April 13: Adam and Eve, Maundy Thursday, Ham Sandwiches

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals.  Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work.  The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas.  It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids.  And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed.  That wasn't in the movie.  Billy was extrapolating.  Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve.

I sometimes think of moving backward through time, like Billy's war movie.  Undoing all the mistakes that I've made.  Making better choices.  In Billy's movie, a war comes undone.  All the bombs are unexploded, returned to the airplanes.  The airplanes return to their bases.  Bombs return to the factories that made them.  And so on and so on.  Everything moving in reverse to Eden.  Adam and Eve.  A new beginning.

It's a wonderful vision.  A chance to correct the mistakes of humankind.  Unfortunately, the world is a very broken place, filled with broken people living broken lives.  Tomorrow is Good Friday, the beginning of Easter weekend.  A time of renewal and hope.  Beginnings.  I really love reading the Passion narrative on Friday, lighting the vigil fires on Saturday, and getting up in the dark on Sunday morning to see the sunrise.  It's sort of like Billy watching the war movie in reverse.  Easter is about moving from darkness to light, death to resurrection.

I'm not going to go all pentecostal here.  I'm just embracing the Jesus narrative, the idea of renewal and hope.  It has been a crappy week for me, full of broken car windows, uprooted trees, and corporate firings.  I'm ready to light a few candles, sing "Up from the Grave He Arose," crack a few green and red eggs, and eat ham sandwiches.

It starts tonight.  A Maundy Thursday service.  The Last Supper.  Friendship and betrayal on the road to redemption.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for renewal.

February 24: Adam and Eve, Pablo Neruda, Wrestling Tournament

Their commander was a middle-aged corporal--red-eyed, scrawny, tough as dried beef, sick of war.  He had been wounded four times--and patched up, and sent back to war.  He was a very good soldier--about to quit, about to find somebody to surrender to.  His bandy legs were thrust into golden cavalry boots which he had taken from a dead Hungarian colonel on the Russian front.  So it goes.

Those boots were almost all he owned in this world.  They were his home.  An anecdote.  One time, a recruit was watching him bone and wax those golden boots, and he held one up to the recruit and said, "If you look in there deeply enough, you'll see Adam and Eve."

Billy Pilgrim had not heard this anecdote.  But, lying on the black ice there, Billy stared into the patina of the corporal's boots, saw Adam and Even in the golden depths.  They were naked.  They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently.  Billy Pilgrim loved them.

I love this little passage, with its almost magically real image of Adam and Eve in the commander's boots.  War and death.  Innocence and vulnerability.  Billy falling in love with them as he is flat on his back on the black ice of the frozen creek.

That's the way poetry happens, really.  In the middle of the shitstorm of life, something beautiful surfaces.  Today, I felt pretty lousy all day long.  Hot then cold.  Stuffed up nose then runny nose.  Full of energy then exhausted.  Right now, I feel like I could crawl under the covers and take a Rip Van Winkle nap.  And there is snow and snow and snow.

I'm looking for poetry tonight.  Having a hard time.  Perhaps if I I take some Nyquil, I will find poetry.  Neruda once wrote, "And it was at that age . . . Poetry arrived / in search of me.  I don't know, I don't know where / it came from, from winter or a river."  I have an idea for a poem I want to write for the poetry reading I'm giving this coming Tuesday.  I haven't had the energy to put pen to journal.  Still don't.  I'm waiting for poetry to arrive.

Tomorrow, my son has a wrestling tournament.  Maybe poetry will be there, cheering in the crowd.  In the afternoon, my daughter has a dance rehearsal.  Maybe poetry will be there in a leotard.  In the evening, church.  Poetry may be there, saying a few prayers.

I'm saying that I don't know when poetry is going to arrive.  I just have to keep an eye out.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for . . .the possibility of meeting poetry at the concession stand.

July 30: My Daughter and Church, Camille T. Dungy, "Frequently Asked Questions: #9"

It is Saturday.  Around 4 p.m., I will go into my daughter's room and tell her that it's time to go to church.  We have been doing this every Saturday for her entire life.  I play the pipe organ, so she has been in church since before she could walk.  I remember her sitting in her carrier as an infant, sucking on her pacifier, sleeping as the huge pipes above her bellowed out "How Great Thou Art."  So the announcement that it's time to leave for church should come as no surprise.

Yet, recently, every time I alert her to our impending departure for church, my daughter flops backward on her bed as if I've just told her that Instagram or Snapchat has been outlawed.  She stomps and sulks.  Rarely does she argue, because she knows she stands no chance of winning the dispute.  But she makes her displeasure very evident.

I miss the days when I could make her happy with a pacifier or clean diaper, when she sat in church and looked around like she could see choirs of angels floating above her.  I know my daughter's main problem at the moment is that she's a teenager.  Awkward and difficult years.  The future scary.  I try to keep that in mind when she's rolling her eyes or saying to me, "Okay, okay, okay, OKAY, I know, I know, I KNOW!!!!"

Saint Marty loves his daughter.  He simply wishes that walking into her room wasn't like approaching a sleeping alligator sometimes.

Frequently Asked Questions:  #9

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Don't you think you should have another child?


This girl I have is hardtack and dried lime
and reminds me, every groggy morning,
what a miracle it must have been
when outfitters learned to stock ship holds
with that one long lasting fruit. How the sailors' tongues,
landing on its bitter brilliance, must have cursed
the curse of joy, as I did that morning the burst
of water brought my sweet girl into our lives.

But, already, she hates me sometimes.
Like I have sometimes hated my mother and she
must have sometimes hated her own.

After weeks at sea, the limes would desiccate and the meal
fill with worms. They would have eaten
anyway, the sailors, but taken no pleasure from anything.
Or taken no pleasure from anything but
the fact of their sustained lives. Which is to say it is all
I can do, most days, not to swallow
her up and curse her maker, I swear. Like I have not
sworn since the morning she was born.

May 14: Scarred and Broken, Sewer Again, Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now:  a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass?  Must everything whole be nibbled?  Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall; the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling--not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Dillard is musing on the violent beauty of the world.  She has just witnessed a mosquito land on the back of a rattlesnake, drink its fill, and then fly off.  She marvels at this sight, the rattlesnake not even responding to the annoyance of the feeding insect.  It's all part of the broken and scarred nature of creation.  The world after the fall.

I am thinking quite a bit about the brokenness of the world this morning.  You may recall that a couple days ago I had a little problem with my sewer.  I paid $150 to have my sewer line cabled by a couple of plumbers.  This morning, as I was going about my morning ablutions, I flushed the toilet and heard gurgling in my bathtub drain.  My sewer is blocked again.

Being the son of a plumber, I have a good idea of the implications of this second blockage.  There's probably something a little more serious going on.  This isn't a minor annoyance.  I can't swat this mosquito away.  Of course, being the eternal optimist, I am thinking about how I scrounge up thousands of dollars to get a sewer line dug up and replaced.  (Yes, I know, I know--I don't even know what's wrong, but I like preparing for the absolute worst.  Then, if anything better than the worst occurs, I count it as a blessing.)

I have called the plumbers who came on Thursday, left a message.  I have not received an answer.  I called my brother, who is a licensed plumber and lives about an hour away from me.  No go on that possibility, either.  So, I am sitting in McDonald's in a kind of sewage limbo.  We can't use the bathroom in my house.  Can't shower,  Can't wash dishes.  I don't really want to crap in a bucket and use it as fertilizer for a garden.  (I don't think my neighbors would appreciate that, either.)  So, I'm stuck at the moment.  Not moving backward or forward.

The world is a broken place.  When Adam and Eve messed up in Eden, they kind of screwed the rest of us.  If it hadn't been for that apple, I would be lounging, naked, on the banks of a river, eating chocolate off a chocolate tree, enjoying another perfect day of warmth and peace.

Instead, it's snowing and cold; sewage is in the air; and Saint Marty is thinking of going off the grid.

Maybe a poem will help . . .

The Universe:  Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even

A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane

Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings

In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire

And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,

Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears

Disappears as if returning somewhere.

I know how i feel--shitty

March 2: Morrow's Mother, Spiritual, "The Book of Genesis Illustrated," New Cartoon

I have her a good look.  She didn't look like any dope to me.  She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of.  But you can't always tell--with somebody's mother, I mean.  Mothers are all slightly insane.  The thing is, though, I liked old Morrow's mother.  She was all right.  "Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her.

Holden comes on to practically every woman he meets in Catcher, young and old.  Mrs. Morrow is the mother of one of his Pencey classmates.  I read an interesting article online about Holden.  The authors claim that Holden is on a spiritual quest.  Despite all his claims to "sexiness," the article says, Holden really is looking for the true Mother and Father (the Blessed Virgin and God).  It's an interesting take on Salinger's book, and Holden does spend a good deal of time talking about church and religion in its pages.  I'm not completely sold on Mrs. Morrow being a stand-in for Christ's mother, but it certainly transforms Holden's crisis.

However, spiritual texts sometimes come from the most unexpected sources.  Holden is an atheist, yet he seems to be drawn to Catholicism.  R. Crumb, the underground comic illustrator from the 1960s, was drawn to the Bible.  He spent five years of his life researching and illustrating the Book of Genesis.  The result, The Book of Genesis Illustrated, is astounding.  Crumb writes in his introduction,

Every other comic book version of the Bible that I've seen contains passages of completely made-up narrative and dialogue, in an attempt to streamline and "modernize" the old Scriptures, and still, these various comic book Bibles all claim to adhere to the belief that the Bible is "the word of God," or "inspired by God," whereas I, ironically, do not believe the Bible is "the word of God."  I believe it is the words of men.  It is, nonetheless, a powerful text with layers of meaning that reach deep into our collective consciousness, our historical consciousness, if you will.

Yet, in reading Crumb's visual interpretation of Genesis, he is able to bring these words of God (or man, if you agree with the artist) to life in ways that few other versions of the Bible have done.  The illustrations are not pretty.  Crumb does not shy away from the seedier elements.  He is at his best showing all the human failings in Genesis, violent and sexual and heartbreaking.  Perhaps, in a way, Crumb is on a spiritual quest with The Book of Genesis Illustrated, looking for the divine in the depravity of humankind.  The illustration of God entrusting Adam and Eve with the Garden of Eden captures both the innocence and sensuality of the moment:

 

God looks benevolent and frightening.  Adam and Eve look child-like and sexual.  The world is full of life and wonder, but there is a  mountain in the distance, perhaps hinting at some distant hardship.  If the words Crumb illustrates are divinely written or inspired, these illustrations are windows into that writing and inspiration.

Like Salinger, R. Crumb may have, unintentionally, created something spiritual or sacred.

Saint Marty wishes he'd had Crumb's book as a kid.  He might have paid more attention in his religion classes.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 28: Men's Courses, Free Will, New Member, New Cartoon

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge.  "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.  Say it is thus with what you show me!"

Scrooge is in a panic at this point in the book.  The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has just brought Scrooge to his neglected grave, shown him his headstone.  After his travels in the spirit world, Scrooge knows he's screwed if he continues to live his life in the same manner.  He wants assurance from the Ghost that he can change the future, that he isn't doomed for eternity.

This passage touches upon the subject of free will.  It's about choices.  If Scrooge chooses to remain a "covetous, old sinner," he's going to die a lonely, hated old miser.  If he chooses to embrace mankind, share his material and spiritual abundance with the world, his heart and life will open.  He will save himself and, at the same time, Tiny Tim and the Cratchits and countless others.  The choice is his.

It's one of the oldest stories in the world.  Adam and Eve have free will in the book of Genesis, and they choose to eat the apple.  Romeo and Juliet have free will, and they choose to love each other.  SpongeBob has free will, and he chooses to work for Mr. Krabs.  If Adam and Eve had chosen a fig instead of the apple, we may all still be living in the Garden of Eden.  If Juliet had had the hots for Joe Blowtini down the lane, she and Romeo would have lived long, unhappy lives.  If SpongeBob worked for Plankton at the Chum Bucket instead...Who am I kidding?  SpongeBob would never work for Plankton.

My point is that we all have choices.  Our lives are a result of our choices.  That's one of the big lessons of A Christmas Carol.  I chose to move back to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my wife over ten years ago.  I chose to pursue degrees in writing and poetry.  I chose to start this blog.  Who I am, what I am, where I am, that's all a result of my choices.

Free will can be a gift or a curse.  It saves Scrooge.  It made Adolf Hitler one of the greatest monsters of the 20th century instead of a struggling artist.  It gave me a job as an adjunct English professor and made me a husband and father.  It may make me a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Pulitzer Prize, depending on my choices and a lot of luck.

Speaking of choices, a new person has chosen to be a disciple of Saint Marty.  I extend a warm welcome to Felipe.

Saint Marty is now going to exercise his free will.  He's going to end this post.

Confessions of Saint Marty