and grimaced at the occasional idiocy of rednecks. Then John continued, “So I said ‘Frosty, are you carrying.’ Or I might’ve said, ‘Are you packin’?’”

“And he said, ‘Yeah.’”

And here are the details:
When: Monday, September 29 at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick, dirty and FREE! PLUS the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
Writing is Liquid

June 11, 2014

I was tagged by Lola Lindle as next in line to share thoughts about writing for the #MyWritingProcess Blog Tour. This turned out to be fortuitous, since I was already noodling on an essay about writing and Lola’s kind nod served to light a fire under my ass to finish it. So hearty thanks to Lola Lindle, and all the writers who have participated in the tour so far.
Link-surfing back through the tour I found these four questions to which I assume I should address my remarks:

What am I working on?

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Why do I write what I do?

How does my writing process work?

(more…)

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
“White Boy can Take a Punch”: Chapter 4 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

May 5, 2014

The Starting Gate. That’s the name of the book I’m working on. It’s sort of a memoir, but more of a rumination. It’s about drinking. It’s about working. It’s about trying to get right what I should be doing, now that I’ve retired from what kept me from going crazy for the last 25 years.
(more…)

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working
Meantime

April 28, 2014

You’re asleep. Dead unconscious. So in a way you aren’t anything.
There is a blast, or a flash. In any case a vast shock of everything. Now you are cold. Freezing. Parts of you are burning. The wind rips through you. You see darkness. Mostly. Falling fire punctuates it. And you are falling.
Ah right: you were in an airplane. But now you are being torn by the torrent of your downward spiraling. Dead soon.
What do you do in the meantime?
There’s always time left.

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Tags: bars, memoir, Paul Mullin, St. Andrews Bar and Grill, The Ending Gate, The Starting Gate, working