April 12-13: Very Good Catholic, Place to Belong, Home

 Merton is a stranger in a strange land, and finds himself home . . . 

At Matanzas I got mixed up in the paseo where the whole town walks around and around the square in the evening coolness, the men in one direction and the girls in the other direction, and immediately I made friends with about fifty-one different people of all ages. The evening ended up with me making a big speech in broken Spanish, surrounded by men and boys in a motley crowd that included the town Reds and the town intellectuals and the graduates of the Marist Fathers’ school and some law students from the University of Havana. It was all about faith and morals and made a big impression and, in return, their acceptance of it made a big impression on me, too: for many of them were glad that someone, a foreigner, should come and talk about these things, and I heard someone who had just arrived in the crowd say: 

“¿Es católico, ese Americano?” 

“Man,” said the other, “he is a Catholic and a very good Catholic,” and the tone in which he said this made me so happy that, when I went to bed, I could not sleep. I lay in the bed and looked up through the mosquito netting at the bright stars that shone in upon me through the wide-open window that had no glass and no frame, but only a heavy wooden shutter against the rain.

Merton, visiting Cuba to recuperate from an operation and rest before entering the monastery, finds himself in a group of Cubans from all stations of life.  Intellectuals and communists.  Marist Fathers students and University of Havana students.  The one thing that unites them all--their faith in God.  Despite being a foreigner in the country, Merton is filled with the peace of belonging.

I think that's what everyone is looking for, every day:  a place to belong.  I lived in Detroit when I was a young child.  For most of the rest of my life, I have made my home smack dab in the middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, except for a short, three-year stint in Kalamazoo.  Four apartments.  One house.  I've taught at two universities.  Worked in a book store.  An outpatient surgery center.  A cardiology office.  Two hospitals.  As a plumber's apprentice.  A housekeeper, cleaning operating rooms and birthing rooms.  I've been an organist at five different churches, four different Christian denominations.  Now, I work for a library.  I've been with the same woman for over thirty years.  Have a beautiful, 20-year-old daughter, funny 12-year-old son, and the cutest puppy in the world.

As the song goes, it has been a long and winding road.

And I don't think I'm done yet.  I have lived the life of a pilgrim, constantly searching for what Merton describes in the above passage.  A place where I look up through mosquito netting at the bright stars and feel completely content.  At home.  

Of course, my parish priest--and one of my best friends who's a Methodist minister--would tell me that the home I'm searching for isn't physical at all.  Merton would probably agree with them.  It's a spiritual thing.  A God thing.  It's what Paul encountered on the road to Damascus.  What Moses met on Mount Horeb.  What Buddha found beneath the Bodhi tree.  What Muhammad discovered in a cave called Hira.

But I'm not Merton.  Or Paul or Moses or Buddha or Muhammad.  My road is still a little unclear to me.  I try to treat everyone in my life with love and kindness every day.  I fail every day.  I try to be a good Christian every day.  And fail.  Good husband.  Fail.  Good father.  Fail.  I think that the only thing I've really perfected in my life is my ability to be imperfect.  

Here is what I call home tonight:

• My son, who let me kiss him on the forehead before he went to sleep.
• The peanuts I'm eating.
• My daughter, who brought me a cup of ice water before she went to bed.
• A picture of my sister who died of lymphoma about six years ago.
• My puppy, who forced herself into my lap and insisted on being held close to my chest.
• Books of poetry stacked on the table beside me.
• My wife, in all the complicated messiness of our thirty years together.
• Rain tapping against the window behind me.

All of the things on this list are ephemeral.  Could disappear tomorrow.  Yet, at this moment, they are what make me feel like I'm exactly where I should be.  Like I belong.  

Mother Teresa said, "If you want to change the world, go home and love your family."

Saint Marty tries to change the world every day.

December 15: Physical Push, Poetry Reading, Hunger

 Merton begins writing his thesis  . . , 

When I got back to New York, one of the first things I did was to break away, at last, from the household in Douglaston. The family had really practically dissolved with the death of my grandparents, and I could get a lot more work done if I did not have to spend so much time on subways and the Long Island train. 

One rainy day in June, then, I made a bargain with Herb, the colored taximan at Douglaston, and he drove me and all my bags and books and my portable vie and all my hot records and pictures to put on the wall and even a tennis racquet which I never used, uptown to a rooming-house on 114th Street, just behind the Columbia library. 

All the way up we discussed the possible reasons for the mysterious death of Rudolph Valentino, once a famous movie star: but it was certainly not what you would call a live issue. Valentino had died at least ten years before. 

“This is a nice spot you got here,” said Herb, approving of the room I was renting for seven-fifty a week. It was shiny and clean and filled with new furniture and had a big view of a pile of coal, in a yard by the campus tennis courts, with South Field and the steps of the old domed library beyond. The panorama even took in a couple of trees. 

“I guess you’re going to have a pretty hot time, now you got away from your folks,” Herb remarked, as he took his leave. 

Whatever else may have happened in that room, it was also there that I started to pray again more or less regularly, and it was there that I added, as Bramachari had suggested, The Imitation of Christ to my books, and it was from there that I was eventually to be driven out by an almost physical push, to go and look for a priest. 

July came, with its great, misty heats, and Columbia filled with all the thousands of plump, spectacled ladies in pink dresses, from the Middle-West, and all the grey gents in seersucker suits, all the dried-up high-school principals from Indiana and Kansas and Iowa and Tennessee, with their veins shriveled up with positivism and all the reactions of the behaviorist flickering behind their spectacles as they meditated on the truths they learned in those sweltering halls. 

The books piled higher and higher on my desk in the Graduate reading room and in my own lodgings. I was in the thick of my thesis, making hundreds of mistakes that I would not be able to detect for several years to come, because I was far out of my depth. Fortunately, nobody else detected them either. But for my own part, I was fairly happy, and learning many things. The discipline of the work itself was good for me, and helped to cure me, more than anything else did, of the illusion that my health was poor.

Merton is really on his own for the first time in his life.  Free to make his own decisions, follow his own heart.  So, in the midst or writing his graduate thesis on William Blake, Merton also begins to pray, explore Christian writings, and, eventually, feels a strong urge to seek out a priest.  A "physical" urge, as he describes it.  Something from deep inside him.

As you all can probably tell, I've felt quite reflective these last several days.  In a season that, in many major religions, is dedicated to light and hope, my little family unit has been the recipient of much love and help from friends.  I haven't had to look very far to see grace at work in my life.  (This is saying quite a lot, as I tend toward a darker view of the universe a lot of the time.  I'm a poet,  What can I say?)

Tonight, I gave a Zoom poetry reading for my local library in the town where I grew up.  I do it every year--Christmas-themed poems, stories, and essays.  I spent most of the late afternoon and evening preparing for it, after working eight hours for the library (a different one--yes, I know this is getting confusing).  I guess you could say that my whole day was dedicated to libraries and books and literature.  Not a bad gig.

The way I prepare for events like this is fairly intuitional.  I start reviewing poems and essays, reading and rereading what I've written.  And, like Merton, if I feel a kind of physical push, I print out what I'm reading.  I usually end up with 15 to 18 pages worth of material.  Once I have that pile, I start rereading it all again.

I've been using this process for years, and it never fails that a theme starts emerging as I review everything that I've selected.  A strong metaphysical current, if you will.  I can't explain how this happens.  Perhaps it's my subconscious at work, as I've usually been thinking about the reading for days.  Or perhaps--just perhaps--it is something stronger, deeper.  Something outside of myself, telling me what I need to say.

Either way, the theme that emerged tonight was "hunger."  During this pandemic, I think we all are experiencing various forms of hunger.  Hunger for friends and family.  For food from a favorite restaurant.  The ability to walk into a theater, sit down, eat popcorn, and watch the latest Tom Hanks movie.  Or go to a library for a live poetry reading, with musicians singing Christmas carols.  The whole world is hungry for this kind of normalcy.

So, I spoke to that hunger tonight.  Tried to address those kinds of urges we all have in our lives for what gives us comfort, feeds our souls.  The holiday season sort of lends itself to this kind of meditation, as much of it centers around the concept of hope.  

And, as I read, looked into the faces of all the people on my computer screen, I felt hope.  Yes, I'm stuck in COVID isolation.  Yes, my daughter has lost her ability to smell or taste anything.  And yes, my normal frenzy of Christmas preparation is greatly curtailed.  Yet, hope was present tonight.  

I have no idea if anybody else felt it, this thing with feathers, perching in their souls, as Emily Dickinson described it.  But I did.  I felt its wings beating against my ribcage.  Its plumes were all the people who were at the reading tonight. who have dropped off groceries these last few days, who have reached out by phone or text or email to express concern and love.  

Human beings are driven their whole lives by hunger for various things.  Hamburgers.  Poetry.  Sex.  Love.  Wine.  Friendship.  Art.  Cheetos.  God.  It's what gets us up in the morning, keeps us moving throughout the day.  Each 24 hours are an exercise in chasing and finding hope.  Filling the emptiness around and inside ourselves.  

I am filled up tonight.  Satisfied.  However, I will certainly wake up hungry again tomorrow morning.  That's the way it works.  Nobody throughout human history has escaped this cycle.  Even Jesus Christ.  Buddha.  Mohammed.  They may all have been incarnations of the Creator.  God made flesh.  But, they were still fully human. subject to all the same pulls and urges and hungers.

Some snapshots from my day:

• My beautiful daughter is still achy and tired.  She has fully lost her sense of smell and taste.  
• My beautiful puppy was my office mate all day, coming over to my chair every once in a while when I needed a break to pet her.
• My beautiful wife made dinner tonight.  Hamburger Helper.  Delicious.
• I had a beautiful phone conversation with my writer friend, Ronnie, about art and faith and music and poetry.
• I gave a Christmas poetry reading to a group of beautiful people.
• I played a game of Trivial Pursuit with my beautiful family, as we watched Ratatouille.
• The bottom element inside my stove burned out tonight as I was trying to cook a pizza for my handsome son.  I have to call an appliance repair place tomorrow.  I have a feeling nobody will step foot in our house until after we are done quarantining.

As you can tell from those snapshots, my day was filled with things that nourished my soul and things that left me craving more.  That is the nature of the universe.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for the miracle of hunger.

April 11: Chains Struck, Easter Vigil, Light and Hope

Young Merton has a little Easter moment . . .

Father had gone to Paris to be best man at the wedding of one of his friends from the old days in New Zealand.  Capt. John Chrystal had made himself a career in the British army and was an officer in the hussars.  Later on he became Governor of a prison:  but he was not as dreary as that might imply.  After the wedding, the Captain and his wife went off on their honeymoon, and the mother of the new Mrs. Chrystal came down to St., Antonin with Father.  

Mrs. Stratton was an impressive kind of a person.  She was a musician, and a singer, but I forgot whether she had been on the stage:  in any case, she was not a very theatrical character, rather the opposite, although she had a certain amount of dash about her.

She was not what you would call elderly, by any means, and besides she was a woman of great vitality and strength of character, with rich intelligence and talent, and strong and precise ideas about things.  Her convictions commanded respect, as did her many talents, and above all her overwhelming personal dignity.  You felt that she ought to have been called Lady Stratton, or the Countess of something.

At first I was secretly resentful of the great influence she at once began to exercise over our lives, and thought she was bossing our affairs too much, but even I was able to realize that her views and advice and guidance were very valuable things.  But so strong was her influence that I think it was due to her more than to anyone else that we gave up the idea of living permanently in St. Antonin.

The house was almost finished and ready for occupation, and it was a beautiful little house too, simple and solid.  It looked good to live in, with that one big room with the medieval window and a huge medieval fireplace.  Father had even managed to procure a winding stone stair and it was by that that you went up to the bedroom.  The garden around the house, where Father had done much work, would have been fine.

On the other hand, Father was travelling too much for the house to be really useful.  In the winter of 1927 he was some months at Marseilles and the rest of the time at Cette, another Mediterranean port.  Soon he would have to go to England, for by this time he was ready for another exhibition.  All this time I was at the Lycee, becoming more and more hard-boiled in my precocity, and getting accustomed to the idea of growing up as a Frenchman.

Then Father went to London for the exhibition.

It was the spring of 1928.  The school year would soon be over.  I was not thinking much about the future.  All I knew was that Father would be back from England in a few days.

It was a bright, sunny morning in May when he arrived at the Lycee, and the first thing he told me was to get my things packed:  we were going to England.

I looked around me like a man that has had chains struck from his hands.  How the light sang on the brick walls of the prison whose gates had just burst open before me, sprung by some invisible and beneficent power:  my escape from the Lycee was, I believe, providential.

Merton is set free from his chains.  The doors of his prison are flung open, and the light shines down upon him.  If you don't recognize the parallels in this passage to Acts 16:  25-26, where Saint Paul and Silas are set free from their prison and chains by an earthquake, then you probably weren't paying attention in Sunday school or didn't attend Sunday school at all.

It's an apt passage for tonight.  It is Holy Saturday.  In a usual year, at this time of the night (it is about 10:30 p.m. right now), I would be in a choir loft, playing the pipe organ and singing the Easter Vigil Mass at my church.  It's one of my favorite Masses of the entire Church calendar, full of all the bells and whistles of Catholic pageantry.  Candles and Gregorian chant, bells and "glorias," and, of course, clouds of incense.  And, just for fun, there are also baptisms and confirmations.  It's quite the show.

This year, however, my church is dark and empty.  No candles flickering in the pews.  No priest in Easter white intoning, "Rejoice, heavenly powers!  Sing, choirs of angels!"  Nope.  This Holy Saturday is more tomb than resurrection.

Of course, Christians all over the world are celebrating Easter in some way tomorrow.  Pope Francis has been holding solemn services all week in a vacant Saint Peter's Square.  Tonight, he celebrated the Easter Vigil in a nearly empty Saint Peter's Basilica.  For some reason, the images of Pope Francis sitting alone in a dark, rainy night have stuck with me.  A symbol of how isolating and terrifying this pandemic is.

Of course, Easter will come tomorrow.  There are five baskets, filled with chocolate, sitting on my kitchen table right now.  This morning, as I was heading to church to practice some music for tomorrow (I am playing for a virtual Easter Sunday service), I passed the Easter Bunny, standing at an intersection of the highway, waving at cars.  I honked and waved back.  Nothing is going to stop Easter.

There is power in the message of Easter for everyone (Christian, atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever) this year:  we will rise from the ashes of this disaster.  There will be light and hope in the world again.  Resurrection is on its way.

Covid-19 is teaching the world some hard lessons.  It's sort of knocked us all on our complacent asses.  We have taken the gifts of this world for granted for a very long time.  Now, we can't.  When we're done sheltering in place.  When we can go grocery shopping without fearing for our lives.  When coming home from work isn't like returning home from war.  When all this is said and done, I hope the Easter we experience is one of renewed appreciation for the graces of living in this spinning universe.  That we see and treat every human being for what they really are:  reflections of the Higher Power (Yahweh/God/Buddha/Jesus Christ/Allah) in our lives.

That will truly be an Easter to rejoice.

Saint Marty wishes you all a joyous Easter Vigil!  He is rising . . .

December 4: All Want Dignity, Follower, Simplest Rules

O'Hare had a little notebook with him, and printed in the back of it were postal rates and airline distances and the altitudes of famous mountains and other key facts about the world.  He was looking up the population of Dresden, which wasn't in the notebook, when he came across this, which he gave me to read:

On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day.  During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition.  So it goes.  In addition 123,000 person will die for other reasons.  So it goes.  This leaves a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world.  The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.

"I suppose they will all want dignity," I said.

"I suppose," said O'Hare. 

According to a website I just consulted, the world's population in the year 2000 was 6,145,006,989.  So that little prediction in Slaughterhouse was fairly accurate, give or take about 900,000 people.  I'm sure that, back in 1969 when Vonnegut first published his little war novel, the concept of having seven billion people existing on the planet was a little terrifying.

The world's population passed that number several years ago now.  We are dealing with all kinds of problems as a result.  Climate change.  The resurgence of Nazis in the world.  Donald Trump and company.  In some ways, I think our world is more surreal than the future that Vonnegut predicted.

However, what strikes me the strongest in that little passage above is Vonnegut's comment near the end:  "I suppose they will all want dignity."  He's saying this tongue-in-cheek, of course.  Vonnegut knows that all human beings deserve dignity.  During the bombing of Dresden, he saw the very worst acts that humans could perpetrate against each other.  That experience guided his entire adult working life, I think. 

So, the takeaway from Slaughterhouse today is this:  it doesn't matter what color your skin is, who you love, whether you are male or female, what God you worship--everybody deserves dignity and respect.  Jesus Christ believed this.  So did Muhammad and Buddha. Unfortunately, many "followers" of Jesus and Muhammad choose to ignore this fact.

Why is it that the simplest rules are the most difficult for people to follow?

Saint Marty doesn't have an easy answer to that question.

July 8: Monstrous Carp, Storm Coming, Things Broken

It scatters and gathers; it comes and goes.  I might see a monstrous carp heave out of the water and disappear in a smack of foam.  I might see a trout emerge in a riffle under my dangling hand, or I might see only a flash of back parts fleeing.  It is the same all summer long, all year long, no matter what I seek.  Lately I have given myself over almost entirely to stalking muskrats--eye food.  I found out the hard way that waiting is better than pursuing; now I usually sit on a narrow pedestrian bridge at a spot where the creek is shallow and wide.  I sit alone and alert, but stilled in a special way, waiting and watching for a change in the water, for the tremulous ripples rising in intensity that signal the appearance of a living muskrat from the underwater entrance to its den.  Muskrats are cautious.  Many, many evenings I wait without seeing one.  But sometimes it turns out that the focus of my waiting is misdirected, as if Buddha had been expecting the fall of an apple.  For when the muskrats don't show, something else does.

It's all about patience for Dillard.  Sitting on a bridge, waiting for something miraculous or surprising to appear.  She goes out looking for fish or muskrats.  Sometimes, she's rewarded with a leaping carp or emerging muskrat.  The altar of Tinker Creek offers up little sacrifices of scaly or hairy wonder, and Dillard knows that God is at work.  As she says, something always shows up.

I think that I'm a patient guy, can wait with the best of them.  Of course, I'm also a planner, like Dillard.  She sets out to see a muskrat.  That's her goal.  She plans it out, stations herself by where she knows a muskrat den exists.  She hedges her bets.  However, she also knows that nothing is certain.  Just because she is in muskrat country does not mean Mr. Muskrat will appear.  But her patience will pay off.

There is a storm brewing outside right now.  Rain has been flirting all day long with my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The tamarack outside is flickering with wind, and the sky has turned into steel.  I'm waiting for this weather party to get started.  Keep glancing out the window for fat drops of water or laces of lightning.  Nothing yet.

On my way home from the office tonight, I stopped by to see my wife, who's working tonight.  She looked at me and said, "I'm about to tell you something that may upset you.  Take a deep breath."  I took a deep breath.  "Are you ready?" she said.  "Okay," I said, expecting almost anything, from an unexpected pregnancy to a house fire.  However, it wasn't anything that catastrophic.

Turns out that my son dropped my iPad this morning.  The screen splintered like winter ice.

Now, I'm not going to lie.  I got a little angry.  I always do when things get broken.  But there was a part of me that was also relieved.  I had been expecting a big, fat, hairy muskrat, and instead I got a little field mouse.  (Both things gross me out, but one is a little less terrifying than the other.)

Saint Marty now has an iPad to repair to the tune of around $75.  This Buddha wasn't expecting the Apple to fall today.

I'm a little disenchanted myself tonight

December 17: Goodness and Piety, Course Evaluations, Annie Dillard, The Goodness of Laughter

God's most common form?  The goodness and piety of others.

These two sentences sort of sum up the entire message of Mr. Ives' Christmas.  In all of his soul-searching, Ives keeps coming back to this one fact:  everyone in the universe (priests, murderers, pastors, prostitutes, nuns, and Republicans) can be a reflection of God's goodness and piety.  There's a little Jesus (or Yahweh or Allah or Buddha) in all of us.

That's the upshot of my message tonight.  We are always surrounded by goodness.  I just read through my course evaluations for this past semester.  They were incredibly generous and positive, even though I don't think I was on my "A" game this semester as a teacher.  I was blessed by really kind and supportive students.

So, my suggestion for everyone tomorrow is to look for the goodness in people (I almost typed "Godness," but it's really the same thing).  You'll be surprised.  When you look for goodness, you will find it at home, work, Walmart, the post office, or DMV.  Everywhere you turn.

I know I've been a little down in my last few posts.  This evening, on my way home, I stopped by the cemetery to visit my sister's grave.  I stood by her stone for a few minutes and talked to her, told her how much I missed her and how much my kids missed her.  As I walked back to my car, a soft snow began to fall.  It was cold and beautiful.  Full of peace.  I felt blessed.

Saint Marty has a lot to be thankful for this Christmas.  He just needs to remind himself that he's surrounded by goodness and angels every moment of his life.

from Teaching a Stone to Talk

by:  Annie Dillard

There are angels in those fields, and, I presume, in all fields, and everywhere else.  I would go to the lions for this conviction, to witness this fact.  What all this means about perception, or language, or angels, or my own sanity, I have no idea.

The Goodness of Laughter...

June 23: Saint Ethelreda

My freshman yearbook photo

So, my pastor friend and his family left town a couple days ago. After a weekend of lasts (last time at book club; last time at McDonald's having breakfast together on Saturday with the kids; last worship service on Sunday), I stopped by his house for the last time on Monday, June 21, to say goodbye and help him and his wife load up some last boxes.

I went to his house immediately following a doctor's appointment. It was a six-month checkup, so I was expecting the whole song-and-dance: bend-over-and-spread-'em, turn-your-head-and-cough, open-wide-stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-"ah." It wasn't quite that invasive, for which I was thankful. However, the thing I really dread, even more than the digital rectal exam, is stepping on the scale and receiving the bad/good news about my weight.

I have fought the battle of the bulges my whole life. In high school, I went from being a pudgy, freshman outcast to a thin, cross country runner. In the years since high school, I have fluctuated from being normal to fat many times. You pick the term, I've been labeled it: husky, burly, big-boned, tubby, plump, obese, grossly obese, fat-assed, double-chinned, double-wide, etc. Whether these words were an accurate description of my physical condition is beside the point. No matter what the scale says, I always feel fat.

Stepping on the scale at the doctor's office, then, is my least favorite part of the visit. The fact that the scale is in the middle of the public hallway is even worse. Anyone can see you standing there, receiving the judgement. At least if the scale were in a private exam room, I could remove my shoes, socks, shirt, pants, insulin pump, and watch. Like at home. If I took a healthy crap before the appointment, I stand the chance of, at the very least, maintaining my weight from my last visit.

The fact that my doctor revels in telling me that I could stand to lose a few pounds doesn't make the situation any better. I sit in the exam room, half-naked, feeling more exposed than Ron Jeremy at work, and wait for my doctor to look up from his laptop with an expression usually reserved for the bearded fat lady at the State Fair. It's inevitable. As a life-long skinny person, my doctor doesn't have a lot of sensitivity to weight issues, aside from knowing it's unhealthy.

On Monday, when my doctor said, "Well, everything looks good. The only thing is your weight," I said, "I know. I don't understand it. I've been dieting all day long."

He looked at me. I looked at him. We stared at each other for a full twenty seconds before I said, "It was a joke."

He went back to typing on his laptop, and I went back to feeling like a Buddha statue at a Thai restaurant. Rub my belly for luck, I thought.

Needless to say, I wasn't in the greatest mood when I showed up at my pastor friend's house. I don't do well with partings to begin with; throw on top of that my encounter with Dr. Skinny-ass, and you have a pretty good idea of my frame of mind.

I helped my friend and his wife finish packing for about half an hour, long enough to walk through the empty parsonage and let the permanence of the change sink in fully. Generally, I try not to wallow in self-pity, but I was pretty much up to my eyes in it by the time I hugged them goodbye and drove away.
Ethelreda, today's saint, is one of those holy people who seem attracted to pain. The book actually says, "Sufferings were her delight. She thanked God when, in her last sickness, she had much to suffer." I understand, to a degree, accepting suffering with grace and dignity. I even understand thinking of suffering as a way a distilling your character, burning off the petty angers, jealousies, and hurts, to make yourself a stronger, spiritually deeper person. I understand that. I do. However, I don't get the concept of being delighted with suffering (unless it involves a Republican). I've been through some difficult times in my life, and I don't think I would ever volunteer to do it all over again. Am I a stronger, better person because of the trials I've experienced? Yes. Do I delight in feeling like a pile of elephant dung? No.

Now, a few days past my doctor's appointment and my friend's departure, I can honestly say I don't think I'm a better person. In fact, I don't like people too much at the moment, friends or relatives. It'll get better. It always does.
But for the time being, I feel like a fat, little high school freshman, dodging the balls God's hurling at me.