June 10: Bike Ride, Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty

Welcome to Sunday afternoon. 

I have not accomplished a whole heck of a lot today.  After church, I decided to get some exercise.  So, I went for a bike ride.  It was about 75 degrees outside, and I was out and about for some 45 minutes.  My initial goal was to bike down to Negaunee, our neighbor city to the east.  It would have been about a six-mile round trip.  I quickly shelved that plan after realizing a very important fact:  there are tons of hills on the path. 

Therefore, I simply biked around my fair city.  I quickly discovered another important fact:  there are tons of hills in my home town.  I think it's the only place in the world where it's uphill both ways, wherever you go.  It was uphill on the way out, and uphill on the way home.  I was sweaty, tired, and a little sore when I finally pulled into my driveway.

Tonight, I will be watching the Tony Awards with my wife, daughter, and my daughter's boyfriend.  He's really thrilled with the prospect, I'm sure.  My daughter is kind of a theater geek.  Go figure.  A lifetime of dancing and music has sort of warped her.  In a good way.  My wife and I, of course, have been theater geeks since childhood.

Those are my big plans for this evening.  Nothing too earth-shattering.

Six years ago, after a weekend of dance recitals, my plans on this day were pretty much the same . . .

June 10, 2012:  Dance Recital Part 2, Tony Awards

I spent the afternoon in a dark theater for the matinee of my daughter's dance recital, or, as I like to to call it, Dance Recital Part 2.  It was, again, about two and a half hours long, but I love watching my daughter perform.  She's so joyful and funny.  And she didn't disappoint.  Her solo dance was exquisite.  Of course, I'm a little biased.  I mean, I've been her manager since the beginning of her career a little over eleven years ago.  I deserve to brag and be sentimental.

Now, I'm sitting in my living room, watching the 2012 Tony Awards.  It's a good way to end a long weekend of theater.  I mean, who doesn't love Neil Patrick Harris, except some small-minded, humorless homophobe?  I think even Mitt Romney loves Neil Patrick Harris, in his presumptive Republican presidential candidate way.  That is to say, by possibly getting his picture taken with Neil in a vain attempt to appear hip and open-minded.

Anyway, that's all I have to say tonight.  I'm going to watch the Tony Awards now.  They're doing a rocking number from the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar at the moment.  It's going to be a good night.

Saint Marty is ready to kick back and eat some licorice, which, as everyone knows, is the perfect Tony Awards snack.

Tony Awards.  Dance Recital weekend.  School is done.  My daughter is going fishing tomorrow with her boyfriend.  My son is staying at grandma's house tonight.  I have writing projects to complete. 

Saint Marty is thankful for summer days.

June 12: Dance Recital Weekend, Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty

I am at the other end of the Dance Recital weekend.  I have survived a week of rehearsals and two performances.  During the past five or six days, I have put about an extra two hundred miles on my car chauffeuring my kids back and forth.  I am tired and happy.  My kids did really well, and now my daughter is at Bible camp for the week.  Dropped her off about an hour ago.  I feel a little guilty in saying that I'm looking forward to a few days of relative calm.

I am a little exhausted at the moment.  I had little time to relax (unless you count dozing off in the auditorium during dance rehearsals).  Five days of work await me.  I have a feeling that it's going to be a very long week.  My only consolation is that tomorrow will be a relatively quiet day at my new job, and I will be working by myself.  Solitude.

Tonight, however, I will be watching the Tony Awards to see Lin-Manuel Miranda take home a boatload of prizes for Hamilton.  And I will be eating Scoop Fritos and cheese dip (it's sort of a tradition for me).  It will be a good night, full of people breaking into spontaneous songs on television.

The episode of Classic Saint Marty I have chosen to share today is only about a year old.  It was written during a time when there was still hope for my sister's recovery from brain lymphoma.  In fact, I don't think she'd received that diagnosis yet.  I was thinking a lot about miracles at the time and the need for them in my life.

June 16, 2015:  Weeping Building, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!

June 10: A Monster, A Freak, A Dance

Either the world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak.

Dillard goes on, after this short paragraph, to discuss both of these options.  She talks about them for almost a full page of the book.  She presents evidence that the world may be monstrous and that she herself may be a little on the freakish side.  Dillard never really chooses sides.  She leaves it up to the reader.

I am too tired to argue either of these alternatives.  I will say that I have seen some pretty terrible things in the world--suffering that made no sense, death that seemed arbitrary and unjust.  On the flip side, I have always been a little bit of a carnival sideshow attraction in my family, different from all of my brothers and sisters.  I have never met a poet who wasn't a little bit of a bearded lady.

My weekend is going to be equally monstrous and freakish.  Most of my day tomorrow will be spent in a dark auditorium, watching my kids practice and perform for their annual dance recital.  It is a long eight or nine hours.  Some people find this weekend a little torturous.  It's like an entire season of football or basketball in two days.  That's the monstrous part.  I really enjoy recital weekend, seeing all my kids' hard work over the past nine months pay off.  I am the freakish.

Don't get me wrong.  By about 4 p.m. on Sunday, I am going to be exhausted.  My daughter and son will probably be at each other's throats.  My wife will probably fall asleep on the way home from the theater.  It's not all sequins and feathers and lights.

However, I will enjoy myself.  Despite my daughter's inevitable meltdowns.  In the eye of my son's coming tantrums.  There's something very affirming for me in watching all these kids doing something they love to do.  Plus, dance is a beautiful art form.  It's live poetry--music and movement.

Saint Marty and Baryshnikov have a lot in common.

June 7: Dance Recital Weekend, Lost Button, Exhaustion, Classic Saint Marty

Sorry for my absence yesterday, folks.  It was my son and daughter's dance recital weekend.  Yesterday, I was in a dark auditorium all day long.  Then I played the pipe organ for a church service.  After that, it was right back to the auditorium for the actual performance.

I have seen so many sequins and fringe and feathers these past two days that I feel like I've lived through a drag show apocalypse.  My daughter was graceful and gorgeous.  My son was adorable and funny.  There was one minor catastrophe when, for about an hour, a button was lost.  (Yes, that's right.  I said a button.  It caused my daughter to have a slight breakdown.  Eventually, the button was located.)

Now, my daughter has lost a card given to her by one of her dance instructors.  She has eviscerated her dance bag, leaving the contents all over the living room floor.  Now, she is sulking in the bathroom.  Correction, she just stomped off to her bedroom.  She's a little exhausted.

I have nothing brilliant or funny to say.  I'm weary.  Plus, the Tony Awards are on right now.

Tonight's episode of Classic Saint first aired three years ago, when I was living for a year with Charles Dickens.

June 7, 2012:  Frightful Cry, Ghosts, I Do Believe in Spooks

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

A nice, horrible little description of the apparition of Jacob Marley. It could have been written by Stephen King, if Stephen King took it upon himself to write a holiday story with Christian overtones about the redemption of a rich bastard. Scrooge literally has to be scared shitless before he sits down and starts listening to what Marley has to tell him. In particular, the whole detail of the lower jaw is a little disconcerting.

It was common practice in Dickens’ time to tie a bandage around the head of a corpse to keep its mouth from falling open. Funeral directors these days have more subtle ways of accomplishing this feat. I believe I once read that, in some cases, the lips of the deceased person are sewn shut to prevent any unsightly yawning during public viewing. Having worked as a hospital housekeeper, I have been around a few recently dead people. Sometimes, if family was present, a towel was placed under the corpse’s chin to close the mouth. Other times, I saw dead people being wheeled down to the morgue with their mouths gaping open, much as Dickens described Marley above, as if they were bored with the entire process of passing away.

This whole passage reminds me of one thing: I am afraid of ghosts. Yes, I believe in ghosts, spirits, phantoms of the dead, poltergeists, specters. Whatever you want to call them, I believe in them. Now, I don’t want to get into all the details of my ghost philosophy. To make a long story short, I think ghosts are souls that have unfinished business here on this planet. Marley’s unfinished business is doing penance for a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Some people have told me that my belief in spirits doesn’t particularly jibe with my Christian faith. I don’t care. I’m like the Cowardly Lion. I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.

My belief in ghosts is also bolstered by my friend who used to be a hospice nurse. She has told about many of her experiences with the sick and dying, and they all point to the existence of an afterlife. That doesn’t mean I want to be some kind of ghost whisperer. Unlike Haley Joel Osment, I do not want to see dead people. I live in a house that’s over 100 years old. My biggest fear has always been stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night and running into my own version of Jacob Marley, chains and everything. The worst I’ve encountered is a little black mole skittering across the floor. (I reacted the same way to the mole that I would to a ghost: I screamed and jumped on top of the toilet.)

Obviously, as a Christian, I believe there’s something beyond blogging. I still have my eyes on sainthood. I certainly don’t have my eyes on wandering the world, wrapped in chains, moaning and lamenting my eternal fate. That would kind of suck.

Saint Marty doesn’t want to end up as a sidekick ghost in a Dickens tale.

Unlike this kid, I don't want to see dead people