January 18: Luke Skywalker Action Figure, Alice Walker, "We Alone"

I love this poem by Alice Walker.  Love how it questions the idea of worth.

Human beings spend way too much time worrying about wealth.  I'm just as guilty as the next person.  I watch Antiques Roadshow and wonder whether my original Luke Skywalker action figure is worth $50,000.  (I have two of them.)  Unfortunately, most people define themselves by their "stuff."  Cars.  Houses.  Salary.  Job titles. 

People who can afford diamonds or gold or Corvettes or tickets to Hamilton are the ones we envy.  Because those things are rare, and anybody that has them must be blessed in some way.

Alice Walker turns that idea on its ear.  She calls for us to treasure the commonplace.  Maple leaves.  Seashells.  The detritus that ends up in the compost pile.  We are all blessed by these wonders.  Every day.

Saint Marty still isn't giving up on his Luke Skywalkers, though.  That's retirement, baby.

We Alone

by:  Alice Walker

We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.

This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce.

May 23: Mad Beams, Existential, Mistakes

All right then.  Pull yourself together.  Is this where I'm spending my life, in the "reptile brain," this lamp at the top of the spine like a lighthouse flipping mad beams indiscriminately into the darkness, into the furred thoraxes of moths, onto the backs of leaping fishes and the wrecks of schooners?  Come up a level; surface.

Dillard is giving herself a little pep talk, trying to talk herself back from her "reptile brain."  There's something crazed, wild in her current state.  She's dwelling with insect and fish, diving into the wreck, as Adrienne Rich would say.  She wants to pull away, kick her way to air, to sky.  To the stars.

I've been feeling a little existential these last couple days.  Questioning the meaning of my life.  Like Dillard, it's not a state in which I want to remain very long.  I would prefer to surface right now, but I can't.  Instead, I'm dwelling on the choices I've made.  Over and over.

I wake up in the morning and think, "What the hell am I doing?"  I didn't dream of being a clinic office clerk when I was a kid.  When I'm sitting at my desk for eight hours, registering patients and answering phones, I sometimes want to get up, walk away, find a quiet corner, and read a book or write a poem.  And when I'm in a classroom teaching, I feel like I'm . . . home (sorry if that sounds corny, but that's the only way I can say it).

Of course, I know I've made mistakes.  Every day, I make mistakes.  Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be working for a little while at my new job, registering patients for about an hour.  I have no clue what I'm doing.  I'm going to need help.  A lot of help.  And I'm going to make mistakes.  A lot of them.  (I'm not entirely sure that this new job is the right choice for me.  It may be another mistake.)

Being human means being flawed.  I'm a jigsaw puzzle of failures.  So is everybody else.  One of the hardest things as a parent is seeing your kids make bad choices and not being able to do a thing to stop them.  Yet, I've learned more from my mistakes than my successes.  That's the irony.  My mistakes have made me a better person.

So, here I sit on my couch at home, in the dark, feeling existential while watching Antiques Roadshow.  I don't know what the meaning of my life is.  I am a husband.  A father.  Teacher, writer, blogger.  And I have failed (sometimes miserably) in each of those roles at one point or another.

Marty is probably failing at being a saint, as well.  He hasn't performed any miracles in a really long time.

January 27: Nothing to Say, Bert Lahr, "Gone With the Wind"

My daughter is waiting impatiently for me to finish typing this post.  She wants to do something called Minecraft on my laptop.  She's been stomping and whining for about an hour.  Thank God she's quieted down a little.  She's watching Minecraft videos on my iPad, I think.

I don't really have anything left to say today.  I just saw a guy on Antiques Roadshow (who happens to be the great grandson of actor Bert Lahr--the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz) have the Oz script used by his great grandfather appraised at $150,000.  I nearly crapped myself.

None of my stuff is that important or valuable.  I have a few signed additions of books, but nothing of real importance.

Saint Marty wishes his great grandfather was Clark Gable.  Then Saint Marty would have a Gone With the Wind script that could get his kids college educations.

This guy can send his kids to college because of his great grandfather's script

June 24: Apology for "Apology"

OK, I'm not really happy with the poem I posted last night.  It's not quite working for me.  I think some of its imagery is pretty good, but, as a whole, it's not holding together for me.  It isn't saying or doing anything interesting, except retelling the Jesus narrative from a little different perspective.  Big deal.

Keep an eye out for revisions of the poem this week.  I'm going to keep working on it until I'm satisfied.  Plus, I'm going to do something I've never done before.  I'm not going to go back to the old post containing the original "Apology" and change it.  I'm going to post each revision to show the progress toward the final product.  Call it a little work-in-progress project.  Hopefully, it will be interesting to see where the words take me.

Saint Marty needs to get to bed, as soon as Antiques Roadshow is over.

First draft of a Gary Soto poem

January 16: A Good Day, A Good Class, "Antiques Roadshow"

It has been a very good day.  My first mythology class of the week went really well.  The students were talking, laughing, listening.  It was almost as if they cared about what I had to say.  I know it's only the first day, and things may change drastically.  But, for the first class of the semester, I left the room feeling like a teacher instead of a study hall monitor.

This evening I went to an open house at my daughter's dance studio.  I've watched my daughter grow from an awkward, five-year-old in pink tights into a confident, graceful dancer.  She was the best in the class, and I'm not saying that just because I'm her father.  She had the moves down cold and obviously loved what she was doing.

Anybody want to give me a bid?

Now, I'm sitting, watching Antiques Roadshow.  I believe this particular episode is set in Minnesota.  Haven't seen anything really impressive yet.  A $25,000 carpet.  And $15,000 Russian landscape.  So, those two items, combined, are worth about as much as my house.  I wonder how much I could get for my vintage action doll from the movie Alien.

Saint Marty is having a great night.