January 1: Eighty-Four Days, Hell of a Two Years, 2022

The beginning of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . . . 

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."

The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

"No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."

"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."

"He hasn't much faith."

"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home."

"Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen."

They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.

When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

I truly sympathize with Santiago this first day of 2022.  Eighty-four days of bad luck.  No fish.  First, accompanied by the boy, and then alone on an empty sea.  What I admire is Santiago's attitude.  He keeps fishing, day after day, returning empty-handed night after night.  Yet, he doesn't succumb to self pity or depression.  Ever.

It has been a hell of a two years.  I start 2022 in COVID quarantine.  I'm pretty sure I'm COVID positive.  My wife tested positive on December 30th.  I woke up on December 31st with a runny nose and sore throat.  During the day, I progressively felt worse.  Today, I'm speaking with a Kathleen Turner rasp.  I just went for a short walk with my puppy, and I am absolutely wiped out.  I haven't been able to get tested to confirm my diagnosis.  That will happen in a couple days.

I could feel sorry for myself.  I don't.  Omicron is spreading faster than measles in an anti-vaxxer convention.  For two years, I've avoided getting sick.  Time caught up with me.  Perhaps I let down my guard.  Made a stupid mistake.  Became a little cocky.  I'm fully vaccinated.  I've had my booster.  That is why I'm not in the hospital, waiting for a ventilator.  

Here's the thing.  On January 1, 2020, I said to myself that it was going to be a better year than 2019.  It wasn't.  This year, I have no expectations.  I'm like Santiago, returning after a long day of fishing.  I'm going to tiptoe into this New Year.  Approach 2022 like it's a fawn in my backyard that I don't want to startle.  I'll just sprinkle some feed corn on the ground.  

An offering for 2022 to come in, eat, and maybe bed down for a while against the shelter of Saint Marty's house.

August 9: Beloved Manure, Another Rejection, Sharon Olds, "Topography," New Cartoon

And so Wilbur came home to his beloved manure pile in the barn cellar.  His was a strange homecoming.  Around his neck he wore a medal of honor; in his mouth, he held a sac of spider's eggs.  There is no place like home, Wilbur thought, as he placed Charlotte's five hundred and fourteen unborn children carefully in a safe corner.  The barn smelled good.  His friends the sheep and the geese were glad to see him back.

I love this passage about Wilbur coming home from the Fair, his survival assured but his life bereft of his best friend.   It holds everything that is so wonderful about Charlotte's Web.  The sense of home, of belonging.  Also, the sense of inevitable loss, of sadness in the midst of happiness.  Basically, it describes everyday life in very simple terms.  It's all about joy mixed with sorrow.

I've just spent a very quiet evening reading Preparing the Ghost by Matt Frank, a friend and colleague from the university (more to come on this book in a future post).  It was quite peaceful.  My wife had to work late.  My kids are spending the night at grandma's house.  Literally, all I had to do was come home, change into my pajamas, and read.

Some books make me want to write.  Ghost is one of those books.  It's beautifully written.  Poetic.  Smart.  Haunting.  When I finished the last page, I was excited to sit down with my laptop and write this post.  Then, I made the mistake of checking my e-mail before I started blogging.

In my inbox was a lovely communication from a magazine to which I recently submitted some poems.  Simply by the truncated memo line (POETRY SUBMISSION STAT...), I knew it was going to be another rejection.  I should be used to these messages by now.  However, for whatever reason, tonight, I felt like I was at a middle school dance watching all the cool kids making out under the bleachers.

I've been at this writing thing for a long time.  I send stuff out, get rejected, spend some time in the fetal position, and then send stuff out again.  That's the nature of publishing.  Those authors who become "overnight successes" probably have a mattress stuffed with rejection letters.  It's just been a very long time since I've gotten an acceptance letter, and I'm a little dispirited.

Of course, as the poetry editor of a respected literary journal, I am familiar with the other side of the coin, as well.  Sifting through hundreds of poems, looking for something startling or breathtaking.  It's a difficult position.  I know, wrapped up in every single submission I read, is a shard of hope.  The author wanting to be asked to slow dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."

So, I will lick my wounds tonight and turn to Sharon Olds to make me feel better.  The poem below is one of her most famous.  It's been anthologized and reprinted all over the place, but there's a reason for that:  it's fucking brilliant.

Now, if you will excuse Saint Marty, he has a fetal position to assume.

Topography

by:  Sharon Olds

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
intricately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Confessions of Saint Marty

April 5: Sense of Humor, Sharon Olds Again, "Diagnosis"

One of the things that allows me to live the life I have is my sense of humor.  I have two basically full-time jobs that barely allow me to pay my bills.  I'm a part-time medical records clerk who works over 50 hours per week for part-time benefits.  I'm a part-time adjunct English professor who's been teaching part-time at the same university for close to 20 years.  I have a book manuscript that I can't get published.  And I have a blog that I obsessively write posts for that I'm not sure anyone cares about.  I have to have a sense of humor.

I've had a good day.  I had breakfast with my best friend whom I haven't seen in close to a year.  I had a great appointment with a therapist.  I just ate a Reese's Peanut Butter Egg.  I'm watching Stranger than Fiction, one of my favorite movies ever.  The snow is melting, and I have the whole weekend ahead of me.

On this P.O.E.T.S. Day Eve, Saint Marty's turning to Sharon Olds again, because she is a poet who has a sense of humor.

Diagnosis

By the time she was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me.  I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood.  My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long.  My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face--
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She's doing it now!  Look!
She's doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor.  Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.

Jesus had a sense of humor, too